The Siren's Touch (12 page)

He raised his face to the bright sky and sucked in a cooling breath. “Sonya, we can’t get distracted by all this…”

“Living?” Her sweet rosebud lips pulled into a sad smile. “You’re right. But the sun feels so good. Let me lie here on this warm stretch of the deck and listen to the water. It’s making my memories jitter.”

He took both her hands and helped her sit down. With his legs dangling off the deck, he tucked the blanket around her and supervised her settling in. She smoothed hair off her forehead and closed her eyes. Her features relaxed, her smooth face rosy with life.

Somehow, she seemed old-fashioned even when she was still and silent. She was clever and innocent, but not at all naïve. The fashion shows had absorbed her, not like a woman who wanted him to buy her expensive things—he’d known plenty of those types—but like an artist. And so he wanted to spoil her, to lavish her with the things she’d never had and never experienced. To give her body the pleasure she was curious about—but only if she wanted—

Hell. What was he thinking? Makar was probably packing up to leave town right this moment, and taking Dmitri’s chance to avenge his father with him.

Vengeance. Strange that hers and his would converge in this way, one need keeping him from the other. But what had Elena said—there was logic in it, that his quest for redemption had led Sonya to him, another soul hungering for revenge.

In the brilliant morning light, scented with herbs and accompanied by dove song, Dmitri’s world shrunk to this moment and the beautiful woman lying next to him. His duty to Gregor, his anger over every indignity of his past—it all fell away. Maybe avenging his family would not change anything. It probably wouldn’t save him from himself in the end. But maybe, just maybe, helping Sonya could.

Like a whispered word, the gentle rise and fall of her chest assured him everything would be all right.

Then the sunlight caught a single tear trickling from her eye, and she sniffed.

His breath hitched. “Hey, ghost, are you remembering?”

“Yes.”

Buoyed on the sound of trickling water, Sonya’s memories floated, carrying her with them.

“Sonya.” Her mother’s whisper was urgent, and on its heels came a harsh jostle. “Wake up. Anya. Girls. We must go.”

“What’s happened?” Anya asked, rubbing her eyes.

“Get your coats and put on your boots. We’re going out the back door. Hurry!”

Sonya shoved her bare foot into a cold shoe and reached for the next one, not bothering to lace them. “How did they find us here?”

“Not now, Sonya. No, leave the satchel. We must run to the row boat out back and—”

A knock sounded, making Sonya jump and nearly causing her to drop the bag of her family’s most precious heirlooms. Papa appeared in the hallway. “They are rousing the neighbors. Quickly, outside.”

He pulled Anya’s arm and Sonya followed. At the door, he shoved his daughters ahead of him.

Mama disappeared down the hall. “I’m just going to get the—”

The next knock was louder.

“Run.” Papa closed the door, locking Sonya and Anya outside.

Sonya yanked uselessly at the handle, a scream building in her heart.

“Come on.” Anya gripped Sonya by the arm and dragged her toward the boat.

Inside the house, a man shouted. “Where is the necklace?”

“We don’t have it. Your friend, he took it from me. Ask him.”

A shot exploded into the quiet night. A second one cut off her mother’s scream. Sonya cried out and Anya tried to drag her toward the short dock where the rowboat was tied. But it was a long way off and the path through the field offered no hiding place.
 

“Christ. You killed them both,” a man shouted.

No!
The scream tore through her mind. They couldn’t be dead. She had to go back in.

Anya yanked at her, whispering. “They sacrificed themselves so we could run. Go.”

Sonya stared into her sister’s eyes for too long before dashing toward the muddy riverbank. They could shelter behind the small drop off at the water’s edge. Only Anya ran in the other direction. The door flew open so loudly it slammed into the wall of the house with a crack.

“Slow down. Let’s think this out. The neighbors can identify us.”

“First, we have to take care of all of them. Then we find the diamonds.”

“The girls never saw—”

“Follow that one into the trees. I’ll take this one.”

The bullet tore into Sonya’s shoulder before she even realized he meant her. She tumbled down the embankment into the mud, pain exploding through her chest. Her satchel spilled, the family bible and her beloved teapot splattered with mud. When she looked up, he was a dark shadow, looming over her, his face shadowed by the visor of his militsya hat. He raised the gun.

She scrambled up and tried to raise her hands in surrender, but her left arm wouldn’t budge. “Please. I—”

“You sound just like your mother.” He squeezed off the shot.

Sonya had swum in the river many times as a child. Without thinking, she dove into the freezing water, grazing the muddy shelf of the shore and sliding deeper into the icy current. She held her breath, kicked, and tried to swim. Her arm still wouldn’t move. Heat poured from her wound. Her boots dragged her down, so she kicked them off. The lazy summer river was now a roaring torrent, frigid with recent rain.

Her lungs burned and she splashed to the surface. He fired another bullet at her, and she ducked underwater with barely a mouthful of air. She tried to surface again, but she had turned to lead. With no more energy left to fight, she sank into the cold blackness.

“Hey, ghost, are you remembering?”

“Yes.”

A warm hand squeezed hers, and gentle fingers brushed away a tear. She blinked.

Dmitri’s slumped shoulders matched his frown. “You were so quiet. I didn’t even realize…oh hell.” Her hand shook, pressing into his big palm. “Was it bad?”

Her world had come to an end in the stretch of three long minutes because of one faceless man. “He has to pay, Dmitri. Nothing else matters. Promise me, even if I am lost to this fury, you will make him pay.”

“Sonya, I—”

His eyes grew wide and his mouth fell open.

“Oh.” For a moment, asking for help avenging her blood debt had seemed perfectly normal, as if she’d asked him escort her to the train station. Maybe he planned to kill someone too, but that didn’t mean he took it lightly. “I’m sorry. It’s a lot to—”

“Let’s just make sure you get your debt paid yourself, so you can join your family.”

“Okay.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“We fled Kiev, but they found us in my mother’s village. They were militsya, Dmitri. And the one—he shot my parents and then me. I drowned in the river. I don’t know what happened to Anya.”

“Militsya?” His gravelly voice lifted up on a skeptical note.

Outraged, she pushed up onto her forearms to defend her family’s honor. “We were innocent, my parents were innocent.”

“I don’t doubt that. There is plenty of corruption in the militsya still. But what did they want with your family?”

She closed her eyes, allowing the heat of the sun to ward off the remembered chill. “A necklace. My father was doing a repair on a valuable necklace for some important communist party leader. Papa called him a muckety-muck.”

His silly tone and eye roll had incited much laughter at the time. Seated at his worktable and holding his brass hand lens to his eye, he’d inspected the broken setting on a jeweled pendant. Every time he bent over an object, it seemed like his bald spot grew bigger, and she would tease him that soon all his hair would be gone. When he sat back up, the jeweler’s loupe would leave a red ring pressed into his eye-socket.

Grief welled up inside her, and she worked to keep her tone flat and simply recount the story without dissolving in unspent emotion. “He was an expert at duplicating jewelry. Before the war, he’d created paste copies for private customers. Afterward, he did repairs, sold secondhand valuables—watches and wedding rings. His claim to fame was making the costume jewelry used in the National Opera.

“The militsya men threatened my father and instructed him to copy the necklace and return the forgery to the customer. Papa planned to double-cross them, but one of them returned early, demanding the necklace at gunpoint. Father gave it to him, and then we ran to the countryside, hiding in the village where my mother was raised.”

With all the calm she could muster, she spelled out the details she’d remembered about the night she drowned, until her memory lingered over her last glimpse of her father’s face, and Anya’s. Then the shaking took her. But as a human, only her flesh and bones rattled and trembled. There was no ghostly power to channel her furious anger into household objects.

“
Sshh
.” Dmitri pulled her upright and cradled her to his chest.

Sobs wracked her. She missed them so much—her sweet father, her capable mother, even her strident sister. How could people so alive be suddenly dead?

“Papa hid their names from us.” She gulped a breath. “To protect us from retaliation.” Another gulp. “But my killer didn’t care. That’s why I’m still here. To make him pay for our senseless deaths.”

She pulled away to look Dmitri in the eye, and he reared back.

“What?”

His nostrils flared. “Your eyes went green. Startled me.”

Instinctively, she squeezed them closed, hating that she’d repulsed him.

Lids pressed tight, she said, “Dmitri?”

“Yes?”

“I wish it was you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wish it was you and not this terrible blood debt that brought me back. I wish I could stay and hold your hand and have some of the life I missed.”

Unsure what color they would be, she opened her eyes just in time to see his face closing in. Firm but gentle lips pressed against hers. In the very first seconds of the kiss, it surpassed her greatest expectations, tingling across every inch of her. If she weren’t already dead, she could die happy. She sighed and parted her lips. He slipped his tongue, thick and hot, between them. He kissed her with a tender confidence so unlike the clumsy efforts of the grocer’s son. Of its own accord, her mouth opened wider and permitted her tongue to play along.

Her heart raced so quickly she might just die all over again. She pressed into his chest, which she’d already memorized with her eyes and fingers.

He groaned and suddenly she lay on the deck beneath him, her wrists pinned next to her ears under his big hands. “Sonya, if this is your rusalka shit, cut it out. I’m only a man. I can’t—”

“No, it’s not.” She clamped her mouth shut, unwilling to deny what she wasn’t quite sure of. Her desire for him wasn’t rusalka shit, as he’d so eloquently said. But maybe his attraction to her was only because of the bloodthirsty siren inside her. “You’re right. How can we be sure what’s real?”

He tilted his head, pressing his lips together in something very like a pout.

“Do you think those details are enough for your friend to start an investigation?” Keeping hold of his forearm, she rolled out from under him and pushed herself up.

He gave her some space but slid his arm up so she could hold his hand. “Yeah. I’ll call him. And then…” He cast a glance over her blanket wrapped form. “I’m taking you shopping.”

“Shopping?”

“Yep. A ghost’s gotta have something to wear.” He flashed a smile that was almost charming in his harsh face. Taking hold of both her wrists, he hauled them to standing. “What was that designer you liked so much, who made the silver dress?”

He remembered? She flushed all over. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I can wear anything.”

“Yeah, you have more than proven that in your damp nightgown.”

Astonished, she gaped up at him. It seemed like he was saying—

“Dmitri!” Elena appeared at the bottom of the garden. “Breakfast is ready, and two goons are parked outside my house.”

All the windows had curtains, and Dmitri needed to glimpse outside without alerting the jackasses he was on to them. This had control-freak Gregor written all over it—acting out because Dmitri was ignoring him. But it was also possible the target had turned the tables. After all, Makar had stared Dmitri down in the alley. Could he have recognized Dmitri and then found Elena’s house?

Elena. In America, she went by her mother’s maiden name for this very reason. No need for enemies of the Lisko family to retaliate against her. But still, Boris Makar had known the family a long time, would surely have known Elena as a young woman too. If Boris was as cunning as Gregor said, it was certainly possible he’d found Dmitri’s aunt.

Frosted glass paned the window in the front door and a narrow border ran around it, just transparent enough to see through. He closed one eye and peered through that half inch of visibility. Two Eurotrash thugs sat smoking in a black sedan, their hair too slick and their sunglasses too flashy. If the old lady he’d frightened saw these two, she keel over right there on the sidewalk.

Dmitri cringed at the memory of the woman’s fear. At least he looked a hell of a lot classier than these two when he was on the job.

“We need to get out of here.” He scanned the street. “Elena, is your car in the garage?”

“Of course. But with three of us, it will be tight.”

“Find something for Sonya to wear, then we’ll split.”

“I do have one dress that might stretch over her…” His aunt closed the door to her room.

Dmitri licked his lip at the imagined end of that sentence. Could the tiny Elena have a single outfit that would accommodate Sonya’s impressive curves?

“Come on, I need to get my things.” He tugged Sonya’s hand, leading her back to his room, where he tossed extra ammo cartridges and a clean shirt into his pack. Once everything was crammed in, he said, “I need coffee. How ’bout you?”

Her stomach growled, roared really, like a ravenous lion that hadn’t eaten in decades. She blushed, wide-eyed.

He tried very hard not to laugh, but her embarrassment charmed him. To bury his chuckle, he said. “Sounds like you need breakfast.”