The Siren's Touch (7 page)

Yeah. So he’d seen two ghosts today. That had nothing to do with Makar. The woman had been innocent and Makar was anything but. Makar had broken every code of honor between friends, and he’d cost Ivan everything, and by extension Dmitri too. He deserved exactly what was coming to him.

Dmitri leaned against the front door. “Nah. No reservations. Not about this one.”

“I only ask because this is the first time you’ve ever missed a—”

Dmitri wrapped his hand around the doorknob. “Listen, I can’t talk about this right now. Just wanted to inform you of the delay.”

“Tell me the truth. Are you all right? You sound—”

“I’m fine, tired and…” What could he say? Shaking from lack of booze and haunted by a sexy ghost. “I’m fine. Just need a good night’s sleep.”

“Relax, son. I’m allowed to be concerned.”

That time, Dmitri couldn’t help but smile. Sometimes he didn’t mind Gregor calling him son.

“Elena hasn’t been trying to talk you into staying, has she?”

“No, of course not.” Dmitri rested his forehead on the door, more than ready to get off the damn phone.

“Because I need you here. Please, never doubt that. Lisko Enterprises needs you. So find your package, take care of things, and then come back here in a hurry.”

“Will do. But there’s one more thing. You remember an antique teapot? It’s white with a red pattern. You gave it to Elena when she left for Moscow.”

Gregor didn’t answer.

Dmitri looked at the phone to check he hadn’t hung up. “You still there?”

“Yes, I vaguely remember the teapot.” There was one drop too much cool in Gregor’s uncharacteristically casual tone.

Dmitri’s mouth went dry, and he had to peel his tongue off the roof of his mouth to ask, “Where did it come from?”

“An antique shop on Olesya Street. But it closed down years ago. Why?”

Damn it. Gregor had never lied to him before. No one else would hear the strain, the forced vowels and punchy consonants of his uncle’s speech. But the two of them were like father and son, knew each other better than anyone else. There was no question he’d tried to deceive Dmitri.

Well, he could play casual too. “No reason. I was just curious.” He turned the knob and crossed the threshold into the house.

Predictably, Gregor laughed, trying to blow the whole thing off. “And all of a sudden you’re interested in antiques?”

“Not hardly. Let’s just say I’m curious about its story.”

At his words, Sonya spun around slowly, like a ballerina in a music box. Her eyes lit up, promising she saw him as a hero, and everything inside him strained to be that man.

A note of pleading that Dmitri had never heard colored his uncle’s voice. “Dima, take care of the package and get back here soon. I need you.”

Dmitri held Sonya’s gaze. “I’ll do my best.”

Sonya coughed, trying to clear the rusalka magic from her throat before she spoke. “You do not trust your uncle?”

“I do, it’s just that…” Dmitri stared at the screen of the small electronic device. Worry etched lines into his brow. Finally, he looked up, his eyes wide and surprisingly unguarded. “Nah. I don’t entirely trust him.”

She didn’t ask. It wasn’t her place. And it would have been a betrayal of the vulnerability shimmering behind his dilated pupils. They both looked into the space between them, silent for a long while.

When those fierce crystal-blue orbs finally shuttered, Sonya spoke. “I remembered something. Not a lot…”

“That’s real good, Sonya. Tell me.” He strode across the room and collapsed onto the armchair by the fireplace.

She sucked an imaginary breath into her ghost lungs and tried to brave her way through the memory. “My father was a jeweler in Kiev. And there was a man—”

In her mind, the scene had frozen in time without revealing a single clue about what came next.

Phooey—the recollection amounted to pretty much nothing.

“What about the man?” Dmitri asked.

She shivered. “He was sad and he wanted the necklace. And that’s all I remember.”

Dmitri exhaled, disappointment personified. And she lost the grip on her composure. The legs of his chair wobbled and the glass doors on the fireplace jittered.

He leaned forward over his knees. “Okay, okay, sweetheart. It’s a start, and that means more will come.”

She sniffed and the angry buzz of energy inside her settled.

Dmitri rubbed his eyes with his fists, an image that tugged her heart in several opposing directions. He pulled out the device with the time and date. It seemed to be a large electronic pocket watch.

“You speak into this thing like a telephone.”

He glanced at her and yawned. She waited for the inevitable urge to mimic the action. It never came.

All right then. Apparently, ghosts don’t yawn.

He raised the device for her examination. “It is a telephone. A mobile one.”

She drifted closer, examining each surface. “It has no wires?”

“None.”

She pointed. “And this is a television?”

“Uh huh. Seen one before?”

“Yes. There was one at my sister’s school and one at the library.”

“Want to see how it works?” He was already reaching for another electronic device.

“Yes, please.”

He turned on the television.

Sonya gasped. Bright images appeared, so crisp and real looking she might have touched them, if she could touch things, of course. “It looks different than the ones I’ve seen.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. They’re better now. With all kinds of programs. Sports, drama, this is all in English…”

“I know a little English.”

“Do you? That must have been unusual for a girl in Kiev in the sixties.”

She shrugged and peeled her gaze away from the shiny actors just in time to catch him looking at her breasts. Quickly, his gaze darted back to the television. Young men were always doing that, but for some reason, it wasn’t so annoying when Dmitri ogled her. And who could blame him? Her stupid wet nightgown left her on display. Any man would stare at any woman in this impossible situation.

He wet his lips with his tongue. “What do you want to watch?”

A list appeared and he selected something. Two young women shrieked at one another in what looked like a tavern. Sonya tried to cover her ears with her useless hands. In a few seconds, the list reappeared on the screen.

“How many programs are on this?”

“There are hundreds of channels. And each runs twenty-four hours a day.”

Hundreds?

“Wait.” She lifted her finger. “This says fashion?”

“Yeah. Runway models in Paris and Milan. That kind of thing.”

“Will you turn it on for me?” That dog-eared issue of
Vogue
flashed in her mind. She floated back from the television until she found a good distance to take in the glittering images.

A lithe model appeared in a dress even more transparent than her sheer slip. “Eeek. Do women really wear these things nowadays?”

He chuckled. “Only the models.”

“They are very skinny.”

“Yep.” He rubbed his chin, covering his mouth and hiding his expression.

“Men prefer women like this in your time?”

“Some.”

Since she was dead, self-consciousness was useless. She stated the obvious. “If I were alive, I would be too fat.”

“That’s not—”

“Oh, look. This one is lovely. The bias cut is perfect. Do you see how the dress drapes?”

The elegant silver gown flattered the thin model, softening her harsh angles with a more feminine style than the other outrageous garments the previous woman had worn down the catwalk.

“Huh,” Dmitri said. “You like this kind of thing?”

It was Sonya’s turn to chuckle. “Oh, yes, it’s my guilty pleasure. Sometimes, when I visit the Opera House, Marya gets
Vogue
magazines for me. They are months out of date, ragged, smuggled from Paris. If I have spare fabric, I try to duplicate the patterns. They never turn out like the ones on the models, but it’s fun to try.”

“Sonya.”

“Uh huh.” She stared at the screen with intense concentration. “That flare at the ankle is very skillful. I’d think the fabric too soft to hold the shape.”

“Did you just remember something?”

She dismissed him, not wanting to miss a single detail of the dress. “No. I remembered that part earlier.”

“Anything else?” His low voice commanded her attention.

Grudgingly, she turned from the television. “Not really. Every thought and memory is in its own bubble. Nothing connects.”

He pressed his lips into that now-familiar line, and his silence subtly demanded she try harder to remember. She retraced the memory. The militsya man, the necklace, the words she exchanged with Papa. “Andrich. The necklace belonged to someone named Director Andrich.”

Dmitri scrubbed his hands down his face. “Good. A name. I’ll call a buddy and ask him to look into it.”

She nodded, even though she doubted the man’s name would lead anywhere. “You look exhausted.”

He barked out a laugh. “That is a massive understatement. My tank is empty, and I’ve burned up all the fumes. I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. It’s a goddamn miracle I’m still upright.”

Her lips twitched, wanting to smile. That old Sonya who had skipped out of the Opera House might have been shocked by his harsh language, but rusalka Sonya was getting used to his rough edges.

“What about you, ghost?”

Funny how the word almost sounded like an endearment.

“What do you mean?”

“Tired?”

She closed her eyes and scanned for some sensation, some indication she should or even could sleep. “No. I don’t have any feelings like that. No physical needs. It’s very strange, like I’m barely real.”

He frowned. “Yeah, well, I’ve gotta get some sleep. I’m gonna eat something and then hit the sack.”

Anticipating a long, unproductive night in front of the television, her ghost particles began their incessant buzzing. She shouldn’t be wasting time. She had to find her killer and avenge herself. But what choice did she have? Without Dmitri to see and hear her, she was helpless. And he looked about to keel over.

“Okay.” She’d hold on tight and try not to shake down the house.

Food. Now.

Then sleep.

The teacakes would be easiest to eat, but Dmitri had no appetite for sweets anymore. He eyed the dish of caviar. After being on the table for hours, its fishy scent was overkill, so he scraped it into the trashcan and pillaged the fridge. Elena’s kitchen was well stocked, and he found sliced ham wrapped up in deli paper. He slathered butter onto brown bread and sandwiched the meat in between.

Sandwich in hand, he fell onto the plush couch in front of the television. Chewing slowly, he closed his eyes to savor the quiet and the company of a friendly ghost enthralled by fashion shows. He swallowed and chomped down again, sinking deeper into the cushions.

His thoughts drifted back to the phone call with Gregor. He’d sure as hell been hiding something. But what?

It had been nine years since that night when Gregor had appeared in the hospital and they’d made their deal. For damn sure, Gregor had never lied to him in all that time.

The other patient in Dmitri’s room sat upright, catatonic. The dead silence of the ward was only interrupted by the squeak of a nurse’s shoes on the worn, over-shined linoleum, or the chirrup of the food cart’s wheels on that same irregular surface. With his entire face swollen and his nose crammed full of cotton wool, he could hardly smell a thing. But sometimes, when the nurses changed the dressing, he caught a nauseating whiff of disinfectant, urine, and cabbage—some combination of which was probably dinner.

He hadn’t been allowed out of the gurney, and in order to keep him there, they’d had to sedate him. The muffled and distant voices of the nurses reached him, as if he were underwater. They joked about how much tranq it had taken to keep him down, like a horse, or an elephant.

This had to be the place they sent people to die, which was fine with him. He had nothing left to live for—when he’d lost the fight, he’d lost everything.

But he refused to think about it. He refused to think about anything. And the knockout drugs made it easy—a foggy haze of not eating, not thinking, and not giving a shit about anything.

At some point, the low murmur of gruff, un-nurse-like voices interrupted his dreamless sleep, demanding he open his eyes. He tried to ignore it.

“Dmitri, son. Can you hear me?”

He squeezed his eyes shut tight. The familiar voice cranked gears in his head, making sedated synapses fire. Apparently, he wasn’t going to die after all.

Fuck.

And fuck Gregor. Of course he would come. This was what he’d been waiting for. His moment to swoop in and play the hero.

Dmitri opened his eyes.

Gregor staggered backward at whatever he saw in them. Then he exhaled a sigh that could only be relief.

Dmitri laughed. His uncle was so transparent. “Not to worry. I’m not brain damaged like the rest of these poor fools. I can still be of use to you.” His voice was thick and nasal, not his own at all.

“Christ. I’m glad you’re all right. When I saw you take that hit—”

“Get to the point, Gregor.”

“First off, this is Doctor Kozlovsky. He is the top plastic surgeon in Kiev, and he’s agreed to fix your nose.” Kozlovsky came to his side, prodding at his face.

Dmitri swatted his hand away. “No.”

The doctor staggered back. Featherweight piece of shit.

Gregor’s always-impassive features twitched. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t want him to fix it. I want to see it every day and remember what I lost, and make sure I never, ever screw up like that again.”

Gregor nodded. “Kozlovsky said he will need to wait until the worst of the swelling goes down anyway. You have a little time to change your mind.”

Dmitri held his uncle’s gaze, confirming Gregor already knew he wouldn’t be changing his mind. “Get out,” he barked at the surgeon.

Kozlovsky turned and scrambled, nearly tripping over a loose flap of linoleum before he reached the door.