Altar of Bones (44 page)

“How delightful. Yet another
pakhan
in the family. If Nikolai Popov was my great-grandfather, then that would make his son my … what? Great-uncle or something? You don’t think it could be genetic, do you?” she said, only half-joking.

Ry cupped the side of her face, turning her head so that she would have to meet his eyes. “You are your own person, Zoe. You’ve already proved that a thousand times over.”

She nodded, swallowed. “I know. It’s just … I know.”

He stroked her cheek once with his thumb, then let her go. “So I’m thinking Nikolai Popov could certainly have told his son about the altar of bones, and your ponytailed guy does have the look and feel of a typical
vor
. But as for Yasmine Poole?” Ry shrugged. “Maybe she works for him, too, but I don’t think so. She doesn’t fit the
mafiya
picture. As far as I can tell, the Popov crime outfit only operates inside of Russia, a country
that’s chauvinistic to the max. No insult to your mother, Zoe, but I can’t see a true Russian
pakhan
trusting a woman to do his enforcement work, especially someone as flamboyantly out there as Yasmine Poole.”

“Remember there was that other guy in the film?” Zoe said. “The one in the railroad uniform who took the rifle from your dad? Katya made sure to focus in tight on his face for a good ten seconds. With your dad dead and Nikolai Popov most likely dead by now, too, and his son a criminal—that guy in the railroad uniform might be the only one left with everything to lose. He could’ve been another KGB mole, like your dad. Maybe Yasmine Poole really is with the CIA, and they’re doing all this to keep the scandal from getting out.”

Ry grunted in agreement. “If it turned out the CIA was involved with the Kennedy assassination, even as dupes, and they covered it up, there would be so many spook heads rolling down Capitol Hill, it would dam up the Potomac.”

Zoe picked up the icon to study it some more, and another thought struck her. “All those icons my mother collected through the years, I bet it was all a front, a way to get her name out there as a serious buyer.
This
is the only one she’s ever really wanted, Ry. Anna Larina knows about the altar of bones, all right. Maybe not everything, but she knows enough to believe this icon is a clue to finding it.”

Zoe brushed the tips of her fingers over the embossed silver skull cup that was cradled in the Virgin’s hands. So unlike anything she’d ever seen on an icon before. “I’m the one who’s supposed to guard the altar from the world, to keep it safe from the hunters, including my own mother, it seems, yet I don’t even know where, or even what, it is. All those Keepers who came before me—I don’t want to be the first one to fail, Ry.”

She hadn’t realized she was crying again until he cupped her neck to wipe a tear off her cheek with his fingers. “No way are you going to fail.
We
won’t fail, because we’re in this together now. From here on out I’ve got your back, Zoe. Trust me on that.”

He spanned the back of her neck with his hand, and this time he didn’t let her go. His palm was hard, calloused, yet warm. She saw his eyes darken, and she thought,
He’s going to kiss me
.

But then he looked away, and a moment later he let his hand fall away as well, and her neck felt strangely cold and naked now without his touch.

Z
OE DIDN’T REALIZE
how hungry she was until she started eating, and then she couldn’t stop. The soup had grown cold, but it still tasted wonderful and she had to restrain herself from licking out the inside of the carton. And she would have arm-wrestled Ry for the last lamb pastry, if he hadn’t snatched it up when she wasn’t watching.

Out in the nightclub, she could hear the hum and crackle of conversation and laughter, the clink of glasses, a melancholy pianist, and Madame Blotski’s husky alto singing “La Vie en Rose.”

Zoe said, “You know, Ry, I’ve been thinking …”

“Jesus. Should I duck?”

She searched through the take-out cartons for something to heave at his head, but they’d eaten everything except the cardboard. Then she spotted a crust of pumpernickel under a napkin, but instead of throwing it at him, she popped it into her mouth instead.

She looked up and caught him grinning at her. “What?”

“Nothing. I just like to see a girl with a healthy appetite. I lived with a ballerina for three years and all I ever saw her eat was lettuce. She’d get so hungry, I swear there were times she looked at me like she wanted to slather me with ketchup and—”

He cut himself off, but he wasn’t quick enough. Zoe felt a big grin splitting across her face, but before she could open her mouth, Ry covered it with his hand. He was laughing, though, and she thought how much she liked his laugh.

She also liked his fingers on her mouth, probably too much, but he pulled back and raised his hands, palms out, in an attitude of surrender. “Okay, okay. You probably got a good half dozen smart-ass zingers just bursting to get out, so lay them on me.”

“Naw,” Zoe said, blushing a little. “I think I’ll pass up on the temptation. This time.”

Ry laughed again as he poured them more vodka from the bottle that now had a good-size dent in it. “So you were thinking …”

“Huh? Oh, just in her letter to me, my grandmother said, ‘Look to the Lady, for her heart cherishes the secret, and the pathway to the secret is infinite’…. ‘The Lady’ is what Boris, the griffin shop man, called the icon, and the icon is what Anna Larina seems to be after. So maybe the icon, or rather the composition of the painting itself, is the riddle that’s supposed to lead us to the altar.”

“Hey, that is a good point. We should find an expert on Russian icons. Get him to take a look at it under the guise of getting it appraised, and see what he’s got to say about it….” His voice trailed off, but she could feel his intensity as he stared at her. “You really are something else, Zoe. You know that, don’t you?”

Zoe’s cheeks felt hot, and she couldn’t meet his eyes or get her mouth to work. She finished off the last of the vodka in one gulp and stood up slowly, brushing off her jeans. “I, uh … think I’ll take a shower. I’ve got wedding cake in my hair and I smell like I’ve been soaking in diesel fumes for a month.”

W
HEN SHE CAME
back out of the bathroom, all clean and deodorized and wearing fresh underwear, the dressing room was empty. The icon and the postcard that she’d left lying on the brass table were gone.

No, goddammit, no. And God damn you to hell and back, Ry O’Malley
.

He couldn’t have done this to her, he just couldn’t. Not after all they’d been through together. She’d trusted him, spewed her guts out to him, told him everything. He wouldn’t do this to her because she knew him, knew he was honorable—

Yeah, right, Dmitroff. Who are you kidding? You didn’t know jackshit, except that he’s gone
.

She crumbled slowly back on the chaise. She wasn’t going to cry, dammit. She would
not
cry. The smell of the empty food cartons was making her sick. She gathered them up to throw them away and saw the note he’d left her, scrawled on a napkin.

She lay back on the chaise, grinning like a fool. Then out of nowhere, she burst into tears.

She snatched up one of the gaudy, fringed pillows and buried her face in it so no one could hear her. Ry had said she was something else, but she didn’t feel like something else right now. What she felt was scared, and she wanted to go home.

S
HE CAME AWAKE
with a start. It felt late, deep into the night. The room, the whole nightclub, was quiet, still. The small lamp on the dressing table was lit, but its soft pink light barely penetrated the shadows. Everything was so quiet, but she knew she wasn’t alone.

She half sat up. “Ry?”

Something huge and heavy slammed her back down onto the chaise, a hand clamped down hard over her mouth. She saw the tip of a knife, pointing at her left eye.

Y
OU’RE GONNA
give me the altar of bones, bitch,” said the ponytailed man as he straddled her, his hand clamped tight over her mouth. “But to save us both time and trouble, I’m taking one of your eyes out first. That way you’ll believe me when I tell you just what you gotta do to save the other one.”