The Siren's Dance (18 page)

“Sergey? What’s wrong?”

His gut felt hollow. Why her? Why was this off-limits ghost the one who got to him? It sure as hell wasn’t because she was a siren. She saw through his don’t-worry-about-me grins and his I’ve-got-this-under-control smiles. She accepted his no-sex rule and was actually fun to be around anyway. She seemed to like him as much as he liked her.

He was beginning to agree with Anya’s bleak assessment. The universe was a real bitch.

“Nothing’s wrong. I was just remembering how my cross-country coach bussed us here from the suburbs to run these once a week.”

Her mouth quirked. “Shall we race?”

“With you in those shoes and me trying to keep you safe? No way. I’d be the one who trips and breaks my neck, while you float off all shimmery and beautiful.”

He thought he saw a trace of a blush before she turned to look at the water. “Tell me about Polina.”

Who? Oh, right. Her. He’d barely managed to remember her name when he’d dreamed up that excuse, and now the woman was even further from his mind.

Though he couldn’t blame Anya for asking. If their roles were reversed, he’d be badgering her to tell him about a guy who could make her deny the connection between them. Under different circumstances, this day could easily be labeled the best date he’d ever been on. But those circumstances didn’t exist.

He pushed the thought aside and pictured the receptionist at Sunrise Villa. “She’s blond, with straight, shoulder-length hair. She has a round face. Her eyes are slightly closer together than normal, but it’s not weird looking. Her nose is strai--”

“Geez, Yuchenko. You sound like you’re giving a description of a suspect to the sketch artist. What makes you serious about her?”

Since he’d never once managed to feel truly serious about a woman in his life, the only thing he could do was tell the truth about the one who was turning him upside down. “She’s brave and smart and funny. She’s also kind, but she doesn’t want anyone to know it, so she acts tough. She’s like a pearl in a very hard oyster shell. She’s hard to crack, but it’s worth it every time you get a glimpse.”

He grinned down at his
vila
, pleased with the metaphor.

But she drew her chin toward her neck, her smile slightly mocking. “So she’s pretty on the inside, and a gnarly shell on the out? Better not tell her that.”

“No.” He laughed, conceding the flaw in his imagery. “I’m a cop, not a poet. Trust me, she’s gorgeous. Everyone who sees her thinks so.” At that very moment, a middle-aged man pointed out Anya to the man at his side, and Sergey’s palm itched to slide against her lower back. “But she doesn’t notice. Doesn’t care.”

“Only eyes for you?”

Nope. For my dear old dad
. “Something like that.”

“Oh.” She glanced out over the harbor, past the cruise ships, to where the giant yellow gantry cranes unloaded shipping containers. The sea breeze blew a lock of her silky dark hair over her face, and she brushed it away, tucking it behind her ear.

Her simple gesture of staring out to sea somehow sharpened his imagination, made it easy to see her loneliness. All those years of isolation, like solitary confinement, with only her anger to keep her sane.

“Maybe she’s more like a diamond. Formed under pressure. She sparkles, glinting and beautiful. But she has sharp edges. It’s not easy to get close to her.”

“But you want to?” Her brows had lifted, and he wasn’t sure if he saw hope there, or simple curiosity.

“Very much. But we’ll see--”

She blew out a breath from her nose. “We’ll see how everything turns out. I used to think we had control over our future, but now it seems more like we’re just catapulted into it. You know the old saying about not being able to escape your fate, even with a horse?”

He’d always hated Ukrainian fatalism. It was like a national pastime. Hell, even those fiercely ambitious ballerinas from his favorite TV show would use the saying, even though they worked their tiny tutu-ed asses off to attempt the very thing.

“Maybe not with a horse. But I’m pretty fast on my own two feet. And so are you.”

“True.” She rewarded him with a smile.

“Do you think it will change your fate to find Demyan?”

She tucked herself into Sergey’s side, the way she’d been doing all day. “Sometimes, I dare to hope. Other times, I persist in trying because I must, even if I believe it futile.”

He held her there, in a salty wind off the Black Sea that she had not caused, silently hoping they were both going to come out on top of this mess.

They took the funicular back up to Center City. She pressed her nose to the glass and watched an ocean liner inch into the port. He checked his phone and deleted a dozen urgent messages from Lisko before sending one to his buddy.

“Any news on the entry authorization?”

The lack of a reply was an answer unto itself. It was beginning to look like Sergey would have to play the bad cop for once. He hated vigilantes. They were a dangerous element in a society that struggled against corruption and civil unrest to cling to the rule of law. But this bone to pick with Demyan was personal.

Hell.
With the hand that didn’t hold Anya, he raked his fingers through his hair. Vigilantes probably always thought things were personal.

Back at city level, they kept walking, wandering for hours, quiet for long stretches or telling stories from school. Grateful for the frequent distraction of her every smile, he recounted every episode of his beloved ballerina show, earning plenty of belly laughs at the way those dancers had refused to cater to the director’s attempt to create drama.

They visited all the other places she associated with Demyan. A grocer, a tailor, a cigarette stand where he’d been able to purchase luxury goods smuggled in from the western side of the Iron Curtain. No one had heard of Demyan, and nothing jogged her memory of where else they might find him.

From there, the wandering turned aimless. Sergey let some unconscious part of him steer the way. They’d both grown quiet, her inner thoughts probably the Anya-version of his bleak ones. What did they do now?

“One second.” He tugged her hand to keep her from crossing a street and sent another message to his cop friend.
“Not gonna happen?”

This time, a reply came instantly.
“50/50. Sit tight.”

Right. Sit tight. Where the hell were they?

Something about the street corner looked familiar and forbidden. A sign jutted from the building, shaped like a round, red-and-white peppermint.
Candy Shop,
it read.
Yeah, forbidden was right.
He chuckled to remember it. When he and Mama had first moved back to Odessa, all his friends had frequented the place. He’d begged her to take him there, or to give him pocket money for a handful of jellybeans. But she’d stood on the corner and trembled, made the sign of the cross, and forced him to promise to stay far, far away from that place. There was evil there.

He hadn’t stayed away, though. He’d found himself back there a few years later, and not for candy. As a teenager, with some of the very same friends, he’d loved to go exploring in the catacombs beneath the city. Hundreds of miles of tunnel had been cut to mine limestone, beginning in the nineteenth century. They crisscrossed under Odessa and the surroundings. When Germany had occupied Ukraine during the Second World War, resistance fighters had lived in the tunnels and waged their rebellion. And Sergey’s sojourns always ended inside that behemoth building across from the candy shop.

Even now, a tremor of thrill shook him. It had been pure exhilaration to go ranging through the mostly unmapped labyrinthine catacombs, joking with his pals and stumbling across bits of history. His longing to explore those tunnels had been almost compulsive--as addictive as that second cigarette would have been. He’d even cut school a few times, marring his perfect-attendance record.

If it weren’t for the fresh coat of ivory paint on the enormous building, he might never have noticed. “This block is the back side of Pidzemnyy Street.”

And that meant the elephantine old building that had been his egress from the catacombs also housed Plotkin’s Timepieces, and was adjacent to the
Académie de Ballet
and across from the forbidden sweet shop.

Something pulled at him, trying to draw him down the street. As fiercely as he’d ever wanted to suck on a candy or to reconnoiter in the tunnels, the force tugged at his gut. Curiosity maybe?

Whatever it was, the power of it promised they hadn’t wandered here by accident.

Anya shivered, even though the low autumn sun had turned the afternoon warm. She wore an intent frown, as if something were plucking at her attention. “Let’s walk down this street.”

But the force that had drawn him here now repelled him, a bit of his mother’s hesitation surfacing from where it slumbered deep in his DNA.

“Please, Sergey,” Anya said, tugging him, her eyes bright and focused down the street.

God, she was beautiful. Like a china doll, but made of iron under the fine porcelain finish. He ached with want for her--another kiss, a palm splayed on her lower back, and so much more. He wanted to take what she’d offered--her body, her desire, all that sensual longing. He wanted to please her, possess her, devour her.

Want. Want. Want.

A gust of wind tore down the street, shaking him from that sudden, intense craving.

“I feel Stas.” Anya’s voice had turned all
siren.

He sucked in a breath and tried to find his footing, but his brain swam in his head, leaving him dizzy and nauseous.

Inside him, a dark hunger rumbled.
Why be good? Take what she offers. She wants you.

Fuck
. He leaned against a nearby streetlamp, let his head fall heavily against the post, hoping to knock some sense into himself. Where the hell was that voice coming from? It wasn’t him. But it sure as hell felt as if something had drawn him here. And he’d unknowingly marched them right to this place in answer. Was it a trap?

No. Of course not. He slapped his palm to his forehead. Shit like this did not happen. It was not real.

“Let’s go find him,” Anya said. At his side, she trembled, snapping him out of his self-absorbed fears. Holy hell. Her hair had come loose, blowing all around as her
vila
powers built momentum. The pedestrians had begun to huddle in doorways.

But he couldn’t look away from the giant ivory building. Was it merely a coincidence? His mother’s dread and those enthralling tunnels and the
Adcadémie de Ballet
all in one place? The frightening hunger inside him answered.

“Sergey?” Anya shook his shoulder.

He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything, wanted things he had no business wanting.

You can’t escape your fate, even with a horse
.

“What’s wrong?” Her voice had returned to normal. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He snorted, tried to laugh at her joke.

But…God… She was magnificent, her skin dusted with sparkles, and all that power pulsing off her. He was desire itself. Want throbbed in his veins, turned his mouth dry. He wanted to strip her down, press her against the side of the building, and make her his.

She slapped him. “Hey. Snap out of it. I need you to be that guy Dmitri says you are. Yuchenko who can handle anything.”

He focused on the sting along his cheekbone, let it sober him. “Yeah. Okay.” He was that guy. He gripped her tight, but the trees, the facades, her face, everything still twirled around him.

“Now it’s your turn to breathe.”

He did. In through the nose, hold it, out through the mouth. Again. Again. The street came into focus. She’d reversed their direction, and they moved at a quick clip away from Pidzemnyy Street. As soon as she saw a cab, she hailed it.

His rational brain was trying like hell to make nothing of the confusion that had seized him, but ghosts were real, and given that, the rest of the dots connected into a picture he didn’t like at all.

Deep down, was he like his father? Or worse, was his father really the monster his mother said? Exerting some demonic pull on him even when he was a boy traipsing through the tunnels?

The absurdity of the thought frightened him. This was it. His break with sanity. Now he would descend into the same delusions as his mother. Maybe he could move in with her at Sunrise Villa.

“Hotel Bristol,” she told the driver.

Sergey didn’t speak at all, his head a thundering storm of wordless fears and anxiety. When the cab pulled up to the curb, he just handed her his wallet. Then she was at his side, leading him into the elevator. In their room, she grabbed his lapel.

“God, Yuchenko. Don’t do this to me. I need you to be the steady one.”

He was anything but steady. He blinked at her. Was this how his mother felt? Like even when she was in a room with people, they were miles away?

“Sorry.” He squeezed her hand and dropped on the couch, pulling her with him. He’d been banking his whole life on being fast enough to outrun this fate.

This was…this was… He’d been winning, until now.

She took firm hold of his jaw, forcing him to look at her. “Tell me what happened.”

He shrugged. “I got a bad feeling.”

She huffed. “Big, strong, always-does-what’s-right Inspector Yuchenko panicked over a bad feeling?”

He sat up straighter, crossed his free arm over his chest. “Hey, it was a really bad one.”

Her lips pursed like she was holding in a smile, and for some reason, that slight mocking put him at ease.

“What did this bad feeling feel like exactly?” she asked.

He shuddered. He kept himself in tip-top condition, didn’t drink alcohol or coffee, all in the hope that if he could just stay healthy, he would also stay sane.

A little furrow formed between her brows. “You can tell me.”

What? That he’d lost his mind? He tried to put his reaction into words, and it sounded completely crazy. But sounding crazy to himself had to be a good sign, right?

He took a deep breath. Maybe he’d really overreacted. “For a second, I felt a little nuts, like I was losing my mind.” He took another breath, and his brain really did start to clear. “But I think I feel better now.”