Читать книгу The Siren's Dance - Amber Belldene - Страница 10

He’d left her in the car. Anya was starting to really hate Inspector Putz. If she could feel her teeth, she would have clenched them. Instead, she unleashed a little vila fury, swirling the air inside the sedan until the whole vehicle shook.

After years of idle isolation, it was tantalizing that people could actually see and feel the wind she controlled. A boy of ten or eleven stopped to stare, and she ceased raging and sank into the space under the dash. She didn’t want to cause a panic in Yuchenko’s quiet, tree-lined street in the Sviatoshyn district.

Well, she kind of did. But not at the expense of getting separated from Yuchenko and her chance to find Demyan.

So she watched the fall leaves drift downward onto the road. At her riverbank, she’d known where the small currents would carry each autumn leaf, depending on where it fell into the river. She’d had nothing else to occupy her attention for all that time. No matter how beautiful the russet and gold colors were, she really hated autumn. And spring. And summer. And more than all that, she hated being trapped.

She could have escaped the car, of course. In her early days as a ghost, she’d experimented with floating through tree trunks and even the wall of an old shed near the riverbank. It had been a horrid feeling--loose, like being squished through a sieve to become a hundred million tiny individual particles with no connection to one another. Each time, mustering the nerve to do it again had required another round of courage, like jumping off a high dive. What if that time she wouldn’t come back together on the other side?

Still, she could escape Lisko’s car if she had to. The problem was, if she floated out, Gregor’s solid gold signet ring would stay inside, and then Yuchenko wouldn’t be able to see her or talk to her. If he drove off with her slipper in the shoebox, she would be dragged behind him like a pet on a leash.

When she’d been stuck at the river, she’d lost her sense of time. Minutes, hours, and days had stretched and then collapsed under the constant and urgent need to find Stas before he died, taking her chance at freedom with him to hell. Waiting for Sergey in Dmitri’s car, she had no idea how much time had passed before he sauntered down the sidewalk, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. It wasn’t a cocky walk, just the strut of a man comfortable in his own skin.

A pair of ragged blue trousers hugged his muscular thighs. She’d always had a thing for a fit man’s thighs, those graceful vastus muscles curving about the knee. Yuchenko would probably be a beautiful specimen in a pair of tights. Beneath his black leather jacket, his white knit undershirt was pulled snug over the ridges of his chest.

The athlete in her recognized the man took care of himself, trained hard, ate well. She understood those things--they had driven her to become the best ballerina. Which begged the question, why did Yuchenko do it?

Probably to garner all the heads that seemed to be turning his way. Several women angled back to appreciate him a second time. Envy drifted through her. No one had looked at her with desire like that, except Stas’s twisted version. She’d entirely missed out on this part of life--flirtation, attraction, connection, intimacy--Demyan demanded a devotion that left no time for such frivolities.

She let her fury unfurl beyond the confines of the car. Outside, a gust stirred the autumnal leaves, instantly turning the fall day blustery and blowing urban detritus--paper receipts, candy wrappers, cigarette butts. Everyone on the street hunched over against the blast.

Good. Yuchenko’s admirers could keep their eyes to themselves.

He glanced up, the wind barely ruffling that flat top of dirty-blond hair. When he leveled his gaze at her, she met it head-on, hypnotized by his golden-boy good looks.

Suddenly, whatever she was made of seemed to buzz with a different kind of energy, hotter and mellower than fury, like the electric heater Papa had used to warm the jewelry shop from under his desk. Yuchenko turned up his palms as if asking what she was looking at, and then he shrugged and continued to the car.

Thank God, he didn’t seem to realize she’d been more or less leering at him, along with every warm-blooded woman who’d passed on the street. The puppy probably couldn’t muster up a smug look to save his life.

He tossed his bag in the trunk and then dropped into the driver’s seat.

“The drive is easy. We’ll be in Odessa in under five hours.”

Great. Five hours trapped in a car with Inspector Putz of the perfect thighs.

“Which is plenty of time for you to tell me what you want with Demyan.”

“In your dreams.”

“Is it business? Personal? Is it related to your death?”

“Wow, is this your interrogation strategy? With you on the case, all of Kiev’s criminals must be behind bars. And the police can kick up their heels and drink green juice.”

“Pretty much.” He chuckled.

She waited for a retort, a cruel parry that she certainly deserved.

Instead, he grinned at the windshield, accelerating to pass a delivery van.

How irritating--a man who could laugh at himself. He was just too easy and comfortable being himself. Anya had never once laughed off a joke at her own expense. More often than not, she’d clocked Sonya or the neighborhood boys, or anyone else who’d made the gibe.

“You came to Odessa with Demyan?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t giving him anything, wouldn’t make another damn thing easy for him. “And that’s quite enough chitchat, thank you. I’ve gotten used to silence, and you’re just annoying me.”

As if she hadn’t said a thing, he asked, “When did you go?”

“A long time ago.”

They’d stopped at a red light, and he took his gaze off the road to glance at her. Then he nodded once and faced the car ahead of them. Whatever he’d heard in her voice seemed to have silenced him.

As they made their way south out of Kiev, she watched the progress of change. According to Gregor Lisko, Ukraine had declared its independence from Russia and established a democracy while she’d danced aimlessly and watched leaves swirl in the river. If only her parents could have lived to see the change. It would have made her father very proud.

In places, the city looked fresher, full of sparkling windows in bright buildings that had once been dingy and sooty. In other places, Kiev looked worse than ever.

“Is it better now, do you think?” she asked.

His puzzled glance told her she’d been unclear.

“Ukraine. Life here.”

“I don’t know. We’re a country divided. Some people wish to draw close to Russia again, and others lean toward Europe. Too often, they disagree violently.”

“Which side are you on?”

“I try to stay off any side, keep my head down, do my job.”

Of course he did. He would be a fence sitter.

“What about Lisko?”

“Oh, he’s a smooth operator. He’s on both sides at once, though neither knows it. He’s loyal to profits and his own power, and his only ideology is his family name.”

“Whereas, I suppose a guy like you actually believes in justice. You were probably destined for this work--wanted to become an investigator ever since you were a kid, playing cops and robbers, or pretending to solve mysteries.”

“Pretty much.” He leveled a good-natured and gorgeous smile at her. Fortunately, she didn’t go for golden guys like him. Otherwise, the electric hum he stirred inside her could be dangerous.

“My turn?”

She shrugged. “If you want.”

“I’m guessing a girl like you just had to become a dancer. To push yourself to the physical limit, to defy gravity and physiology to be, what, the best? Or maybe because it was the only arena where you were encouraged to hone your sharp edges, rather than blunt them.”

Regular seams in the asphalt of the highway caused the tire wheels to thump, thump, thump, like a slow and thunderous heartbeat, each one emphasizing the failure of her repartee. She wracked her brain but could not compose an appropriately sharp reply.

“How’d I do?” he asked.

You cut way too close to home, you presumptuous puppy, was on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it to say, “What makes you think that?”

“Your nasty slipper, your battered feet, and your perfect thighs.” He didn’t glance away from the road.

That hot, electric energy wafted through her again. “Oh.”

“Also, my mom was a dancer. I understand what goes into that life, and you have it written all over you. Or am I wrong?”

“You know you’re not, but guessing I was a dancer when you’re carrying around my shoe hardly makes you Sherlock Holmes.”

“Guess not.” He chuckled again in that annoyingly self-effacing way. “So why dance?”

“I was better at it than Sonya.”

“Huh.” He nodded as if he were trying not say what a terrible reason that was.

“I know it sounds petty, and it was. Completely. She was older, smart, and sweet, could sew, draw, and paint. She even knit tiny caps for newborns. My fingers were clumsy. I didn’t like to read much…”

It had been so painful to grow up in her shadow, to sense how everyone at school and in the neighborhood had measured her according to Sonya and found her short. How their parents, with the same kindly temperaments as her sister, winced when Anya’s prickly side appeared, liked they’d been sent home from the hospital with the wrong child.

“But dance, it was the one thing I could do better than her.”

“Yeah. Maybe just a little petty.” He held up his finger and thumb as if he pressed a die between them.

She laughed. “Let me finish. It became more than that. It became everything, and for a time, I had a chance at becoming a prima ballerina. But even then my parents always thought it was only about my rivalry with Sonya.”

They hadn’t understood obsession any more than they’d comprehended her tendency to sarcasm, her acerbic comments--all had been labeled flaws with a cluck or a hush or a raised eyebrow. Mama and Papa had never been cruel. They’d simply treated her like an odd and alien creature in their home, keeping her at a slight distance from the intimacy the rest of them shared.

“I’d think you would have had to fall in love with it to get so far. What was your favorite role?”

If he’d expressed sympathy or judgment, she’d have shut down. But the question sounded so casual, almost careless. Just making conversation on a long drive. So she considered it.

She’d been Clara in the Nutcracker, an understudy to Odette in Swan Lake, but Demyan had groomed her to be Giselle. The role had been the most coveted by all the dancers, the part she’d truly craved. This universe, with its fixation on justice and vengeance, also seemed to have a sense of humor, making her a vila, just like Giselle. Irony? Fate? Who could say? But she did prefer wind to water, so this role she’d been cast in was far better than being a rusalka.

“Odette was my favorite,” she lied. “I was the understudy. I performed in the prima’s place for two matinees. The two best days of my life.”

“So you were a junkie for the applause?”

“Jun-key?”

“Oh, sorry. It’s a bit of English that snuck into usage at the station. A junkie’s a drug addict.”

She’d been deaf to the applause of anyone but Stas, could hear his palms slap together over the sounds of the whole house bursting into cheers.

“Something like that.”

A crisp memory of his darkly sensual smile came to her. He’d been standing in the wings, his gaze piercing, always evaluating her. His black dance shirt open wide and low to reveal the smattering of hair on his lean, muscular chest. He’d been everything a young ballerina could want--an older, experienced man, a skilled dancer whose touch activated all her instincts so that her movements flowed from pure emotion.

And now, also straight from her emotions--the hate and anger building inside--wind like the fiercest storm churned inside her. Fog appeared on the car windows, and Yuchenko flipped on the defroster. By sheer force of will, she kept the energy inside her, ordered it to still, but it fought for freedom like it never had on her riverbank. It was possible, as the chance of finding Stas became real, that she wasn’t in quite as much control of her powers as she’d thought.

* * * *

Sergey couldn’t resist watching her whenever she angled away from him. Even in profile, the lines of her features were dramatic and elegant, and they came alive when she spoke, even in anger, turning her outright beautiful.

She was fascinating, captivating, even when not a drop of that potent siren song sounded in her voice. Those powers of seduction were wasted on him. He’d have found her just as attractive without them.

It would have been amazing to see her on stage. A dancer like that, such a force of personality, her intensity--she would stand out from the other ballerinas even from the highest balconies. All eyes would fixate on her like he was now. She would steal the show.

She fiddled with Gregor’s ring, her ghostly fingers somehow able to hold it, twist and spin it. And maybe it was his stirred-up, freaked-out imagination, but emotions seemed to radiate off her, turning the air inside Lisko’s car cold, then hot, then sultry.

All down the side of his body facing her, he tingled seconds before she actually turned to look at him. The perusal lasted long enough that she must have thought he hadn’t noticed.

“You’re an athlete?” she finally asked.

“Not really, not anymore. Now I just keep fit.”

“But you don’t compete?”

“No.”

“Then why bother? Oh, never mind. I should have known right off. Vanity.”

She’d meant to insult him again, but he only laughed. Vanity had very little to do with it. “I’m a little compulsive. The first time I smoked a cigarette, I knew I was in trouble. If I’d had another, I’d never have been able to quit. Same with alcohol, coffee. Anything habit forming.”

“Except training, which is highly addictive.”

“It is. All those neurotransmitters that bliss you out--the endorphins and stuff.”

“What on earth are neurotransmitters?” Her eyes went wide with wonder. “Do you have a radio in your brain? Is that how those portable telephones work?”

He chuckled. “No. Neurotransmitters are natural chemicals in the brain. As potent as other drugs, but healthy. So that’s the high I allow myself.”

“I see. So you’re an endorphin junkie. And are you addicted to your green juice too?”

“Maybe a little.” He’d actually considered bringing his juicer along on this trip. He was very attached to his beet and carrot concoction in the morning. It was the best thing after a long run, full of iron and antioxidants and complex carbs, if you could get over the whole piss-red-as-blood thing. “You should try it. The chlorophyll has all sorts of health benefits.”

“How delightful. I don’t suppose it can bring a ghost back to life?”

He went tense, furious with the sheer stupidity of his comment. Had he completely forgotten she was dead? “I’m really sorry.”

She leveled a scathing look at him. “That I’m dead? Don’t bother. I quite prefer it. Or did you mean sorry for being such an idiot? I just assumed you can’t help it.”

He would have laughed off the barb, but he was too hung up on what she’d admitted. “You prefer being dead?

“You wouldn’t understand, puppy.”

“But Gregor and Sonya--they all want you to forgive him and live again. Are you telling me you don’t want that?”

How was it possible that such a lively woman as her wouldn’t want to be alive?

“What I want is to find Stas Demyan. Now, would you mind turning on the radio. I tire of your company.”

She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want to talk. Not that he could blame her. He gave up trying to be friendly and found a station that played classical music. She closed her eyes and appeared to relax.

It seemed staying close and shutting up was the best he could do for her.