Читать книгу The Siren's Dance - Amber Belldene - Страница 8

Anya was freezing; her skin puckered into goose bumps. With each breath, she labored against the weight of her ribs and her muscles as the pleasing pull of gravity hugged her to the earth.

Each sensation was wondrous. But being alive couldn’t last. She had to remain focused on her goal.

Find Stas. Be free. Hurry.

And she wasn’t the least bit convinced this puppy, with his kind, brown eyes, could help. During the drive to the station, Gregor had said Yuchenko was a crack detective who could find anyone. Anya had pictured a hard-boiled cop with pockmarked cheeks and a barrel chest who smoked two cigarettes at once, not this disappointing infant--the last sort of man she wanted at her side when she faced Stas. Even under the strain of meeting a ghost, his fresh, handsome face remained unlined and made her feel every one of the seventy or so years since she’d been born.

He dropped into a chair and unbuttoned his coat so that it fell open at his sides.

He was big, with bulky muscles filling out the shoulders and arms of his otherwise too large suit. The ill-fitting navy coat looked sloppy in contrast to his tidy, cropped haircut and clean-shaven jaw.

“He’s no use to me. He doesn’t even think I’m real.” She put one hand on her hip and let the other dangle at her side where Gregor held it.

“Yes, he does,” Dmitri said. “He just wishes he didn’t. Am I right?”

The inspector’s gaze swept over her; then he cleared his throat and averted his eyes. “Yeah.”

Oh, right. The nightgown. Her skin heated with a blush. Sonya had made the sexy low-cut slip for her as an engagement present, and vilas--the ghosts of jilted brides--were clothed in their wedding dresses in death. The nightie was as close as Anya had ever gotten to a white gown, and it left nothing to the imagination, not to mention the tight, pink satin was eternally soaked from her fatal dive into the river.

“What exactly is she?” he asked.

“A rusalka.” Gregor dropped into a chair, holding her fast. She stumbled back a few steps before righting herself to glower at the ailing Lisko. Then she saw the pain etched deep into his face and settled for an indignant sniff instead.

No. She wasn’t one of those maudlin sirens who perched in trees over rivers, trying to seduce fishermen into joining them in death. She was a vila who rode the clouds like they were her chariot and cavorted with a sisterhood of mischievous wind nymphs. At least, she would be if she could get free of her ballet shoe.

“I am no--”

“I was one too,” Sonya said.

Anya pressed her lips together and glared at her sister, who always thought she knew what was best for Anya. So Sonya had been a different kind of ghost. That must be where the whole forgive-Gregor-and-live-again story had come from.

Queen Jerisavlja herself had told Anya she was a vila. But she had no idea how rusalkas and vilas were different. Sonya had been tethered to a teapot, just like Anya was stuck to her slipper, and would be until she could find Stas. Then again, Sonya had slumbered peacefully inside her teapot while Anya had been wide-awake for half a century, without even sleep to break up the monotony of her solitude, the whole time fearing Stas would die before she found him, and she would never be free.

“Remind me what a rusalka is?” Yuchenko asked.

She could correct their misassumption, but maybe it was better to let the error stand. If they believed in their plan of saving Anya’s life and Gregor’s soul, they were more likely to help her. If they knew what Anya really wanted, and what it required, Sonya would surely try to stop her.

Dmitri waved at Anya as if the answer was self-evident. “She’s a watery revenge ghost with built-in sex appeal, though I have to say, Sonya had more.”

Yuchenko’s attention flicked back to her, probably on sheer instinct.

On the same instinct, she glanced down at herself. Her hipbones jutted, as prominent as ever. At the tip of her small breasts, her nipples stabbed through the sheer satin of her nightgown. They ached like they’d been hard for days.

For Anya’s whole life, people had measured her sharp angles against sweet, pretty, curvy Sonya. Apparently, the unfavorable comparisons would continue in her afterlife. Without exactly planning it, she hissed an eerie siren sound at Dmitri, and he inched backward.

How gratifying. She brushed the palm of her free hand against her thigh and turned back to Yuchenko.

His gaze seemed glued to her chest, and the tip of his tongue swept out to lick his bottom lip. The sight of it sent an unfamiliar heat through her, curling low in her belly. She clenched around it, only making the sensations more intense.

Phew. She exhaled. It was going to take a while to get used to having a body again and the not entirely unpleasant sensation of it being ogled.

Maybe Inspector Puppy didn’t find her as wanting as her brother-in-law, or maybe it was just an effect of her vila powers. She’d never tried acting like a siren before.

Sonya turned to the inspector. “Don’t mind Anya. My sister is trapped between worlds until she avenges her killer, and her siren powers are all she has.”

Anya tried not to let her sister’s dismissal rankle her.

“Demyan killed her?” Yuchenko asked.

“No,” Gregor and Dmitri spoke at the same time.

Anya’s thoughts snagged on the technicalities of the question, but she didn’t chime in. Sonya watched her with a troubled expression, seeing more than Anya wanted her to, as she so often had.

All at once, her sister embraced her. “I am so glad to see you,” she whispered in Anya’s ear.

The warmth of her arms was pure bliss. Sonya was alive and a note of pure joy resounded inside Anya, making her want to dance. But she couldn’t let herself get used to such comforts. Besides, they’d hardly been huggers in their actual lives. She nudged her sister away. “It’s good to be seen.”

The inspector watched the exchange, frowning. “Then who killed her?”

“Me,” Gregor replied without opening his eyes, his forehead resting in his palm. “That’s why she materialized when I touched her. We were all hoping she would accept my apology so that she could live again, as Sonya does. But she wants Demyan.”

“Exactly what do you want with him?”

Gregor raised his lids and gave her a slight shake of the head.

She hardly needed the warning. This puppy was as square as Sonya. He wouldn’t want any part of what Anya intended.

“I simply hope to talk and resolve some things from our past.” Her voice trembled and she hated herself for feeling even a drop of fear at the prospect of seeing Stas again.

“Fine.” He flipped open a notepad, wrote S.D. at the top of the page, and glanced up at her expectantly.

On second look, his eyes might be gentle, but they weren’t youthful or innocent. She considered him for a moment, disarmed by the unforeseen intensity of his stare. This puppy had seen things. Being a police officer probably guaranteed as much.

She scanned his pleasant face again, smooth, with that fair-but-golden-kissed skin fate bestowed upon only the luckiest of Ukrainian men. His knowing, hazel-eyed gaze snagged her, electrifying the air and accelerating her out-of-practice heart.

She’d thought him barely twenty-three at first, but that penetrating stare raised her estimate to twenty-seven or maybe twenty-eight. Still an infant compared to Stas, who’d been fifteen years older than Anya when he’d taught her. And a child compared to her, though she’d been only twenty-one when she’d died.

“Come on, Yuchenko, put away your little notepad. Do you need to pack an overnight bag, or shall we head straight for Odessa? From the cut of your suit, I see you care nothing for your appearance, so I imagine we can leave straight away.”

“What?” He blinked those languid eyes. Really, the man was a dolt. If she weren’t an invisible and semi-naked ghost shackled to a muddy slipper, she would find Demyan herself.

“Odessa. The trail starts at his ballet studio there. Let’s go.”

“Absolutely not. I’m going alone. Tell me what you know.” He sat straighter, unaware there was still a bit of green juice at the corner of his mouth.

A mocking laugh escaped her, as resonant as the hiss that had slid from her mouth earlier, but this time cruel. Pink blotches appeared on his high, strong cheekbones. Once upon a time, she might have regretted shaming a man like that, but now, after decades of being alone and invisible, the power was pure pleasure.

“I’m going.”

“No.”

She crossed her arms and looked to the Lisko contingent. Surely they would second her command, but Sonya and Dmitri leaned back against the wall as if they were watching a show, expressions bemused. Perhaps she shouldn’t have antagonized her thuggish brother-in-law so thoroughly on the car ride from the river. And Sonya--she hadn’t changed a day since they’d died. She and her sister had been like oil and water before. Now they were more like heaven and hell.

No way was she going to let this police putz find Stas without her.

She let her anger build--Sonya’s patronizing, Yuchenko’s dismissal, and deeper than both, her outrage at what Stas had done. She drew the emotions up to the surface where they poured off her and filled the room with a violent wind.