“Auntie, tell me about rusalki.” He gripped the little woman’s arm.
His aunt came to a halt, shaking her head as if to clear it. “I’m trying to recall. Dmitri, understand, they are obscure mythological creatures. They only appear in a few stories, the oldest fairytales. Hmm. I believe they are said to have green eyes with no irises or pupils.”
“No. Her eyes are brown. Normal eyes, just very dark, almost black. Maybe she’s not—”
“I don’t see what else she can be, if she came from the teapot.”
His gaze followed the ghost, and the prickle of it heated her not-real skin. She gave him a reassuring nod.
With her permission, he pressed on. “Tell us about rusalki then.”
“According to the legends, they are the spirits of women who drowned themselves after being jilted by a lover. Suicides, often women pregnant outside of marriage. Or their deaths were grave injustices and they linger in the world to avenge them.”
Her translucent hand went to her belly. With mysterious certainty, she knew there had been no child there. But an injustice—that notion sent ghostly energy sizzling through her.
“Does she have powers?” he asked.
Elena snapped her fingers. “Pay attention, Dmitri. I said she is a siren.”
Through the slow burn of vengeful fury, she tried to make sense of the older woman’s words. Sirens. They were from Homer’s tale of Odysseus, luring the sailors onto the rocks with their beautiful songs. The memory of a blush came over her in one hot flash. That’s what her voice did to Dmitri—some kind of supernatural seduction.
He must have come to the same conclusion, because he narrowed his eyes, fixing her to the spot where she hovered beside Elena, who had bent to retrieve the silver bases of the teacups—all that remained of her lovely stekans.
“She’s using magic to control me?” Angry, his voice had even more gravel in it.
“What?” Elena straightened, each centimeter of her little frame erect, clasping the silver handles in one hand and brushing the other off on her trousers. “Oh, I see. You’ve experienced her powers?”
He shifted in his chair, his gaze darting away, and he coughed something that sounded like a yes.
Guilt pooled in her ghostly shell.
Poor man.
He’d only offered to help her because she had some kind of supernatural sex appeal. If he’d met her alive, dressed in her woolen skirts and hand-knit sweaters, he’d have thought she was the plainest Jane. Not a seductive bone in her body.
“From my limited understanding, I’d guess she doesn’t want to destroy you, but only to ensure your help achieving her revenge.”
Dmitri ran his hand over his shaved head, and the shadow of stubble there promised hair as thick and glossy as Elena’s.
Why did he shave it all off?
With one big paw, he crammed an entire teacake into his mouth.
Her ghost stomach gurgled with remembered hunger. She would never eat a teacake again. How she’d loved them, with her mother’s homemade blackberry jam—
“How can I help her? She doesn’t even recall her own name.”
“Sonya.” The round word rolled off her tongue without the memory returning. Suddenly, she simply knew.
He scratched his head, eyeing her intently. “I thought you said—”
“It just came back all of a sudden.” She offered him a half-hearted smile.
“Anything else?”
“Nothing important.” She hovered, weightless, yet she still wished she could sit down. She wasn’t tired exactly. But floating required a certain amount of mental energy, and she longed for the psychological comfort of resting on a soft cushion somewhere.
Dmitri leaned forward. With his elbow on his knee, he rested his chin in one of his big, knotty hands. “Why can I see her if you can’t?”
“Yes, that’s my question too.” Elena’s gaze traced the pattern of her previous pacing, but instead, she returned to the closet and raised a dustpan triumphantly. “It seems to me that she recognizes something about you.” The petite woman paused, retrieving her broom from where it rested against the back of a chair. “I’d like to think, Dmitri, that she sees something good in you, something honorable. Perhaps she is your crossroads.”
Dmitri’s handsome lips pressed into a thin line, no doubt a sign he didn’t much like his aunt’s words, and Sonya was curious to understand what they meant. She swished over to the air between them. It was different—thicker and full of tension. Their meaning wasn’t clear to her, but the current of what—accusation, resentment? She couldn’t miss the ripples it sent through her spectral body, threatening to loosen whatever bound her together. It was enough to make her panic, and she couldn’t take her eyes of his face.
His nostrils flared, but he nodded. Not quite an agreement, that was obvious, more like an acknowledgement Elena might be right. The emotional current dissipated, and Sonya’s sense of ghostly self stabilized. She took one of those habitual, relieved not-breaths.
He cleared his throat. “I already promised I’ll try to help her. Not for the reasons you said, but because she needs me, and I want to help.”
Sonya couldn’t help it. She was drawn by his reassuring solidarity, the pull of it tugging her to his side at a rate much slower than a swish. Why on earth would his aunt question his honor? He’d only been gentle and kind, and even respected her modesty as much as any man could, her being a mostly nude siren. Perhaps he looked dangerous and disreputable, but he certainly didn’t act that way.
“Good. Do you have a plan to assist her yet?” Elena’s clipped tone matched the efficiency with which she swept up shards of glass.
She reminded Sonya of her mother. But then the memory was gone, without even a face to go with it. In its place came another wave of fury—someone had taken that mother and that memory from her, and he had to pay. The spiritual particles that made up Sonya’s ghost self began to boil, colliding with one another and sending waves of spectral energy into the room. The vibrations shook the house more violently than any of her earlier fits of fury.
“Under the table, Dmitri. It’s an earthquake.”
“Nah. It’s the ghost, and she’s pissed.” His whisper could barely be heard over the rattling objects on shelves and hanging on the wall, but it still soothed Sonya. “Calm down, girl. What happened?”
“I remembered, no…I tried, but couldn’t remember…” Her gaze volleyed between them.
Elena politely turned toward Sonya without focus.
“I have to find who did this to me, who took me away from my family.”
His voice fell flat when he repeated her words to his aunt.
Elena lifted her chin and sighed. “It’s as I thought. A blood debt.”
A ghostly tremor rippled through Sonya.
He leaned forward in his chair. “Blood?”
Yes. She could practically taste the iron of it in her mouth. She floated to the ceiling in thrilling ecstasy. Oh, how she wanted blood. Wanted it to pour from the veins of her killer, wanted to spill entrails and flay skin off muscle, then muscle off bone.
The spell broke with a snap, and the lingering desires shocked her. She sank again, shaking her head. To want some stranger to suffer a gory death, even if he had killed her? Her mind rejected the longing,