“Oh, pardon me, dear. I forgot you were there.” Elena hugged her arms across her chest, shuddering. “What an odd sensation. Clearly, I’ve never passed through a ghost before. I would surely have remembered that prickly, bone-itching sensation. It’s repulsively cold.”
Sonya cringed, the words pulling her back into her surroundings. Her touch was cold and repulsive? That was mortifying in a different way than discovering her vengeful bloodlust. She would never feel human contact again. Never feel the warmth of a handshake, or an embrace.
The thick bridge of Dmitri’s nose wrinkled in concentration. “How long have you been in Elena’s house, Sonya?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how long have you been liv—um, I mean, been in the teapot? “
Sonya’s mind searched for the memories and came up blank. She shook her head. “I’ve never been out of the teapot before. I was running, and I was at the river, and there was the bang, and the cold, and the water, and then…I was here.”
“And that’s all you remember?”
“Yes.” She raised her chin and steeled herself, trying to disguise her fear. Not only was her mission terrifying, it was hopeless. She needed vengeance, but she couldn’t even remember why.
Dmitri tapped his fingers on the table, from little finger to big, three times. “When?”
“What do you mean?”
He let out a breath, not bothering to hide that he thought she was dim-witted. “What year do you last remember being alive?
Year? Was he implying…?
For the very first time, she took in her surroundings. The furnishings were odd, yes. But so much was familiar—the food on the table, the tea service.
Now the unfamiliar leapt out—
A large, shiny rectangle hung from the wall like an empty black picture frame. Similarly glossy black boxes with glowing lights and buttons were stacked beneath it. Futuristic bubble-shaped autos passed by outside. And then there was Elena’s suit…
She finished her survey and turned back to Dmitri, who reached into his pocket and pulled out another small box, the size of a cigarette case. He pressed a button and its surface illuminated with some stunning futuristic technology. He showed her its face.
She gasped. The twenty-first century. So much time had passed. How on earth would they find whoever had killed her?
“1968. October. That is the date I last remember.”
“Damn.” Dmitri cleared his throat. “How do we know the person who killed her is even alive?”
“It’s a good question,” Elena replied. “But there is a logic to these things. At least in the stories…”
A flash of the looseness, the almost-disappearing flickered through her ghost form and her thoughts grew disjointed and desperate.
Dmitri grunted, rapping the arm of the chair with his knuckles. “Stories. All we know about her comes from children’s stories.”
Sonya’s thoughts exactly. She laughed, but only a thin, hollow sound came out.
Elena squared her hips and shoulders. “Don’t be foolish, Dmitri. The old myths you call children’s stories carry truths more ancient and real than anything science can explain. Someone owes your ghost, our Sonya here, something important. I suspect it is their life, unless you can find another way to—”
A loud explosion was the only warning Sonya had before the furious energy welled up. She burst apart. Her particles of soul flew apart like a supernova.
Chapter 5
The lights went out with the popping sound of breaking glass. Something stabbed into Dmitri’s forearm, he wiped at it, glass grazing his palm. Dusk had arrived outside, leaving the room dark. Every light bulb in the room must have burst at the same time.
“Elena, are you okay?”
“Fine. A little irked about how much sweeping there is to do. I wonder if glass is in the cushions of the sofa—can’t get that out, you know.”
“Sonya?”
No response. Where was the pretty thing? And what the hell was she trying to do with that stupid stunt?
“Sonya. Where are you? It’s too dark. I can’t see you.”
Still nothing. Perhaps she was gone. The thought left him empty. He should be relieved she was no longer his problem, but he’d been seduced by the idea of helping her—by the idea of being the kind of man who would help her.
Elena banged around in the broom closet, calling out to him from across the room. “I don’t even have enough bulbs to replace all those lights. Do you think it’s safe to start, or will she get angry again?”
Is that what had happened?
“I can’t see her, and she’s not responding. Do you think she’s gone?”
His aunt’s head appeared like a darker shadow from within the closet. “Gone? I don’t think so.”
A quiet whimper came from the blackest corner of the room. It grew into a sob.
“Sonya?”
“It hurts. Dmitri, it hurts.”
Her plea stole his breath and squeezed his heart, eking out compassion he hadn’t known was there. “What hurts, ghost?”
“I can feel them. My family. They are somewhere else and I need to go. Dmitri, I need to go to them now. Or else, I will…fall apart.”
A small tremor shook the room in time with a loud sob.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Elena shouted from the closet, the beam of her flashlight flickering out the doorway. “Calm her down, Dmitri.”
“It’s okay,” he whispered, trying to sound like he believed it. “I promise I’ll help. I’ll find what you need—”
“Who.” In that word, Sonya’s voice became even more alluring than before. “You must find who did this to me. And he must pay. With blood. There is no other way.”
Good Lord. He would do anything she said as long as she kept talking to him. Her voice was all sex, and power, and need, and hunger, and woman. It made him hot, made him want. It made him into something noble and dedicated to justice, not the self-serving needs of Lisko Enterprises. It made him into the man he wanted to be.
“Yeah,” he croaked. “I’ll find him.” No matter how impossible it would be to discover who had committed a forty-five-year-old crime half a world away, he would do it for her. Just as soon as he took care of Makar. Maybe that’s why he could see her. He knew more than a little about vendettas.
Hell, he was the perfect man for the job.
Elena screwed a bulb into a lamp behind Dmitri, filling the room with soft golden light. Sonya became visible, but she was fainter, thinner, too sheer for his liking.
“Elena, she looks different—weaker.”
He closed the distance between himself and the ghost, squatting to look her in the eye. She’d wrapped her hands around her knees again, seeming to forget her modesty.
He pretended to forget too, and gentled his voice the way he imagined a man talked to a skittish horse. “What made you angry, girl?”
“There is no other way than blood.”