“See? I told you that’s all you were thinking about.” His jaw set, and he sniffed, cocking his head. Just like he’d done to Vanya.
Before I could stop myself, my hands snapped out, and I shoved him along the balcony. He stumbled, mouth agape, and I rippled through with a twitch that turned into an explosive roundhouse punch and a sharp, wordless shout.
My fist hit the railing. The whole thing rattled under the impact.
“Jesus, Alexi—”
“You want to lie? You want to accuse me of lying about what I think?!” I roared, frustration and rage and insult curdling every word with a real force, anger red enough that it made Vassily take another step back from me. “You want to know what I’m like when I don’t give a fuck? Fine! You can get the fuck out of my house!”
“Woah, hey—” Vassily’s face turned the color of milk.
“Did I stutter?” I shouted back, lips peeled back from my teeth. “You think I’m gonna let you bring this shit into my life? You think I’m going to stand by and, and watch you lie to me? About me? I have dedicated my life to pursuing truth, Vassily, in all of its morbid, abject mortality, and if you are going to bring the lie back into my life, you can get the fuck away from me!”
Vassily took another step back. Whatever he saw in my face must have frightened him. “Lexi, I—”
“I nearly died three times this week, and do you give a fuck?” I advanced as he retreated and shoved him bonelessly into the railing. Vassily hit it without protest and bounced, too startled to do anything except gape.
His fingers twitched up, and for a moment, I thought he was going to draw on me. Instead, the nervous energy in his limbs drained out, and he turned back to the balcony door. “You get one good fuck, and this is what happens?” He sneered. “I don’t need you.”
I was horrified, and horrified by the feeling that welled up helplessly in my stomach and throat. Disgust. I wasn’t supposed to be disgusted by Vassily. “Is that what this is about?”
He whirled, eyes blazing, and jerked his head at the doorway. “Is what about? It’s not my business who you screw. I’m going inside.”
My disgust intensified. Vassily was wrong: I hadn’t changed, but he had. I looked at him, and I couldn’t see anything other than the lie. A void, a shell that covered a sucking black thing of need and fear. “Crina’s a beard, Vassily. She’s in it for her own reasons.”
“She’s a hooker. And what does she do? Heroin?”
“Books,” I replied stiffly. “She’s a literature PhD.”
“Her and every other crab-riddled bitch from the Balkans. They all say the same thing. They’re here to study, get work…. whatever. It’s all bullshit. She got brought over here to make money. You want to lay shit on me for a couple lines of coke—”
“Bags, Vassily. Bags of coke.”
“Then you better fucking lay it on her junk-shooting cunt, too.” Vassily glared at me with feverish eyes and stalked off back into the casino.
Lying. He would make up whatever stories made him feel better, and this time, it was me who backed away. I was certain the tight ringing in my gut was from panic, but I couldn’t find a way to explain the subtle terror Vassily’s denial of reality caused me. It felt sick, the way that Yuri and Nacari and the hit man that looked like him felt sick.
I turned to the Atlantic, to the curve of the seashore reaching back up along the coast to home. Miserable, polluted water.
“Alexi?” It was Crina, speaking from the entry to the balcony.
I grunted back wordlessly in reply.
“Is something the matter? Vassily just pushed on by. He looked pretty pissed off.”
“He is.” And so was I.
“He seems a bit prickly, doesn’t he?” She tapped her way across to me and leaned beside my shoulder.
“Long story,” I replied. “Let’s… talk about something else for now. Like The Red Book. Have you seen it yet?”
Crina’s face suffused, lips curling, eyes lighting up. “Yes. I saw it this morning, while I was in class. It’s… it’s more than anything I ever dreamed. You’re going to love it.”
That made me smile, however briefly. “Translated?”
“No, it’s still in German. But I can read that just fine.” She looked down. “Are we still on for tomorrow?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “At my house. I insist.”
Crina didn’t really laugh so much as catch a single heated sound of pleasure behind her teeth as she grinned, her eyes half-closed. She pushed back. “Then it’s a deal. But not a date. Come on… Mr. Mollusk was asking about you.”
“My goodness. You didn’t really just call him that, did you?” Amused and dismayed, I followed her back inside.
“I absolutely just did. But you won’t tell him I said that, will you?” Crina glanced back over her shoulder. She was trying to cheer me up, and it was an earnest effort. Not misplaced, either. There was no place for showing weakness here.
We walked back into the hot parlor, and I caught Crina’s arm, halting her in the doorway. I saw Vassily, Mikhail, Mikhail’s girl, and Vanya bent over the coke table, while the Laguetta meathead cheered them on. George was deep in quiet, drunken conversation with Lev. The other goons were clustered around the poker table.
I paused there, watching them as a stranger might. Something in my heart sealed over, hard and bleak and lonely. Very lonely.
“Alexi?” Crina turned back to me. “Come on… we should go back inside.”
I nodded, but I had to pause to take a deep breath before we did… and that moment of hesitation was the only reason I didn’t catch a bullet as the parlor door burst in in a spray of machine gun fire and broken glass.
Chapter 15
Split seconds. It was Crina who dragged me to the ground as the room turned into a haze of blood mist and shattered furniture and glass. The guys at the roulette table weren’t fast enough: three of George’s men and the dealer went down like ragdolls. I heard Vassily drop with a scream of pain to my right, and my blood turned to ice.
I flung myself against the nearest baccarat table, dragging Crina behind the cover as the dealer, screaming and panicked, ran out into the room and bolted for the balcony entry. I didn’t see what happened to her: I drew my non-enchanted pistol, and Crina motioned at me with a grabby hands gesture, wide-eyed. She wanted a gun. I gave her mine and drew the silenced Wardbreaker instead.
“Keep them busy!” A horribly familiar voice called out from the entry.
“Carmine,” I grunted. “GOD dammit.”
“Who?” Crina’s hands were shaking, but she checked and took position like a soldier. East Germany. Of course.
“He’s—” Shots rang out, deafening, and then the machine guns. The guys at the door were taking turns: two guys firing, two guys reloading. “—a spook! Go to the bar, get Vassily. I’ll cover you!”
Her eyes widened even more, but this table wasn’t big enough for the pair of us. Bullets chewed up the sides, spraying wood past us in a stinging cloud. The bar was safer. I backed up in a crouch as Crina kicked her heels off and hitched the hem of her short silk dress up to her waist so she could move. She crawled around me and then dashed low to the ground as I knelt up and fired over the table, drawing the next hail of bullets over my head. I wouldn’t be far behind her: the firing squad was advancing, fanning out to start a search of the tables closest to the entry.
There was no time for fear. I pulled out my pocket mirror and looked around the edge of the table. Mikhail lay still on the ground, his swept-back hair a wet and bloody sprawl on the carpet. Worse was Carmine, bent in deep concentration around his pentacle ring. I felt something buckle and twist in the room, like my ribs were sucking in towards the inside of my chest. Carmine was the nexus of a small storm that rumbled, darkening the air around him as it began to coalesce into large, canine forms.