The Siren's Dance Page 5

  Chapter 6

  A cool wind billowed past just as Sergey holstered the nozzle on the gas pump and screwed on the cap. Then came a roar like the sound of a train at high speed, louder and louder until the howl engulfed him.

  A train? Impossible. The north-south railroad ran miles west of Lyubashivka. What else could possibly be making such a thunder?

  He scanned his surroundings and found the answer.

  A tornado, barely fifteen yards away. The funnel cloud churned, so dark it cut a slash against the bright blue sky. Which way was it moving? The wind battered him from all sides, but the tornado itself seemed to hover, stationary, over an empty field across from the petrol station.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Moments ago, the sky had been brilliantly clear blue. Tornados didn’t come out of nowhere. They formed as part of storm systems, which meant--Anya.

  He ran to the car.

  Of course, she was gone. He yanked open the passenger door. Gregor’s ring fell onto the asphalt.

  He picked it up. Hell, he couldn’t even see her. How would he ever get it back on her? Shit. He’d lost a ghost, a pretty little pain-in-the-ass ghost. His heart rate shot up to racing speed.

  All around, cars screeched one hundred and eighty degree turns and began driving away, though a few had come to a halt. A young man dashed from the service station, holding out his mobile phone, probably shooting a video. An old woman came to the front porch of her small house.

  “Take cover,” Sergey shouted to the gawkers. “Into your basements.”

  None of the onlookers heeded his warning. Perhaps they couldn’t hear him. Should he run to them first?

  No. His guts were twisting just like that funnel cloud. He had to find her before she blew away.

  “Anya!” He searched the sky, knowing it was futile. He couldn’t spot an invisible ghost.

  Where was she? Somewhere near the car? The answer choked him, lodged in his throat with certainty, a hunch without a shred of proof. She was in the middle of that twister.

  What had set her off? They’d been having an almost civil chat. How she’d lived in sweet and feminine Sonya’s shadow, her obsession with ballet, her ghostly isolation, and the beauty of sunflowers. He’d made inroads toward understanding her, his interrogation methods far more subtle than she’d given him credit for. And she’d revealed tiny confidences, each one more significant, until he’d begun to know what made her tick.

  Once he’d uncovered those gears--seen their size and shape--it turned out she wasn’t so bad. Kind of funny, really. Though he was still completely at a loss about what she wanted with Demyan.

  If he didn’t get Lisko’s ring on her fast, he might never find out.

  “Anya?” he shouted with the full force of his lungs.

  The tornado swallowed her name. It brooked no sound but its own deafening roar. But for all its churning energy, the swirling funnel stood perfectly vertical and still. He jogged toward it, even though his shoulders tensed and his skin prickled with the urge to run the hell away from the danger.

  “Anya!” How had Dmitri calmed her before? He’d told her to--“Breathe!”

  Silly, since clearly she had no actual lungs. But the wind flickered, possibly only in his imagination.

  “Do it again, Anya!”

  That time, the wind discernibly slowed. It still swirled, but now gently enough that he could make out her shape, just a silhouette within the cloud’s vapor. The sight of her, straight-backed and calm in the funnel, reminded him of a painting he’d once seen in a museum in Belgrade when he’d gone to a detective’s conference. A vila, a wind nymph, brandishing a bow and arrow and troubling some Serbian prince. Only Anya spun like a pirouetting ballerina instead of taking aim like an archer, graceful and terrifying.

  Sonya had said Anya was a rusalka, a vengeful water sprite, but this funnel cloud would beg to differ, though he didn’t precisely know what difference her breed of ghost made.

  There was bound to be some difference, because that’s how the damn fairytale logic worked. God, he hated this superstitious shit. But that wasn’t Anya’s fault.

  “One more breath,” he called out, “and then come get Gregor’s ring.”

  The tornado collapsed like a deflated balloon, and he lost sight of her in the melting wisps of cloud. Had she collapsed too? Had he lost her for good?

  A moment later, an icy breeze brushed against his fingers. He braced himself for her touch, knowing instinctively that it would be unpleasant--another thing his mother’s fairytales had taught him. Don’t cuddle with ghosts.

  On second thought, he took hold of the loop of packing twine her sister had fashioned so Anya could wear the enormous ring as a pendant. Threading his thumbs into the rough strand, he held it open, and seconds later, her fine-boned face appeared, her semi-nude, entirely svelte form next.

  He dropped the string and stepped back. “Hi.”

  She smiled, somewhat sheepishly, if such a thing were possible on a face set in such a permanent scowl. “Hi.”

  Her sudden demureness was enough to tickle the corners of his mouth with his own smile. “You’re not embarrassed, are you?”

  “Of course not. I’ve lost my shot at the national ballet. An audience of bumpkins to admire my tornado will have to satisfy me until we find Demyan.” She glanced around behind her, crossing her arms and shivering.

  “Lisko said you mean to talk to him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s all? You don’t plan to start a tornado and suck him up into it?”

  She blinked, her dark brown eyes widening in surprise. “No. I didn’t even know I could do it until just now, before that, I’d only managed to stir up the wind. Fast sometimes, but not like that.”

  “I see.” And that much, he believed. In spite of her efforts to hide it, she’d been shaken.

  Sergey was an investigator. Long before this moment, he should have formed several working hypotheses about why she wanted to see the man who might be his own father. Yet, between Lisko on death’s door and a ghost appearing in the interrogation room, he’d been distracted. Also, she was pretty. But none of that was an excuse for the oversight. This case was personal.

  He needed to get his act together, draw on his expertise. Motives, at their core, were basic. They all boiled down to the three categories: greed, jealousy, and ego.

  Had Demyan taken something from her? Possessed something she wanted? Or wounded her pride in some unforgivable way? His cop’s intuition told him it was the last choice. It seemed the only thing worth holding a grudge over for so long. And if there was one thing this ghost seemed to have, it was pride.

  Of course, there was the possibility of a less sinister motive--an overdue confession of love, maybe a child born in secret?

  She was spinning again, like a dancer in a music box, and humming a vaguely familiar tune, though he couldn’t place it.

  Nope. That high chin, that heat flashing in her dark eyes, and the wind… She wasn’t on a mission of reconciliation.

  He examined her… What was the word? It would have been her skin, if she had a body. Instead, it was her…surface would have to do. Something had changed about her. When Gregor had held her wrist, her skin had been lovely and fine alabaster, just as creamy from her collarbone to her fingertips, and the hem of her nightie to her toes. The kind of complexion that would look radiant on a stage even from the highest mezzanine, luminous skin, the kind a man could lap at like a cat from a saucer of milk.

  Sergey’s cock stirred, his mouth moistening to imagine what the hollow of her collarbone would taste like, or those pert nipples.

  “What are you looking at?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Just making sure none of you blew away.”

  “I see. Concerned with any parts in particular?”

  A blush crept up his neck.

  She laughed. “Look all you want, puppy. No one has in a long time,
probably never will.”

  The black words instantly stifled his desire. It was one thing to check out an attractive woman, another to ogle a ghost, who may or may not have the chance to live again. But he made use of the invitation to keep staring.

  Yes, something had changed. Before, she’d had a pearly sheen. Now she wore a dusting of microscopic sparkles, like the supernatural version of the glitter girls sprinkled on themselves before going to nightclubs.

  Hadn’t there been something about glittery vilas in the orange, cloth-bound book of fairy tales his mom kept for him? Just as other kids were given a baptismal Bible, she’d read to him from the tome in hopes of instilling a healthy fear of the things that go bump in the night, until he was old enough to know she was more than a little unbalanced in her own fears.

  It was an ancient book, given to her by the babushka she believed to be something of a wise woman. It had an extensive encyclopedia of mythic beings, from A for Afron, the mythical Russian tsar, to Z for zmora, the greedy, nightmarish incubi who fed on the souls of women.

  She stared at the overgrown field, its grass turning brown from the cool nights of early fall. In spite of her stiff posture and her determined jaw, she trembled. If she wasn’t scared, she was at least unsettled by her own surprising power.

  She looked so young and had been a devoted dancer--she’d probably never even been to a nightclub. Never really lived. She’d tried to carve a life for herself outside of her sister’s shadow, and presumably under Demyan’s wing. And then it had all been cut short, just like his mother’s promising career.

  Now that was a coincidence a cop couldn’t ignore. Two women, tied to his father, their lives destroyed.

  “Did Demyan do something to you?”

  She glanced up, her face shuttering at the same time, and he regretted the question instantly.

  So much for subtle, big guy.

  She wrapped herself in her bare, sparkly arms, curving with shapely strength.

  “Are you cold?” he asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m a ghost, idiot. I do not feel cold. But you will if I smack that concern off your face.”

  “All right.” He held up his palms in surrender. “Excuse a guy for trying.”

  “Don’t bother. Now, I’m ready to leave this place. How much farther is Odessa?”

  “Not long. Perhaps an hour, depending on traffic. Tired?”

  “Only of your company, putz.”

  He couldn’t help but chuckle at that one, though it would probably infuriate her.

  “Too bad.” He opened the car door for her.

  She whooshed inside and hovered over the seat so close it looked like she’d actually parked her tiny, sculpted ass in it.

  “I was hoping you’d regale me with more stories from your illustrious dancing career.”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me the story of Swan Lake. I don’t know it,” he lied.

  She complied, summarizing it neatly as he pulled back onto the highway and accelerated toward Odessa. She grew animated, debating with him some of the finer details.

  “And what role did you want next?”

  “Giselle.”

  “Ah. The greatest role of all.”

  He’d learned that when he’d once gotten hooked on a reality TV show where three dancers competed for the role.

  Unlike a typical docudrama, the dancers had defied the director’s attempts to stir up conflict. They hadn’t hated each other, only kept their heads down and worked ferociously hard. The lack of backbiting among the dancers had earned the show low ratings and it was canceled, but Sergey had admired the women and re-watched the first season over and over again, completely addicted. That’s why he stuck with juice--everything else was a slippery slope, even reality TV.

  “The greatest.” Anya rotated her ghost form toward him.

  A single glimpse of her sharp and unexpected beauty, her compelling, perplexing liveliness, left him reeling. What a shame he’d met her under these weird circumstances. And that she was dead. Even in his kinkiest dreams, he couldn’t imagine how that would work.

  “It’s bizarre that you know so much about ballet,” she said. “I assumed you were a meathead, with your…you know…muscles.”

  “Oh, I am.” He knocked his knuckles against his temple. “Total, grade-A prime beef in here. But in my defense, your muscles are impressive too, and I’m not calling you a putz.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He thought he heard a smile in the words, but he was afraid to look and learn he was mistaken. Had she ever been quick to laugh or show pleasure?

  A picture surfaced in his memory. The cover of a tabloid newspaper, the most determined of the three TV ballerinas captured on camera with a broad smile. Months after the show had been cancelled, the news had broken that she’d been having an affair with the married director of the ballet. Sergey had grown furious on the woman’s behalf. Her ambition had made her vulnerable, and a powerful older man had taken advantage.

  His gut tingled with a detective’s hunch, the sort he didn’t like to credit. But still… That ballerina had been the most like Anya of the three.

  He inhaled and braced himself for another tornado before he asked, “Was Demyan your lover?”

  She answered instantly and without a hint of surprise. “He was my teacher. Only that.”

  Sergey didn’t believe her. Maybe it was the sudden hollowness in her otherwise beautiful voice, or the definitive hard stop that invited no further questions on the subject.

  “Then tell me about your death.” He kept his gaze glued to the road as the traffic thickened on the approach into the city. “I read the police reports, but I gather Ivan and Gregor worked a whopper of a cover-up on those.”

  In the corner of his eye, he saw her swivel her head toward him.

  “Weren’t you ever taught some topics are taboo?”

  “In my house it was politics, religion, and my father. Of course, my mother taught me not to ask a woman’s age, or her weight, but she never discouraged me from inquiring about how she died. Would you rather talk about the weather? The leaves have already turned. Fall came early this year.”

  She burst out laughing, a sound so rich and full of those supernatural timbres that it washed him with pleasure. “Oh God, please. I want to talk about anything but autumn leaves. Death, Demyan, anything.”

  Sergey didn’t get the joke, but he loved that he’d made her laugh. In the aftermath, the silence between them felt cleaner and easier.

  Then she spoke. “Gregor did it, but I don’t think he meant to. I remember him calling out for me to stop running, but I’d just heard his brother shoot my parents and then Sonya, and I was too frightened to listen. I jumped into the river.”

  He shook with rage, his jaw clenched, but he managed to bite out a few words, because he needed her to know them. “I hate crooked cops.”

  “Of course you do, puppy.”

  The nickname had grated, but it was beginning to sound almost affectionate.

  “Don’t you?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t care less. For most people, life is misery and then they die. Who cares if people are crooked and miserable, or honest and miserable?”

  “Maybe if less people were crooked, we’d be less miserable.”

  He believed it. At least he really wanted to. He’d often wondered if some secret injustice was at the root of his mother’s delusions. Still, the sentiment did sound naive when spoken to a victim of such blatant exploitation.

  “How about I hold my breath?” she asked. “Oh, right. I don’t have one.”

  A fact he was genuinely beginning to regret, though he chuckled at her joke.

  “What were they like, your parents?”

  She snuffled affectionately. “Like everyone’s parents. Boring, clueless as to what I felt or cared about. But also good and honest. They worked hard, loved each other, and Sonya, and they tried to love me. I j
ust… Well, I’m me.”

  Sergey had met enough troubled kids and desperate parents to be certain hers had loved her more than she’d understood. How sad that they’d all died before she could grow up enough to see it. But if he said so, she’d call him a sugarcoated puppy and roll her eyes at his every future attempt to speak.

  Chapter 7

  Like Kiev, skyscrapers had been erected in Odessa, vastly transforming the skyline since the last time Anya had visited, but the heavy air felt familiar. Without an actual nose, she couldn’t smell the briny Black Sea as she had before, but the atmospheric change still triggered the memories of her first arrival at Demyan’s side.

  She’d been defeated, humiliated by him in Lyubashivka, but as they’d driven into Odessa, with its tree-lined streets, she’d regained her determination. She would win his love, would be the dancer and woman he wanted. Now, all these years later, when that determination had long ago proved futile, the bitterness of the humiliation lingered as an acid edge to her every thought.

  She glanced over at the strong profile of her driver. His silence only added to her old and angry shame. She’d admitted she knew she was unlovable, and he’d held his tongue, too much the sweet puppy to agree outright. But she’d heard it in his failure to speak, the absence of an argument or even a self-effacing joke.

  He rubbed his nose, slid his sunglasses onto the top of his head, and then drummed his fingers on the steering wheel to a silent beat. His every gesture lacked Stas’s elegant grace, and yet Sergey’s movements were thoroughly masculine and quite attractive in their own way.

  Ridiculous that as her chance for freedom from her stupid slipper drew near, she was longing for some handsome man to tell her she was lovable. Had she really expected him to argue? He was such a nice guy that even if he had, it would have been honey meant to soothe her.

  She’d always known, from her first years of school, that she didn’t have the temperament or the looks to be treasured the way Sonya and other girls were. She’d been bony and sharp instead of soft and pretty, assertive and acerbic in the face of the other girls’ docility. That’s why, when Demyan had shown interest and praised her technique as particularly stark and beautiful, she’d been shocked. Slowly, it had seemed that with him her faults might be attributes--her razor edges and cutting tongue signs of her determination, her discipline, her individuality.