The Siren's Dance. Amber Belldene

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Sergey’s notebook blew off the table, and Gregor’s tie caught like a sail and smacked him in the face.

      The ghost laughed with frightening glee.

      Sergey stood up and backed himself against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. He needed a moment to wrap his head around a windstorm in the interrogation room.

      And a sexy, super-mean ghost.

      And a mission to find his father, which surely had more to it than just talking.

      The whole scene felt like he’d stepped into one of his mom’s hallucinations.

      Sonya came to stand in front of Anya, gripping her biceps. “You have to control it.”

      The ghost blinked. “I am.”

      Sonya’s shoulders fell. “Of course you are. I should have known. Anya, if you want to find Stas, you cannot antagonize those who would help you.”

      “Fine.” Her lovely body seemed to vibrate with the force of the wind while her face screwed up in concentration, her brows drawing closer together.

      The plastic chair Sergey had been sitting in blew over.

      Okay. Time to wrap up his little time-out. It wasn’t working anyway. He could still only halfway believe any of this shit was happening.

      “Now, Anya!” Sonya cried.

      “Um…?” the ghost said.

      Sergey squeezed his eyes shut. Not a good syllable coming from a powerful supernatural creature. He tried to keep his voice calm as he said, “She’s lost it. She’s not in control anymore.”

      “Breathe,” Dmitri ordered. “Slow and steady. That always helped your sister.”

      She nodded, forming a little O with her mouth, her cheeks hollowing out and her chest rising. Slowly, the wind calmed.

      “Hell. Does that happen often?” Sergey asked, this time failing to hide the tremor in his hands and voice.

      Gregor rubbed his free hand over his eyes, then smeared it down his face. “Only when a rusalka doesn’t get what she wants. You should have seen Sonya here when she was about to blow. Nearly took down all twenty-six stories of the Hotel Omnus.”

      “Come to think of it,” Dmitri said, glaring at Anya while addressing Sergey, “I think you should take her with you, get her off our hands.”

      “Dima.” Sonya tilted her head at Gregor, who looked on the verge of passing out. “Your uncle is in no state to travel, and Anya can’t go without him.”

      “Well, she can go. Yuchenko can take her moldy ballet slipper with him.” He nodded at the shoebox. “And he won’t have to hear a peep from her without Gregor there. I think that’s a win-win.”

      “Except me. I don’t win.” Anya huffed and stomped her foot. The loss of control had left her even more disheveled, her cheeks flushed, and for some reason, the childish stamping was kind of endearing, vulnerable instead of just bitchy. The unexpected gesture filled his cop-brain with a rush of curiosity. What exactly was this pretty little siren’s story?

      “I have to go with you,” she said. “There are things I can’t recall about Odessa, about Stas. If I see the place, it will jog my memory. What I can tell you now will just be a sliver of what I could, once I see the place again.”

      Gregor cleared his throat. “There may be another way.” He pulled a signet ring off his finger. The band had been wrapped with gauze, narrowing the opening to fit his emaciated hands. He slid it onto Anya’s thumb. “Ready?”

      “For what?” She seemed to flinch away from him.

      But he’d already let go of her. Sonya’s coat fell to the ground, and a shiny swath of pink satin showed inside it. Her nightgown.

      Shit, was she naked?

      He glanced up--how could he not? The little thing was fine to look at.

      Nope, not naked. Somehow wearing the very same nightgown. What the hell? He crossed over and picked up the one on the ground. Perfectly real, soft as sin, and slightly warm from her body.

      He fisted it like a lifeline and risked a closer look at her. She’d vanished--but not all the way--she’d become what he imagined a ghost to look like. So translucent he could see the wall through her lithe body, like a cloud of steam, but shiny, and so, so beautiful. Soft, the color of a see-through pearl, and she floated upward like a helium balloon set free, her muscular limbs graceful and lovely.

      A freaking ghost. The last doubt exploded in Sergey’s mind, leaving a blast pattern of shrapnel embedded in his brain--a thousand questions, starting with What the hell? And ending with, Is this Demyan thing just a crazy coincidence? Because if Anya was a rusalka, and the fairy tales were true, she wanted revenge against the man. Most days, his mother was too listless and apathetic to want anything more ambitious than a bowl of custard.

      At the moment, Anya didn’t look particularly vengeful. In fact, her pretty features had fallen in despair. That was, until her obsidian gaze sharpened on him. “You can see me?”

      “Sure can.”

      She raised her chin. “Then wipe that pitying expression of your face. Grab my slipper and let’s go.”

      “Perfect.” Dmitri shooed her away. “Now you can take her. And if you get sick of the little harpy, just leave the box somewhere. She can’t go more than about fifteen yards from the ballet shoe inside.”

      Anya’s left hand fisted around Gregor’s walnut-sized signet ring. Like a magic amulet, the thing had made her visible to the rest of them without her having to hold on to the old guy. And she was tethered to a slipper. Sergey’s cop-mind raced to make rational deductions, but really, this situation required the logic of a fairy tale, and not the ones Walt Disney had turned into cute children’s stories.

      This was the stuff of his mother’s nightmares and paranoid fantasies. Vengeful rusalkas, demonic incubi, and that bony-legged Baba Yaga who professed to smell something delicious, then licked her lips and devoured the person who had dared to visit her chicken-legged hut.

      And he hated this irrational world, this fucked-up logic of magic and creatures that defied the laws of physics. Hated what it had done to his mother, hated the way it had darkened the corners of his childhood homes with vague, shadowy fears. Her hushed whispers that they were always in danger, the way she clung to superstitious objects and compulsively whispered prayers to Mary, the mother of God.

      He’d become a police officer to get away from this shit, so he could be a just-the-facts-ma’am kind of cop, could gather evidence and draw well-substantiated conclusions. And now he was supposed to go on a road trip with a goddamn ghost.

      She whooshed over to him and hovered so they were at eye level, her dark brows arching over her still-mocking eyes. “Shall we go?”

      This was a terrible idea.

      He should work alone, phone Gregor if he had questions. But the truth was, this ghost was the best chance he had СКАЧАТЬ