Page 107 of Aftertaste

“And smile for the camera while you do it,” Stephanie added, her phone pointed at Viktor and The Comrade like a firearm, recording everything. “We’re streaming live, bitches. Say hello to all my followers.”

Viktor and The Comrade exchanged glances, The Comrade lifting one brow as if to ask,What’s the plan, Boss?

“DUH’s closed,” Konstantin said clearly. “Out of respect for the Dead. Now get out of my kitchen.”

And, with Kostya barely believing what was happening, that it had worked, Viktor stepped aside, a thick vein in his neck throbbing angrily, pulsing like it might pop.

OUT ON THEsidewalk, it felt like they could breathe.

“I can’t believe that fucking worked,” Rio pronounced.

“Have I mentioned I love Instagram?” Kostya panted, heart still racing.

“Little does he know, I’ve only got four followers!”

There was a strange, giddy camaraderie between them, the unity of having just survived a brush with death (two brushes, technically). They were laughing. That nervous, giggly,can-you-believe-we-made-itkind of laughter. Kostya knew it wasn’t over, that Viktor would retaliate, that the police might need to get involved, but right then, he was hugging everyone, trying to hold on to this moment, this relief and joy and love.

And then the air hit the back of his neck, a breeze like a kiss.

The cool puff in the back of his throat.

A chill went through him, and his heart sped fast, faster, double espresso. He swallowed, and there it was, the faint, metallic tingle on his tongue.

Salt. The world’s best. The minerals in it like the marshes of Guérande.

And knowing even then he might be too late, Konstantin began to run.

SECRET INGREDIENTS

HE WAS INa cold sweat when he reached Maura’s apartment. He banged on the door, shouted her name, threw his shoulder against it twice before he remembered the spare key.

It was there this time, above the frame. She’d put it back, as if she’d been expecting him. As if she’d wanted him to come.

Inside was the shrill buzz of silence.

Kostya shook, adrenaline and terror flooding his veins as he crossed the long hall toward her kitchen. The room drew him like an instinct, back to the first night they spent together, the first meal he made her, all the late nights they stood hunched over the counter, drinking coffee, or whiskey, or wine, and talking, all those conversations, every last kiss in the kitchen, every memory contained there a good one, except what he might be walking toward right now.

He could taste it still—or perhaps again—fleur de selin the back of his throat, the bite of it. He could feel her absence in his bones. And when he saw her violet hair spilled on the floor, the way she lay, like she might only be asleep, his heart sank down into his gut, through the floor, to a place deep underground, from which it would never, never rise.

“No.No.Oh, God! Oh God oh God oh God.”

He felt for a pulse, listened for breath, begged her to come back as if she hadn’t just made the hideous choice to leave.

“Maur, please.Please.Wake up.”

He’d seen her do that trick before, the life flooding back into her eyes.

Only this time, it didn’t.

Trembling, he typed 9-1-1 into his phone, his finger hovering above the call button.

He pictured paramedics rushing in, seeing the scene, wheeling Maura away. He wondered if they’d take him, too. Lock him up, send him right back to a mental ward. Straitjackets. Tranquilizers. No socks. They’d have his old hospitalization records, plus word of what had happened back at DUH, form a narrative of him being unhinged, a history of psychosis. A tragedy. A crime.

Not that it mattered now.

He’d deserve what he got, after all the people he’d hurt, Living and Dead, without ever really considering the consequences. And now the woman he loved, growing cold on the floor beside him because he hadn’t believed her, hadn’t helped her even when she’d begged him to.

He didn’t care what she’d done. He wasn’t mad now, only desperately sorry. He just wanted her to come back. To return long enough to hear him say it.

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