Page 38 of Spring's Arcana
There were weirder things in the city than some guy carrying a bleeding woman in a green dress down a sidewalk growing increasingly icy as the temperature dropped. Nat had even seen one or two of them tonight, but she still flinched every time a car rolled slowly by, feeling strangers’ gazes burn over them. Dmitri refused to set her down.
“You might run off again,zaika. And it’s been a nice evening.”
So she gave up and let herself be borne along, trying to ignore how the cold didn’t touch her, how her skirt was sliced cleanly in a few places, and how blood was slowly clotting on her arms and fingertips. She also tried to ignore how the pavement was doing funny things underfoot, or how the buildings seemed to change places when she wasn’t looking. They were no longer in Manhattan, but that wasimpossible.
Just like everything else tonight. This was probably Baba de Winter’s idea of a good time, and definitely Dmitri’s. At least, he was whistling as he carted her along, a wandering tune that wove in and out of something she vaguely remembered hearing on the radio lately.
“Put me down,” she repeated.
His whistling broke off. “You’re shaking.”
No shit.“I’ll manage.”
“No.” And that, his tone clearly said, was that.
“You’re hurt.” She didn’t know if he was or not, but it stood to reason with the way his suit looked he’d been in a fight withsomething. Probably not to rescue her, though—he seemed to hatethe scarecrow more than he liked her, which was about par for the course. “You shouldn’t be carrying me.”
“Ah, she cares.” His chiseled lip lifted a little, mockingly. “So sweet. But no,zaika,Dima is not hurt. That which does not kill me had better tell Hell who sent them.”
“That’s not the saying.” Nat peered over his shoulder and wished she hadn’t, because the streetlights looked warped. He stepped sideways, then the opposite direction, and each time her vantage point showed a different avenue. One looked like Flushing, and the other a little like Jersey for all she could tell, and both moved like building blocks in a child’s nightmare.
“Close enough. Stop peeking, you’ll get sick.”
“What are youdoing?”
“Traveling,zaika. A thief has ways of moving. You’ll have your own, once you stop fighting what you are.” His heels dug in, scratching a long furrow through a sheet of ice, and they jolted to a stop before a high narrow brick building squeezed between two dingy, closed-down storefronts. “Hello, girls.”
A bright crimson neon cross burned on the roof, the only part of a much bigger billboard still functioning. A blonde woman and a brunette, both extremely underdressed for the temperature, stood on the front steps, smoking thin joints tucked into improbably long holders.
The blonde stared at Dmitri like he was something scraped off the soles of her white pleather go-go boots. Red garter straps vanished under her impossibly short skirt, sinking cruelly into tender skin, and her bright red mouth pursed. The brunette, in a shimmering yellow minidress and sunny, strappy platform wedges, exhaled a cloud of skunk-smelling smoke that wasdefinitelynot tobacco. “Mama’s in,” she said, in a pleasant but neutral contralto.
“She better be.” Dmitri finally set Nat on her feet.
She swayed, hoping Coco’s shoes would continue to hold up and she wouldn’t fall on her ass. They did, gripping sparkling ice, and she realized the street in front of this place was unplowed, an unbroken sheet of white with thick clear ice-frosting.
The gangster patted at her shoulders, tugging at various parts of her dress with an impersonal, critical expression, like a kid with a doll. “Good enough,” he muttered, finally. “Just tell her it was Koschei, and it’ll be fine.” Then he offered her his arm, just as he had at Jay’s mansion.
Nat suppressed a shudder, but she took the support anyway, with something approaching gratitude. Her knees weren’t quite steady.
After all, she’d seen two men murdered tonight. Or was it murder if neither of them were dead? “Jay,” she said, refusing to move when Dima leaned as if to step forward. “Is he…”
“Oh, hell no.” Dima snorted, the sound turning into a genuine laugh at the end. “Come high noon he’ll be fine, right as rain and searching the entire house for his missing flower. Inside, little girl. You’ll like this lady.”
“Is she like de Winter?” She couldn’t make herself saygrandmotherright now, even in another language.
He threw his head back and laughed afresh while he set off for the stairs, and once more she had to follow or be dragged.
The blonde examined them critically, then met the brunette’s gaze and shrugged.I just work here,that shrug said, and the brunette giggled. It was a hard, bright sound, and echoed all the way down the street.
The front door was a beautiful Art Deco survivor of wood and beveled glass, a gem in a prosaic alloy setting. It opened with a cheerful jingle, a cascade of small brass bells hanging from tangled red yarn wrapped around the inside knob; Nat and Dima plunged into dim crimson warmth and the smell of nag champa.
Curls of perfumed smoke floated down the staircase to the left; the house was built narrow and squeezed mercilessly from either side. A low doorway to the right held swaying strings of pink heart-shaped plastic beads; an antiseptic glow near the end of the long hall parallel to the stairs glittered off black-and-white linoleum, making Nat thinkkitchen.
She missed the little yellow house with uncharacteristic fierceness. She’d scrub every floor, sing every song to every plant, andperform every useless, fiddly task Mom had ever devised if she could just crawl into her own closet once she was done and forget all of this.
“Who is it?” A velvety voice drifted down the stairs. “I smell a man, you’d better have a good reason for—oh. It’s Dima. What have you… Oh, honey, what happened?”
Clip-clopping footsteps hurried down the stairs and the gangster pushed Nat forward a little, almost like a shield.
