Page 25 of Spring's Arcana
“Ah, Lois. Beautiful as ever.” Because he liked pissing Friendly off, Dmitri took her long capable ink-stained hand, calluses scratching at her fingertips where they struck typewriter keys, and bowed over it. Her grubby mackintosh was nobody’s idea of party attire even if a string of Christmas lights blinked merrily under the lapels, but her sister Mitford would be dressed in another of Coco’s finest gowns and swanning among the upper crust—or what passed for it, here—while ferreting out information, useful or not,to hoard. Or to sell. “You hear about Friendly? He wants to work for me.”
“I thought he alreadydid.” Lois’s eyes gleamed behind the spectacle lenses. “It’s a hero crowd tonight, by the way. I just saw that caped dumbass over by the biggest canapé table.”
“Stuffing his face, no doubt.” Dmitri grinned at the lady’s knuckles. The brightly clad “hero” kept chasing Lois, and she kept giving him short shrift. “Just like a few other pigs.”
Friendly’s cheeks pinkened, well on their way to brick red. It wouldn’t be difficult to provoke the god of property protection tonight.
Still… Jay took a very dim view of serious altercations on the second floor. Drunken fisticuffs outside were one thing, the unformed on the first floor were hungry enough to disregard any of their host’s strictures, and so few were invited to the third floor there was often nobody there to cross swords with, let alone fists or other weapons. But when the Pasha of West Egg opened his doors for the amusement and culling of his fellow divinities, powers, principalities, and other forces he was very clear about the etiquette on thesecondfloor, world and literature without end, amen.
Dmitri had only seen the result of Jay’s pique once. The man had descended upon combatants with the high, screaming roar of an old-fashioned dive bomber, knocking both supine while he bellowedIt’s just not cricket, old sport.
And when the altercation had continued after that warning, Jay had become truly irate. Crimson ichor dribbling down his chin as bright white triangular teeth broke the hard crust of one of his own kind—thatwas how the Pasha of West Egg had survived so long, maybe.
A place in the literary canon wasn’t a guarantee unless you tapped into something deeper, and Jay’s longing was drawn from the deepest well of all.
“Someday,” Friendly said, very softly. “All it takes is one wrong step, Konets.”
“I can quote you on that.” Lois’s dark eyes danced with corpselightsparks as Dmitri straightened and dropped her hand. “Neighborhood Officer Threatens Citizen at West Egg Shindig.”
Friendly glared at her, executed a military about-face, and marched towards the bar, his buttocks working independently under blue serge like the haunches of two different beasts forced into unwilling tandem.
“That was unexpectedly satisfying,” Lois continued, subtracting a tall narrow glass full of sticky red fluid from a passing Jeeves. “So, do a girl a favor. Maschenka Drozdova’s dying at last; she’s been in town all this time?”
“What would you pay to know?” Dima’s grin didn’t alter a whit, though a faint tendril of relief uncurled inside his ribcage.
One day he’d kill the blue-coated bastard. Just not tonight.
“Looks like Jay likes the new incarnation.” Lois dropped him a cheeky wink—a journalist had to try, after all—and stepped back, vanishing into the dancers as the music changed, wild beat slowing and golden glow dimming just a fraction.
“There you are, old sport!” Jay appeared again, stepping smartly out of the flow; thezaikain his arms was pale. He brought her to a stop right in front of Dmitri, dropping her hand but keeping his grasp on her waist. “Isn’t she beautiful? All in green, too. For a moment I could’ve sworn… listen,listen,old sport, have you seen Daisy?”
“Not yet tonight.” It wasn’t a lie; still, the words tasted bitter and metallic, so Dima finished his whiskey and tossed the glass again. It shattered, and thezaikaflinched. Her dark eyes were huge, a doe caught in headlights. “Mind if I cut in?”
“Oh…” Jay beamed mistily at him. “I suppose I should look for Daisy. Well, it’s been a pleasure, Miss Drozdova. Did I tell you I’ve been to Russia?”
“No,” the girl said, faintly. “You didn’t. I hear it’s nice.”
“Capital!” Jay crowed, handing her over to Dmitri and turning, craning his neck to look over the party. Dima wasted no time, sweeping her back onto the floor as West Egg’s resident genius—in the old sense, although “monomania” might qualify as the newer definition if fueled by enough cognitive horsepower—saunteredaway, almost immediately clustered by several other guests probably fishing to know who the new girl was.
Nat was light as a sparrow in Dima’s arms, and he whirled them into the heart of the dance.
STUPID QUESTIONS
It would have been fascinating and pretty, Nat supposed, if she could have found a quiet corner and just watched. But first the guy in the linen suit—and now Dmitri—dragged her through complicated steps she barely remembered practicing with Leo after Mama stopped sending her to ballet classes.You’ll never be Pavlova, Natchenka. Give me the shoes, they’re still worth something.
That was a bad memory. She stiffened, the whirling variegated crowd pressing too close. Everyone waslookingat her.
“Eh,zaika.” Dmitri’s hand at her waist was sure and implacable, and his fingers were warm. He held her hand like he was cradle-caging an egg. “Gonna throw up?”
Oh, for God’s sake. “No.” Or at least, if she did, she would aim it where it did the most good. Like right in his self-satisfied, smirking face.
She swallowed an acidic burp. Nat thumped back into her body with a sound she was surprised didn’t crash through the music. Someone was actually playing the massive, brass-shining pipe organ fastened halfway up the far wall, banging out a rocked-up rendition of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” or something close to it.
“It’s natural the first time.” He kept trying to draw her closer while their feet moved, breaking the frame; Nat kept trying to lean away. “Relax, will you? I’m helping.”
Nat didn’t bother laughing at an obvious lie. “That doesn’t seem your style.”
“You’d be surprised. You like Jay?”
