Page 39 of Spring's Arcana
The first surprise was that the woman was dressed like an old fifties cheesecake pinup of a nurse, complete with deep-plunging cleavage exposing two-thirds of plump coppery breasts that looked both free of any silicone adjustmentandgravity-defying, right to the perky little nubbins of her slightly asymmetrical nipples pressing against thick snowy cloth. A little starched cap with a red cross to match the neon one outside perched in her cloud of dark curls, and her wide chocolate eyes sparkled with kindness. Her nails were moderately short, but painted just as neon-crimson as the cross or hat, and her legs, innocent of any pantyhose, were gloriously long, muscled like a pole dancer’s, and ended in white platform brogues that gave a good impression of being the heavy-duty shoes of a woman who worked on her feet for twelve hours at a time.
She had a cute button nose, and her lips were just a few shades darker than her nails—maybe Coco had done her makeup. “Oh, honey,” she repeated, and swept down the rest of the stairs in a rush. “You come right on in, now, and let’s take a look at that. We’ll make it all better.”
“Hello, Candy.” The gangster actually sounded respectful, for once.
“Speak when you’re spoken to,” she snapped. “This is not your house, dark one.”
His shrug also served to shake his arm free of Nat’s; he surrendered her to this new strangeness without demur.
That was how the young Drozdova met Nurse Candy.
BLOOD-TOUCHED DIAMOND
Half the kitchen was a regular 60s-era throwback complete with avocado-colored toaster, matching ancient Frigidaire, and bulky, vile-orange stove; the other half was painted white and looked like a surgical suite. Candy motioned her towards a high, three-legged wooden stool instead of the two examining tables or the dentist’s chair with a dead, shrouded light fixture hovering over it like a scorpion’s tail. This place, despite its narrowness, was much bigger on the inside, like Coco’s boutique or Jay’s palatial home—but then again, wasn’t everything in fairyland?
Nat couldn’t stop shaking, though she wasn’t cold. Candy glared at Dmitri when he stepped over the invisible line demarcating the medical side from the kitchen. Both were floored in those spotless white and black linoleum squares, and Nat wondered who cleaned all this.
Magic? Or people who didn’t know what they were scrubbing? What if it was people whodidknow, and how young had they been when they learned to keep their mouths shut like she had?
“You make her nervous,” the nurse snapped. “Go outside. And you leave my girls alone if any come along, they’re off tonight.”
“Weather like this hurts business.” Dima tipped Nat a lazy, two-finger salute. “I wait outside,zaika. From now on, I keep both eyes on you.” He backed halfway down the hall, his gaze holding hers, before turning with a flourish and stalking out the front door. He didn’t slam, though, just closed it gently as if leaving a sickroom.
“Fucking men.” The nurse shook her head. “Well, hi there. I’m Candy, honey. And you’re the Drozdova.”
“N-Nat.” Her throat was a pinhole. “How. Do you. Do.”
“I haven’t heard that one in a long while. It’s a nice change fromHey baby.” Candy smiled, and touched Nat’s wrist. “I’m just gonna take a look at this, all right, honey? Where you been tonight to get hurt like this?” The slight feather of urgency in the last question was almost nice, really.
Nat could pretend someone cared. “J-Jay’s.” Of course her teeth would pick now to chatter. “Then a van. Then K-K-K-Koes—”
“Koschei? I heard he was in town, with that flying sleigh of his.” Candy touched the inside of Nat’s elbow with a gentle fingertip. “Which explains why Dima’s bothering. Let me just take a peek at how bad it is.…” A quick, narrow glance at Nat’s stunned expression, and Candy’s tone turned excessively casual once more. “So, do you have the Heart? Can I see it?”
“The what?” Nat shook her head. “I don’t have anything, and my mom’s going to die.”
The woman looked up from examining Nat’s right arm, her eyebrows peaking with surprise. “Maria Drozdova is still alive?”
“I h-hope so.” Nat’s lower lip quivered; she tried to firm her expression. “She sent me to Baba de Winter to find something she wants, and de Winter will cure her, but I was supposed to ask the right q-question and I didn’t.”I sound five years old again. But Nat couldn’t help it, the woman’s eyes were kind, and she listened like nothing else in the world mattered.
It was a warm balm; nobody ever paid attention like this. Even Leo.
“Cureher?” Candy dropped Nat’s arm and took a step back, her platform shoes squeaking slightly. “… Oh. I see.” She half-turned, and one of her hands jumped to her mouth. The bright lighting—it didn’t buzz like fluorescents or make Candy look sickly, though it was probably not doing Nat any favors—dimmed for a few heartbeats.
She should have been terrified all over again, but Nat was simply too tired. She examined the cuts on her arms and fingers instead. Hair-thin, none of them very deep—it was a good thing, she could have bled out in that terrible place.
So the sorcerer probably hadn’t been trying to kill or really injure, just terrify? He’d done an A-plus job of that.
Nat’s fingers were too slick with tacky-wet blood to grab at the sides of the seat, so she couldn’t shut her eyes—she’d probably fall right off, with the way the shakes were going through her. It didn’t matter much. She focused on the bright orange stove in the kitchen half, wondering how they got the burner shields so spotless. Her mother would be interested in that little housekeeping trick. A macramé holder in the darkened window held what looked like an aloe vera with huge drooping arms, but no aloe she’d ever seen had thorns like that.
“I’m sorry, honey.” Candy turned back again, now with a bright smile. “I just needed a moment. Let me guess. Your mother let you grow up thinking you were normal, didn’t she. It makes a certain amount of… oh, the bitch. The grasping littlebitch.”
Normally, Nat would have leapt to Mom’s defense. After tonight, though, it didn’t really seem important. She just stared at Candy, wondering what the woman wanted. Leo was right, there was no trusting anyone.
That thought hurt. She sucked in a tiny breath, as if she’d been punched.
“Oh, honey.” Candy was suddenly very close, and wrapped her arms around Nat, blood and all. She had to bend to do it, and the cleavage pressed against Nat’s cheek was definitely all natural. But the funny thing was…
Well, she smelled wonderful. Like flowers and black earth and fresh air after Nat’s mother spent an afternoon in the garden, one of the fine summer days—not too hot—when Maria was in a good mood and things were growing as she liked them. A day when the lemonade had the right amount of sugar and Nat had performed her chores as soon as she got up, a day when Leo hadn’t irritated Mrs. Drozdova too much and her daughter hadn’t needed anything.
