Page 50 of Spring's Arcana
Thezaikastirred. Dima waited, but she said nothing, just cast him a few sneaking glances. Maybe her plan to escape hadn’t worked as well as she hoped, and she was waiting for a momentary inattention.
Suppose Maschka had wanted the girl as strong as possible before the renewal. Suppose, just suppose—how would you go about that? He could contemplate it calmly, of course; it could even be argued he had a natural bent for, or rulership over, such an operation.
Such atheft.
Well, Maschka would want the girl to give it up willingly. And what girl wouldn’t want to cure her dear mama?
But what if thezaikadidn’t? Perhaps… Dima reached for another cigarette; smoke helped you think. If the waning-weakness had struck suddenly, if Maschka had let things go on too long, perhaps she would need other hands to finish the work.
Long, strong, cruelly boned hands that gripped like ice. The operation couldn’t happen without Baba’s blessing; the old dame stood at the doorway.
So to speak.
He had it all clear in his mind for a moment, but thezaikastirred again, reaching into the back for her bag. Dima quelled a twitch and an ill-tempered snarl; there was no way she could know she’d just interrupted a profitable line of thought.
“You, uh…” Nat trailed off uncertainly, watching his profile, then unzipped the backpack. “You want some gum?”
Do I look like I play baseball, little girl?“No.” An anemic twinge somewhere inside his ribcage made his knuckles whiten again on the wheel.
Sitting next to her made his mouth water. The vulnerability was almost as attractive as the freshness; oh, he remembered what Maschka had been like, with that hard glint to her cherry-red lips and the depths to her pupils like sucking mud in the old country during the season of rain and melt.
What man didn’t want to sink? Letting go was exquisite, the release of tension craved.
“My uncle always said it was good for driving. Means you don’t get hungry and have to stop.” She popped a cheap stick of spearmint in her mouth, neatly folding the foil wrapper with grave attention.
Don’t do it, Dima.“You go on vacation much?”
“Me? Oh no.” Her laugh wasn’t sarcastic this time, but genuinely amused. Ice on the windshield melted, and the tires took a firmer grip. “This is the furthest out of the city I’ve ever been.”
Now that’s a damn shame. “You mean you’ve never…”
“We went to a Renaissance Faire in Jersey once. That’s about it.” She sobered, creasing and folding the wrapper again. When a girl was nervous, she played with things like that.
“Well then,zaika.” He checked the signs, sniffed deeply, and clicked his teeth together twice. Yes, there was a prospect nearby, and a nice one. “Suppose we better do it right, huh?”
“What does doing it right entail?” Her attention was a thin sheet of sunshine resting against his right side.
Dima rolled the window down a little more—she wore no perfume, but an edge of jasmine colored her scent as she relaxed. His mouth watered afresh.
“Wait and see.” His smile broadened. Yes, it was definitely aprospect; his fingertips were tingling. “You want to tell me exactly where we go?”
Maybe she was beginning to like him, because her mouth softened slightly. “Wait and see.”
The exit he wanted tried to sneak past but Dima swerved, thezaikayelped, and the car’s tires dug through a thin scrim of fresh snow before he snapped the brakes on, producing a satisfying smokerubber squeal. At the summit of a long shallow overpass hill a Pilot station’s big red-and-yellow sign glowed, a beacon in the gray almost-lunchtime while a winter storm settled brooding over timbered and slash-covered hills.
She’d grabbed at the dash; he chuckled and the black car banked again, bumping gently over mismatched concrete edges into a parking lot. Gas pumps sat wearily under their inadequate shelter. The black car rocked as it came to a halt, its nose pointed at the corner of the brick building. From this angle he could see a rust-eaten blue Chevy idling in front of the sliding glass door painted with a cheeryHappy Holidays,headlights blear-blinking as the engine shivered on its mounts.
The reek of desperate, delicious wickedness lingered on the car, and Dmitri’s grin widened still further. Right on time.
Pop. Pop. Two muffled sounds, just barely reaching through his window to land on his cheek like kisses. “What you want? Pepsi? Coke? Chips? Candy?”
Nat shook her head; her door swung wide. Looked like the little girl didn’t trust the big bad wolf. He could have stayed in the driver’s seat and let her figure out for herself, but she might get hysterical and run, and that would lead to a chase.
Which he didn’t want. Not yet.
She hitched her backpack on her shoulder, striding through fat feathery flakes of bright new snow, and glanced at the Chevy as she went past, the quick look of a woman scanning only for a certain type of danger. Dima unbuckled his seatbelt just as a kid in a skimask burst through the door, clipping it with his shoulder as his sneakers almost went out from under him. He almost bowled the girl over, too, and Dima snarled, suddenly outside the car and skidding to a stop at the end of two long lines scraped free of ice where his boots had cut.
“Stupid,” Dima hissed, and his finger-flick moved the kid’s snub-nosed, very illegal revolver’s muzzle a few critical degrees so the bullet zinged between him and Nat. The weapon was stolen too; it obeyed without any hesitation at all.
