Page 51 of Spring's Arcana
“Whafuck?” Ski Mask gurgled. His camo jacket flapped, and he fell into the driver’s seat more by luck than design.
It was pleasing enough. The desperation, the high edge of adrenaline and greasy fear-sweat, the breaking of a thin moral barrier—oh, it was the boy’s first time, and Dima liked welcoming a chosen few personally. Ski Mask was in the right place at the right time, and the divinity he had just pleased tapped the driver’s door, pushing it closed with a bang.
The new thief howled, his knee barked by heavy metal, and fumbled with the wheel. A plastic bag stuffed with the take—pathetic, but at least the kid had some moxie—spilled over the passenger seat, and the Chevy’s engine decided it was going to crap out at that moment.
“OhGod,” Nat breathed, and hurried into the station. Dima shook his head, lifting an admonishing finger to his newest cousin.
The boy wouldn’t be a real nephew without some hard work, but he was off to a promising start.
“One time,” he said, softly, and exhaled. Snow flashed into ice, tinkling down in bright shards, and the blue Chevy coughed defiantly before roaring into fresh life. “But you bring Uncle Dima something good, little cousin, or I find you later.”
Wide, terrified hazel eyes stared at him. Dmitri made a little shooing motion, and the Chevy dropped into gear.Well, go on. I don’t have all day.
“Dmitri!”
For a moment he wasn’t sure who had called him. Then he realized it was thezaika.
She sounded frightened. No, she sounded flat-out petrified, and she was calling for him.
Dima tipped the kid an old-fashioned salute and ambled past the painted glass door. The new thief had popped it right out of its track, a safety feature you hardly ever saw used these days. Bright fluorescent light poured out, and Dima stepped onto worn, faded linoleum.
“Dmitri!” she yelled again. “Goddammit!Dmitri!”
“I’m right here.” He strolled past a spinning tower of sunglasses, absently pocketing a tortoiseshell pair that would look nice on her. “What?”
She was nowhere to be seen until he went on tiptoe to peer over the counter. Thezaikahad wormed her way behind and had her hands clapped to a bleeding hole in a uniformed clerk’s chest. Her fingers, with a lingering ghost of summer tan, were still very pale next to that bright red.
There was nothing to be done, so Dima clicked his tongue and shook his head. Very sad, but that was how it went. “He gone,zaika. You want some Pringles?”
Her big dark eyes were afire with indignation, fear, and something else. “What? Get on the phone, he needs an ambulance.”
“Phone won’t fix it.Ilike Pringles. We get some cheese curls too.”
“Dmitri.” Cold weight on the syllables—if he hadn’t known Maschka raised her, the tone would have told him. Did she know she sounded like her mother, only softer, almost pleading? “Help me. Please.”
He shrugged. “What you pay me,zaika? Tell me where it is, I steal this man from—”
“You don’t want to finish that sentence,” a new voice intruded. “Ah, the Drozdova. I heard he’d been seen with you. How very interesting.”
Dima spun on his bootheel, snarling silently.
STARVE THE WOLF
A mass of teased, dyed-black hair drinking in the light, a livid mouth pulled into a straight line, a black tank top and skinny-muscled greenish-tinted shoulders, the woman halted at the section of counter Nat had flipped up to get to the victim. The new arrival’s dark eyes burned in the shadow of that hair. She wore hip-hugging black jeans, a wide black leather belt with a big silver buckle—an ankh lying on its side—and no shoes. Her bare feet were just as greenish as her shoulders and wasted, corded arms, and her chin came to a sharp point.
“Do you have a phone?” Nat kept her hand clamped over the hot, pumping wound. The clerk—just a kid, really, he still had acne on both cheeks and a wispy little goatee—made an inarticulate sound, staring over her shoulder at this new strangeness. “He’s bleeding pretty bad, I can’t—”
“No,” the woman said. Even her voice was colorless, though it was far more sonorous than her narrow ribcage should have been able to produce. “You can’t. Step aside, please.”
What the fuck?Nat tried again. “We can get an ambulance. The cops—”
“You’re in the way.” The woman drifted closer, somehow fitting in the cramped space behind the counter. The shelves underneath were jammed with ephemera—binders with tattered plastic covers, a cardboard box labeledLOST & FOUNDin shaky Sharpie, cartons of cigarettes, a pair of wet galoshes tucked in the footwell under the violated, hanging-open register. “Jake? Jake, look at me, honey.”
The clerk’s body jerked. His lips bubbled with blood and saliva. “M-m-m-mo—”
“That’s right.” The thin greenish woman sank gracefully, shouldering Nat aside. Her bare skin was icy; Nat cringed away, an instinctive motion. The chill reached right through her peacoat, a freezing spike turning her entire arm numb. “I’m here for you, Jake. Look at me.”
“M-m-momma…”
