Page 63 of Spring's Arcana
She was also prepared for an argument over the hotel bill, but Dmitri just took her elbow as they left the elevator, hustling her through the foyer. The man behind the desk—Priest, his shaven head gleaming—saw them and smiled encouragingly, waving a gloved hand; maybe Dima had prepaid? The bar was still the same behind its smoked glass, and there was a tall woman with a shock of bright thistledown hair, her ragged gray dress brushing neatly at pale ankles as she stood before the fireplace, wearing leather sandals with diamond-glittering soles.
Nat craned to look more closely at that gleaming, but Dmitri let out a soft short sound, more than an exhale but not quite a word. He hurried her through the giant, polished revolving glass door, and once more she was dead certain it would turn into a mouth andswallow them both whole until they burst into bright thin golden frostlight, shadows sharply defined on the cobblestones and the big black car rumbling a greeting under its shining hood. He all but shoved her into the passenger side, not even bothering to nod at the valet’s greeting, and Nat watched the Elysium’s spinning door.
It seemed ridiculously like the gangster was almost… frightened? No, but certainly cautious.
When he dropped into the driver’s seat it was with a muttered word in the old country’s language she was certain Leo would never had said in her presence, even if he’d just skinned his knuckles on an engine.
“What’s wrong?” It was stupid to ask, she knew. Still, the glaring bruises on his face, and the damage all over his torso—at least he seemed to be moving all right. “We can get you some ibuprofen or something.”
“What the fuck for?” he snarled, and the engine replied with an unhappy sound. The tires chirped, the hood ornament shifted as it clove freezing air, and she barely had time to get her seat belt fastened before they rocketed out of the courtyard and onto a snow-packed city street, just narrowly missing a big blue-and-white bus carefully picking its way between stratified snow-ridges.
At least he hadn’t hit a pedestrian. Still, Nat almost grabbed for the dash, restraining herself just in time and clutching her backpack to her chest instead.
The gangster dug in the inner pocket of his black jacket, his lip still lifted slightly, teeth gleaming underneath, and extracted a somewhat prosaic pack of Camels. His frown was thunderous, but he tapped one coffin-nail up and lit it with a mutter; it smelled just the same as the others.
It didn’t take long for him to find I-77; once they reached the freeway his knuckles lost their white tinge on the wheel-yoke and the incense-smoke, exhaled in long twin jets, was dragged out the crack of open window into the slipstream. No chains, again, but the black car didn’t slide, and its low-throated growl had turned carnivorous. “Drive fast today. Might wanna tell me just where we goin’,zaika.” He checked the mirrors, probably just for show, beforehe turned the wheel slightly and they swung wide around a laboring semi. The tires grabbed hard, he pressed the accelerator, and for a moment the thought that she was going to die in a car wreck was either proof of sanity or completely irrelevant. “West, yeah, but north or south?”
“South,” she managed.Weren’t you listening?“South Dakota.”
“Old ground,” he muttered. “Don’t get out that way much.”
Do you have GPS in this thing? Somehow, she didn’t think so. Nat hugged her backpack tighter and stared out the window, trying to ignore the slippery way mile markers were flashing past. Every other vehicle on the road was using relative caution, but the black car grumbled as Dmitri twisted the wheel, slaloming past snow-starred vehicles with fringes of dirty ice clinging to their mud flaps. Traffic was surprisingly heavy but then again, the entire economy couldn’t shut down because of a little thing like the weather.
Was there a god of capitalism? Who was in charge of the snow, de Winter? Was she watching them now, every drift a listening station and every snowflake a tiny eye?
It sounded exhausting.
Dmitri didn’t turn the radio on; the car might not even have one. The only sound was the engine’s subterranean song and the crunch of tires on ridged, salted ice. It was oddly soothing, and if she could just relax, might even be fun.
And yet.
That horsethief will kill you if he can, buffalo girl. But a lot of others will do worse.“Who else is after me?”
“Nowyou askin’?” His laugh rode a cloud of that strange perfumed smoke; those definitely weren’t Camels, despite the packaging. “Don’t matter none,zaika. Dima will keep you safe and sound, so long as I don’t get my hands on what your mama stole from me.”
It was the first time he’d said it quite so directly, which would have been a small victory if he hadn’t slewed the car from the far left lane all the way across to the right, almost onto the shoulder, and aimed at a ramp for I-76 South. It looked like he knew the local roads.
Probably for quick getaways.
“Technically she stole it from Baba, right?” She braced herself for an explosion, but all she got was a sideways glance from one bruised, blackened eye. He looked a little better now; maybe it was the light. “I’m just trying to understand.”
“What you need to understand? It’smine.”
“Oh.” A laughably simple observation occurred to Nat, and bolted free of her mouth besides. “You were going to steal it back. She beat you to it.”
“Do me a favor and shut up.” Dmitri stamped on the accelerator, and Nat was pushed into her seat. “Today we travel like we should.”
What, like we’re running from something?Well, they probably were.
Silence ticked by, the sun glittering vengefully off snow-covered houses, filthy ice clinging to shoulders and curbs, a long line of darkness in the north that meant another storm but not quite yet. Once city faded into suburbia and the modesty screens of spindly bushes and saplings, naked for the winter and hopefully sleeping through the miserable cold, showed fields beyond, Dmitri eased up on the gas, and it wasn’t her imagination.
He was looking better. The bruises retreated almost as she watched, cuts sealing themselves up in tiny twitching increments.
Nowthatwas handy. She almost opened her mouth to observe as much, thought better, and swallowed the words. They hit crowding questions at the end of her esophagus with a plop, mixed with the coffee she’d bolted after the protein bar but before a quick tooth-brushing, and settled into a ball of anxiety.
Did she really have an esophagus? What was divinity biology, not to mention anatomy? How on earth was she going to find out? Why wasn’t she hungrier?
And why hadn’t she needed the toilet in the birch suit’s luxurious bathroom this morning?
