Katya swam in the sensation of Nikolai’s big form pressing her flat, making her more real and alive than ever.
Then she felt the vibration against her hip—his phone.
“Chert.” He growled into her neck, his stubble rubbing delicious friction. “Ignore it.” He began to trace a lazy line along the shell of her ear with his tongue. She went limp as shivery tingles spread over her skin. No one had ever licked her ear before. No one had ever made her body so happy or so needy. She could almost forget she was dead, could almost forget why she’d remained on this side of the afterlife.
The phone buzzed again, and his body went stiff over her.
“Just check it,” she said. “What if Dariya’s calling because there’s an emergency?”
He grunted and shifted his weight onto his knees, kneeling between her legs to free the phone—a task evidently made harder by the erection straining against his fly and taking up too much room in his pants. When he finally got a grip on the device and looked at the screen, he pressed his lips together before re-pocketing the phone and lowering his face to her neck again. His kiss was like a saltshaker of electric sparks on her skin.
She angled her head to give him access to more of her sensitized flesh. “Who was it?”
“Just a text from Dariya.”
“What did she say?”
“She wants us to come back. They’re covering the Lisko trial on the news, but I saw his press conference live. I don’t need the playback.”
Katya pushed one hand against his chest and considered thwacking him upside the head with the other one. “It’s not about you. She needs to see it, but she doesn’t want to watch it alone.”
He blinked. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Come on, let’s go.”
Was she imagining the jut of his lower lip, because the look he wore resembled a pout more than a little? “Fine.”
Even with all the things to carry into the apartment, he kept a hand on her lower back as they descended the stairs. The touch provided more than mere comfort, but something like the opposite of isolation, as if in that point of contact lived the very essence of not being alone. For as long as it lasted, at least.
When they walked into the apartment, the news recap must have ended, because Dariya stared at a blank screen, her lanky body unmoving on the sofa.
“Dariya?” he asked.
She didn’t speak, but nearly silent whimpers shook her body.
Katya hurried around the couch to embrace the girl and stroke her short pink hair. “Shhh. We’re here now.”
Nikolai sat on the other side of Dariya, his big body angled toward her awkwardly, as if his bones themselves were unsure how to comfort a teenage girl. But grief and some other emotion Katya couldn’t quite name contorted his lips into an uneven line.
“I hate him. He’s smiling and the reporters are laughing, and he’s promising to do what’s right, but I know he’s lying.”
“Who?” Katya asked.
“Lisko,” Nikolai growled.
Of course, she should have known. And yet Katya’s encounter with the man had been devoid of laughter and smiles, so the description had not made sense.
Dariya had wrapped her arms around Katya, and she sniffled like a miserable child. Katya smoothed her hand down the girl’s spine in long strokes. She wanted to mutter reassurances, but she held little hope in Nikolai’s form of justice, and what the mara demanded was too gruesome to voice to the anxious adolescent. Plus, once Katya had achieved her vengeance, she would no longer have a shoulder for Dariya to cry on, nor a lower back for Nikolai to press possessively.
She interrupted her strokes to gesture at him, pointing between him and his niece. Silently, she mouthed the obvious, “She needs you, not me.”
He nodded, but his eyes had widened with something like panic. This man who Dariya imagined to be as brave as one of her comic book heroes, afraid of a teenage girl.
“Come here,” His big hand came to Dariya’s biceps, and he tugged her gently, away from Katya and into his side. Once she was tucked safely under his arm, her head resting on his shoulder, he closed his eyes, his brow furrowing so deeply.
And Katya was able to name that mysterious emotion that flickered beneath his grief and worry—fear that he would fail the girl, would not be enough to help her heal, or even venture from the apartment to forge a life of her own.
Katya, however, held no doubt. He’d been unfailingly tender with her, almost chivalrous, at least since he’d accepted the truth of her status as a ghost. And Dariya had the soul of a warrior, like the women of Femme Fatale. The Zurkovs would be fine, but if they came to be dependent on her facilitating their intimacy, it would take them longer to get there.
She stood. “It’s getting late, and I need to be going. You two are very lucky to have each other.”
“Don’t go.” Dariya sat up and glanced between Katya and Nikolai. “Aren’t you going to stay over?”
Her uncle glowered, equally disturbed, if for different reasons. He no longer had that erection crowding his pants, but the hot gaze he leveled her promised he had not forgotten their tantalizing activities on the roof.
Under different circumstances, Katya might have blushed at the assumptions in the girl’s question and the desire in Nikolai’s smoldering stare, but right now, what Dariya needed was a reassuring adult, not an insecure ghost with a voracious sexual appetite.
“No, not tonight. This is a night for you to be a family.”
“But you can be—”
“No, neboha, Katya’s right.”
Thank God, he’d stopped her before she’d said Katya could be a part of their family. Once spoken, it would be even harder to let go of the hope, and that proposition was completely impossible. She was a ghost, soon to fly off to the ever after, if she and Nikolai succeeded. And he may desire Katya, but clearly he still wrestled with making room for Dariya in his life. He wasn’t exactly in the market for a girlfriend to round out the arrangement.
“She’s been a good friend to us,” he continued, snagging Katya’s gaze. “But in this sadness, we must lean on each other.” As if the emotions had zipped into her along the line of his stare, his appreciation filled her, warming her body as thoroughly as his sexual desire had earlier.
Maybe, while he pursued Lisko for her, she could help this pair find their way into an easier intimacy. It was probably more important than folding their laundry.
He lifted his face to her. “Where are you going?”
His hope sounded in the question, as if he might see Dariya off to bed and then go find Katya to finish what they’d started. Part of her body still tingled at the prospect, but the wise part of her that knew to exit this scene of private grief prevailed.
“Just home,” she said, knowing the evasion would sound like an answer to his niece.
“You’ll be all right?”
“Just fine.”
He nodded, his eyes remaining soft and aglow with warm gratitude as the corners of his mouth turned down. The man did a number on a wide range of her internal organs—heart, belly, and lower—all soft and fluttery for him. At least her brain remained mostly clear and certain of the fact he had no clue how this love-starved ghost would respond to his kindnesses. And as much as she’d enjoyed their foreplay on the roof, it was probably a good thing Dariya had interrupted. She needed to refocus on Fedir and Lisko, not indulge in the distracting fleshly pleasures a ghost had no right to.
With her hand on the doorknob, she said, “Good night.”
In no hurry, she made her way back up to Mr. Kulish’s apartment and once again availed herself of his hidden key. She returned to his study, where the musty encyclopedia lay open to the page on maras and a pile of Nikolai’s clothes sat on the floor. She folded them up and returned to the book. Was there anything she’d missed?
Legends attribute to the mara the ability to enter the dreams of any creature she has ever set eyes on.
Anyone she’d ever seen? She’d only entered the dream of a person in the building when she found them asleep in their beds and the mara tugged her to slip inside their minds. How could she do it if they weren’t present in the room?
She lay down on the floor, closed her eyes, and imagined the man she’d seen that night. A hulk, far bigger even than the bear-like Nikolai. Lisko had worn a blank expression, had peered out of arctic-blue eyes with complete disregard, as if to him, Fedir was not a man, but a problem to be solved with a bullet. He hadn’t even spared a glance for Katya, only a phrase. “Keep out of the way, and I won’t hurt you.”
Was he asleep somewhere now, his dreams vulnerable to her invasion? The ticking antique clock on Mr. Kulish’s desk read nine-thirty. She pictured those inhumanly empty eyes closing, his jaw softening, his mouth falling open in sleep. With that crooked nose, he probably snored. She searched for the sensations in her body akin to the mara’s tug and tried to pour herself into his mind. Nothing happened. Each attempt felt like a mental collision, his eyes even popped open in her imagination.
So how the hell did this work? She read and reread the article, made tea, and located Mr. Kulish’s old-fashioned tin of biscuits. For some reason, the crumbly, buttery cookies tasted especially delicious when eaten in the room with the fusty odor of ancient books, and she was very careful not to get grease spots on the old tomes. She looked through the set of encyclopedias and then the entire library for leads.
As she worked, her body began to drag, leaden and toasty warm in the apartment where she’d left the heat blazing. What was this vaguely familiar feeling? She yawned. Oh, right. Fatigue.
Once she’d given it a name, and such a dramatic one, her stinging eyes became unbearable. She’d made herself at home in the old man’s apartment, but she didn’t feel quite brazen enough to put herself to sleep in his bed. She opted for his couch, under a spare blanket she found in his linen closet.
Sure enough, as soon as she was settled, she fretted about leaving his apartment a mess. What if Nikolai never summoned her again? Poor Mr. Kulish would come home to a scene like the three bears discovering the mess Goldilocks left behind, which was no way to repay his hospitality, even if she’d more or less stolen it from him without his knowledge.
Once she’d tidied up, she slipped under the blanket and dropped right into a dark cavern of sleep. Sometime later, she came back to consciousness in Nikolai’s bed. She lifted the covers to find she wore only her panties and tank top, which left her certain she was dreaming. With her movement of the blankets, he rolled onto his side and blinked at her, rather like he had when she’d walked out of his apartment.
A sleepy grin stole over his face. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.”
He reached around her, drawing her against him with a palm on her back. “Am I dreaming?”
“I think so.”
“You are the sweetest nightmare in the whole world.” His hand played at the hem of her tank top, teasing the skin of her belly.
She rubbed her toes against the coarse hair on his calves, relishing the sensations, surrendering to his nearness. This time it felt so different. Because she’d passed most of a day in his life, she knew he liked sausage and Greek olives on his pizza, knew how loyal he was to Dariya. “You were a very good uncle tonight.”
He stilled his hands. “Thanks to you. And thank you for taking so much care with her expectations.”
“I was once a lonely young girl.”
“You’re still young.” He kissed her forehead. “Too fucking young to be dead.”
“Well, I’m feeling very alive at the moment.” She stroked her palms over his chest. Funny how a touch could carry so much more emotion after just a day of knowing him.
He watched her nails scratch lightly at his chest. Could he possibly sense the difference in her touch? All at once, he pressed her palm flat to the hard muscle over his heart and slanted his mouth over hers. The kiss started slow and sweet, tentative licks, like tongues of flame escaping from an almost banked fire. Then he unleashed all his heat on her, devouring her mouth, but so unlike the pure chemistry of strangers they’d shared before. This hunger was personal, a craving for each other. He wanted her, Katya, not because she looked like her mother. And she wanted him, not out of duty or obligation.
He slid his hand into her underwear and cupped her mound.
And then, all at once, cold gripped her and her eyes shuddered against blinding white light. She stood outside in the snow, in boots and a parka, her gloved hand lifted to grip a hand belonging to a tall man at her side. She looked up at him to find him staring across the way. She followed his gaze to see Lukyanivska prison. The sight of its soot-blackened walls shot despair through her, but she didn’t know why.
Then she was somewhere else, her head splitting with pain like someone had taken an axe to the bridge of her nose. She touched it, and her hand—a large, split-knuckled and masculine one—came away with blood. The whooshing ring in her ears cleared, making a new sound audible—the jeering shouts of a crowd. She squinted to see beyond the bright lights beating down on her, and with sickening recognition, she felt the humiliation of the man’s defeat.
She was inside his dream, but not as an observer the way she’d always been in the other nightmares. This time, she was the dreamer.
Could she ghost out of the subject’s body to see whose dream she’d found? Why not?
She swooshed away from his body and found herself in a bedroom.
The man bolted up in his bed, his arctic eyes wide and wild. Lisko, not the stoic brute who’d marched into the apartment the night he’d killed Fedir, but a man shaken, haunted.
Her face obscured by a mass of dark hair, the woman at his side patted his thigh and murmured. “Shhh. It’s just another nightmare.”
This was the breakthrough Katya had been waiting for. What could she say to lure him to her? Maybe she should play it like a ghost in the movies.
She pointed at him. “Murderer.”
He opened his mouth as if to scream, but no sound came out, and with a howling whoosh, she returned to Nikolai’s bathroom once again.