by Callie Hart
Then again, this is Pasha. The guy is fucking massive, and he knows how to fight. I haven't forgotten about the cage matches. The bruises on his ribcage that were so stark and vivid and purple when he first removed his shirt back in my apartment have faded a little, but they're still very visible. Pasha probably hasn't gone crazy with home security because he isn't afraid of a fight. He'd probably welcome the prospect of someone breaking into his property just so he could teach them a lesson. I almost chuckle to myself as I picture it in my mind. Woe betide any man stupid enough to try and rob Pasha Rivin.
I sigh with relief as we step inside and a blast of warm air hits me in the face. Pasha's fingers graze the back of my neck as he relieves me of his coat, and I shiver at his touch. I've been waiting for my body to settle into this. I've assumed that the more time I spend with Pasha, the less I'll react. Seems as though I'm shit out of luck, though. Every minute I spend with him seems to lead me deeper down a rabbit hole. Every time his skin makes contact, every time his lips meet my lips, every time our eyes meet, for Christ's sake, I find myself becoming more and more paralyzed by him.
My face feels flushed as he takes me by the hand and leads me down a wide open entryway into a vast, cavernous, open space. There’s no real transition from one area to the next. One minute we're in the entryway, the next we're standing in a huge open plan loft space, and I am face-to-face with a gallery of expansive floor to ceiling windows.
I was so wrong outside. I said the place was unremarkable, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. From out there, Pasha's home had looked like it would be a smallish one-bedroom apartment, but the architecture of the place is deceptive. The sides of the building are hidden by the trees, but they must fan out to both the left and the right at a twenty-five-degree angle, giving the loft space a wedged shape.
Just as Pasha had told me it would be, the view is spectacular, but I am far more interested in what can be seen inside the loft than outside of it. Not long ago I had been embarrassed by my small, poky apartment. It had felt too cluttered and overly full. And now, seeing the stark, bare lines of Pasha's living space and hearing the way my footsteps actually echo inside the place, I suddenly find that I'm embarrassed all over again.
There are no real modern trappings here. Sure, in the kitchen there’s a microwave, a toaster, and a kettle. Yes, there is a modest television—a small flat screen suspended from the wall. But there are no phone chargers sticking out of walls, no devices cluttered together, battling for outlet space.
On the far side of the loft, Pasha's bed is neatly made, a huge California king with pale grey sheets. Beyond it, Pasha's clothes neatly hang from a rolling garment rack. A pair of running shoes are sticking out from underneath the end of his bed.
The leather sofa in the center of the room is small, barely big enough for two people, and gives me the impression that Pasha likes it that way, as if by limiting seating space in his home, he can avoid the possibility that there might be more than two people in here at any one time.
On the eastern side of the building, a deep six-foot-wide fireplace has been hewn out of the wall, and a smudge of black soot stains the concrete, rising up the wall. In front of the fireplace, a single wingback chair sits, angled toward the non-existent flames, with a stack of books on the floor at its feet.
The scene paints itself for me without me even having to try and imagine it: Pasha sitting here alone at night in front of a roaring fire with a book in his hand, the light playing over his face as he descends into whatever realm or world has come alive for him on the pages between his hands.
Slowly, I spin around, taking every little aspect of the place in, every little detail, every little element. The place smells distinctly and specifically Pasha. I want to breathe the place in, as if I can absorb it through my lungs and I’ll be able to keep it with me forever.
Beside me, Pasha rubs bashfully at the back of his neck. “I should probably buy a rug or something.”
I try not to laugh. “I'm sure that’d warm the place up a little. I like it, though. It's clean. Minimal.”
“I've been perfectly happy here up until now,” he admits. “Suddenly, I'm beginning to wish I'd made more of an effort to turn this place into a home.”
“What are you talking about? This is homely,” I say, gesturing to the near-empty space. Our words echo, bouncing off the walls, disproving my statement even as I make it. Pasha casts a cool eye from one side of the loft to the other, sliding his hands into his pockets. Always so cocky and arrogant, it's actually entertaining to see him self-conscious for once. “Archie does have more stuff in his vardo than you do in here,” I tell him. “But it's a welcome change. I'm not going to be walking into any furniture when I'm over here, that's for sure.”
“I guess that’ll serve as a silver lining,” Pasha says dryly. “Wait here. I’ll grab some clothes and I’ll take you back to your place. Better we get back there sooner rather than later. We don’t want to miss any phone calls.”
Why Lazlo decided to choose the payphone outside the Bakersfield as our point of contact, I have no idea. It would have been so much easier if he’d called my cell phone instead. Sure, my number isn’t listed, but the man’s a fucking criminal. I’m sure he could have figured it out if he’d wanted to. By deciding to call the payphone, Lazlo was taking a big risk. There’s every chance I wouldn’t have heard it. An even higher chance that I wouldn’t have answered it. The only reason I did answer it was because the shrill, incessant ring tone was driving me to the point of insanity.
Perhaps Lazlo had been counting on that, and he knew I’d storm down the stairs in my slippers and rip the handset from its cradle eventually. The idea that he might have been able to discern this about me, that he might know anything about me at all, makes me seriously uncomfortable.
“I’m gonna steal some of your electricity,” I tell Pasha, taking my cell phone out of my back pocket. With no power and no reception at the Rivin glen, my phone’s been dead for the last sixteen hours at least. I root around in my bag until I locate a charger cable and then I set it to power up in the kitchen. It’s going to take a while for the battery to charge sufficiently to turn back on, so I pace over to the huge windows and stare out at the city.
I wasn’t born here. I haven’t lived here very long. Honestly, the city doesn’t even really feel like my home, even though I adore my life here. As I look out over Spokane, I realize that there’s a disconnect somewhere. Some part of me that can appreciate this view and admire it from afar, but has little interest in heading toward or immersing myself in it. There’s a part of it I simply don’t understand and never will. Like a piece of contemporary art hanging on a gallery wall, I look at the city, the cool mid-morning sun glancing off countless high-rise tower windows in the distance down by the river, and I can appreciate its master strokes. But I wouldn’t hang it from the windows of my own house on the hill.
I try to imagine what view I would hang in front of these windows, if I could choose it, but… the only thing I can see when I try is a reflection of Pasha, standing behind me in the glass.
“You miss New York?” he asks quietly, sweeping my hair back over my shoulder, exposing my bare skin. What had he said the Roma people called vampires when he was teasing Shireen the other day? A Strigoi. Yes. That’s what he looks like, so pale, his hair so dark, his eyes full of an intense fire as he dips down and kisses me gently in the crook of my neck.
It’d make a lot of sense if he really was a vampire. It would at least explain how he can so easily read my mood and guess at my thoughts so accurately. There’s no way he could have known what I was thinking just now, and yet he still asked me about New York.
“No. I don’t,” I tell him. “I— I—” My eyelids shutter, my eyes rolling back in my head as he kisses me again. The heat of his mouth on my skin is so fucking dizzying, I can barely form thoughts around the sensation. I melt into him, my body loosening and falling slack as Pasha takes hold of me by the hip, slidi
ng his other hand around me and up my stomach. It’s then that I feel the hard length of his erection pressing into the small of my back.
“Oh, fuck, Zara. I knew I was going to want this.”
“What? What do you want?”
“I want you naked and pressed up against these windows,” he growls into my ear. “I want to see the outline of your tits every time I stand here in the morning and watch the sun rise. I want your hand prints marked in sweat on every single fucking pane of glass. Take off yo—”
BOOM!
I react in slow motion.
Pasha doesn’t.
His arms are around me, tight as a vise, and he’s lifting me…
…spinning…
…turning away from the windows before I’ve even registered that they are shattering.
My feet are off the floor.
Pasha’s heart is thundering in his chest—I can feel it through the thick wool of my cable-knit sweater.
A crashing sound bounces around the inside of the loft, and then it’s raining diamonds.
Mimicking the snow that fell on us last night, thousands of tiny glass shards explode into the loft, landing in my hair, catching in my sweater, catching at my skin, and then striking the polished concrete before scattering in every direction.
The moment lasts both a heartbeat and a lifetime.
Pasha’s chest swells against my back as he sucks in a deep breath. He hasn’t moved a muscle, his torso still twisted, his back turned on the city so he could protect me from the projectiles of glass. “Fuck,” he pants. “Are you okay?”
I’m not in any pain. Can’t feel the hot, dull ache of blood pouring from my body. “I…Yeah, I think so.”
Carefully, Pasha sets me down. Cubes of safety glass crunch and grind under the soles of my shoes as I steady myself against the back of the wingback chair by the fire. Pasha’s face is white as a sheet. He turns around, surveying the destruction before him, a jagged slash of a frown carved so deep into his brow that it looks like it’s cut down to the bone.
Everywhere: glass.
Side-by-side, two of the huge, ten-foot-high panels of glass, there a second ago, are now just gone, broken into a million pieces on the floor, and a stiff, foreboding northern wind is snaking its way inside the loft, tugging at Pasha’s shirt. He digs his fingers into his hair, staring down at the broken glass, and then, just like the glass, he explodes.
“FUUUCK!” His brutal roar echoes around the loft, escaping out of the yawning maw where the windows used to be, and blares out into the valley, repeating itself again and again before the mountainside to the left of us captures his furious cry and deadens it.
“What the…fuck just…happened?” I can’t cram enough oxygen into my lungs to get the sentence out all in one go. I realize I’m shaking; my legs feel so fucking weak, I’m concerned they might actually collapse out from underneath me. I sidle around the wingback chair, sitting down on it as I try and make sense of the scene in front of me.
“Something hit the glass,” Pasha says. His voice is flat now. Quiet. If it weren’t for the abject rage on his face, I’d say he was in shock. I’m most definitely in shock. Oh, Christ, I think I’m going to—
I jump to my feet again, hands on my hips, hauling a breath into my lungs, filling them until they feel like they’re about to burst. All the while, I’m pressing down the unsettling feeling that I might be about to faint. I am not going to fucking faint. I’m not going to fucking faint. Don’t you dare fucking faint, you stupid bitch. This is not eighteen ninety-three. Women don’t just faint because they got a shock.
“I saw it coming. White. Out of nowhere. Barely had time to fucking grab you,” Pasha mutters. He steps into the broken glass, kicking through it with the toe of his boot. A second later, he finds what he’s looking for. I see it at the same time, my eyes catching on the tiny pool of red that is slowly spreading underneath the aquamarine of the safety glass.
Not a rock, or a brick. Not a man-made projectile of any kind.
It’s a bird.
Pasha brushes the mess away, scooping the creature up in his hands. He bares his teeth, as if he’s afraid to hurt it, but the poor thing’s dead, of course. The rhythm of my heart is evening out again, normalizing with each deep breath I take. I feel considerably steadier on my feet as I step forward to get a better look, but then one of the bird’s wings shoots out, snow-white and flecked with blood, and I nearly land on my ass, I jump back so fast.
“Ah, Jesus,” Pasha groans. “Hit the window hard enough to shatter two fucking panes, but not hard enough to kill it?”
I clutch at my chest, horror corkscrewing through me as the bird spasms, both its wings now moving as it flails in Pasha’s hands, trying to get away from him. Against my own better judgement, I look closer, and my heart splinters right down the middle when the bird looks up at me. Its eye resembles a glass bead, a beautiful golden color with an obsidian black pupil, unlike most bird’s eyes. A startling level of intelligence stares back at me, and all I see is the bird’s panic. All I see is its pain.
“Oh my god, I can’t.” I turn away, covering my mouth with my hand.
“Stay there. Don’t come outside.” Pasha leaves, glass crunching as he steps out onto the balcony.
When he comes back, his hands are empty, and the bird is gone.
“Did you…?” God, I can’t even say it.
He nods. “Its neck was broken. It was dying anyway.”
That information doesn’t make me feel any better. Not really. “What kind of bird was that? That glass is half an inch thick, Pasha. Those windows should never have shattered like that.”
Pasha’s mouth is downturned as he rubs at his forehead; he closes his eyes for a second, breathing out down his nose. When he opens his eyes again, his expression is even more grim. “It wasn’t just a bird, Firefly. It was an owl.”
THIRD
Outside the box, the world is a vivid mess of color.
There are leaves on the ground. The boy can’t remember if they were there when he went inside the box or not. The man holds the boy’s hand. They walk quickly through the park, their breath making pillars of fog that trail behind them in the cold, and the man looks. He’s always looking. It took the boy a little while to realize what the man was looking for, but then the man found another little boy like him and brought him back to the box, too, and the boy figured it out.
The other boy hadn’t stop crying for days. The other boy was called Peter, and his daddy was a fireman. The man hadn’t liked the boy talking to Peter. The man had come and taken Peter away after only three visits, and Peter had not come back.
The boy knows better than to ask what happened to Peter. Instead, he likes to think that Peter’s father brought his firetruck and rescued him. If the boy’s own father had a firetruck, then undoubtedly he would have done the same.
“Don’t make a sound,” the man warns as they approach the playground. “If you’re good, I’ll buy you some cotton candy.”
The boy’s heart climbs into his throat. It’s so hard to know how to be good and make theƒ man happy, but the boy wants to make him happy. He wants that cotton candy more than anything else in the world. Treats like that used to be commonplace in his old life, but now they are few and far between, and not to be missed out on.
The man takes the boy and sits on a bench, watching the other children play. Then the man sits the boy on a swing and pushes him, and for a few moments the dizzying weightless potential of flight is an ecstasy that grips hold of the boy and physically shakes him.
Soon, the man has made up his mind.
He removes the boy from the swing, and heads back to the bench. “There. Him.” He points out the one he has selected. The boy knows what must be done. Wrapped in his thick winter coat, the boy makes his way across the playground and approaches the boy playing alone in the dirt.
“What are you doing?” the boy asks.
“Digging,” is the reply.
“Can I
play?”
The other boy nods. His name is Samuel, and his daddy is a doctor. The boy wonders vaguely how Samuel’s father will save him, if he doesn’t have a firetruck.
On the way back to the car, the man carries Samuel in his arms. He doesn’t cry. Doesn’t seem to mind the adventure.
The man lets the boy sit in front to eat his cotton candy on the way home.
Eighteen
PASHA
Bad luck is a tricky thing. It’s easy to come by, and hard to get rid of. As a rule, I generally do my best not to believe in it. I cultivated a scientific mind when I went away to boarding school as a teenager and made sure I stopped lending weight to the numerous superstitions that used to go hand in hand with the Roma people. I filled my head with as many scientific facts as I could, and I started washing my hands in the same damn sink as women, I didn’t break out into a cold sweat every time I heard a dog howl, and before too long I didn’t even think about such things anymore.
But fucking owls…
Owls are more than just bad luck. They’re an omen of death, and one just flew into the windows of my loft and brought a hail of shattered, sharp-edged glass raining down on top of the woman I love.
Prikoza.
I never thought I’d be fucking saying this to myself, but this is some seriously fucked up prikoza.
Zara doesn’t speak much on the way over to her place. She’s trapped in a loop inside her head. The same loop I’m spinning around in. The words I whispered into her ear; the heat between our bodies; the moment when we both signed ourselves over to the fact that we were going to fuck like animals in front of the window; me, noticing the blur of white come rushing toward us; me, grabbing hold of Zara and shielding her with my body; an impossibly deafening sound as the glass splintered and fell; me, taking the broken bird outside and bashing the tiny creature’s head in with a fucking ashtray.
