I replied.
Trying not to appear awkward, I slid my chair away from Stephanie. “I want to know about this ankh,” I said, clearing my throat, not acknowledging the more pressing topic at hand, while staggering my breaths so that her mango aroma that followed my every move wouldn’t have me making promises I’d regret later.
“I see…” Stephanie said. She ran her fingernail around the ankh again before shoving it back into her pocket. “I didn’t mean to make you…uncomfortable.” She slipped a lock of red hair nervously behind her ear.
You didn’t make me uncomfortable…you were driving me mad. But I didn’t say a word, unsure of how to respond.
“I’m…gonna’ go.” She squinted hard, thumbing behind her as she rose from her seat, taking her drink with her. When she had started away, I heard her mumble, “That didn’t go as planned.”
CHAPTER
THREE
That night back at my place, I didn’t feel like cooking, so I made a bowl of maple syrup instant oatmeal. After taking the bowl out of the microwave, I sat on the couch in the living room and started watching ESPN, more just to have some background noise than anything else.
I had another few months before football season, and March Madness was over and done with, so I got to watch a reel of highlights from various sports I didn’t particularly care about, namely baseball.
Now wearing a loose white t-shirt and black gym shorts, I was relaxed enough to wind down for the evening. After three or four spoonfuls of oatmeal though, I heard several knocks on my apartment door. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I’d started eating, and I wasn’t in the mood for interruptions.
My first thought was to just ignore it, but it was too late. The television was dreadfully loud, so I figured I’d just answer the door and get it over with. “Coming,” I called. I set the bowl on the glass coffee table—a new addition now that I didn’t have Carter tearing my place apart—and opened the door. “Can I help you?”
A man with black, gelled hair stood at my door. He was thin, but not frail, and probably as old as I was and equally just as tall. His eyes sunk in underneath his brow, and his bony slender nose dipped in at the crest. A black t-shirt gripped his ripped runner’s arms, and he wore a pair of dark blue jeans.
With his rough and low voice, he looked me square in the eyes. “Are you Lyle Finnegan?”
“That’s me. Who’s asking?” The way the man stared at me was making me a little uneasy, so I peeked my head out the doorway and glanced up and down Gorman Street, just to be sure that there was no one else with him.
“My name is Zakhar,” he said.
When he said his name, I recognized his Russian accent more clearly than I had before, and I immediately put my guard up. This is that Shaman who’s looking for Stephanie. But why is he here at my place? “Is there…something I can do for you, Zakhar?” I lacked the Slavic pronunciation.
Zakhar looked around, fidgeting his fingers in and out of a fist. “What I have to say is better is said inside.”
A mosquito buzzed over my head and flew into my apartment, then another followed. “Look, man. I’m kinda’ busy right now, and I’ve got bugs flying in my house. Is this something we can schedule at another time?” If he says no, then I’ll just let him know that I don’t have time right now.
“This is too urgent to discuss at another time…Changer.” Zakhar was being a little more pushy now, and how did he know that I was a Decanter? “You met with a girl today who has something that belongs to me. If you help me, then I will assume that you are not working with her.”
“Sure. Come in,” I offered, stepping aside to let Zakhar pass. “I was just having dinner, if you can call it that. Want some?” I gestured to the bowl of oatmeal on the coffee table that was beginning to congeal into oat lumps.
“No, thank you.” Zakhar hooked his thumbs in his pockets, taking inventory of my apartment, rocking back on his heels, nodding. “Nice place. Tidy.”
If only he’d come by when Carter was here. I was standing behind the kitchen counter that overlooked the living room where Zakhar stood. “Thanks. I’m not much on clutter. You from around here?” Judging by your accent, I think I know my answer to that.
“If it is my accent that makes you wonder, then you should know that I am an American, through and through. Guts to bones,” he said, making a claw right at his stomach as he rocked forward on his heels. “Believe it or not, my mother was from Missouri, and my father was from Kotlovka, a suburb of sorts to Moscow. I was born here in the states, but after my mother passed away when I was four, I moved to Kotlovka with my father. I came back to America to go to school in California, and I’ve been here for the past eleven years. No matter how hard I try, I can’t ever seem to get rid of this hearty Belarusian.” He burst into a laugh, just before stepping up to the counter. “You offered me dinner, but I would prefer a drink instead?” It came out as a question.
“Coming right up.” I dug through my cabinets until I found my Amoretto, pouring two shots into a whiskey glass. When I went to the fridge to mix in some orange juice for his Salty Austin, Zakhar stopped me.
“This will do,” he said, savoring a swig. “Why sully a liquor when the taste alone is far more satisfying?”
I closed the refrigerator. “So Stephanie, the girl I met with today—I assume you already know her name—but what does she have of yours? And why come to me? What do I have to do with it?”
“So then…to business?” He pushed his drink aside, no longer interested, then he grunted, touching the side of his head, squinting. “The television,” he wound his hand around his ear, “it is a tad too loud. Do you mind if we…turn it down a little?”
He can’t be serious. I grabbed the remote from the coffee table and pressed mute, then went back into the kitchen.
“Much better,” Zakhar said. “I could barely hear myself think.” He pointed at a light brown wooden stool at the counter. “Mind if I sit?”
“Go ahead.”
“Mr. Lyle, I want to be open with you, for the sake of full disclosure.” He grunted, hoisting himself on the stool. He placed his elbows on the counter and massaged his knuckles. “What Stephanie took from me…it is…it is very important to me. Now I know I could be secretive and manipulative and devious and deceptive and try to get you to help me without telling you anything, but where is the trust in that? Hm? What she stole from me was my ankh—a cross with a little loop at the end.” He traced out the design in the air with his finger. “Have you ever seen something like this before?”
“Heard of it.” I poured myself a couple of shots, then tucked the Amoretto back into the cabinet. I preferred mine with orange juice, but I figured I’d have only the shots just as my unwelcomed guest was. “Don’t know too much about an ankh though. Not really important to me,” I shrugged. “Just tell me what you need.”
Zakhar shook his finger at me. “A business man with a tie, you are. Mr. Straight-forward,” he chuckled. “I cannot say that I am fond of it, but you an
d I, we are no different. Isn’t that right, Changer? What I need is for you to get the ankh from your friend and hand it over to me.”
“Why can’t you get it yourself? You even sure she has the thing?” I took a sip of liquor, looking at Zakhar over the brim of the glass.
“With Stephanie holding the ankh,” he bobbed his head side to side, frowning, “it, uh…complicates things.”
“And you need me, because you think she trusts me?” I took another sip, then another. “I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t know Stephanie at all really. She got my number from a friend, I assume, and she gave me a ring to have coffee just out of the blue.” I wasn’t sure how Zakhar had heard about my meeting with Stephanie, but I wasn’t interested in asking him questions. I just wanted to see his angle, and then get him out of my apartment.
“A businessman, and an honest man, Mr. Lyle. Two things that make a man real man. I like that. I wish that there were more like you. But, Mr. Lyle, I have a question for you. Are you a sensible man?” He leaned over the counter, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Sensible?”
“Yes. Sensible. You see, a sensible man knows when to count his stacks and go home,” Zakhar said.
“Or when to get the ankh for you and walk away, you mean?” I took another sip, already tired of the diplomacy.
Zakhar patted the air with both hands, eyes closed. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Mr. Lyle. We are merely talking here. No need to go on the defensive. I am not attacking you. Far from it, in fact. For all I am concerned, you and I are working together on this. What I need is for you to go to Stephanie, and maybe…uh…talk some sense into her. Make her a sensible woman, just as you are a sensible man. Let her know that all her debts can be forgiven if she is compliant.”
“All things you could tell her yourself.” I wasn’t buying a word of this gibberish. Why did he need me to talk to her? He could get to her just as easily as I could and get the ankh from her.
“You don’t know Stephanie; I understand that. Neither do I, for that matter. But what I do know is that she would not listen to a guy like me—a guy whom she thinks wants to do her harm.” No longer neglecting the drink I’d poured him, Zakhar swallowed another swig.
“Do you?”
“Do I what? Want to harm her? Of course I do,” he laughed, raking fingers through his hair. “She has my ankh. Took it out of my car when I lived in California. Do I want to harm her?” he mocked. “What if I came to your lovely apartment, Mr. Lyle, and I…” he looked around until he saw my fifty-inch television, “and I up and took your television? How would you feel? Would you want to harm me? Would you come after me? Or what if it was something more expensive, like your laptop or your sedan? Then how would you feel? That ankh cost a lot of people a lot of money, and for your friend’s safety, it is not wise for me to confront her about the ankh face-to-face. I could not promise that I would be able to control myself, if I thought about how much was at stake.”
Rebekah made a sound of uncertainty.
“Mr. Lyle, I have already held you up longer than was my intention, especially once I interrupted your dinner. Rather rude of me, I must say. But remember.” He swallowed the rest of his liquor and shoved the glass aside, rising up from the stool. “I would hate to think that the two of you were conspiring together to keep my ankh all to yourselves. I know that a sensible man like yourself has very little difficulty making sensible decisions.” He tapped the counter twice, making his way out.
When he opened the door, he turned to look at me. “And Mr. Lyle,” he said. “I am really counting on you to do the right thing.” With that, his eyes lit up bright blue, electric sparks twisting and snapping inside. Then, Zakhar was gone, crossing through the parking lot with his hands in his pockets, never looking back again.
CHAPTER
FOUR
The door slammed shut behind Zakhar after he left my apartment, abandoning me at the kitchen counter with a dumbfounded expression on my face and a glass of liquor in my hand that I couldn’t finish. I dumped my glass into the sink and set both my glass and his on the counter.
I sat on the couch and grabbed the bowl of cold, clumpy oatmeal, taking a bite of the congealed oats, and after a few pasty chews, I set the bowl aside.
Reconsidering what I had just said, I realized something. Why hasn’t she tried to sell it to a paranormal fence? It must be worth twenty grand or more. That got me thinking, not that I was willing to agree with Rebekah—that Stephanie couldn’t get rid of the ankh, but it got me thinking nonetheless.
Umara Mayorsen was the fairy who enchanted and sold rare items. She also was Rebekah’s Paranormal Advisor before everything went down. I wasn’t too fond of having someone telling me what to do and when to do it, so having Umara as my PA wasn’t really that much of an interest.
I said.
I went to the bedroom and picked up my phone from the dresser, opening it to the recent calls and finding Stephanie’s number at the top, though it wasn’t her name, only the digits since I hadn’t found it necessary to save her contact information. When I called her, she picked up right away.
“Lyle?” Her voice was perky, cool, and inviting.
I sat on the side of my bed with the phone to my left ear, right arm bracing up my left elbow. “I just ran into your old friend.”
“My old friend? You mean Zakhar? Where’d you see him?”
“Uhh…at my house! He paid me a visit,” I said. “Actually just left.”
There was silence on her end of the phone. “What did he say?”
I wasn’t sure where to go from here. Zakhar wanted me to get the ankh from her, or else he’d come a
fter me, figuring that I was helping her. But then again, I at least knew a little bit about Stephanie, and what I knew about her wasn’t all bad. She had shown up to help us deal with Marcus. This Zakhar guy, I didn’t know anything about him. I decided to sidestep from answering her right away.
“The real question is, how did he know that I met up with you?” I asked her. “We’ve hardly so much as spoken before, but on the day that you and I decide to grab some coffee, here he comes knocking on my door.”
“Because that’s what he’s good at,” she said. “Finding people, making connections. That’s what he does. That’s what makes him so dangerous.” There was an edge to her rant—one that let me know she wasn’t taking Zakhar’s visit to my place lightly.
“So a few connections, and he ended up at my place?” I asked Stephanie over the phone, getting off my bed and going back into the living room to lower the volume on the television, since I had still left it too loud.
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” she sighed on the other end of the receiver. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
“Like when you didn’t tell me that you stole the ankh from Zakhar’s car? Kept that detail to yourself, didn’t you?” I leaned against the back of the couch, staring into the kitchen at the metal toaster by the sink.
Elemental Damage: Confessions of a Summoner Book 2 Page 2
