Fort Morgan

by Christian, Claudia Hall

  “I saw Katia,” Ivan said.

  “Katia — the one who let you get away?” she said. “That Katia.”

  “Da,” Ivan said.

  “And?” she asked in Russian.

  “She is engaged to a wealthy, homosexual young man,” he said in Russian.

  “Who is paying for her schooling?” she asked.

  “I assume,” he said. “And everything else. Diamonds, expensive clothing. . . Expensive apartment, I’m sure.”

  “And you?” she furrowed her brow. “How did it feel to see her again?”

  Ivan shrugged. She reached out and covered his hand with hers. He looked at her. She raised her eyebrows to encourage him to talk. He looked confused.

  “I ask because I want to know,” Nadia said. “I care, and I am listening.”

  “I was exhausted, sweating, sore. . . my ankles ached, and I felt ancient,” Ivan said. “She was ridiculous. Reeked of cigarettes. Gave me her number, but so did he.”

  Nadia laughed.

  “You weren’t tempted?” she asked.

  He gave her a long look before smiling.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I was wondering why you ask,” he said.

  “So you were tempted!”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth,” Ivan said. “And, anyway, why do you care? You want this to be. . .”

  “Casual,” Nadia switched to American English again. “I don’t want anything serious. I wouldn’t have time for it now, anyway. My first and deepest love is for my work. So, as much as I love you, I cannot. . .”

  “Own you,” Ivan finished her sentence in English with her. “Yes.”

  “Plus, your heart and soul belong to Sissy,” she said with a smile.

  Ivan’s face flushed. He was so flustered that he looked away from her. She touched his hand again.

  “I love you,” she said. “You love me. And we are not each other’s destiny. Right?”

  Ivan shrugged.

  “So were you tempted?” she said with a laugh.

  He laughed and shook his head.

  “Not even by the fiancé?” she asked. “He sounds like a real prize.”

  He smiled again.

  “Before I forget,” she said. “There’s a message for you on the voicemail.”

  He turned to look at the phone and then turned back to look at her.

  “As you know, I love voicemail,” she said. “Thank you for leaving me those messages.”

  She gave a shiver, and he grinned.

  “I love getting sexy messages in my mother’s native language,” she said. “Makes me feel filthy and so hot. My colleagues know they are from you, and they are jealous.”

  “My pleasure,” he said in Russian.

  “The message was from a ‘Sandy,’” she continued in English. “She said she would like to speak to you about Sissy.”

  Ivan turned to look at the phone again.

  “She is dead?” Ivan asked.

  “She is very much alive,” Nadia said with a smile. “I checked with a colleague in Colorado. Sissy is in treatment again. The awful mother is out of the picture.”

  “Thank you,” Ivan nodded. He used his chopsticks to take a bite of sashimi.

  “That’s how I remembered her name,” Nadia said.

  “I wondered,” he said.

  “Names are not my specialty,” she said. “If you love her, then I love her.”

  He looked up at her.

  “That’s just how I am,” she said. “Plus, she saved you from the gulag. How could I not love her?”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am,” she said.

  “I may leave here,” Ivan said.

  “I assumed,” she nodded. “I will miss you.”

  He reached across the table to stroke her cheek. He cupped her cheek. She closed her eyes and rested against him.

  “I will miss you as well,” he said in a low tone. “I do love you, this.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Come,” he said. He stood in place. “Let me show you.”

  She grinned.

  “In Russian?” she asked.

  “Pozvol'te mne pokazat' vam,” he said.

  “So hot,” she said with a smile.

  She got up from her seat, and they went into the bedroom.

  ~~~~~~~~

  “Did you recognize her?” Delphie asked.

  Sissy shook her head.

  “Who was she?” Abi asked.

  “She was Sissy’s doctor when we first came in,” Sandy said. “I remember thinking that she acted like she knew us. She seemed to know my name and Sissy’s history with the eating disorders. I was just grateful for her help, so I didn’t question it.”

  “She got you right into surgery, Sissy,” Delphie said.

  “She stayed until you were out and made sure you were well taken care of,” Sandy said. “She’s come by a few times to see if you’re all right.”

  “Like family,” Delphie said.

  Sandy nodded.

  “I will love her,” Sissy said with a croak.

  Delphie, Sandy, and Abi turned to look at Sissy.

  “She loves Ivan,” Sissy said. “I will love her, too.”

  “Who?” Ivan asked from the doorway.

  The women gave him a guilty look. The room became uncomfortably still.

  “Dr. Nadia,” Sissy said. “Do you still love her?”

  Ivan gave something between a shrug and a nod.

  “Then I love her, too,” Sissy said.

  Ivan’s eyes welled with emotion. He clenched his jaw.

  “Family,” Sandy said. “She will be a part of our family.”

  Ivan looked at Sandy for a moment.

  “She has none,” Ivan said. “Her mother was Russian bride from an agency. Her family said it was shameful and disowned her. Nadia’s American father was quite wealthy, elderly. He died when Nadia was young. Her mother was killed in a car accident when Nadia was at university.”

  “She has family now,” Sandy said.

  Delphie and Abi nodded.

  “Is that all right with you?” Sandy asked Ivan.

  He nodded.

  “Is she downstairs?” Sissy asked.

  Ivan nodded.

  “I’ll go,” Sandy said. As she passed Ivan, she kissed his cheek, and whispered, “Thank you for loving Sissy.”

  Ivan flushed.

  “Please,” Delphie said. “Come in.”

  Ivan sat down next to Sissy’s bedside. They sat in silence for a moment before Delphie cleared her throat.

  “How are the men?” Delphie asked Ivan.

  Ivan shot her a look of gratitude.

  “They are good,” Ivan said.

  He told them a funny story about his work with the men’s troupe. He was finishing when Nadia appeared in the doorway to Sissy’s room. Abi disappeared. Ivan smiled at her and waved her inside. Sandy came in after her.

  “I’m Delphie,” she said, standing.

  “She’s an Oracle,” Ivan said. “You can ask her anything. She will tell you what will happen or what has happened in the past.”

  “What might happen,” Delphie said. “We still have choice.”

  “Really?” Nadia asked. “Would you know if my mother and father are united in heaven?”

  “Of course they are,” Delphie said. “It’s hard to imagine two more different people — I mean your father’s eyebrows alone should have kept your mother away — but they do truly love each other.”

  Nadia gulped a breath.

  “Don’t be overwhelmed but there is also a full-blooded fairy here,” Ivan said.

  “A real fairy?” Nadia asked.

  Abi appeared behind Nadia and touched her shoulder. Nadia turned around. She looked at Abi’s wand and her pink Fairy Corps suit.

  “General Abi,” she said and held her hand out.

  “Princess,” Delphie said.

  “Princess Abi, wife to Finegal. . .” Abi said.

  �
��From Queen Fand’s court?” Nadia’s face lit up.

  “At your service.” Abi curtsied.

  “How. . .?” Sandy asked.

  “Nadia loves fairies,” Ivan said. “She knows everything about them including. . .”

  “Rubbing pregnant belly,” Sissy said.

  “Very lucky,” Nadia said. She leaned into Abi and asked, “That Manannàn — he’s not the powerful one, is he?”

  “Compared to the Queen?” Abi shook her head.

  “Knew it!” Nadia said under her breath.

  “Welcome to the family,” Sissy said.

  Nadia blinked and looked at Ivan. He shrugged, and she looked at Sandy. She smiled.

  “Well, I guess I’m not the weirdo anymore,” Nadia said with a smile.

  They laughed. Ivan gestured to a seat, and Nadia sat down. They talked until the nurse came with Sissy’s sleep medications. Afterwards, they went to a nearby diner, where they talked for hours.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Wednesday morning — 4:30 a.m.

  “No, I will not calm down,” Jill said in a terse whisper.

  She was standing at the counter in their little loft kitchen. Jacob was in the process of making a pot of coffee.

  “I didn’t ask you to calm down,” Jacob said and pressed on the coffee maker. “I’m a jerk, but I’m not that much of a jerk.”

  “You want me to,” Jill said.

  “No,” Jacob shook his head. “I want to understand what you’re talking about. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see or feel this thing. I can’t see or feel anything now, probably because it’s so close to me. I don’t know what it was.”

  Jill scowled.

  “Something had ahold of Katy,” Jacob said. It was clear he was repeating what she’d told him. “You were able to dispel it from her, but it chased you from school to the hospital to here. Mike and Honey were able to chase it off.”

  “It looked like my father,” Jill said.

  “To you,” Jacob said. “Mike said it was crows.”

  “You talked to Mike?” Jill asked.

  “Of course I talked to Mike,” Jacob said. “I talked to Honey, too.”

  “Oh.” Jill gave him an embarrassed grin.

  “I care,” Jacob said. “My daughter had an incident — possibly medical, possibly fairy, possibly something else altogether. I want to know everything I can about it.”

  “Sorry,” Jill said. She looked down.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Jacob said. “You saved our daughter from who knows what? There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”

  Jill gave a slight nod.

  “And?” Jacob asked.

  “I’m sick of this,” Jill said. “I’m sick of getting sucked into this bullshit.”

  “Bullshit?” Jacob asked.

  “An adventure on the freakin’ Isle of Man? The end of the creepy serpents? Some drama in Olympia of all places?”

  Jacob nodded that he understood.

  “I’m not living in some television show where once a week someone I love is possessed by a demon,” Jill said. “I need to find a way to protect my children, us, everyone from other beings. . . bullshit. We have lives to live. Katy is just a little girl! She needs to be a little girl!”

  Jill paused to catch her breath.

  “No more,” she said.

  “No more?”

  “No more am I going to leave us hanging out there for any freak to take over our lives,” Jill said. “I’m going to find a way to protect us from demons and fairies and whatever else.”

  “How can I help?” Jacob asked.

  Jill looked confused. The coffee maker burbled the last drops of the pot. He turned to pour her a cup of coffee.

  “Who would know how to do this?” Jill asked.

  “Your dad,” Jacob said. “Delphie.”

  “Otis,” Jill said.

  “The fairy siblings,” Jacob said.

  “Edie and Fin,” Jill said with a nod. “Abi, too.”

  “My dad,” Jacob said.

  “Your dad?” Jill asked.

  “He’s not magical but he’s really good in a pinch,” Jacob said. “Val too.”

  “The girlfriends,” Jill said with a nod. She picked up the cup of coffee and started toward her office.

  “What are you going to do?” Jacob asked.

  “I’m going to hold a meeting of the minds,” Jill turned to look at him. “Someone knows how to do this, or we’ll figure it out together.”

  “And if they won’t come?”

  “Oh, they’ll come,” Jill said and closed her office door.

  Jacob shot a worried look after her and left for work.

  Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty-six

  Awakening a dragon

  Thursday morning — 8:45 a.m.

  New York City, New York

  “And what?” Otis asked in Russian.

  He threw his hands up in the air and paced across Ivan’s open loft. At the windows, he turned back toward the couch. Out to the windows, and back to the couch. When he reached the window a third time, and Ivan hadn’t responded, he turned to point at him.

  “I have to hear this from the daughter of my oldest friend!” Otis said.

  Used to Otis’s outbursts, Ivan held his tongue. Mari was standing at the window, looking out at the city below. Bruno sat in the armchair on Ivan’s left.

  “God damn it!” Otis said, as he paced back toward where Ivan was sitting on the couch.

  Otis stopped pacing. Ivan raised his eyebrows to ask if Otis was done; Otis gave him an acquiescing nod.

  “I thought it was a good thing,” Ivan said in Russian.

  “An unbreakable, mandatory one-year employment?” Otis asked. “It’s slavery!”

  “They are paying me well,” Ivan said.

  “I’d kill the man who trapped me like that,” Otis said.

  Bruno nodded in agreement.

  “I thought that, this way they couldn’t get rid of me,” Ivan said.

  “He thought they would want to keep the girl and get rid of him,” Bruno said in Russian. “This way, they couldn’t break them up. What he says — it makes sense to me.”

  Otis scowled at Bruno, who looked unimpressed by Otis’s scowl. Otis shook his head.

  “I wanted to stay with her,” Ivan said.

  “Instead, they got rid of the girl, and you’re stuck!” Otis said. “Who is going to manage her rehabilitation? Without good care, she will never dance again.”

  “I will take care of it,” Ivan said.

  “No,” Otis shook his head. “You’re forced to work for the ballet company here in New York, while our ballerina rots away in Denver!”

  Ivan shook his head at Otis.

  “And why is that?” Otis asked.

  “Katia,” Ivan said.

  “That’s right,” Otis said. “The ridiculous girl. What did I tell you to do with her?”

  “Get rid of her,” Ivan said.

  “And, what did you do?”

  “I let her move to New York,” Ivan said what he’d told Otis before. “I’ve had nothing to do with her. Nothing. Ask Nadia!”

  Otis glared at him.

  “What did you want me to do?” Ivan asked. “Kill her?”

  Otis’s eyes flicked to Bruno, who stood up from the armchair. Ivan waved for Bruno to sit back down again. The large man looked at Otis before sitting back in his seat. Otis went back to pacing.

  “This was her plan all along,” Ivan said.

  “Shoot little Sissy?” Bruno asked, his voice filled with horror.

  He stood from his chair. Otis turned at the window. Bruno looked at Otis, but this time Otis shook his head.

  “To separate me from Sissy,” Ivan said. “Destroy Sissy’s chance at a career in the ballet.”

  “That’s worse,” Bruno said.

  Ivan nodded in agreement.

  “Katia is the reason Sissy wasn’t hired outright by other companies,” Otis said. His head nodded as if he finally underst
ood something. “Sissy is so talented. I couldn’t believe that every company wouldn’t jump at a chance to have her.”

  “Yes, this is true,” Ivan said. “But Sissy met the madam, who hired her.”

  Mari walked over to the coffee table and picked up Ivan’s contract. She held the paper to her nose.

  “She wrote this,” Mari said in Russian. “Katia. She wants to have you for herself.”

  “It’s madness!” Ivan said.

  He got up from the couch and stalked to the kitchen. The others watched him go.

  “You hurt her ego?” Bruno asked in a loud English.

  “Never,” Ivan shouted from the kitchen.

  He returned with a percolator, cups, and fixings for coffee. Bruno and Otis made a cup of coffee for themselves before Ivan poured a black cup. Mari turned up her nose at Russian coffee.

  “It is odd,” Otis said in Russian.

  He looked at Mari. She gave a nod. Taking the contract, she moved away from the group.

  “What will you do?” Bruno asked.

  “I’ll work my contract,” Ivan said. “What choice do I have?”

  “How long?” Otis asked.

  “One year,” Ivan said. “If they try to make it longer, Nadia’s lawyers say we can intervene.”

  “I have spoken with them,” Otis said.

  Mari walked back toward them. The men turned to look at her.

  “He is right,” Mari said. “This is not about Ivan. This is about the girl, Sissy. Katia has decided that Sissy has injured her in some way. How? She isn’t sure. She just feels the slight. She took the position on the board as a way of keeping Sissy from becoming a ballerina.”

  “She married the homosexual to do just that!” Ivan said.

  “Yes,” Mari said. “But there are things this Katia doesn’t know.”

  The men became still and stared at her.

  “She doesn’t know the girl is connected to O’Malley,” Mari said with a nod. She pointed to Otis. “Or you.”

  “That’s good,” Otis said.

  “She doesn’t know about Nadia,” Mari said.

  “Nadia took over her father’s seats on all of the ballet boards,” Ivan said.

  “The real question is why would this Katia take such a dislike to Sissy,” Mari said.

  Ivan pointed to himself.

  “Yes,” Mari said. “And no. Did they ever meet?”

  “A few times,” Ivan said. “When Katia lived with me in Denver.”