Someone pounded on my door the next morning and then proceeded to come in without waiting for an answer.
“I have brought you breakfast,” Margarita said, slamming a plate with a hard-boiled egg and some toast down on my nightstand.
“Wow,” I said, running a hand over my face. “Service with a smile.”
“I also need to talk,” she said. “Alone. Without Dmitri hearing.”
“Is this the part where you tell me to stay clear of your man?” I got out of bed, finding the jeans I’d been wearing the day before and rooting in the chest of drawers for a fresh shirt. They were all men’s sizes, but I was past caring. I found a ratty Slayer band shirt from sometime in the eighties and slipped it on. Margarita studied my body with narrowed eyes, not even trying to hide it.
“Kickboxing,” I said. “But don’t worry—from what I’ve seen of his choice of women, you’re way more Dmitri’s usual type.” He’d come back from Kiev with a mate last time, forced on him by the pack, or so he said. Now I wondered. “Irina—I dunno if you two hang out or anything—but she was like you. Bright hair, big stripper tits, that sweet farm-girl face that he likes so very much.”
Margarita inhaled sharply, her nostrils flaring out. “I have given you no reason to speak to me like this. I have every reason to be angry with you.”
“Oh?” I said, rolling the egg between my palms to get the shell off.
“You endangered the father of my child. Your actions could take him from us,” she said. “You are reckless and dangerous by every account. I need to know that Dmitri will be safe with you, when you go to find Masha.”
“Dmitri is a big boy,” I said. The toast looked a little musty, but I dug into it, anyway. I was still hungry enough to clean out my favorite restaurant in Nocturne City, the Devere Diner, and go back for seconds.
“He is also blinded by what he feels is his fault, his wrongdoing,” said Margarita. “He will charge in and he will not care if it costs him his life. You must be the one to have balance and to have a care for him.”
I raised an eyebrow. Maybe Margarita wasn’t as simple as those big eyes and big breasts let on. Most were women in packs I’d encountered were some nightmare version of Stepford—submissive, with no thoughts in their heads aside from what they could do to please their man. Since the alternative was a beating or a humiliation bite often enough, I didn’t exactly blame them.
“Well?” Margarita said, standing. “Will you bring Masha and her father home safely?”
“I’ll do what I can,” I said. “But I have to tell you—Dmitri isn’t exactly the most stable guy I’ve ever met, even without the daemon bite. Now … he’s pretty much off the reservation.”
“And that is your cross to bear,” said Margarita, touching the Orthodox one at her neck. “As it should be.” She walked out and slammed the door.
“Yeah,” I said. “Nice talking with you, too.”
I brushed my hair and pulled it into a low bun—if we were going back to the hotel, it wasn’t a question of if things would get rough but when, and hair flying around for someone to grab onto like a slot-machine lever isn’t a real smart move.
Downstairs, I found Kirov sitting on a sagging velvet sofa, reading a newspaper. He smiled at me when he smelled me. “Good morning, Luna. Did you rest well?”
“Well enough,” I said. “Kirov, I need to ask you a favor.”
“Of course,” he said.
“I need some firepower,” I said. “A gun for the human contingent of these gangsters.” And for Grigorii and Ekaterina, too, just because they deserved to have someone shoot them. More than once.
“I’ll see what I can do.” Kirov levered himself off the sofa and folded his paper over his squat stomach. “Do you have a preference for the firearm?”
“Something that makes holes in the people I point it at,” I said. “Hollow-point ammunition if you’ve got it.”
“You’ll find that the Redbacks have a little of everything.” Kirov grinned. “Dmitri asked that you find him when you woke. He’s out back, smoking.”
I found Dmitri standing in the alley, staring up at the sun balefully. “Sixteen days,” he said when I stepped out the door. “That’s how long she’s been gone, this morning.”
“We’re getting her back,” I said. “I promise.”
“You’re good at making promises,” Dmitri sighed. “Like how you were going to cure me from the daemon infection and stick with me forever. That one was my favorite.”
“You can blow me if you think we’re going to start that game all over again,” I snapped. “Seriously, Dmitri, do you ever think before you open your mouth?”
“Do you think before you make promises?” he returned. We were just like the Hamas and the Mossad, going back and forth, equally pissed off and never ready to back down.
“I think plenty,” I said. “I think how lucky I am to have gotten rid of you and your alpha-male issues every damn day.”
That shut him up. And I immediately felt like the world’s biggest bitch for saying it out loud. “Wow,” I said.
“I’m thinking an ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t gonna cut it here, but…”
“Don’t say anything else,” Dmitri told me. “You did the kindest thing. Now I remember why we never worked in the first place. You and your gods-damned comments.”
“I am sticking with you to help you find an innocent little girl who has no business being caught up in this,” I hissed. “Not because I feel some obligation for how I treated you. For the record, buster, my comments were the least of our problems.”
“Yeah,” Dmitri said. “You tell yourself that, if it helps.”
“It does,” I said.
“Denial is definitely your color,” Dmitri said.
“Fuck you. Right up the rear shaft.”
Kirov came outside then and saved me from having to slap Dmitri hard and repeatedly across
