Daemon’s Mark by Caitlin Kittredge (web ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“Kiev?” Will sounded gobsmacked. “Gods, Luna, I knew those Russian bastards must have done something to you, but Kiev? Gods,” he said again.

“I’m fine,” I repeated. For certain values of fine.

“I’ll be on the next federal flight out,” Will said. “Just give me your address and sit tight.”

I shut my eyes and drew in a breath. “Not yet,” I said.

There was a thud on the other end of the phone. “Ow! Dammit,” Will said. “I stubbed my toe on your freaking armoire. What do you mean not yet?”

“You’re at my apartment?” I said.

“Yeah,” Will said. “Couldn’t sleep at mine. Stupid and girly, I know. I should go lift weights or shoot some game to make up for it.”

“Will,” I said. “There’s something here I have to do.”

“I don’t buy that, Luna. You need to come home and we need to nail these guys.”

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I’m all right, and I’ll be home soon.”

“Luna…” Will started.

“I love you,” I whispered, and hit the disconnect. The dial tone pulsed in my ear, in time with my heartbeat.

I stalked back to the bar and sat on the stool next to Dmitri. “Whiskey,” I said to the bartender. “No ice, no water, no umbrella.”

He shrugged at me. I glared at Dmitri. “Translation, por favor? ”

Dmitri and the bartender exchanged a few snapped syllables and the bartender slid a cloudy glass of rotgut in front of me. I took a sip and winced.

“Good gods. What do they put in the whiskey in this country, nuclear waste?”

Dmitri lifted his shoulders. “You didn’t say what kind you preferred.”

I rolled my eyes at him and changed the subject. “Tell me about Masha,” I said. “Lay it all out. The more information I have, the faster I can find her and get the Hex home.”

“The fiancé,” Dmitri said. “Will. How’d he take it? Is he jealous?”

I swiveled to face him, throwing down the rest of my glass. “We’re not talking about Will. Not now, not ever. Understood?”

Dmitri chuckled. “Touchy. You must really like the guy.”

“The precious spawn of your prolific loins,” I reminded him. The whiskey against my still virtually empty stomach brought out the vocabulary words. “Tell me the details.”

“Masha isn’t what you’d call a model kid,” he said. “She got into a lot of trouble—fights, boyfriends, probably a little pot.”

Could have been me at fourteen. “Yeah, funny how that happens when there’s not a father in the picture.”

Dmitri snarled. “Don’t do that. You said you’d help.”

“I said that. I said nothing about not making snarky remarks to keep myself from punching you in the teeth for lying. Go on.”

“She was cutting school a lot, and hanging out with some wannabe gangsters. Margarita eyeballed one of them after she went missing and I followed him for a while, to the Belikovs’ compound. You know the rest.”

“Which gangster?” I said. “Why Masha?”

“Some ponytailed asshole who likes to wave a gun around. And I’m thinking for the same reason you were there. Were girls turn a profit.”

“Mikel,” I said. “I’ve had the pleasure. But Masha wasn’t in the compound.”

“No,” Dmitri growled, tapping one index finger on the bar like a restless secondary heartbeat. “She was gone, and I didn’t have time to look around once I saw you.”

“Okay,” I said. “So we go back there and we ask some politely phrased questions.”

Dmitri smirked. “Same old Luna. Always willing to go running in like the sheriff.”

“Speaking of,” I said. “Why haven’t you gone to the real police? Or is that a dumb question?”

“The pack has a lot of friends in the Kiev police,” said Dmitri, “but the Belikovs have more. Legends in Kiev, old witch blood, with ties back to the Romanovs themselves. Pull with regular criminal circles, and magickal ones. It’s too risky. If they find out Masha is my daughter, that she’s connected to the Redbacks, they’ll kill her to save themselves the trouble.”

“Okay,” I said. “In the morning, we go back.”

Dmitri frowned. “The morning? Masha is in trouble right now.”

“I’m exhausted,” I said. “I’m running on fumes. I’ve gotten maybe eight hours of sleep in the last seven days. If I don’t get some sleep soon I’m going to nod off and pull a Tyler Durden, and no one wants that.” I reached out, mostly out of pity, and laid my hand over his. “If they haven’t killed her yet, they aren’t going to do it anytime soon. Their girls are worth more alive.”

I wasn’t entirely sure the profits stopped rolling in when the girls were dead, having seen the way Grigorii operated, but I didn’t say it out loud.

“I guess you got a point,” Dmitri muttered. “Come on. We’ll head back to the pack house and you can get some rest.” We walked out to the curb, where Kirov was patiently dozing at the wheel of the car, and I got into the front this time. I was through with being shoved to the back, shuttled from one place to another.

“Margarita will be relieved,” said Dmitri. “We were at wit’s end. Masha is a good girl, even if she went off the path a bit.”

His voice and face went soft when he talked about the girl, a softness that I’d only seen a few times when we’d been together. Never at the end. Even as wasted as Dmitri looked now, he managed to appear a father.

The stab of jealous heat that went through my gut was purely an animal reaction, or so I told myself. Not like I could compete with flesh-and-blood relations, even if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to.

I kept telling myself that until I was in a lumpy bed on the top floor of the pack house, so tired that sleep wouldn’t come. I wasn’t jealous of Masha, I wasn’t jealous of the family that Dmitri had hidden from me. He and I were over, and just because I hadn’t rated the truth when we were going out didn’t mean I had the right to get all uppity now.

I