Burn Artist

Chapter 21

I called Sirens and then AEROMOR from a payphone, and learned that Nicolai and his team had taken Maslak to our Red Hook interrogation and execution room. There was a sub-basement underneath one of the old brownstone dockside warehouses, a floor practically level with the waterline. It was cold, industrial, and intimidating, and had everything you needed in a prison: small cells, discreet entry points, great insulation and soundproofing, and a drain that washed out into the ocean.

Unsurprisingly, Maslak was screaming and cursing up a storm when I got there. They had him locked in the hole, a blocked-off vertical sewer access drain with an iron grate, and he was in full freakout mode. The room that contained the hole had a door that faced a wide concrete corridor with a low ceiling and two small rooms. One of them was also used as a cell. The other was the interrogation room, which was white-tiled on all surfaces. A chair was bolted to the floor, and shower rails were bolted to the walls. A lot of people had died in that room.

Nicolai, Ovar, Yuri and Rodion were gathered in the corridor, loitering around the entrance to the cellroom, and they turned as a unit as I came clumping slowly down the metal stairs. Nic’s eyebrows nearly reached his hairline when he saw me.

“You got fried,” he said.

“Kovacs is dead.” I limped to join them, reeking of burned hair, and held out the ring to Rodion. It was still attached to the mage’s finger. “I took this from him. Happy birthday.”

“Aww, you shouldn’t have.” My Avtoritet grinned wolfishly, taking the finger and yanking the ring off it. “He give you much trouble?”

“He gave me thirty thousand dollars’ worth of trouble,” I said sourly. “Not twenty-one.”

“Fair enough. Call it a nine-thousand-dollar tip for a hard night’s work.” Rodion chuckled, turning the ring over to look at the inside of the band. “Huh, not bad. Real gold, real… wait a second.”

“Ey?” Ovar leaned in, as if he could possibly see whatever it was that Rodion had noted.

Rodion’s jaw dropped. “Lexi… oh man. Do you… you can’t have…”

“What?” I was curious now, as were the others.

“This ring,” Rodion said. “It belonged to Elvis fucking Presley.”

Yuri scoffed. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“The maker’s mark. And I’ve seen photos of him with it on, I’m sure of it.” Awestruck, Rodion tested his fingers until he found one that fit. It went on perfectly over his left ring finger, and his delight was palpable. “Holy shit, Alexi.”

“Guess you’re married to the King now.” Nicolai smiled a thin, papery smile around his cigarette, clapping Rodion on the back.

“Haha! Holy freakin’ shit!” Rodion grinned from ear to ear.

Yuri snorted and shook his head, and then rolled his eyes to look at me. “Hey kid. The bitch down in the hole has some kinda protection on him… something that stops bullets. We tested it out just to make sure, you know? Think you got the stomach to take care of it?”

I regarded him levelly. “Of course. Do we need him for the operation?”

Rodion sobered a little, rubbing the new ring to settle it on his hand. “We need some details extracted before we make an example of him, if you think you’re up for it.”

Interrogation was an art as subtle and ritualistic as magic, and I was definitely up for it… but not tonight. “The bulletproofing is not a problem, Avtoritet, but I don’t have it in me after the fight with Kovacs. Vassily’s going to court tomorrow during the day time, and I need what sleep I can get. Can Maslak stew for twelve hours?”

“Nothing seasons a man up for interrogation like solitary,” Nic grunted.

“Yeah, what Nic said. We’ll post someone down here to keep an eye out, but I don’t think Scappeti’s going to be too keen on retrieving him.” Rodion airily waved a hand. “Go rest, Lexi. You did good work.”

The momentary praise was gratifying, but the glow only lasted for a moment as I cleared my throat. “What happened to Grigori?”

Nic shrugged. “The burn mark disappeared around nine thirty. I figured you’d killed the spook.”

My face settled into pleasant nothingness. “I see. Well, I am sincerely glad that no one else perished. It feels like success.”

“Yeah, it does.” Rodion gave me a curious, expectant look.

I inclined my head and left without saying anything else. I didn’t want them to see how disappointed I was.

I arrived home to find that I had no front door. Or, more accurately, that I had a pile of splintered green-painted wood in place of a door, and the concrete hallway smelled of male urine, old blood, and vomit.

“Marco?” I drew my gun and stepped over the wreckage with a grimace.

“Polo.” Vassily called back from the living room.

I looked into my bedroom with a sinking heart. It was untouched, thank goodness, so I continued on to the den. Vassily was sitting on the sofa in his bathrobe. He was pale, and smoking with nervous, shaking hands. His gun was laid out on the coffee table by his ash tray.

“What on Earth happened?” I checked and then holstered the Wardbreaker, searching him for injuries. He looked fine, though the room had taken a beating. A number of my books had been pulled down and torn apart.

“Sir Purrs-a-Lot,” he said dully.

I blinked, realizing what was missing from the scene. Vassily’s cat was gone.

“Grigori brought the sledgehammer here and killed the cat,” I said.

“He killed my cat, Alexi.” Vassily’s voice was steady, save for the quiver of furious orange I could taste under the usual rich blue. “I came back and found blood all over the kitchen and laundry. He threw him off the balcony. The head was still up here on the kitchen floor.”

As Vassily talked, the dissociation started up. I felt like I was a million miles away from my own body. My head and heart pounded, my hands itched. I took a heavy seat on the sofa beside him.

“I’m going to kill him for this,” I said. My voice sounded far away. “One day. Not too far off.”

“It’s… Purrs was just a cat, Alexi. A cat’s not worth a human life.”

I ground my teeth, sharpening the cusps. “I beg to differ.”

“Just stop, okay?” Vassily ground his cigarette into the tray and sat back. “I can’t listen to it right now. Do whatever you want to do, but I don’t want to hear about it.”

This was the one thing that Vassily would never understand about me. Vassily saw death as cruel and arbitrary, and my job as being necessary, but fundamentally horrific. I saw death as the entry to the true underworld, Reality in all its scalding honesty and mystery. My job was to enact fate. With this action of violation and needless cruelty, my father had sealed his. He was a rabid dog, and he always would be. No matter what Lev said, it was time for him to move on.

“I’ve already called someone about the door.” Vassily sniffed, breaking the thick, tense silence that had clotted the air of the room. “So don’t worry about it. They’ll be here at eleven.”

I swallowed my rage and my intent, and bowed my head in acknowledgment. “Alright… thank you. I’m sorry about Sir Purrs-a-Lot.”

“Me too. I’m going to tell Rodion about this, believe me. Grisha’s out of control.” Vassily’s mobile face twisted through a flickering parade of emotions. Anger, hesitancy, fatigue. He looked as tired as I felt. “So now you know all about that, uh, I was wondering—”

Already most of the way to the door, I turned to look back at him. “I’ll set up the chessboard in the kitchen. I doubt either of us are actually going to get to sleep now.”

He grinned, and some of the energy finally returned to his eyes. “You read my mind. You really are a wizard, huh?”

“Fortunes told, charms and benedictions,” I said, flatly, as I turned and walked out toward the bathroom.

“Hey, you know what? In between choking people with their own underwear and throwing them into the bay, you should totally set up a fortune telling stand. ‘Alexi’s Psychic Readings, five bucks a pop.”

“Five? My readings are worth at least twenty.”

“Only if they have a happy ending,” Vassily trailed after me. “If you know what I mean.”

I rolled my eyes, collecting a clean towel and throwing it over my shoulder. “People don’t come to have their fortune told because they’re happy, Vassily.”

He stuck his head out the door as I began to pull off my outerwear. “So you make them happy. Tell them they’ll get their perfect job, their true love, all that bullshit. You could get into celebrity consulting like that.”

“Tell them fantasy stories, in other words.”

He grinned, face as sly and handsome as a cartoon fox. “What? You don’t believe in twu wuv?”

“I believe that love is illusory and unattainable.”

He cocked his head, leaning a little further into the bathroom. “What? What’s illusory about it?”

The robe had slipped. He was shirtless underneath, and I glanced across the stars emblazoned on his shoulders, the diamond back python tattoo that wound up his long arm. Vassily was a leanly muscled man, long-limbed, with striking hands made more so by the rings of blue and black ink he wore. The question I’d wanted ask him lingered on my tongue, but it couldn’t move past the wall of my own hesitation.

“Love is always a narcissistic fantasy. We project what it is we really want in ourselves onto other people.” I smiled a small, bitter smile, turning away into the bathroom. “We have to be at the courthouse by eleven, don’t we?”

“Yeah.” Vassily replied. He scratched his head.

“How you feeling?”

He smiled, eyes deep and blue in the mirror. “I was talking with Lev about it when we were scoping that apartment down in DUMBO. He thinks it’ll be nothing, really… a slap on the wrist, a big fine and maybe some community service. Marco Goldstein’s a good lawyer… unless we have a rat in the ranks that no one knew about, it’ll be a piece of cake.”

I snorted, regarding his reflection behind my own. “Go brew some coffee. No matter what happens, we can play chess until we’re ready for bed.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “And hey, after the court thing’s over… I’ve got two VIP movie passes burning a hole in my wallet. Let’s go see Big Trouble in Little China again. This time with one hundred percent less drunk asshole. Then we can go make a toast to Purrs to send his soul onto kitty heaven, yeah?”

And plan for my father’s execution. I grimaced and closed my eyes, drawing a deep, tired breath as I squared my shoulders.

“I’m willing to suffer another film for the good company,” I said.

He grinned, the lines around his eyes creasing, and some hidden tension in my chest loosened. Despite myself, I was also worried about Vassily’s trial. Besides that, I was already ruminating on Maslak, my father, the dead cat, Kovacs and Slava, and the blurry, anxious recollections of the night before. The events of the last week – perhaps the most difficult of my life – marched through my head in a confused tumble. It all needed to be put aside to face the dawn. Revenge and the plan for my father’s death could wait. My best friend needed me in the now, and that was all that mattered.