What seemed like a lifetime ago, she’d been one of these students.
Lifting her face to the sky, she thought back to an afternoon just like that one. A light day, free from strain and duty and pressure. Instead of alone and stalling her certain death, as she was now, Roksana sat on that very fountain surrounded by friends, gossiping with their mouths full of sandwiches, totally oblivious to anything but the magic they were spinning. It would last forever, that magic, wouldn’t it? Who would dare take it away?
“I’m borrowing your yellow dress for Friday night, Roksana,” Olga announced, walking the edge of the fountain like a tightrope. “The one with the pockets. It makes you look washed out, anyway.”
A chorus of oooohs went up from Roksana’s friends, informing her she’d been burned.
Roksana shrugged and bit into her potato and green bean sandwich. “You are jealous because you tried to go blonde, but blonde didn’t go for you.” She slipped a green bean out from between the bread and chucked it at Olga. “You need the pockets to carry your shame.”
Olga kicked a few droplets of water at Roksana, who gasped and volleyed a handful back in return. They both hopped to their feet at the same time, a fake boxing match ensuing while their friends hooted and placed phony bets, passersby rolling their eyes at the antics.
Kira stepped in between them, her voice dropped low, like a man’s. “We will have a fair fight today, ladies. No hair pulling or nipple twisting.”
“There goes my strategy,” Roksana whined. “Is pantsing allowed?”
Kira rubbed her hands together. “It’s encouraged.”
Olga screeched and took off, holding on to the waistband of her jeans for dear life, Roksana hot on her heels…laughing. So much laughing.
Roksana realized she’d been staring into nothing for over an hour when a cloud passed in front of the sun, snapping her from a series of hazy reveries. The jacket she’d bought—on Elias’s credit card—for springtime in New York was doing little to combat the cold of Moscow, but she huddled into the nylon interior and left the park, wheeling her suitcase behind her.
Didn’t this place use to be so much bigger? Every store front, every fire hydrant, looked like a movie prop. Similarly, Roksana felt like an actress playing a part. One foot in front of the other, wheel the suitcase, look normal.
Nothing was normal, though.
Once upon a time, while still in college, she’d had the ability to drape a shroud over her upbringing, to dull its presence in her psyche. She’d lived through a youth in which monsters were pointed out on every street corner and often turned to dust, right in front of her very eyes, at the hands of her mother.
As slayers are sworn to keep their existence a secret, she’d watched battles play out in graveyards and tended to her mother’s wounds, but was never able to tell her friends about it the next morning at school. Or confide her reluctance and fears about leading the Russian slayer contingent her mother had formed, to mimic the ones in North America, Spain, Mexico and elsewhere. Not only had Inessa mimicked them, she’d turned her operation into the most prestigious jewel in the slayerhood crown.
Yes, Roksana had been groomed from a young age to fill her mother’s position as the Queen of Shadows—and she’d hated every moment. Why should she have to acknowledge every ugliness in the world? Why was it her duty to hunt the streets for the undead when everyone else got to live in blissful ignorance of such things? It wasn’t fair!
Roksana’s grip twisted around the plastic handle of the suitcase.
How self-centered she’d been. A whiny child.
And her selfishness had cost her friends their lives.
With a lump lodged in her throat, Roksana caught sight of the library ahead, its grand columns seeming to announce her homecoming.
After Vegas, she’d spent one year training to retaliate.
Six months honing her skill in the field, preparing to travel back to America, this time to the East Coast. Another year and a half in New York, failing to carry out the revenge she’d once lived to execute.
Ordered to deliver by her mother.
Elias’s face appeared in her mind, not as he’d been in Vegas all those years ago. But as he’d been on the rooftop, just two nights prior. Commanding, pissed off, beautiful. The memory of his finger slipping into her garter had Roksana’s steps faltering on the sidewalk, her rolling luggage ramming into her heel.
Why did he have to do that?
Had he not proven his hold over her enough?
If not, she’d certainly done so by dropping her stake and running. Thank God she never had to look into his bottomless whiskey eyes again.
Thank God, right?
Roksana swiped the back of her wrist beneath her nose, sniffed and trudged on. The closer she came to the library, its gargoyle protectors lit by the sunset, the more her knees started to tremble. Her mother could probably smell her weakness from the underground depths of the building. And it annoyed her like nothing else that Elias’s image is what gave her the balls to keep moving. He would demand it of her. He would raise that single eyebrow if she stopped, as if to say, “Really? You’re quitting?”