This Time Tomorrow (Phenomenal Fate 2)

“Late for what exactly?”

Oh, what the hell, she was never going to see him again.

That really shouldn’t bother her as much as it did.

Forcing herself to grin, Roksana opened the sides of her cardigan, bathing their immediate area with the pink, blinking lights of her bra. “Dasvidanya, temnota moya.”

Goodbye, my darkness.

She left the man staring into space, her laughter trailing behind her as she jogged out of the casino, cheap heels clacking on the marble, then the baking sidewalk. When she made it down to the strip, she waved at Kira to signal her readiness and got a thumbs up in return. Something strange happened, though. She thought of the man in the casino. His face. The way he’d smelled like pine. Actually, she had an almost giddy urge to turn around and search for him in the entrance of Circus Circus. Maybe he’d followed?

At the very least, she wished she’d asked his name.

What on earth had possessed her to call him her darkness?

That sounded so intimate.

Yet she’d loved the way it felt rolling off her tongue. How the utterance of it had seemed to…lock them together. To solidify something.

“The heat has definitely turned my brain to shit,” Roksana muttered, still experiencing the craving to turn around. To look for him.

She just started to turn her head when her cell phone beeped.

Go time.

She stripped off her cardigan and discarded it on the sidewalk, immediately receiving honks from passing motorists. Whether in annoyance or irritation, Roksana didn’t know or care. As soon as there was a break in traffic, four Russian girls in flashing pink bras dashed out into the thoroughfare, breaking into the dance they’d been choreographing for weeks in between classes. Right on cue, Olga was escorted by her fiancé—who’d been in on the plan—to a stop in front of her dancing bridesmaids.

For a full ten seconds, all she could do was stare openmouthed, but when Roksana stepped to the forefront of the foursome, bending and snapping with her eyes crossed, Olga lost her battle with amusement, her body shaking with laughter.

A new wave of traffic drew closer to them, but the girls continued to dance, hitting their moves in pace with each other. And it was one of those moments where everything slowed down and life leapt like a prima ballerina, landing with perfect form. Here was why she’d avoided the terror of her mother’s legacy. The despair of what it meant to be a vampire slayer. Here was why she’d chosen light instead. For moments like this, when a person’s shine went up a notch in the universe, so bright she could be seen from space. All of them were having that moment together and she exulted in the golden haze of a memory being created. Stored forever.

A crowd had formed behind Olga and her fiancé on the sidewalk, and Roksana was compelled to search the back of the gathering. A whiskey gaze was on her, steady, amused.

Hot.

My darkness.

A shiver zipped down her spine and her steps faltered.

“Roks!” Kira half laughed, half hissed. “Big finish. Big finish!”

“Right. I’m ready.” She shook herself and turned, bending forward and flipping up her skirt. Standing in a straight line with the other four bridesmaids, their asses spelled O-L-G-A.

Horns honked like crazy in quick succession and cheers went up from both sides of the strip.

Sirens cut through all of it.

The five of them scrambled to the sidewalk to allow the traffic to pass, everyone talking a mile a minute, laughing. Olga tried to show them the pictures of the performance she’d captured on her phone, but the sirens weren’t just close now, they were in view, whipping through the intersection on the same block as Circus Circus.

“Hey!” Roksana shouted, cutting through the chatter. “Get Olga out of here. If one of us gets arrested, so be it, but she’s not missing her wedding.”

Olga’s fiancé took his still-giggling future bride by the arm and jogged her toward the casino. Which was great for them. But their clothes were long gone and they were still standing there, lighting up the sidewalk in LED bras.

“This is the part of the plan we didn’t think through,” Roksana said thoughtfully. “A little short-sighted of us, but we’ll do better next time, da?”

A gruff voice spoke up behind them, deep and authoritative. “You girls have to separate. Scatter. They’re going to be looking for a group.”

Roksana turned to find him, the man from the casino, advancing on their posse. “Our clothes are gone,” she informed him with a wince. “I think the American word for this is ‘conspicuous.’”

“You could say that,” he returned dryly, sliding a billfold out of his back pocket and peeling off five twenties, handing them to her friends. “Get inside. Buy shirts at the gift shop and lay low. Go.”

The way he took charge so easily without being pushy caused Roksana’s thoughts to trip over themselves, but she eventually reassured she friends in Russian and shooed them toward the blinking lights of Circus Circus. “What about me, man with the plan?”