Page 71 of Marked by the Demigod

There stands the man from the night before, looking so closely like Iakov that it hurts for a split second.

They stare at each other, and he tries to take a step forward, but is stopped, as if he got jerked back by a leash.

"Nice wards you have there, got anything else up your sleeve?"

She tries to swing the door closed, but it stops, as if the hinges are melted together into one piece.

Instead he just peers at her, as if an insect under glass or a spider in a cage. "Who are you?" He asks, his voice more bewildered than anything else.

She doesn't know how to answer, so she puts her weight behind the door, and nothing happens.

"Whoever did your wards did the other side of the door, so I wouldn't bother." He says, and his voice dips even deeper into the Russian accent than Iakov's ever did. "I can't get to you, but anything on this side, I can. Who are you?"

Her neck crawling, she turns her back on him and heads for the telephone.

"Security isn't going to answer, not right now," he drawls. "Who found you and made you his own?" He paces back and forth, an inch away from her door. "Or her own, I'm progressive."

His word choice scratches at her mind, and it starts racing. She grabs her phone, unlocking and...

Seeing no signal.

"I can control that, too. Control all your communication, control anything that passes through these walls, control any cry for help," he says, leaning all causal against the door jam. "I don't like what goes on in my city that I don't know."

Out of a lack of anything else to do, she sits down on the bed. "I'm just here on vacation." She says, soft. "I didn't know I would offend anyone." She crosses her hands in her lap, partially to stop them from shaking, and partially cause, just maybe, she might come across as someone completely separate from who he thinks she is.

If he doesn't truly know. If he's trying to get her to admit it.

His eyes narrow. "Do you know who I am?" he asks, his voice low.

She shakes her head, and her frizzy hair is everywhere, a cloud around her face. "Saw you at the bar last night."

"And you left quite quickly."

"Don't much like strange men staring at me," she says.

He's so close in appearance to Iakov, his mouth a bit crueler, his eyes a bit darker, his skin a bit rougher and, somewhere out there, is his exact twin.

As if sensing her thoughts, his eyebrows raise ever so slightly, almost a slip in the mask. "Who gave you the necklace you wore last night?" And this, this was a lie she could tell.

She shrugs, not looking at it on the dresser, now under her scarf from yesterday. "This guy I hooked up with. Left it on my dresser before he," she jerks her thumb, "before he fucked off."

His eyebrows flash up. "A guy you hooked up with."

She nods, mind racing, trying to figure out how to drop the wrong information. "Don't see how that's any of your business."

He appraises her, for far longer than she wants, but she doesn't squirm, doesn't fidget, because she'd sooner cut off her left foot than show her discomfort.

"Well," he says, voice slowing into a drawl. "Well. Whoever it was that fucked off warded this place to high hell." He toes at the invisible barrier between him and the door-frame. "Does he have black hair?"

She shakes her head. "Blondish. Sandy." She touches her own hair, near the growing out highlights. "Like a surfer dude. Said he was from Hawaii."

He nods, and she doesn't trust, doesn't actually trust, that he buys the story. "Here? In Vegas?"

She shifts, hugging her jacket closer. "In Maine." She blurts out, then winces, as that was where they had that tryst and --

He coughs, the picture of politeness, despite his blustering a few minutes ago. "I'm going to leave my business card here, since I can't come in." He says, cordial. "I'd encourage you to contact me again, when you're not cowering alone in a hotel room." He flashes the little card, then places it on the door jam. He smiles, and he has dimples in the exact same place as her Iakov does. "Enjoy Vegas, if anyone bothers you, my brother and I will take care of them."

And with that he tips her invisible hat at her, then trundles down the hallway.

---