Page 70 of Katya and the Young God

Katya shakes herself, feels the stab in her shoulder, reminds herself that she’s alive when her torturer isn’t. That the remaining Demigod in the picture might be worth saving.

Or she might have to take him down, to protect the girl.

Neither scenario leaves a good taste in her mouth.

The bedroom in the cabin is small, taken up mostly by the giant bed, with an equally giant bookcase shoved into the other corner. Piles of books, all ranging in topics, clutter the room in small piles.

There’s a dog bed on the floor by the bed, obviously well loved.

“Why did you take me here?” Katya whispers to the dog, who sniffs around the room, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. “What’s important about being here?”

Of course, the dog has no answers, and Katya’s in no mood to do any investigation, so she leaves the too-private bedroom and goes back to the main room, feeling off-kilter.

A quick search reveals the brand of dog food for Stepan, as well as a tiny medical kit, with saline and calamine and a few bandages, as well as what’s needed to give stitches. Katya briefly considers taking it with her, but...

But instead she tucks it back into the cabinet, straightening, looking over at Stepan.

“Okay, boy, I’m ready to go,” she says, and Stepan bounds to the basket of dog toys, taking three in his mouth and wagging his tail.

Katya squashes a laugh, because of course a dog would take her to the home of a rogue Demigod for the sole purpose of getting dog toys.

* * *

She leavesStepan happily chewing on a rawhide bone on her own porch before quick changing into her suit, pressing down on any wrinkles.

It fits poorly, like something in her has been changed so fundamentally her own clothing no longer fits. Like the days of eating too little and walking too much had their toll, and it’s a toll she doesn’t like to think about.

She goes into Denver. Files paperwork with the bare bones of her experiences, fills out forms, refusing to let her experience stop her from doing her job.

But also refusing to meet Ollo’s eyes, as he inquires about which forms she’ll need, as he offers to take her out for some food, and she leaves as soon as she can.

Because maybe, when she gets back to the little cabin, she can start to figure out how to save the little girl. Find Pieter, wherever he is.

Fix her failure.

10

She can’t.

For five long weeks, nothing happens. She does basic paperwork for the Denver office, goes on runs checking up on members, nothing that even remotely causes a blip on her radar of difficult tasks. Doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of her itch to figure this out.

She contacts Aimes, tells her everything in a snot-nosed crying way, and gets a spectacular lack of judgment and an offer to visit. Katya turns that down as quick as she can.

For five long weeks, as the weather firmly turns to autumn, as the birch trees outside her cabin slowly start to lose their leaves, as frost crunches underneath her boots on her daily walks through the forest with Stepan to the other cabin, she finds nothing, and the gnawing hollow in her chest just grows.

11

Katya’s up in bed, reading a report in her pajamas as another thunderstorm rages on outside, with the scared dog cuddled up, when something changes.

Abruptly, Stepan stops shaking, springing to his feet, still on the bed, and Katya just blinks at him over her laptop, before returning to reading.

She only gets a few more words read before Stepan does the half jump, half crouch move that she has now learned is just a thing huskies do when they’re really excited, and she looks at him again.

He whines in the back of his throat, before he lets out the weird half-howl half-bark half-moan sound that sends the hair on the back of her arms raising.

“Whoa, okay boy, what is it?” She asks, more because she’s gotten used to talking to the dog now that it barely lets her out of sight.

With a spring, the dog jumps off the bed, vaulting to the widest open space on her floor in front of the ugly floral couch she still hasn’t gotten rid of, turning around in circles, fast.

---