Page 35 of The Rusalka and Mr. Right

“What the fuck? Why?”

“She wanted Marina to return to his... organization. Koshchei has chosen her as his bride and will arrive to claim her in a few weeks. On the seventeenth of October, we believe.”

I want to hit Jakob Minegold, “wonderful” or not. He sounds way too calm.

“Well, he can’t fucking have my girlfriend. She doesn’t love him. It doesn’t sound like he loves her, either!”

“Do you love her?” The graying man asks, searching in the pockets of his long black coat, the expensive brushed wool kind with big lapels. He hands me Marina’s shirt and phone.

Marina’s voice emerges from her huddled ball, a steel flint. “Shut up, Jakob. You can’t ask that.”

“I am sorry, my dear. I will leave you two alone if you wish. But please tell Kev about our...research.”

I grunt and take the shirt, glaring at the other man. “Yeah, you tell me about that, honey, and Jakob can tell me about why he was carrying you around without your damn top if it was in his pocket!”

“I’m covered in tannis root and arnica salve. I love my new shirt. I didn’t want to get it dirty.”

“And I carried her because she has a large cut on the bottom of her foot from the rocks in the river.”

“Some bastard threw you into the river?” I pace. I air punch. Oooh, God I am not the sane one right now. “Where is this punk?”

“She’s deceased. The police are handling it,” Mr. Minegold explains, still too damn calm.

I whip my head around so hard that I hear something pop in my neck. “What? She killed— Marina, baby, what did you—”

“Drowning. Accidental. I’ll be going now.” Minegold leaves with a swift bow, eyes sweeping over Marina, whose head remains slumped on her chest.

When the door closes after him, I pace. I sit with Marina. I pace again. “That dude just lied to me. Like, not about everything, but about a couple things.”

“He’s protecting me. He wants to protect me. Everyone wants to help and no one can.”

There’s a weird hesitancy in Marina’s voice. I’ve heard hints of it before, but this is a big fat obvious hiccup, not a lie, maybe, but something she is holding back.

“I’ll help you.” The words come out fast, without thinking.

I don’t know if she needs me to lie in court and say I was with her on the houseboat, or get her bail money, or leave the state in the dead of night. I don’t know. Don’t care. I would do it.

“You have a wonderful heart. You try to help people and fix things. I think... I think I am a broken thing from a broken people, and you cannot fix this.” Her ribs heave up and down as she talks.

When I rest my hand on her bare back, it comes away yellowish and sticky. That root stuff, I guess. “You got family drama? Lay it on me. My grandpa came to ask out my meemaw’s sister and ended up taking meemaw out instead. They were married fifty-two years—but Aunt Laverne didn’t speak to Meemaw until she got married herself, ten years later.”

“Oh, darling,” Marina looks at me, hollow-eyed but smiling, her accent much thicker—and to me, so damn hot. I love the way it sounds like “Dah-link,” and I can imagine her in little black lacey things, long black gloves, and covered in diamonds.

Mmmhmm!

Focus, Kevin. This is so not the time to be turned on.

“The Koshchei—”

“Big K?”

“Yes, Big K. Let’s call him that. It sounds less horrible,” Marina’s smile struggles to life with a hint of genuine laughter. “He is... He owns women like me.”

“The fuck you say?Owns? Like slavery?”Pardon me while I prepare to break some bones.

“I suppose. We give half of our earnings to him.”

“Like a pimp? A slave-holding pimp? Jesus H. Christ,letthis bastard come to town, I will put him on his back so fast, I—”

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