Page 122 of My Wild Horse King

“I agree,” Aleks says.

“As do I,” Alexei says.

“And me,” Mirdza says. That one surprises me.

“Not that anyone cares, but I vote that he dies, too.” No shock Adriana wants him gone. He almost killed Alexei and Grigoriy the last time they saw him, from what I hear.

“We’ll have time to decide after seeing how he behaves,” I say. “We can vote afterward, and we’ll do what the majority demands.”

That shuts them up, miraculously.

But when we reach Birch Creek, nothing goes as we expect. There aren’t any roadblocks. There are no guards anywhere. In fact, we drive right up to Steve and Abigail’s house, and it almost looks like there’s a party happening. Amanda Saddler and her husband Tommy are here, judging by the big truck parked beside Abigail’s SUV.

Several kids are darting around the swing on the front porch, playing some kind of tag-affiliated game.

But when we pull up and kill the engine, everyone freezes. I open my door and jump out. “Is everything really alright?”

“You came.” Abby’s not smiling, though. She looks a little ill.

“I’m so happy to see it.” Leonid steps out from behind Steve, and I realize that he’s grilling burgers on the side of the house.

Leonid’s just standing around, grilling burgers.

No guards.

No Boris or Mikhail, at least, not that I can see. There’s no one else here at all, other than our friends.

“Won’t you join us?” Leonid’s British accent is the only sign that he’s not a local when he waves us over. And then in Russian, he says, “You got here just in time. I was running out of patience, truth be told.”

“Where’s my brother?” Katerina asks.

“Boris and Misha are out back, playing a rousing game of horseshoes,” Leonid says, still speaking in Russian. “If you’ve never heard of it, it’s this strange thing they do here, where they try and throw a horseshoe as close to a metal stick as they can get it.”

What on earth is going on?

Leonid’s gaze shifts, his eyes turning toward me.

I’d have said that Katerina had the most stunning, the brightest green eyes I’d ever seen, but I’d never seen Leonid Ivanovich in person. His eyes are brighter than the grass in Easter baskets. They’re the kind of bright that you really only see in CGI-enhanced movies or cartoons.

And heisannoyingly handsome—even more so in real life than he was on the television screen.

“You must be Gustav. You know, your friends here wereso sureyou’d come. I didn’t have nearly the same faith that they did, but look! They were proved right after all.” He smiles, and I want to strike him.

All you can do is contain him.Baba Yaga’s words come back to me over and over.

I hope my plan isn’t complete lunacy.

“Why are you just standing there?” Leonid gestures. “We’ve got food back here.”

“How did you find out where we were?” I ask.

“You have your grandfather to thank for that. He’s quite a man, you know. Self-made, or at least, mostly. He took his father’s modest energy empire and turned it into something unique. I’m sure his disappointment when your mother fell in love with your father was truly deep.”

If he thinks he’ll taunt me into acting with rage over a few barbs aimed at my father, he’s sorely mistaken. “My father disappoints everyone. It’s what he does best.”

Leonid steps closer. “You and I have more in common than I realized, Gustav. My father was a monumental disappointment as well.”

“Yes, I imagine we could be besties in no time,” I say.

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