Page 13 of One For my Enemy

Almost immediately (his back shoved against the wall, her fingers in his hair, his hands on her waist and then up-up-upto the line of her neck, hands fumbling under coats andoh oh oh) it was much, much too much. Sasha wasn’t wholly inexperienced; she knew enough (and had certainly been warned by her older sisters six times over) to know that when a kiss felt likethis—like intoxication itself, like madness, so terribly impious and yet so purely, completely divine—it had to be stopped, and quickly, or else it would set fire to her every thought.

“I have to go,” she whispered, and felt Lev growl his opposition, his fingers tightening briefly before he released her, permitting her to step away. He sighed, one hand still stretched towards her, and raised the other to curl it around his mouth, filling it with the arguments he clearly understood she didn’t want to have.

“Are you sure you can make it home by yourself?” he asked after a moment, with a gravity that made her want to laugh. He seemed very serious when he wanted to be, even as he twitched with the need to be closer to her; which seemed appropriate, really, considering that she ached with the need to be closer to him.

“Yes, I can, I promise. But I can, um. I can give you my number?” she suggested, and immediately winced, bothered by the eagerness in her own voice. “If you want, I mean. Or not, obviously—”

“Yes, please,” Lev said, mortally serious again. He fumbled into his pocket, removing his cell phone, and placed it in her hand, attention never falling from her face while she clumsily typed in her name and phone number.

“Maybe I’ll see you, then,” she said, locking his phone screen and handing it back to him before stepping away, not wishing to make a fool of herself twice over by falling into his arms a second time. “Or, I don’t know, maybe—”

“Sasha.” He reached out, pulling her close, and kissed her one more time, both his hands curling around her face and drawing lines blindly around the landscape of it;nose, cheeks, lips,as deliberately as if he planned to paint her later, and would need to remember the arrangement of what he’d seen.

“See you,” he exhaled, forcing himself a step back.

She felt anything she said in return would be a stupid, incoherent mess.

So she tucked her smile into her palm until she could covet it freely later, disappearing around the corner and compelling herself not to look back.

I. 9

(Diamonds.)

“Mama, are you sure?” Marya exhaled, pacing her mother’s bedroom. “I mean—are youverysure, because I really don’t know if she’s ready. This expansion, it’s not just dangerous, it’sillegal—if the Borough Witches were to find out who was behind it, or worse, if Koschei sent someone to intervene—”

She pressed a hand to her forehead, suffering either dehydration or the pounding evidence of stress.

“Not to mention The Bridge loves deals enough to make them with the devil himself,” Marya muttered, “provided he were paid well enough.”

“I thought you approved of the plan, Masha,” Yaga said, arching a brow. “You assured me your informant could be trusted, did you not?”

“Yes, of course. I know both his talents and his tricks, believe me, and this is precisely what we’ve been working towards, but given everything—”

“You don’t think Sasha can do it,” Yaga supplied bluntly. “Is that it?”

Silence.

“Or,” Yaga noted, “is it that you simply don’twanther to?”

Marya let her gaze cut away. “There’s just no going back, Mama. You know that.”

“Yes, I know that. But I never went back, did I? And neither did you.” Yaga took hold of Marya’s face with one hand, holding it steady, and Marya thought again how Baba Yaga was such a perfectly incongruous misnomer; a clever reference to a witch who was haggard and old instead of sleekly refined, graceful, so that nobody would ever guess a woman this lovely and this shockingly young would choose so unflattering a moniker.

“You know she’s the right person to do it, Masha,” said Yaga. “She’s a student, after all, isn’t she? That finally plays to our advantage, and besides, she’s older than you were when we started this. She’ll have to decide eventually where she stands, just like you did. Just like each of my daughters has.”

Yaga paused, and then ventured with curiosity, “I’ve never seen you falter like this before, Masha.”

“Mama, it’s Sasha; it’s our Sashenka,” Marya pleaded softly. “You and I’ve both protected her for so long, we’ve been socareful,and now is hardly the ideal time. What if something happens to her? Look at this trouble with Koschei, with our dealers—”

But Yaga said nothing, her expression did not change, and so Marya trailed off at an exhale, dispelling her anxieties into empty air and abandoning them, unfurling her tougher shell in their absence. She was often relieved that, in moments like that one, their mother could be counted on never to soften, or to permit even a breath or two of fear. Marya trusted that the woman called Baba Yaga possessed no knowledge of what it was to be soft, and so she drew from her namesake, from her mother, and conjured for herself the tireless reminder that fear had no place on an Antonova witch’s lips.

“Nothing will happen to her, Masha, if you do not let it,” Yaga said in Marya’s silence. “Am I understood?”

Marya nodded.

“Yes, Mama,” she agreed. “I won’t let anyone touch Sasha.”

Marya felt her mother step away as she closed her eyes, the familiar smell of Yaga’s perfume filling her mind and her memories with the promise of roses even as she tasted blood on her tongue, viscous and coppery and awash in every direction she looked.

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