Page 135 of One For my Enemy

“You can’t be,” she said again, but that time, even she heard her own voice falter.

He took a step, and she didn’t move.

Another, and she couldn’t look away.

“Tell me what I said to you,” he murmured to her, reaching out to brush her hair back from her face. “What was the last thing I said to you, Sasha?”

She shivered. He touched her cheek fleetingly, softly, and savored her with a glance, scouring her face.

“You said,” she began, and swallowed. “You said, ‘I’ll find you, Sasha.’”

“Yes. I said I would find you.”

She felt a little hitch in time; a hiccup, a tiny faltering of reality, and her parted lips rose up for his, just to convince the air in her lungs he was real.

“I keep my word,” he rasped against her mouth, and his kiss was a pulse of strange familiarity; a strike of dull impossibility; a moment that folded over itself in time to bring her a glimpse of perfect synchronicity, newness and repetition all at once.

“How,” she gasped, the word falling from her lips unbidden, and he shook his head.

“Give me tomorrow tomorrow,” he told her. “Tonight, I want tonight.”

If it was a dream, he seemed to say, then let it end in the morning. Let the sun do its worst.

She pulled Lev back into her and kissed him again, firmly this time, with all the conviction she thought she’d lost. The world had looked so different without Lev Fedorov in it; with him, it was suddenly brighter and fuller. The air itself was thick with anticipation, crowded with possibility, the night an inky shade of rapture and relief.

“Is it too late to love you, Lev Fedorov?” she asked him, her hands finding his, and he shook his head, pulling her with him.

“Sasha, it’s never too late for us,” he promised hoarsely, and with a brush of his thumb to her cheek, they both vanished into the dark.

V. 16

(Populism.)

For thse Boroughs, the lack of Stas Maksimov was a vacancy in more than just a missing vote. It was the loss of someone who had already been accepted; who had already possessed a subtle understanding of their customs, their secrets and their lives. As a result, they were in something of a hurry to fill the hollow absence with stability, and specifically, with someone they could either grudgingly trust or easily lie to.

Stas had been more of the former: a quiet sort of man, well-trained by his father not to stand too aggressively against the political status quo. For all that Stas Maksimov was considered one of the good ones, he was also notably one of the smart ones. He knew the important things, like who to avoid crossing and with whom to make an appeal if he were ever in need, and he knew how to keep his mouth shut, which was a particular virtue that had gone both ways. He kept his suspicions to himself; likewise, those who suspected him of undue influence by his wife (her, and her questionable misdeeds), followed suit.

Ideally, the Boroughs would have replaced Stas with another version of himself: some young twenty-something who would know to keep his head down if he wanted to climb, which he might do over the course of the next several decades if he made no mistakes. The best-case scenario, in most of the Borough witches’ minds, was a blank canvas, new blood. Someone they could mold, or break, with an underlying implication of circuity: Someone who could be built up from nothing would, as a result, owe his every success (and the entirety of his loyalty) to the Borough witches themselves.

Dimitri Fedorov, a witch already possessing a man’s reputation, was exactly nothing the Boroughs had in mind. Fortunately, Dimitri and Marya had already known this, and they had played their cards well. Marya in particular had been right that Jonathan Moronoe was a most valuable pawn; once Brooklyn had leaned Fedorov—the result of Moronoe’s subtlest political work, with little more than glimpses of furtively shaken hands—then Queens, Staten Island, and The Bronx were unanimously in agreement.

The last Borough, Manhattan, was wary. Some had resented Koschei’s influence for generations and regarded Dimitri, a known Koschei associate, with concern, or even fear. Others had been friends of Stas Maksimov and his father and, unable to stomach the idea of someone like Dimitri Fedorov in a Maksimov seat, argued against him relentlessly; Dimitri couldn’t be broken, they pointed out, and he wouldn’t be used, so doubtlessly, he couldn’t be swayed. To give Dimitri Fedorov Stas Maksimov’s vote was to take something which had belonged to a fox and give it to a snake. One was safe, they argued, and manageable, once you knew where its claws were. The other could only be counted on to strike.

Ultimately, though, decisions had to be made, and discord had little choice but to settle. With the four other Boroughs in agreement, Manhattan’s vote rapidly became a fight not worth having. While the end result wasn’t unanimous (even to call it ‘resigned’ would be excessively polite), Manhattan ultimately selected Dimitri Fedorov to fill the vacancy left by Stas Maksimov’s untimely death.

Within a matter of hours, Dimitri had won all five Boroughs.

“Congratulations,” offered a satisfied Jonathan Moronoe, who believed he’d done nothing wrong. Of course, perhaps he hadn’t; what did it matter his intent? Power was power, as Koschei had often said. Decisions (and those who made them) had power, and choosing to use it, unduly or not, was still a choice. “What will you do now, Dimitri?”

“Exactly as I promised,” Dimitri assured him. “The Boroughs have been under the thumb of one criminal or another for too long,” he announced to the room, glancing expectantly around it. “That’s about to change.”

There was a ripple of both excitement and panic.

“Do you plan to take down Baba Yaga?” one Borough witch prompted. He’d voted Fedorov without hesitation; not everyone had been a friend of Stas Maksimov. Many had disliked the woman whose interests Stas had quietly stood to protect, for reasons varying from valid to not.

“Yes,” Dimitri said, and immediately, several witches turned to each other with apprehension, expressions contorted with concern. This was what they’d been afraid of, they muttered and groaned. Baba Yaga was mostly harmless, they whispered; there were worse criminals, and she stayed out of the Boroughs’ way. Without Yaga, what new threat would rise to fill the role of Koschei’s rival?

“AndKoschei?” Jonathan prompted warily, addressing the cause for outburst.

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