Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) (9 page)

“I told you,” he said. “My name is not particularly helpful. Not here. Not in your world. You had a relevant context for it, so I gave it to you. I am being transparent about my motives, Ilana. I desire for you to find me credible. If I did not have those motives and you had not had that context, I would have given you a different name.”

“A different name?” Her voice sharpened more. “Like what? What name would you give?”

He shrugged. “I would have chosen one appropriate to this time and this place. I would have given you a name solely so that you would have something to call me. I know how important names are to people in this world.”

“My world?” she said.
“This
world? You’ve said that twice now.” Her frown grew more genuine, as did her concern. “What ‘world’ would that be, Comrade?”

That time, he didn’t answer at all.

He simply watched her face, his gray eyes faintly glowing.

Deciding to let it go for now, she turned from him to walk down her floor’s corridor, past a row of numbered, green-painted doors. She stopped when she reached her own. Inserting the key into the lock, it struck her again how foolhardy this was, to not only let a complete stranger know where she lived but to bring him willingly into her home. Even with her training, her superiors would not approve of this, not without knowing why she had done it.

Karkoff would not approve.

He trusted her, however.

All of this ran through her mind even as she swung open the door on her modest apartment and led him inside. Raguel followed cautiously, again looking around as if afraid he might break something or knock something over by his very presence.

Her apartment was reasonably clean, so that was a bonus.

Opening the curtains to let in the cool winter sunlight, she turned on the gas heater first, still conscious of her guest’s discomfort. She motioned for him to sit on the flower-patterned couch in her main living room while she hung up her coat and turned on the kitchen light, exposing her lime green refrigerator and porcelain sink near the center cutting board.

She brought him the box of clothes first, pulling out articles to show him until he’d found a few he seemed to approve of, or at least did not actively disapprove of. Given that he still shivered like he couldn’t get his body under control, even on her couch with her heater blasting, it didn’t surprise her that he focused on warmth––taking dark wool pants, a thick thermal shirt and an even heavier sweater out of the pile of Uri’s more casual, off-work clothes.

When he’d finished picking out articles, she brought him to her bathroom and showed him how to work the hot water and the shower. He acted as though he’d never used one of those before either, but he seemed to get the hang of the thing quickly. Once she got the water hot out of the rattling heater, she saw understanding hit him for real.

Relief once more flooded his expression.

He threw off the blanket that smelled faintly of cat-piss and bad wine and began taking off the dirty jeans right in front of her.

Her cheeks flushing hot, Ilana looked away, but waited by the doorway so he could hand her the filthy blanket and jeans. She fully intended to throw them out while he bathed. She would have burned them if she could, but the garbage chute would have to do.

She couldn’t help sneaking a peek at him when he handed over the clothes.

He was that same pearl-white all over, she noticed.

His skin appeared strangely new-looking and unmarked, as if he had been sculpted from that flawless slab of marble recently. She had an urge to lay a hand on that perfect skin, to see if it was warm or cold and as smooth as it looked. Some part of her wanted to be convinced that he was flesh and blood, not from some other world like he’d more or less claimed.

There really was something so strange and beautiful about him. The strangeness struck her now even more than his beauty.

She wished she understood what that something was, and why he was having this effect on her. She knew it wasn’t his looks alone. After all, Uri had been a beautiful man. Uri still
was
beautiful, objectively-speaking, and still young, being in his early thirties and only a few years older than her. Ilana had gone down the path of beautiful men. She had married one.

So what was it about this man that so fascinated her?

He looked lost––heartbreakingly so at times.

Perhaps it was empathy that moved her. He knew about Golunsky. More to the point, he knew things about Ilana herself, things he shouldn’t know. The fact that he knew them anyway and shared personal details about her with that
ment
back at the station should have disturbed her, angered her even, but somehow did neither.

Rather, she found herself thinking he’d done it purely out of expediency, like he’d told her. He’d told the officer those things about her the same way he’d told her his real name rather than simply inventing one she would believe.

Both things served a purpose.

She was sure he hadn’t done it to harm her, emotionally or otherwise. She had no reason to think that, yet she did. That sureness struck her as strange too.

Normally, she was a pretty suspicious person. She had to be, given what she was.

She didn’t realize she’d gone from glancing to staring until the man touched her arm.

He stroked it when she didn’t pull away.

In the other room, she’d taken off her suit jacket in addition to her coat, not long after they came inside her apartment. Now she wore only a short-sleeved dark blue blouse over dark pants. When he continued to trace his fingers down her forearm, it was skin to skin, causing a kind of electric shock to run up her arm.

Jerking her eyes up and off where she’d been staring down at his body, including below the waist, she felt her face flush with a lot more heat, even as she met his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

But he didn’t seem bothered by her stare.

Rather, his expression looked relieved again.

She strongly got the impression it was at least partly from him touching her. Even as she thought it, he began stroking her fingers attached to the arm he wasn’t already touching. He let his hand run up that arm too, squeezing here and there, but not pulling her closer or attempting to touch her anywhere else. It struck her that the contact reassured him in some way.

It didn’t feel particularly sexual, but she felt a tugging need behind it regardless.

Still, some part of him responded to either her stare or his hands on her or both––when she glanced down his body a second time, she couldn’t help noticing the physical proof of that response. Flinching a little, she jerked her eyes back up to his face, flushing more.

“Do you mind if I use the shower now?” he said. “I’m still cold.”

His voice came out strangely gentle.

“No,” she blurted. Backing off him at once, she forced him to take his hands off her by creating distance between them. “No, no... of course not. I apologize, comrade. I will dispose of these old clothes.” Still fighting to steady her voice, she avoided his eyes as she jerked her chin towards the cabinet. “There are clean towels in there. Use whatever soap or shampoo you wish... take your time. As much as you want.”

“Thank you, Ilana.”

Him using her first name again made her blush harder, but she only nodded.

Gathering up the bad-smelling blanket and even worse-smelling pants, she retreated from the washroom without looking at him again. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so flustered by proximity to a man, even a naked one.

But it wasn’t like she invited strange men into her shower on a regular basis––or ever, really––so maybe she didn’t really know herself when it came to such things.

Either way, she hadn’t missed much in her appraisal of him, no matter how much her mind wandered. Going over details of the naked body she’d glimpsed, even as she headed for the trash chute outside her front door, she found her face and ears flushing even hotter.

He really was built... quite well.

Of course, she had few men to compare that to, as far as personal experience. On the other hand, she’d seen a lot of her comrades naked in the military and during KGB operations, so she had perhaps more points of comparison than many women.

From what she had glimpsed, he was quite...

Well, quite beautiful all over. More physically intimidating than Uri had been for some reason, and not only due to his size. He was beautiful––a perfectly proportioned form defined by long muscles, broad shoulders, narrow hips, muscular legs.

She tried to shove the image aside as she dumped his clothes in the chute and closed it with a metal clang. When she got back inside her apartment, she tried to shove her embarrassment aside too, mainly by focusing on why she’d brought him here in the first place. Washing her face and hands in the sink from the filthy clothes, she put water and coffee grounds in her overused upright coffee pot and put it on the gas stove to boil.

Only then did she let out a sigh, feeling herself start to relax.

Combing her fingers through her hair, she pulled out one of the chairs around her kitchen table and sat.

She pulled over the stack of files she’d dumped there when they first entered. Waiting for the coffee to boil, she sorted through them, thumbing through each briefly to get an idea of the contents. She spread them out on the table one by one, in smaller, neater piles. By the time she had them all sorted according to importance and basic subject-matter, the coffee was ready. Mug in hand, she sat back at the table and began to read, starting with the police report on the murder scene itself.

Twenty or so minutes later, she was fully immersed.

That’s probably why she didn’t hear the bathroom door open.

She didn’t look up until he walked into the kitchen and stood at the edge of the room. When she did, he was glancing around her living room once more, his strangely striped hair wet and slicked back on his head. He looked beautiful that way too, yet strangely more normal. His face still held that silent calm of his though, as if part of his mind lived a thousand miles away.

She saw him focus on a few photographs hanging on the wall, most of them of her family. His eyes shifted next to the row of china animals that she’d been collecting since she was a child, then a picture of her from her military days, holding an automatic rifle.

He’d stopped shivering.

He wore Uri’s long-sleeved thermal shirt and that heavier sweater over the pants. The pants still didn’t fit him quite right, since Uri was a bit thicker around the waist and not quite as tall, but the differences almost worked, causing the pants to hang down low on his hips so that the bottom of the pant legs brushed the tops of his bare feet. He filled out Uri’s clothes better than Uri did, she couldn’t help thinking, even though they clearly hadn’t been made for him.

She glanced at his feet, which were also marble-white.

“Do you want socks?” she said, looking up.

He didn’t answer, but walked towards her, his eyes focused on the files spread out on the table. Seeing him staring at the crime scene photos, she shut the folder in front of her with deliberation and met his gaze more levelly.

“How about some coffee, comrade?”

“Raguel.” His expression denoted some discomfort, even with the calm. For a few seconds she thought he might speak more, maybe to explain that discomfort, but he never did.

“How about some coffee, Raguel?” she said, her voice more subdued.

After a short pause, he nodded.

She got the sense he wasn’t sure if he wanted it or not.

Puzzled once more, and feeling awkward although unable to articulate to herself
why
she felt awkward, she got up and pulled a second mug out of the cabinet over the sink. She poured him a cup of coffee, only glancing back at him once.

“Milk? Sugar?”

He hesitated again, then nodded. “Yes.”

Smiling faintly that time, Ilana shook her head, then made his coffee roughly the way she made her own. She used the pot to top off her own cup at the same time, and then added more milk and sugar to her mug as well.

It was a privilege to have good coffee––one of the few perks she indulged in as a result of her job. Otherwise, she chose to live more or less proletariat-style, and not all of that was cover. Her apartment was basic, identical to that of most others in the white collar classes and even many of the higher-tier blue collar classes. Her clothes. Her car. She did not call attention to herself. Most of her neighbors thought her a secretary in some segment of the Politiboro and Ilana didn’t dissuade that belief.