The Siren's Dance (2 page)

Demyan was the name his mother muttered in the throes of her most frightening delusions but refused to speak aloud if she was in her right mind. He’d pressed her during those hallucinations, and every single time she’d said the same thing--Stas Demyan was his father.

It sounded like a common enough name. If he hadn’t already searched for it in every database he had access to, he might believe it was a coincidence. But he’d turned up zilch on the man, aside from one stint at the National Ballet before Sergey’s ballerina mother was even born.

At the desk opposite him, his partner, Pavel, glanced up and cringed at Sergey’s bottle of bright green liquid. “God, how do you drink that stuff? It looks like something oozing out of the ruins of Chernobyl.”

Sergey took a lot of shit from his fellow cops for his clean living--no coffee, no hard drinking, no smoking. But he was a nice enough guy not to point out he was the only investigator without a beer paunch or a ruddy vodka nose, so he shrugged. “I like it.”

He glanced at his computer screen where he’d run a search on Demyan’s name. Zero results, just like all the other times he’d tried to find his father.

It must have been during one of those attempts that he’d scrawled the name on a notepad and left it out for Dmitri to see. Which had proved to be good luck, since the younger Lisko had called with this new lead. Of course, Sergey had told him Demyan was just a name that had surfaced on the fringes of an old case, no need to reveal the personal nature of that investigation.

The cursor on the screen blinked as if in mockery.
0 results match your search.
Still no trace of the guy in the national databases. Tension ratcheted up Sergey’s shoulders--all the old frustration and fears coming back to him. If his father was a good man, he wouldn’t be impossible to find.

“Yuchenko,” Pavel said, tilting his head toward the door.

The Liskos stood just inside, along with a pretty girl he’d never seen before, who cradled a shoebox to her chest as carefully as if it had a newborn inside.

Gregor stepped out from behind Dmitri, leaning severely on a cane. God, the man looked bad--years older in the months since Sergey had last seen him. Bruises ringing his eyes, the skin of his face shriveled like a tired balloon. Pity softened Sergey toward the guy. The elder Lisko more or less ran Ukraine behind the scenes, but to his credit, he did it better than a lot of men could.

Sergey showed them down the hall into one of the empty interrogation rooms.

When the door closed, Dmitri extended his hand. “Thanks for this, Yuchenko.” He angled toward the woman. “Meet my wife, Sonya.”

Sonya? Strange. That had been the name of one of the girls in the Truss family. Sergey had pulled the case file on their murders for Dmitri last month.

“Nice to meet you.” He offered his hand, and she shook it eagerly in a warm grasp.

“You too.” She had an amiable smile, and Sergey liked her immediately, maybe because of how Dmitri’s sharp edges felt duller and less dangerous with her at his side. She returned her hand to its place hugging the shoebox. “And I want to thank you personally. This is important to all of us.”

“Have a seat,” Sergey said, indicating a table dented by handcuffs and stained by water rings. Sonya put the shoebox on it ever so gently, but no baby whimpered. Of course not. No one carried a baby in a shoebox, but the way she handled the thing sure had him thinking it was precious cargo.

He cut to the chase. “I’m afraid this is hopeless. Aside from a brief stint at the National Ballet, there is no record of Stas Demyan anywhere.”

Gregor turned toward the empty corner of the room and raised his palm toward the blank wall. “Shh. We will find him.”

Sergey sat back in his chair, transfixed. He’d never seen the oligarch at less than full-blown intimidating, and now he was talking to the wall? The guy had to be on some serious meds.

“So, what’s this lead you mentioned?” he asked.

Sonya and Dmitri looked at each other, exchanging one of those wordless communications lovers seem to manage, but that Sergey had never once experienced.

A gust of warm air billowed through the room, as if the heat had just kicked on and blown through the vents. But the building didn’t have a central furnace, just radiators.

Sergey turned toward the door to see if someone had opened it while Gregor angled to the corner again and said, “Hush.”

Shit. He was seriously hallucinating.

Sergey braved a stare right at high-as-a-kite Lisko. “Why are you looking for this guy?”

His gaze flicked toward that empty corner again. “It’s an unresolved matter between Demyan and a woman of my acquaintance, to whom I owe a debt.”

“Okay. So when can I talk to her?”

Another knowing look passed between Dmitri and Sonya.

Gregor jumped in. “She’s anxious to talk to you, and would sincerely like to offer her assistance until the son of a bitch--her words--is found.”

“Great. Then where is she? Can she come down to the station?”

“She’s right here.” Gregor waved toward the corner where he’d been so focused.

Sergey looked to the couple for a clue just in time to catch Sonya’s wince.

“Brace yourself, bro,” Dmitri said.

Right. Were they all nuts? Having a little party on Gregor’s meds?

And then Gregor seemed to take hold of something, and… Hell, a woman appeared out of nowhere.

Sergey held statue-still as his skin tightened and his heart hammered against his sternum. This could not be happening. Shit like this didn’t happen.

The petite woman coughed and spluttered, retching like she had lungfuls of water. The cop in him was chomping at the bit to go to her aid. His inner child trembled like he’d just woken from a nightmare. But he would force reason to prevail. He gripped the seat of his chair with both hands and waited until he had a better grasp on the situation.

When her heaves stopped, Sergey could see the woman was drenched and almost naked. She had to be--what--a ghost? There was no other explanation. But
that
was no kind of explanation. Ghosts inhabited children’s books with witches, fairies, and demons, not the real world, and sure as hell not his interrogation room.

He tried to blink the vision away. No dice.

Fear formed a ball in his throat, threatening to break free as a scream. He swallowed it and reached for the pistol holstered at his hip. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to put your hands up.”

“Put that away, Yuchenko,” the ailing Lisko scoffed. “She’s harmless.”

Dmitri crossed his arms over his chest. “I wouldn’t say harmless. She’s been whispering violent fantasies into Gregor’s ear since we found the little harpy--”

Sonya silenced him with an elbow to his ribs. “That’s my sister you’re talking about.”

Sister. She couldn’t mean…?

Dmitri shuddered. “The things she said. Enough to turn a guy off his lunch.”

The younger Lisko was a former heavyweight boxer who’d done his uncle’s wet work. Sergey didn’t want to know what would ruin the guy’s appetite. Still, he holstered his gun. There wasn’t a single place she could hide a weapon in that skimpy get-up anyway.
The ghost stared at her hand, flexed her fingers, then touched her face. Her mouth fell open, astonished. So small and fragile and pretty. Sergey’s fear bled away, and in its wake came fascination. He couldn’t look away from the ghost.

“Oh, Anya, you’re wearing the pink nightie,” Sonya said.

Anya looked down at herself for a long, tense moment, then rose to her full height. “So what.” She put her hands on her hips, though the ailing Lisko kept his own wrapped around one of her wrists.

“Inspector Yuchenko, meet my sister, Anya.”

Anya and Sonya Truss. The girls murdered in 1968. Impossible.

The ghost’s wet nightgown was almost entirely see-through, a rosy pink just one shade darker than her skin, which showed her nipples and her belly button almost as clearly as cling-wrap would. If it weren’t for the thick hem of black lace stretched high and taut over her lean, muscular thighs, he’d have seen a lot more. Smooth alabaster flesh, or would there be a shadowy triangle there, as dark as her almost-black hair, slicked back with water? Hell, a puddle was forming at her feet, drops falling from her nightie and splashing into a growing pool.

His tongue grew thick in his mouth and his cock was starting to feel the same way. Seriously? A hard-on for a hallucination? Down, boy. But there was just something about her. Or a million things, endless captivating details coalescing into a supremely erotic little bundle of ghost.

She glared at him, her mahogany eyes like glinting blades, her fine brows arched in disapproval. She would make a perfect Odile from Tchaikovsky’s
Swan Lake
--the hatefully beautiful twin of the cursed princess Odette.

And then she spoke.

“You think this buffoon can help me?” She scowled. “He’s wearing a mustache of something disgustingly green on his lip. Can he even write his name? I bet his mother irons his shirts.”

Okay. That was a bucket of ice on his blazing libido.

Gregor chuckled but tried to turn it into a cough. Sergey’s hand went to his mouth to wipe at the juice because some ghost--and everyone knew ghosts weren’t real--had insulted him.

“Anushka,” Sonya scolded, wrapping her sister up in her coat. “Be nice. We’re lucky he’s willing to assist us. Otherwise, you may never find Demyan.”

The ghost’s expression changed as quickly as a child who’d realized her spite would not get her what she wanted. “Thank you, Inspector Yuchenko. From the bottom of my heart.” Her voice sounded strange all of a sudden, richly layered with mysterious tones. Beautiful. Hypnotic. He wanted her to say more, wanted to strip off his suit and rub naked against her words, his frozen-over libido thawing instantaneously.

“You’re welcome,” he ground out.

“And aren’t you cute?” This time she lowered her voice, nearly whispering. She seemed to float closer to him, testing the leash of Gregor’s grasp. “You’re like an over-grown puppy. These big hands and feet and this baby face.” She pinched his cheek and then pulled a tuft of his hair. “This military cut turned shaggy.”

His cock had come fully to attention, straining toward her like she was its north. Her words seemed to caress it, warm and wet and with just enough friction to please.

Somewhere off in the distance, Dmitri cursed. “Shit. We probably should have warned him.”

“Oh, dear. How could I have forgotten this part?” Sonya squeaked.

“What part?” Gregor asked.

“She’s a siren,” Dmitri replied. “She could sex-talk a guy into pretty much anything.”

But Sergey only had ears for Anya, who was practically purring. “The thing is, Yuchenko, Stas Demyan is a panther, and he will eat a puppy like you for lunch.”

With her words, the spell broke, her enchantment falling limp like the snip of a taut string. Sergey imagined a panther devouring a puppy until his erection flagged. “Give me a break. He’s older than Gregor, here.”

“I’m certain he will only be more evil with age,” she said with a bitterness a hell of a lot like his mother’s.

She was a ghost and a siren, and in her opinion, his father was an evil son of a bitch. This was so not the day Sergey had signed up for when he’d rolled out of bed. Either he was turning as batty as his mother, or the Liskos were pulling one over on him.

He closed his eyes. “This is a joke, right? Gregor had my wheatgrass laced with LSD, and I’m hallucinating, and the rest of you are laughing your asses off at me. ‘When Yuchenko loses it, he imagines hateful, hot ghosts in tiny wet nightgowns.’”

“How sweet. The puppy thinks I’m hot.” Anya’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s a compliment, right?”

Sonya chuckled. “Yes.”

He groaned. “I don’t want a position in your organization, now or ever. I’m a cop, and I’m sticking to the straight and narrow. So you can cut out this hazing crap.”

Dmitri snickered and turned to Sonya. “I told you he’d take it all pretty well. Yuchenko’s a trooper. He’s made of solid, Ukrainian stuff. Meat and potatoes with his wheatgrass. No fainting at the sight of a ghost. No hysterics when she turned that siren shit on. We can count on him.”

Anya was freezing; her skin puckered into goose bumps. With each breath, she labored against the weight of her ribs and her muscles as the pleasing pull of gravity hugged her to the earth.

Each sensation was wondrous. But being alive couldn’t last. She had to remain focused on her goal.

Find Stas. Be free. Hurry.

And she wasn’t the least bit convinced this puppy, with his kind, brown eyes, could help. During the drive to the station, Gregor had said Yuchenko was a crack detective who could find anyone. Anya had pictured a hard-boiled cop with pockmarked cheeks and a barrel chest who smoked two cigarettes at once, not this disappointing infant--the last sort of man she wanted at her side when she faced Stas. Even under the strain of meeting a ghost, his fresh, handsome face remained unlined and made her feel every one of the seventy or so years since she’d been born.

He dropped into a chair and unbuttoned his coat so that it fell open at his sides.

He was big, with bulky muscles filling out the shoulders and arms of his otherwise too large suit. The ill-fitting navy coat looked sloppy in contrast to his tidy, cropped haircut and clean-shaven jaw.

“He’s no use to me. He doesn’t even think I’m real.” She put one hand on her hip and let the other dangle at her side where Gregor held it.

“Yes, he does,” Dmitri said. “He just wishes he didn’t. Am I right?”

The inspector’s gaze swept over her; then he cleared his throat and averted his eyes. “Yeah.”

Oh, right. The nightgown.
Her skin heated with a blush. Sonya had made the sexy low-cut slip for her as an engagement present, and
vilas
--the ghosts of jilted brides--were clothed in their wedding dresses in death. The nightie was as close as Anya had ever gotten to a white gown, and it left nothing to the imagination, not to mention the tight, pink satin was eternally soaked from her fatal dive into the river.