Earth and Salt, Fire and Mercury Read online

  Nadia strode over, swaying her hips a little. Someone had switched on the portable spotlights that circled the ring, and Van’s eyes glittered in the yellow glare.

  “I want a fair fight, girls,” Radko said. “No fucking around.”

  “We won’t fuck around at all,” Nadia said, although she spoke to Van.

  Van just laughed again. “You sure you’re ready for this?”

  “You sure you are?” Nadia countered.

  Van winked, and Nadia’s heart fluttered like a hummingbird.

  The bell rang. The crowd roared.

  Van and Nadia lunged toward each other.

  Van was fast, Nadia would give her that. She moved with a brutal grace, a dancer out for blood. But Nadia was fast too. Van swung; Nadia blocked. Nadia swung; Van darted around, moving in a tight, looping circle. Trying to stay on Nadia’s periphery. Trying to come at her sideways.

  “Not so fast, belka.” Nadia struck hard and quick, whipping her body around at the last minute. But not quite quick enough—her glove made contact with Van’s shoulder, and Van spun away, grinning over her gloves.

  “I heard good things about you, Ostrokhina,” Van said. “Don’t let me down.”

  Nadia wiped a bead of sweat away from her forehead. “This is just a warm-up.”

  Van’s smile widened and it was like her whole face lit from within. She darted forward. Right hook, haymaker, block, block. All of Nadia’s attention had narrowed to a single focus: Van. Van and her vicious strength, Van and the muscles cording beneath her skin shining with sweat, Van with that shock of black hair.

  And then the world screeched to a halt. Nadia’s vision faltered. Light flashed around her. Pain blossomed along her left cheek.

  Van had gotten a fucking hit in.

  “Eh, no hard feelings, right, comrade?” Two Vans wove in and out of each other. Nadia shook out the stun of the hit. The world blurred back into focus. Van, the light, the crowd screaming for blood.

  “Hard feelings? That was nothing.” Nadia lunged forward, feinted. Van didn’t fall for it. She was good. But Nadia couldn’t let that distract her. She wasn’t about to let a pretty girl lose her a fight.

  They circled around each other. Van’s eyes were bright above her gloves, bright and mischievous, and Nadia cursed herself—no distractions. The crowd was chanting something, too growly and indistinct for Nadia to make out.

  Van flicked her gaze over to the crowd, though. Nadia took her chance. Her fist connected with Van’s jawbone. Van stumbled but didn’t fall, not that Nadia had expected her to. She was back up in seconds, and she was grinning.

  “Now that,” she said, “is more like what I expected from the great Nadezhda Ostrokhina.”

  With that, they flew at each in earnest. Everything before then had just been foreplay, a bit of teasing to get each other ready. Van’s blows came in a blur, and Nadia fought back as furiously as she could. They tangled with each other, gloves slapping against wet flesh. Strands of Van’s hair, soaked through with sweat, clung to the side of her face, and her expression was all twisted up in a kind of violent ecstasy. Nadia felt it, too. Her whole body was on fire. She and Van moved together, a pair of mirror images. You wouldn’t call it a dance. But it was sure as hell close.

  And then Nadia saw her opening. Van had dropped her guard, just a few inches. Getting tired? Nadia didn’t have time to think about it. She took the chance, throwing her punch with as much force as she could muster.

  Van flew back, landing hard on the mat. She groaned, her chest heaving. Radko knelt beside her, started the countdown. Van dropped her head and her eyes caught Nadia’s. She smiled. It was the sort of smile that made Nadia’s stomach feel like it was full of electricity.

  “Eight!” Radko shouted. “Nine!”

  Nadia straightened her shoulders, braced herself for Van’s recovery. But Van just kept watching her through half-opened eyes, grinning the entire time.

  That bitch was gonna let her win.

  “Ten!” Radko shouted, and he jumped to his feet and grabbed Nadia’s wrist to hoist her hand above her head. “We’ve got our winner!”

  The crowd clamored with approval and disappointment. Already the bookies were handing out payments. Radko dropped Nadia’s hand and she looked over at Van, sitting up against the ropes, her arms draped over her knees.

  “Good fight,” Van said.

  “Better for me.”

  Van peered up at her. “Depends on how things shake out tonight.”

  Excitement flickered up Nadia’s spine. She strolled over to her bucket of water, yanked off the gloves, splashed her face. The coldness of it was like a kiss. She glanced back at Van.

  “And how are things going to shake out tonight?”

  Van just smiled. She stood and ambled over to the bucket, splashed her own face. Nadia handed her a towel and watched as she dried off.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Van said, not looking at her. “I could go in for a round two.” She gave Nadia a quick sideways glance and Nadia’s heart pumped. “I hate losing.”

  “So do I,” Nadia said. “But I hate it when someone lets me win even more.”

  Van flipped the towel over her shoulder and turned to Nadia. She gazed at her from under her long dark lashes. “You think I let you win?”

  “Seemed that way to me.” Nadia smiled a little. “You could have gotten up.”

  Van smiled. “Well, then we should definitely go for round two.” She stepped in close to Nadia and everything else fell away. The only thing that mattered was Van. “My place or yours?”

  Bold of her, putting it out in the open like that. But Nadia liked bold. Bold got things done.

  “Loser picks,” Nadia said.

  “Trust me,” Van said, her eyes sparking, “I am not the loser tonight.” And then she turned and strolled toward the exit, her muscles moving beneath her sweat-soaked shirt.

  Nadia didn’t hesitate to follow.

  2.

  Tanya sat on a stained sofa crammed up next to a window overlooking the Vltava; a lookout point, she supposed, for checking on the ley line that ran beneath it.

  “So the golem is not the culprit,” Alestair said. “What options does that leave us?”

  “The Flame,” Tanya said, her gaze still turned toward the river. Already flowers were growing along its banks, their colors too vivid in the dim light. They weren’t natural blooms. One of the elementals that had been lost in the barge fire, still lingering in the air above Prague, leaving its mark in the soil. “The house was on a ley line. It was likely a ritual space.”

  “A fair guess,” Alestair said, “I’m inclined to agree. Gabe, what do you think?”

  Tanya turned to Gabe expectantly. He was sitting beside Alestair on one of the rickety chairs the British agent had dragged in from the kitchen. This apartment was an Ice safe house Alestair had set up. A way for the three of them to communicate, although Gabe had still grumbled about it, insisting that they needed to keep their in-person meetings to a minimum.

  “I suppose,” he said carefully. “The fire at the house was likely tied to the fire at the barge—similar magic, at any rate, since the barge fire had blue flames, according to reports from operatives who were there. And that fire at the hotel definitely had magical ties as well.”

  He met Tanya’s gaze briefly. The discomfort in his expression mirrored her own. She didn’t want to think about the barge, either.

  “A new type of magic,” she said, forcing herself to look at Alestair. “Something they can’t quite control yet, maybe. It would make sense, with a new Flame leader in town.” She paused. “And Gabe has a new friend at the CIA office. We know what happened the last time that was the case.”

  Gabe scowled at her.

  “You’re referring to Edith Lowell, I assume?” Alestair leaned back in his chair. He managed to make the old wooden frame look elegant somehow.

  “I am.”

  “Edith Lowell is a pain in the ass,” Gabe said, “if for no other
reason than she makes it next to impossible for us to meet. But I don’t think she’s Flame. She was with me the night of the hotel fire, for one thing, when we were tracking Terzian. I’m fairly confident we can trust her.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Tanya asked.

  “Because I had to drag her out of the fire! Besides…” Gabe paused. “Do you really think the Flame would try to pull the same trick twice?”

  Tanya shrugged. He had a point—and yet it was a bit of a coincidence, wasn’t it? Rumors of a Flame leader making their way into Prague, and then the appearance of some CIA woman—as if it were easy for a woman to make her way into American spy work!—at the offices. She didn’t like it.

  “It’s at least a lead,” Alestair said. “The only one we really have, at the moment.”

  Gabe shook his head. “No. Not the only one.”

  Tanya frowned. “What do you mean?” She glanced at Alestair but he was giving nothing away. “Did you hear something from Jordan?”

  “No.” Gabe took a deep breath, ran one hand over his hair. “I had an—encounter the other night. A weird one.”

  “You didn’t think this was important enough to mention?” Tanya asked.

  Even Alestair looked annoyed, his eyes glittering. “What happened?” he asked. “You really need to keep us abreast of these things.”

  Gabe sighed. “What part of there’s-a-CI-investigation-going-on do you not understand? Even if they are just interested in Dom, I don’t want to risk it. Besides, I wasn’t entirely sure the encounter was magic-related. It was—weird. Someone was tailing me. The hitchhiker was completely silent, no sense of magic at all. But she had absolute shit tradecraft.”

  “Oh, yours isn’t that good, Amerikanski,” Tanya said, shaking her head. Really, though, she felt a little better. Perhaps it was just some would-be rebel stumbling their way through the dark.

  “You said she,” Alestair said. “So you saw her?”

  “Yeah. She spoke to me. Called me Quicksilver.” He paused. “As in mercury.”

  Tanya and Alestair looked at each other. Tanya’s sense of relief dissipated. “She knew about it,” Tanya said softly. “Your elemental.”

  “Yeah,” Gabe said. “But I’m telling you—I didn’t feel any kind of magic on her. None. And I always feel magic. Thanks to this.” He tapped the side of his head. “It was weird, like I said. Could go either way. Spy or sorcerer.” He shrugged. “Maybe the destruction isn’t Flame-related at all.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Alestair said.

  “So do I.” Tanya curled her hands in frustration. It had to be Flame. Who else would care about the barge?

  “The lack of magic, though,” Alestair said, “is very unusual.”

  Tanya looked up at him. “They could be recruiting non-magical agents,” she said. “Perhaps with a promise of teaching them Flame spells.”

  “Maybe.” Alestair rubbed at his chin. “It doesn’t seem like them, though. They’re always so showy.”

  He was worried. Tanya could see it in the thin lines on his forehead.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “If they found a way to hide their magic,” Alestair said, “to dampen it and keep it from being perceived, that could account for Gabe’s peculiar experience the other night.”

  A weight dropped to the bottom of Tanya’s stomach. Dampening magic like that was supposed to be impossible. No ordinary sorcerer had ever found a way to accomplish it.

  “If that’s true…” she began, not wanting to finish her sentence.

  “Yes,” Alestair said. “It would be very bad for us.”

  Bad for the Ice, but bad for the whole world, too. The Flame must not have that kind of power.

  “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions, however.” Alestair stood up. “Let’s continue this investigation. See what we can find out.”

  “That’s going to be difficult,” Gabe said. “Edith may not be Flame, but she could still screw me over royally if she saw me buddying up with the goddamn KGB.”

  “You think it’s easy for me?” Tanya shot back.

  “It’s difficult for all of us, in these trying times,” Alestair mediated. “But we have our work-arounds. We’ll manage.”

  The three of them sat in silence. Outside, the ley line simmering beneath the Vltava flowed through the city, a river beneath the river. What kind of magic would it reveal to them next, Tanya wondered. What awaited them—Flame? Ice? Everyone in between?

  There was no way to know. Magic was like a spy. It stayed in the shadows, and it held its secrets close.

  • • •

  Nadia stretched out on top of the sheets, reaching her hands over her head so that her fingers brushed up against the wall behind her. The window was cracked open, and a spring breeze wafted in, stirring the shabby curtains and cooling the sweat on her bare skin.

  “Smoke?” Van slid a pack from the bedside table and pulled out two cigarettes without waiting for an answer. Nadia rolled over onto her side, grinned up at her.

  “I need one, after that.”

  Van laughed. She sat, still naked, with her back pressed against the wall, legs stretched out in front of her. She slipped the cigarettes into her mouth and lit both of them. Nadia was enchanted by her movements: the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in to ignite the tobacco, the purse of her lips, the indolent gesture of her arm reaching out to hand Nadia a smoke. Nadia leaned on her back and puffed on the cigarette, languid and luxurious in the twisted pile of sheets on the bed.

  “So who would you say won this round?” The bed creaked; Van stretched out on her stomach alongside Nadia, blew her smoke at the wall.

  “I’d say it was a tie.” Nadia stretched her arm across Van’s back and kissed her shoulder, leaving a trail of kisses across the top of her back. She could taste the salt on Van’s skin, and she pressed her face to the base of Van’s neck, breathing her in. They stayed like that for a few moments, entangled with each other. She had no sense of how long it had been since the fight, and she didn’t care.

  “You’re burning the sheets!” Van giggled, and snatched the cigarette out of Nadia’s hands, extinguishing it in a black spot on the wall.

  “You burned the wall.” Nadia kissed the back of Van’s neck again, and Van shifted beneath her, rolling onto her back so that Nadia found herself straddling her at the waist, their noses touching. Van finished her own cigarette, and when she kissed Nadia the taste of smoke lingered.

  “Not my wall, not my sheets,” Van murmured, tracing her finger down Nadia’s spine. Nadia shivered with pleasure. “But if you burned the sheets you would have caught on fire yourself, and I would hate to see that happen.”

  Nadia kissed Van on the mouth in response—too late for her, she was on fire again anyway, although it was a slow-burning fire, not the intense burst of desire that had erupted earlier. She kissed down the line of Van’s collarbone, over the soft swell of her breasts. Slowly. Taking her time, the way she hadn’t before. Van made soft mumbling noises of contentment and wound her fingers in Nadia’s hair. Nadia kept kissing, down over the hard, strong planes of her stomach. Over a tattoo.

  A tattoo she hadn’t noticed before, having been too caught up in other things. But a tattoo that she recognized now, with a sharp twist of shock.

  Imprinted in faded black ink on the faint angle of Van’s hipbone, a pair of jagged lines: a lightning strike and lucky number seven, layered on top of each other. The alchemical symbol for lead.

  “Why’d you stop, mon chaton?” Van’s fingers brushed the back of Nadia’s head.

  “I got distracted by your tattoo.” Nadia kissed it, her eyes fluttering. She half-expected to feel a surge of magical power, but there was only the soft silkiness of Van’s skin.

  “Oh, that old thing.” Van laughed. “I had it done ages ago.”

  “What’s it mean?” Nadia kept her voice spy-calm, and traced her finger over the tattoo. Perhaps it was nothing—a bad decision after a night o
f drinking.

  But perhaps not.

  “It’s an old family symbol,” Van said lightly. “From Vietnam.”

  Bullshit. Nadia could hear the lie in Van’s voice. She kissed the tattoo again, kissed across Van’s stomach. “But what does it mean?” she murmured. “Beautiful? Sex goddess?”

  Van laughed. “Nothing so exciting. Just a family thing.”

  Liar, Nadia thought, as she kissed along the top of Van’s thigh. Van sighed with pleasure. There was some magical connection there. Not Ice, Nadia would know that. Van didn’t feel like an Acolyte of Flame—too much of a loner. The family business probably meant she was some kind of hedgewitch, the traditions passed down from mother to daughter through the generations.

  But even if Van were Flame, Nadia wasn’t about to stop what she was doing. Van moaned and tugged on Nadia’s hair, whispered something in Vietnamese over and over again in soft, gasping sighs. Nadia made her decision. Whether Flame or hedgewitch, she—and Ice—would have this woman.

  • • •

  A knock sounded at Frank’s office door—and then, before he could answer, the door swung open and Emily bustled in, a stack of files under one arm, a mug of coffee steaming in her free hand.

  “You read my mind,” he said, eyeing the coffee. Emily grinned at him and set it on his desk.

  “I always do, sir. Do you have a moment to chat?”

  Frank nodded and sipped at the coffee. Emily reached over and discreetly shut the door, then settled down in the chair without waiting to be asked. That was the thing Frank liked about her—she understood that there didn’t need to be that kind of hierarchy between the CIA station chief and his secretary, not the way there was between him and his officers. She didn’t just take his calls and bring him his morning coffee. She was his extension, his view into the inner workings of the ecosystem of the office. They had an understanding.