"Janine Hathaway?" Tatiana's eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline. "I'm sure she has other commitments. No, we've got much better choices. This young lady's only a few years older than you."
A better choice than Janine Hathaway? Not likely. Before Dimitri, my mother had been the gold standard by which I measured all badassedness.
Tatiana's "young lady" was undoubtedly someone under the queen's control-and more importantly, not a Hathaway. The queen didn't like my mom any more than she liked me. Once, when Tatiana had been bitching me out for something, she'd made a reference to a man my mother had been involved with-someone whom I suspected might be my father, a guy named Ibrahim. The funny thing was, the queen had almost sounded like she had once had an interest in the guy too, and I had to wonder if that was part of her dislike for my family.
Lissa put on a tight, polite smile for the queen and thanked her for the consideration. Lissa and I both understood what was going on. This was Tatiana's game. Everyone was part of her plan, and there was no way to go against her. For a brief moment, Lissa had that strange thought again, of something Victor Dashkov had once said to her. Aside from his crazy killing and kidnapping schemes, Victor had also wanted to start a revolution among the Moroi. He thought the power distribution was off-something Lissa occasionally believed too-and that it was wielded unfairly by those with too much control. The moment was gone almost as soon as it came. Victor Dashkov was a crazy villain whose ideas deserved no acknowledgment.
Then, as soon as courtesy allowed, Lissa excused herself from the queen and headed across the room, feeling like she was going to explode with grief and anger. She nearly ran into Avery as she did.
"God," said Avery. "Do you think Reed could embarrass me any more? Two people have tried to make conversation with him, and he keeps scaring them off. He actually just told Robin Badica to shut up. I mean, yeah, she was going on and on, but still. That is not cool." Avery's dramatic look of exasperation faded as she took in Lissa's face. "Hey, what's wrong?"
Lissa glanced at Tatiana and then turned back to Avery, taking comfort in her friend's blue-gray eyes. "I need to get out of here." Lissa took a deep, calming breath. "Remember all that good stuff you said you knew about? When is that going to happen?"
Avery smiled. "As soon as you want."
I returned to myself, sitting there on the curb. My emotions were still going crazy, and my eyes were fighting off tears. My earlier doubts were confirmed: Lissa didn't need me anymore... and yet, I still had that feeling that there was something odd going on that I couldn't quite put a finger on. I supposed her guilt over Mia's comment or spirit side effects could be affecting her, but still... she wasn't the same Lissa.
Footsteps on the pavement made me look up. Of all the people who might have found me, I would have expected Abe or maybe Viktoria. But it wasn't.
It was Yeva.
The old woman stood there, a shawl draped over her narrow shoulders, and her sharp, cunning eyes looking down at me disapprovingly. I sighed.
"What happened? Did a house fall on your sister?" I asked. Maybe there was a benefit to our language barrier. She pursed her lips.
"You can't stay here any longer," she said.
My mouth dropped open.
"You... you speak English?"
She snorted. "Of course."
I shot up. "All this time you've been pretending not to? You've been making Paul play translator?"
"It's easier," she said simply. "You avoid a lot of annoying conversation when you don't speak the language. And I've found that Americans make the most annoying conversation of all."
I was still aghast. "You don't even know me! But from the first day, you've been giving me hell. Why? Why do you hate me?"
"I don't hate you. But I am disappointed."
"Disappointed? How?"
"I dreamed you would come."
"I heard that. You dream a lot?"
"Sometimes," she said. The moonlight glinted in her eyes, enhancing her otherworldly appearance. A chill ran down my spine. "Sometimes my dreams are true. Sometimes not. I dreamed Dimka was dead, but I didn't want to believe it, not until I had proof. You were my proof."
"And that's why you were disappointed?"
Yeva drew the shawl more tightly around her. "No. In my dreams, you shone. You burned like a star, and I saw you as a warrior, someone who could do great deeds. Instead? You've sat around and moped. You've done nothing. You haven't done what you came to do."
I studied her, wondering if she really knew what she was talking about. "And what is that exactly?"
"You know what it is. I dreamed that, too."
I waited for more. When it didn't come, I laughed. "Nice vague answer. You're as bad as any scam fortune-teller."
Even in the darkness, I could see the anger kindle in her eyes. "You've come to search for Dimka. To try to kill him. You must find him."
"What do you mean 'try'?" I didn't want to believe her, didn't want to believe she might actually know my future. Nonetheless, I found myself getting hooked in. "Have you seen what happens? Do I kill him?"
"I can't see everything."
"Oh. Fantastic."
"I only saw that you must find him."
"But that's all you've got? I already knew that!"
"It's what I saw."
I groaned. "Damn it, I don't have time for these cryptic clues. If you can't help me, then don't say anything."
She stayed quiet.
I slung my bag over my shoulder. "Fine. I'm leaving then." And like that, I knew where I would go. "Tell the others... well, tell them thank you for everything. And that I'm sorry."
"You're doing the right thing," she said. "This isn't where you should be."
"So I've heard," I muttered, walking away.
I wondered if she'd say anything else: chastise me, curse me, give me more mysterious words of "wisdom." But she stayed silent, and I didn't look back.
I had no home, not here and not in America. The only thing left for me was to do what I'd come to do. I had told Abe I kept my promises. I would.
I'd leave Baia like I told him. And I'd kill Dimitri, as I'd promised myself I would.
I knew where to go now. The address had never left my mind: 83 Kasakova. I didn't know where it was, but once I reached the town's center, I found a guy walking down the street who gave me directions. The address was close by, only about a mile, and I headed out at a brisk pace.
When I reached the house, I was glad to see that the lights were still on. Even as pissed off and raging as I was, I didn't want to wake anyone up.
I also didn't want to speak to Nikolai and was relieved when Denis opened the door.
His expression was all astonishment when he saw me. Despite his bold words back at the church earlier, I don't think he'd really believed I'd join him and the other unpromised ones. He was speechless, so I did the talking.
"I changed my mind. I'm coming with you." I took a deep breath, bracing myself for what came next. I'd promised Abe I'd leave Baia-but I hadn't promised to return to the U.S. "Take me to Novosibirsk."
Chapter Sixteen
Denis and his two unpromised friends, Artur and Lev, were ecstatic that I was going to be part of their posse. But if they expected me to share their crazy enthusiasm for reckless Strigoi hunting, they were about to be sorely disappointed. In fact, it didn't take long after I joined them before they realized that I was approaching the hunt very differently than they were. Denis's friend Lev had a car, and we took turns driving to Novosibirsk. The drive was about fifteen hours, and even though we stopped at a hotel for the night, it was still a lot of continuous time to be cooped up in a small space with three guys who couldn't stop talking about all the Strigoi they were going to kill.
In particular, they kept trying to draw me out. They wanted to know about how many Strigoi I'd slain. They wanted to know what the battle at the Academy had been like. They wanted to know my methods. Anytime my mind turned to those topics, though, all I could think of was blood and grief. It was nothing I wanted to brag about, and it took about six hours on the road for them to finally figure out that they weren't going to get much information from me.
Instead, they regaled me with tales of their own adventures. To be fair, they'd slain several Strigoi-but they'd lost a number of their friends, all of whom had been in their teens, like these guys. My experiences weren't that dissimilar; I'd lost friends too. My losses had been a result of being outnumbered, though. Denis's group's casualties seemed to have been more due to rushing in to without thinking. Indeed, their plan once we got to Novosibirsk wasn't really that solid. They reiterated that Strigoi liked to hunt at places that were crowded at night, like dance clubs, or in remote places like alleys, that made for easy pickings. No one noticed as much when people disappeared from those kinds of places. So Denis's plans mostly involved trolling those hot spots in the hopes that we'd run into Strigoi.