LITMIR.BIZ

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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.”

      Chapter 2

      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.

      “What exactly is she?” he asked.

      “A rusalka.” Gregor dropped into a chair, holding her fast. She stumbled back a few steps before righting herself to glower at the ailing Lisko. Then she saw the pain etched deep into his face and settled for an indignant sniff instead.

      No. She wasn’t one of those maudlin sirens who perched in trees over rivers, trying to seduce fishermen into joining them in death. She was a vila who rode the clouds like they were her chariot and cavorted with a sisterhood of mischievous wind nymphs. At least, she would be if she could get free of her ballet shoe.

      “I am no--”

      “I was one too,” Sonya said.

      Anya pressed her lips together and glared at her sister, who always thought she knew what was best for Anya. So Sonya had been a different kind of ghost. That must be where the whole forgive-Gregor-and-live-again story had come from.

      Queen Jerisavlja herself had told Anya she was a vila. But she had no idea how rusalkas and vilas were different. Sonya had been tethered to a teapot, just like Anya was stuck to her slipper, and would be until she could find Stas. Then again, Sonya had slumbered peacefully inside her teapot while Anya had been wide-awake for half a century, without even sleep to break up the monotony of her solitude, the whole time fearing Stas would die before she found him, and she would never be free.

      “Remind me what a rusalka is?” Yuchenko asked.

      She could correct their misassumption, but maybe it was better to let the error stand. If they believed in their plan of saving Anya’s life and Gregor’s soul, they were more likely to help her. If they knew what Anya really wanted, and what it required, Sonya would surely try to stop her.

      Dmitri waved at Anya as if the answer was self-evident. “She’s a watery revenge ghost with built-in sex appeal, though I have to say, Sonya had more.”

      Yuchenko’s attention flicked back to her, probably on sheer instinct.

      On the same instinct, she glanced down at herself. Her hipbones jutted, as prominent as ever. At the tip of her small breasts, her nipples stabbed through the sheer satin of her nightgown. They ached like they’d been hard for days.

      For Anya’s whole life, people had measured her sharp angles against sweet, pretty, curvy Sonya. Apparently, the unfavorable comparisons would continue in her afterlife. Without exactly planning it, she hissed an eerie siren sound at Dmitri, and he inched backward.

      How gratifying. She brushed the palm of her free hand against her thigh and turned back to Yuchenko.

      His gaze seemed glued to her chest, and the tip of his tongue swept out to lick his bottom lip. The sight of it sent an unfamiliar heat through her, curling low in her belly. She clenched around it, only making the sensations more intense.

      Phew. She exhaled. It was going to take a while to get used to having a body again and the not entirely unpleasant sensation of it being ogled.

      Maybe Inspector Puppy didn’t find her as wanting as her brother-in-law, or maybe it was just an effect of her vila powers. She’d never tried acting like a siren before.

      Sonya turned to the inspector. “Don’t mind Anya. My sister is trapped between worlds until she avenges her killer, and her siren powers are all she has.”

      Anya tried not to let her sister’s dismissal rankle her.

      “Demyan killed her?” Yuchenko asked.

      “No,” Gregor and Dmitri spoke at the same time.

      Anya’s thoughts snagged on the technicalities of the question, but she didn’t chime in. Sonya watched her with a troubled expression, seeing more than Anya wanted her to, as she so often had.

      All at once, her sister embraced her. “I am so glad to see you,” she whispered in Anya’s ear.

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