James Baldwin - Burn Artist

Vassily exhaled thinly through his nose, cupping his mug and looking down at it. After a while, he nodded.

I stretched, grimacing as my back clicked. “I’ll shower and get dressed. Then we should go to Mariya’s and call Rodion. I can fill him in with how I expect to deal with the crisis in a reasonable timeframe, which will be some point between the point Grigori combusts and three a.m. tomorrow night.”

“What do you think caused the curse to turn on him?” Vassily pushed back from the table, collected our plates, and took them to the sink.

“Well… I’d assume that this spook has built a set of failsafes into his magic,” I said. “That’s normal procedure, when you’re enacting things like curses. It’s obvious that a mage will expect opposition and plan accordingly for things like counter-curses and protective wards, so that the spell will find some way to get around them, destroy them, or…”

I trailed off as an ugly realization struck me cold.

“What?” Vassily turned. The Hand of Fatima was framed by the collar of his bathrobe, the lapis and pearl eye staring out from his chest.

“Or he’s keyed it so that if the curse is turned by a ward, it defaults to the next closest blood kin of the intended target,” I said. “The guy works for the mafia. It makes total sense… if you can’t twist the target’s wrist with his own life, twist his wrist with his family’s.”

Vassily froze, the tap still running over the plate in his hands. “Your only relative is your dad. Which means—”

“Mariya.” I finished. “Your only living relative is Mariya.”

I sat at the table in stunned silence for a moment as hope began to fade, then fear and disappointment dawned. The tension I’d lost in my stomach and shoulders knotted back into my muscles as the seconds crawled on by. There was a risk of Mariya being hit if Vassily kept the medallion on, and a risk of Vassily being hit if he took it off to try and save his sister’s life: the exact predicament that Kovacs hoped for, in the event of him encountering a mage strong enough to fend off his magic.

“Well…” I licked my lips, and rested back in the chair. “It’s unlikely that Kovacs will try to curse you within twelve hours. He tried and failed to lay magic on two people last night, and he only targeted one before that…”

“No!” Vassily slammed the wet plate down onto the metal counter, and I winced at the painful, sharp sound.

“Vassily, I’m not saying—”

“I can’t fucking believe you! I know you’re a stone cold motherfucker, but I don’t care how much your hate your dad. This is my sister we’re talking about! Your sister!”

I held up my hands. “I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t go do the job. I was just thinking about the level of risk relative to—”

“Relative to what?” He turned on me, eyes flashing. “Relative to your fucking blood feud? We don’t have twelve hours, Alexi. Rodion called at midday. It’s four in the fucking afternoon. We have six hours, at best, before this guy regains enough mojo to try again. And then what? How many people would have to burn alive so that you can breathe easy?”

“I’m going to do the job,” I repeated.

“But you needed to think about it.” Vassily stared at me.

“I think about everything.”

His mouth sloped to the side. “I know you do. And I also know that you’re a terrible fucking liar. You were sitting there weighing it up.”

I flushed, shoulders hunching in, and fought past a wave of irritation and self-righteousness while staring at my remaining tea. He didn’t know what it was like to have to deal with Grigori, and he never would really get it.

“Part of the problem is that we now have no idea where Kovacs is casting his magic from,” I said. “We literally have to catch him in the act of performing the curse to locate him. By that time, Grisha could be dead and you or Mariya could have been attacked.”

“What’s the likelihood of him going back to K&S?” Vassily’s voice was still sharp, but he seemed at least somewhat soothed by my discomfort. Strange how that worked.

“Moderate, but not certain. I know that if it was me doing this kind of magic, I’d have multiple sites of power, places where everything as set up to facilitate the Art that I typically worked… I’d have one at home, and several others scattered around the city. It really depends on just how arrogant he is.”

“How arrogant is he?”

I sighed testily. “Arrogant enough to have a threesome in front of a sliding glass door leading out onto his balcony – with the curtains open – when he knows there's people gunning for him.”

Vassily’s mouth stopped moving for a moment, hanging open, before he squinted and returned to his seat. “Hang on… What?”

“That’s why my first attempt went bad. The events in the room made it very difficult to get a clean shot. There were two women in there, and they kept… getting in the way.”

Incredulousness replaced some of his anger. “Wait. Are you telling me that you watched this guy bang two chicks through your scope?”

“The women were doing most of the… things… with each other.” I stared down at the tabletop.

“That’s like… a one in a million chance event, man. Just think about the twisted probability involved in that scenario.” Vassily leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands linked in the space between his thighs. “… Were they hot?”

I threw up my hands. “Look, no. I didn’t look at them, and… if I’m to go and do anything about this tonight, I really don’t need the Technicolor motion picture of Kovacs’ sex life running through my head while I’m putting rounds through his face.”

“Well, say there’s a moderate chance of Kovacs being at K&S. That means we need to run multiple operations across different sites.” Vassily began to patter his hands on his knees, thinking. “I’ve got an idea of how to organize this. Rodya’s at Vanya’s place down Coney Island way… so let’s pack up and go there instead of Mariya’s. I don’t want to worry her.”

“I have to face Kovacs alone,” I said. “Confronting a mage in his place of power should only be attempted by another mage.”

“What? Is it like some wizard code of honor? Wands at fifty paces?” Vassily got to his feet again, agitated and animated, and strode off past me out of the kitchen and down the hall.

“No. I have to wrest the energy of the circle from him and claim it for myself.” I also got up, not half as spry as he was. “Bystanders are at risk of being exploited, and there’s not enough body armor in the world to stop this kind of magic at close range.”

“The amulet won’t help?” He called back from his bedroom door.

“No. I will be hard pressed enough to defend myself, let alone other people.” I rolled my shoulders back, heading in the same direction.

“Well, I trust you. Just tell me that you’re going to do this tonight. I don’t want to risk Mariya, not now, not ever. This isn’t her life.”

“I’ll fight with everything I have to stop her from getting involved.” And I would, but it hurt to have to think about it.

Dry-mouthed and headache, I left the kitchen and went to my room to prepare for what was surely going to be a long, violent night. Of all the things that happened at the Fox, I could still hang onto Lev’s words. Let nature take its course. There was still hope. The wheels of politics would continue to turn in the background, and Vassily was right. This wasn’t Mariya’s life, not at all. She was as innocent as anyone could be in this business.

“The asshole gave us until nine p.m. tonight to make the call to Maslak,” Rodion said. “And there’s no way in hell we’re going to. Vassily recommends that we send one team to the spook’s condo, one team to nab Maslak, and then we make him speak on the phone to his pet spook while we have him bent over a barrel. Even if he’s being protected by Scappeti’s crew, they ain’t shit against Nic’s team when we get the guys together.”