“Yeah, well, it could be worse,” Cash said. “It’s the sort of thing you tell your daughter, you know. Getting married.”
Yana handed him his phone back. On the screen Ellie grinned at the camera, her arms thrown over the shoulders of two other little monsters. Werewolves, from the eyebrows. All three of them were muddy, and behind them two boys were trying to get to their feet in the mud.
“Why? It’s nothing to do with her,” she asked.
“Jerome is going to be her stepfather,” Cash said. “A whole new family to be part of.”
Yana shook her head and sat down on the bed to take her boots off. They were in her suite, the mirror image of Arkady’s, from the shape to the decor. A set of expensive suitcases were stacked neatly in the corner, and a tray of something sat on the dresser, the plate covered with a chased silver dome.
“That’s stupid. I barely see Ellie. Why would Jerome want anything to do with her?” She kicked her boots across the room and pulled her feet up onto the bed. All of a sudden, she didn’t seem old enough to get married, all bony knees and rounded shoulders. Her eyes narrowed over high, freckled cheekbones. “Besides, that’s rich talk coming from the pot. My brother can’t make his own spawn, so he’s just moved in on you and my kid. Nice little readymade family, huh? What are you going to do? The three of you going to move to the heartlands and become cowboys?”
Cash was briefly distracted by that idea. “No. It’s not like that, and why would we? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cow up close.”
“Oh please, you were at Arkady’s wedding,” Yana said with a perfectly tilted lift of one eyebrow. She held the mock-confused look for a second and then snorted at the expression on Cash’s face. “It was a joke, Kasparas.”
Sometimes Yana was a lot like her mother, but she wouldn’t thank Cash if he pointed that out. He glanced down at the photo of Ellie on his phone. Despite her grin and the camp’s thin comment, clearly unsure if it was a good trait or not—that she “was uncommonly personable and made friends easily”—Ellie still looked very small and very human to him.
Even though she shouldn’t, really.
Cash blanked the screen before he said anything, as if some sort of contagion were possible through a screen. Who knew, after all? It might be.
“Kohary’s here,” he said.
There was a pause as Yana absorbed that. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, her irises were flat human hazel. Her smile was tart and full of mockery as she hopped off the bed.
“Well, Mother’s hospitalityislegendary,” she said. Her image in the long free-standing mirror caught her eye, and she paused to tidy her curls, as much as they’d cooperate. “If you survive it. Now that my brother is his good left pinky, I guess he couldn’t overlook the chance to partake.”
“You okay with that?” Cash asked. He put his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight.
With no one but herself to perform for, Yana’s expression in the mirror was empty. Her eyes flicked toward Cash, and she shrugged.
“Why would I care?” she asked. Her tone was light, but there was a barb hidden under the fluff she used as a lure.
“Because, once upon a time, it was his job to decide if you got to live or die?”
She hitched one shoulder in a shrug and leaned in closer to the mirror to tidy her lipstick with the edge of her nail. “It was nothing personal. Water under the bridge.”
“Because—” Cash broke off as he saw a shadow flicker, long and grayish, against the wall. A second later one of the housekeepers appeared at the door, silent in her sneakers, with a stack of fresh towels for the bathroom. He waited until she’d dropped them off, and by then the urge to be honest had passed. “It’s your wedding, and is Jerome really going to be comfortable meeting the Left Hand over canapés?”
Yana smiled. It was for herself and her mirror image and therefore faded and brief. She didn’t feel much, not like most people did—not hunger, not rage, not anything. It had seemed, when Cash was young, hungry, and spurned, to be enviable.
“Jerome won’t have a clue,” she said. “He’ll shake Luke’s hand and ask him what he does and if he enjoys it. Tell him the Kohary is here, and it’ll mean nothing to him. He might have heard of the Left Hand, but he doesn’t know enough to fear him.”
The thought of Kohary’s marsh-water eyes made Cash shudder.
“He’s scary enough on his own,” he said. “I wouldn’t need to know anything about it to know he was bad news.”
Yana turned and quirked an eyebrow at him. “That’s only because youarethe bad boy.” She paused and then smiled at him. The expression was sickly sweet, and there was acid in her voice when she said, “When I heard Arkady had gotten divorced, I assumed Kohary would be his date to my wedding. I guess he wasn’t ready for the big-league bad boys, though. Not yet.”
She waited. So did Cash, for the brittle tide of self-loathing and insecurity to hit the back of his throat like bile.
They were both disappointed. Cash laughed when Yana’s smile folded into an annoyed pucker.
“I get good performance reviews at work,” Cash said. “The moms at Ellie’s school all think I’m a sweetheart and trust me to have sleepovers. It’s flattering I can even pass for bad-boy training wheels.”
She sniffed and dismissed that with a flick of her hand. “Don’t be smug, Cash. One raw spot scabbed over doesn’t make you invulnerable.”
“I thought you should know about Kohary, that’s all.”
