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“Do you know for sure?” There was a tremble in my voice.
“No one knows. But she vanished, right? Like she’d never even been on this Earth in the first place. She must be dead. And I knew you’d be just like her. I could see it. Ruining everything you touched, hurting everyone who cared about you, chasing after crazy dreams and supernatural beings instead of planting your damn feet on the ground and living a decent life like any decent, sane person would. And that was why I hated you. Even if I didn’t. I didn’t hate you.” He stammered. “You know what I mean.” He finished his beer. This time, however, he didn’t wave at the waiter to bring him another one. He’d had enough.
I dragged in a breath. Then another, and another. I couldn’t look at him, so I looked out the window. It was dark, and I had to go. I stood up, threw a few bills on the table for my water, and waited for him to acknowledge that I was leaving.
“Oh, right. It’s late.” He stood up, shaky on his feet.
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For telling me the truth.”
“Yeah, well. I hope it helps.”
“It does. It helps a great deal.”
We walked out of the bar and stayed side by side, for a minute, on the sidewalk. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one.
“Jesus, Dad. I don’t smoke.”
“If you’re still calling me Dad, what do you call him?”
“Father?”
He laughed. “Very posh.”
He stared in the distance for a while, and I followed his gaze. He was looking at the Academy walls up on the mountain.
“You should sleep at night, you know,” I said.
“How could I? He found you again. And he has a new scythe.”
“It must be new, right? I keep wondering… But you said it broke into a million pieces, so it must be new.”
He nodded. “It looked like glass dust on the ground.”
“No way he could repair it. He replaced it.”
“For sure. Does that help?”
“I don’t know yet… It might.”
We stayed in silence for another few moments, then we each went our separate ways without much fuss or unnecessary words. I’d discovered more than I was hoping for tonight.
He was protecting me. Hurting me but protecting me at the same time. That’s fucked up. But it was true. And I knew it was true precisely because it was so fucked up. Stepan Lazarov had never made much sense. If anything, all these years, he’d stayed in character.
I found a dark, deserted alley and teleported at the Academy, right in my dorm-room. Corri was waiting for me on top of a mountain of pillows, her knees dragged to her chest, her little body shivering all over.
“Corri, what’s wrong? I told you not to worry.”
Her almond eyes were wide and filled with fear. With a trembling finger, she pointed behind me.
I turned around to face the door. The closed, very much locked door of my room. Well, it wasn’t closed right now, let alone locked. Valentine Morningstar was waiting for me in the threshold. Crassus was standing straight and as mute as ever behind him. I sighed a heavy sigh from the deepest pits of my lungs.
“Let me guess,” I tipped my chin at Crassus. “He started paying you again.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
