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Jasper is paler than ever in the dim light, his skeletal tattoos shifting eerily through the fog of cigar smoke drifting around his lean frame. He lights up a cigarette with no filter, inhaling slowly, letting the curls of smoke leak out his nostrils.
“Can I have one of those?”
Benjamin Franklin said the best way to make a friend is to ask for a favor.
Jasper stares at me silently, then hold out his silver cigarette case.
I take a roll-up and let him light it.
Jaspers flicks up the lid of his zippo and creates a flame, all in one movement like a magician.
“Thanks,” I say, puffing lightly.
He’s mixed weed in the tobacco. The smoke singes my sinuses, sending a heady warmth through my brain.
“Settling in?” Jasper asks.
He’s smarter than Vlad, smart enough not to show his animosity openly. But we both know the score. Jasper is Adrik’s right-hand man. We’re in direct competition for his attention.
Smiling, I say, “I already feel right at home.”
“Oh yeah?” Jasper’s upper lip curls, showing a glint of incisor. “Moscow is just like the suburbs of Chicago?”
“Sure.” I shrug. “People are the same everywhere. The vodka’s a little nicer.”
I raise my glass to him, half-friendly, half-mocking, and take a drink.
Then, because it’s not always my intention to be a dick, I ask him, “Where’s home for you?”
It’s the wrong question. Jasper’s eyes narrow, his lips almost disappearing.
“This is it,” he hisses. “I don’t have another life waiting for me when I’m tired of playing gangster.”
I consider quipping,So there’s no Mrs. Skeletor?but I keep a lid on it, instead saying to Vlad, “How ‘bout you, big boy? You an orphan too?”
“No,” Vlad grunts. “My mother is alive. My father was killed trying to bring Ivan Petrov home.”
Fuuuuuck me. When will I learn to do the tiniest bit of research before opening my mouth?
“Sorry,” I say.
“Why? You didn’t know him.”
Aggression radiates out of the two of them, dull and heated from Vlad, sharp and cold from Jasper.
I’m not getting anywhere with chit-chat. It might be time for some old-fashioned flattery.
“Leo told me about the boxing tournament at Kingmakers,” I say to Jasper. “He said you almost won the whole thing. That you might have taken down Dean if you didn’t have to fight Silas first.”
Jasper has his roll-up tucked in the corner of his mouth, keeping his hands free so he can crack his knuckles swiftly and systematically. He runs down the fingers one by one, each pop as crisp as if his hands really were made of nothing but bone. When he’s finished, he pinches the spliff between his thumb and index finger and lets out a vast cloud of smoke, through which his eyes glint, pale and green—an amphibian in murky water.
“I’d like to fight him again,” he says.
That’s how I’d feel, too—I’d want another chance.
Grinning, I say, “Should we go find him? He lives here, doesn’t he?”
Jasper shakes his head. “Dean went back to Kingmakers one more year—to teach.”
