Chapter 41

Chapter Forty-One

“ S evastopol?” Tatyana felt her heart freeze. “My mother?—”

“Is safe. Vera is glued to her, and I’ve sent guards to check on her; she’ll be under surveillance until I deal with Zara.” Oleg was sitting behind his desk, looking every bit like the dictator that he was. “And you will stay inside the house until I find her.”

She blinked. “You’re locking me inside?”

“For your own good.” His tone was condescending, and it made her want to scream. “Zara doesn’t have a large fighting force. She’ll look to pick off isolated vampires when she attacks the house, and you’re the most vulnerable right now.”

“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to—” Tatyana clamped her mouth shut.

Oleg narrowed his eyes. “What were you going to say?”

“I was going to say that the gold is hers and you should just give it to her, but then I remembered what Elene’s body looked like tied to that chair and I want to kill Zara again.”

Oleg smirked, and it did nothing to tamp down Tatyana’s fury. She just wanted to slap him when he looked like that.

“Good,” he said. “I like this attitude. I told you from the beginning, I like to see your teeth.”

“But I’m not staying in the house.”

“I will lock you in your quarters if I have to.”

“Fuck you!” Tatyana jumped to her feet and started to pace. “Is this because you don’t trust me?”

He raised his eyebrows. “You said yourself that you love her.”

“I don’t love her,” Tatyana snarled. “I love—” She bit her tongue to silence herself.

Oleg cocked his head, watching her with narrowed eyes, but he said nothing.

“I don’t love Zara.” She let out a slow breath. “And I want to call my mother. I want to talk to her. Right now.”

“Ah.” Oleg nodded as if he understood.

He understood nothing.

“Mika said he was getting me a phone and a computer that I could use,” she said. “Where is he?”

“On his way back from Moscow right now, and I imagine he’ll have your devices with him.”

“Good.” She crossed her arms over her chest as she paced.

Oleg was sitting calmly behind a vast dark wood desk that shone in the gold lamplight. His office was lined with bookshelves, but his desk was immaculate with a single black rotary phone on the corner and a leather portfolio to his right.

She wanted to throw the phone across the room, tear the portfolio with her teeth, and then fuck him on the top of that clean, shiny, civilized desk.

His voice was smoke and whispers. “What are you thinking of right now?”

“That I hate feeling out of control.” Tatyana turned and walked out of his office before she could do or say anything she would regret. “If you lock me in my room, I will not forgive you and I will not forget.”

A few hours later, she heard a tap on the door and smelled Mika outside. She opened it, and he held out a silver carafe of blood and a large white box.

“Here and here. Oleg said you needed more blood.”

She snatched the blood, grabbed the box, and slammed the door in his face.

“You’re welcome,” he said from behind the heavy oak. “Do you need any help setting up the computer?”

“I know more than you.” She was already drinking the blood and eyeing the box with the new device.

“The phone is charged and equipped with an unlimited data plan,” Mika continued. “There’s no Wi-Fi in the house, but there are towers close enough that you should be able to use the phone as a hot spot if you need to get online.”

“Good.” She’d rooted around in the garden shed two nights before in anticipation of trying to work with electronics again. Now, as she finished gulping down the carafe of blood, she took the battered old gardening gloves made of leather from under her mattress. “Thank you.”

“If you want to thank me, you’ll stay in your room until I can kill Zara.”

That made her stand up straight. She walked to the door and opened it. “What if I want to kill Zara?”

“Get in line,” Mika muttered, then walked away.

She watched the dark man’s retreat and decided she wasn’t going to think about killing Zara just yet. Not until she put into motion the plan she’d been concocting from the moment she’d last spoken to her mother.

But first she needed access to the world.

She opened the box and saw the largest, most awkward and inelegant laptop she’d ever seen before in her life. It was glorious.

The computer was encased in a clear plastic box, and there was an additional clear bracket included in the box. When she put on the gloves and opened the laptop, she realized the clear bracket was a type of keyboard extender that rested an inch over the keyboard with striking pieces that reached down to each key. By using it, she could type on the laptop without touching the keys at all. It would not be swift or convenient, but it should work to keep her amnis away from the delicate hard drive and circuit board.

Not taking any chances, she pulled on the gloves and managed to turn on the computer. As it started, she reached for the large mobile phone in a similarly clumsy case that was in another box. On the front was the word Nocht with a mirrored bird’s head underneath it.

Attached to the phone was a stylus that made it possible to use the phone without her gloves.

Excellent.

She turned on the phone, quickly logged into the operating system with a dummy email account she used for throwaway phones, and immediately checked the software, pleased to realize that the phone already came equipped with a VPN.

It made sense that any communications company that wanted to work with vampires would have virtual private networks preinstalled, but since this operating system was a completely new animal to her, she didn’t want to assume.

Within a half an hour, she had another VPN installed on the laptop, the phone tethered to the machine, and she was navigating through a rudimentary internet browser to a chat room where she suspected Grimace might be hanging out. She created a new name to use for the moment and looked for any familiar handles.

As soon as she started surfing the message boards, she felt like she could breathe again. It was the middle of the night, but that was when her people—the computer geeks of the world—came alive.

Come to think of it, they were a little bit like their own vampire druzhina. Just with code instead of blood.

It was hard to type, but Tatyana managed, and scrolling to the bottom of a board she knew Grimace liked to frequent, she dropped a line of code that she hoped would catch his attention.

Minutes later, Grimace was private messaging her.

—pidge, where are you??? wait, is this pidge?

She could sense his hesitation, and she didn’t blame him for caution, so she typed a phrase that would only make sense to him.

—pushkin wants his code back.

—it is youuuuuu what the hell and where have you been? do you have my $$$ or what? ru living in the maldives with all my money?

—i am not in the maldives + will have your $$$ but now is not the time. need a favor and i will pay you.

—ur already making me $$$ what is it?

Tatyana took a deep breath, glanced at the closed door, then back to the computer.

—if my mom needed to disappear from svstpl could you help her?

There was a slight pause, and then he typed back.

—tell me when and where.