Page 46 of The Last Dance

I thought about Iren, in the room, refusing to be afraid even as the world closed in. I thought about the last line of the letter.

I watched the light until it finally went out.

Chapter Twelve

~ Iren ~

Vadim hadn’t slept. If he had, it was in the standing way some wild animals sleep—one eye open, claws ready, brain clocked to the next sound on the wire.

At six-forty a.m. I found him in the main corridor, the one that ran the full length of the house, standing at a window that framed the east lawn like a Renaissance painting, glass cold enough to haze the view.

He wore a suit that looked like it had been welded to his bones, and his hair was a black, perfect line from forehead to collar, not a strand out of alignment.

The sky outside was a nothing gray, the kind of morning that never resolved into proper day. I could see his reflection in the glass: face sharp as a crime, gold watch on the wrist, a cup of coffee in his hand cooling by the quarter-second. He wasn’t drinking it, just holding it, as if the act itself was a dare to the universe to intervene.

Lin ghosted through the corridor behind him, doing something to a vase that probably didn’t need to be done. He saw me, made a note on his phone, and drifted off with the professional silence of a man whose job it was to haunt nice homes. I got the impression he didn’t like mornings, or maybe he just didn’t like sharing them with mortals.

I almost said something to Vadim.

Almost.

Instead, I watched him watch the world, and wondered if he’d even noticed I was there. I didn’t expect him to say good morning. He wasn’t built for that.

He didn’t turn around when he said: “There’s news.”

His voice was low, half an octave below the ambient silence.

I padded up to the window, still barefoot, and leaned against the cold stone frame. “Good or bad?”

He looked at my reflection, not at me. “It depends.”

We stood there, both looking at the same blank sky, both pretending we could see more than we did.

After a minute, Lin reappeared, notepad in hand, and hovered behind us until Vadim turned. “Study,” was all he said.

I followed.

Vadim’s study was the only room in the house that didn’t try to impress. The walls were lined with shelves, filled less with books than with folders and leather-bound ledgers.

A single monitor on the desk, off. Two chairs—one his, one the universal “guest” model, which was only slightly less comfortable than a church pew. The window behind the desk was shuttered. The air smelled faintly of ink, and something sharper, metallic.

Yuri was waiting in the guest chair, his suit and tie a shade lighter than Vadim’s, but no less armor. He looked up when I entered, and nodded once, like a concession in a chess game already lost.

Vadim sat. “Report,” he said to Yuri.

Yuri spoke without preamble: “The letter from Parsons. The postmark is not from his home, or his practice. It’s a secondary drop, three miles north.”

Vadim absorbed this the way a man absorbs a blow: with stillness. “Active?”

“Unused for three years before last week,” Yuri said. “He set it up as a dead-drop, probably for this purpose alone.”

I sat on the arm of a leather sofa, trying to look casual and failing.

Vadim steepled his fingers, the watch glinting. “What else.”

Yuri handed him a folder. It was heavy, thick, the paper inside collated and tabbed. “The technicals pulled another letter. This one was inside a catalog, addressed to the club’s old mailbox. Lin caught it before it was trashed. It was never opened.”

Vadim took the folder, leafed to the plastic-sleeved evidence bag, and extracted a standard white envelope, barely thicker than the junk mail it had been hiding inside. He looked at it for a long time, thumb running over the seal.