The Ice Coven by Max Seeck

Author:Max Seeck [Seeck, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

49

Yusuf leans against the hood of his car and lights a cigarette. A police van is parked outside the kambo spa across the street, and the sidewalk has been cordoned off with blue-and-white police tape. The gray apartment blocks rising on either side of the one-story spa flicker with bright blue light; curious faces peer down from balconies.

Yusuf sucks the nicotine into his lungs, then holds his breath, as if giving the poison a chance to absorb properly into his circulation. Then he releases the smoke in a thin ribbon from the corner of his mouth.

Yusuf has been smoking more than ever lately. He has gradually given up all sports involving aerobic conditioning and focused on lifting. After the breakup last spring, hoisting heavy iron seemed like the only thing that eased his mind. Music playing on his headphones, the clank of weights, chalk puffing up from his palms, the smell of sweat. The lactates flooding his muscles; the burn that washes over the body during the final counts of a long series of negative reps. Muscles bulging and trembling from the strain.

More than anything, this has been about reinventing himself, Yusuf supposes. Enough with the athletic, beautiful dark-skinned boy everybody loves who performs a simple hat trick on the pitch, then hits the showers and rushes home to his fiancée. The time has come to be something else. He wants to experience what it’s like being the alpha—and in such killer shape by summer that he’ll make panties wet on the Mummotunneli dance floor.

At the same time, Yusuf knows it: the whole thing is so fucking ridiculous. In spite of his bluster and the vows he’s sworn at the mirror, things have been dead silent on the female front in recent months. Not that he hasn’t had plenty of opportunities. But he can’t be bothered with sex right now. Generalized irritation has robbed him of his libido.

Yusuf looks up from his shoes to the sight of a double-length semi slowly passing on its way downtown. When it eventually disappears from view, he sees Jessica cross the street and approach him.

“There are a few bottles in the fridge,” she says as she walks up. “They’ll be taken to the lab for analysis. It’s possible all the substances found in Olga’s body will turn up, either mixed with the frog toxin or separately.”

“I’m sure they will. Unless the shooter grabbed them already.”

A tram turns the corner and clanks by lazily, making for Hakaniemi Square and the subway station. A dozen or so students in dark green college coveralls are carousing in the rear.

Jessica sits on the hood at Yusuf’s side. “What do you think? About all this?”

He takes a drag, then lifts his face toward the anthracite sky; the heavy cloud layer has made off with the moon. “Olga Belousova came here on Saturday. Maybe alone, maybe with someone. Maybe that someone caught wind today that we found a body at Aurinkolahti. Decided it had to be Olga. That the marks on her arms would lead the police here, that we’d start asking questions.

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