Sekret by Smith Lindsay

Sekret by Smith Lindsay

Author:Smith, Lindsay [Smith, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Published: 2014-04-01T00:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 23

PAVEL, MY GUARD, hovers over me. Watching him is like hearing an echo; his face trails behind his movements, and his words dot his face like breath in the winter air. The American sunshine man radiates somewhere over my shoulder; my bared back is already peeling with a burn.

“Get her out of here.” Pavel’s voice dances before me. “Don’t let her back into the main room. I’ll alert the others.”

Someone’s hand closes tight on my arm and faces swirl before me like little galaxies, exploding into balls of nothingness and radiation. “Too much Shampanskoye,” another guard says from the end of a comet’s tail. We’re orbiting the party like a Sputnik satellite, snapping little spy photographs.

“Please, Yulia, you have to shake it off.” Valentin helps me sit on the stone steps; we’re facing a massive painting of Tchaikovsky, surrounded by Karl Marx, Stalin, Lenin, and a sea of faceless farmers harvesting wheat as rays of sunshine and music soar overhead. They fly through the cosmos with me, shrouded by a planet’s umbra, safe from the scrubber’s glow. “Focus on your mental shield—try to keep it in your head—”

“What’s going on?” Footsteps pound down the staircase toward us. I flop backward against the sharp stairs and see Sergei from upside down. Shostakovich cinches around my thoughts.

“The scrubber’s here with one of Gruzova’s co-workers.” Valentin’s voice turns stony. “I think he hurt Yulia.”

“I’m fine,” I say.

Sergei pushes his hand under my shoulder blades and props me back up. “Scrubbers are dangerous. She should steer clear of them. All of them.” There’s an edge to his voice, cutting through the haze.

Valentin’s cheeks burn darkly. “I would never do that to her.”

“But you could. Maybe you did it by accident.” Sergei crouches down on my other side and snaps his fingers in front of me. “Yulia? Null, one, two. Follow the sound of my voice.”

There is no galaxy, no blinding sun. My head throbs and the marble is too firm against my hipbones, and I’m sinking back down to earth. I smack Sergei’s hand out of my face. “I’m fine. Just a little dizzy, is all.” I nestle into Shostakovich’s sawing strings section. “I didn’t even get a good look at the guy.”

“As well you didn’t. If he was targeting you…” Valentin grimaces.

“Don’t scare her.” Sergei won’t take his hand off my shoulder. It weighs on me like lead. “Bad enough she had to dance with you, flatfoot.”

Valentin sets his lips in a straight line. “I’d better get back. I want to help our guards hunt him down.”

“I’m not some weak thing you have to protect.” I rub my temples. Now that my adrenaline has faded, there’s a sharp pain rooting around in my skull. It treads a familiar path through constricted blood vessels, though I can’t recall ever feeling this pain before.

“I know you aren’t, but I’d rather he try to scrub me than get ahold of you. You work with touch, and if he were to … grab your arm, or something—”

I nod, halfhearted, at Valentin.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.