We sit in silence for a moment while I try to reorient myself to which way is up and which way is down. Back along the alley,one of the three amigos groans. I freeze, but the groaner doesn’t move or make a noise again beyond that single pitiful whine.
“So,” I say once I’ve got my bearings back a bit. “What now?”
The B.E.B. tilts his head back against the dumpster and looks at me sideways. Those ocean-rinsed eyes are impossible to read in the low light. “That depends,” he says.
“On?”
“On whether you’re done being reckless for the evening, or whether I should clear my schedule.”
Against my better judgment, I laugh. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself in my thirty years on this planet, it’s that I am a never-ending supply of bad choices.”
He scrutinizes me for a moment. My cheeks flush under the heat of his gaze. He’s got this calm, unblinking way of looking that makes me feel like a butterfly pinned up on some creepy bug scientist’s wall. “You’re handling attempted rape remarkably well,” he observes.
I laugh again. “‘Handling’? No. ‘Dissociating,’ maybe.” I snap my fingers in front of his eyes, then in front of mine. “Are you even real? Am I? Is any of this? Am I caught in some dream? Have I fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole? It’s like licking to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop: The world may never know.”
“I take it back,” he drawls sarcastically. “You’re not handling it well at all.”
“Definitely not,” I admit. “But what else is a girl to do?” I pull my coat tighter around myself and squint at him. “Anyway. Enough about my coping mechanisms. You didn’t answer my question: Are you real?”
He shrugs. “Remains to be seen.”
“Well, do you have a name, Mr. Apparition? Or should I just keep calling you ‘Blue-Eyed Bastard’ in my head?”
“I suppose I’ve been called worse.” His brow lifts in mild amusement. “Matvei is a little easier to say, though.”
“Matvei,” I repeat, testing the feel of it in my mouth. “I’m Cassandra. Cass to my friends.” I stick my hand out. “Nice to formally meet you. Even if it’s under these incredibly fucked-up circumstances.”
He looks at my hand for a beat, then takes it. His fingers close around mine. That’s three times now he’s touched me tonight. Bad things come in threes, or so my mother used to say. Then again, my mother also used to say that God has a plan for everyone, and look how that turned out for Giana and me.
I go to shift my weight as I pull my hand back, and as I do, my knee lights up. I suck air through my teeth at the sudden rush of pain.
Matvei notices. His eyes drop to my leg. Without a word, he reaches into his jacket and produces a white handkerchief.
He folds it into a neat square and presses it against the torn skin of my knee. It’s bizarre how soft his touch is. I just watched him pulverize three very scary dudes, but here he is tending to my wounds, tender as an Eskimo kiss.
I was joking a second ago, but now, I’m really starting to wonder if I am in fact hallucinating this entire event.
“Are you this nice to all the damsels in distress you rescue?” I ask.
“You’re the first of your kind, actually. I don’t usually bother,” Matvei replies. “Generally, I find they’ve brought the distress upon themselves.”
“And yet here you are. Dabbing my knee with a monogrammed hankie like some kind of Victorian gentleman.”
“No one’s ever accused me of beingthatbefore.”
I glance down the alley at the dark, ominous stack of bodies that Matvei just so courteously arranged for me. “Yeah, I guess not.”
I feel the tendrils of fear starting to snake in around my heart and my throat the longer I look at them. It might’ve choked me out altogether if it weren’t for two light points of pressure on the side of my jaw.
“Hey.Hey.Look at me,” Matvei whispers as he turns my face back toward his with a pair of fingertips. “Not at them. Forget about them.”
The eye contact lingers for a moment. His irises are huge and blue, like two alien moons that no one but me has ever seen before. I gulp, then turn away and shrug off his touch.
“They don’t bother me,” I lie shamelessly. “I’ve seen worse.”
That’s not true. Giana’s coffin lid was closed. But I’ve certainlyimaginedworse.
Like the gentleman he claims he isn’t, Matvei lets me get away with that blatant untruth. He’s in no hurry to fill in the silence, though. I get the feeling that he’s perfectly comfortable with strange tensions.