“You absolutely are not.”
Lina and I watched in bemused fascination as Luka and Niko faced each other down across the bar top like opposing generals. They’d launched into it as soon as Fjolar had left, after I’d had the chance to sum up what Lina and I had learned at the hotel. Hazel eyes glaring into brown, her profile like a cameo version of his with their stubborn chins, fine lips, and classical noses, they reminded me of that optical illusion, the vase that melted into two faces when you looked at it differently.
“Yes I am, you miserable wildebeest!” Niko gave Luka a robust shove against his chest, growling in frustration when he barely budged a half step. “Ugh, why are you so big, God.”
He growled back at her, about ten octaves lower. “Do you understand that this is dangerous, Nikoleta? We have no idea what’s happening here, or what we’re going to find in Perast. The police are supposed to be doing the investigating, and if this one didn’t make mazes come alive out of ceilings, and that one didn’t sound like a Guillermo del Toro angel, I wouldn’t be letting any of this happen. But no police is going to do anything good with this, especially not ours, who handle nothing more dangerous than Mihajlo the Widower bellowing at lampposts and palm trees on the weekends. And if I don’t take them myself, these two will go off to Perast alone, and I. Cannot. Have that.”
These two? Malina mouthed at me. I looked away from her. I hadn’t forgotten how furious I was with her, even if now wasn’t the time to air that out.
“What even happened to you, Riss?” she said cautiously. “That ceiling. You haven’t done something like that in so long. I didn’t think you . . .”
“No,” I agreed coolly. “I didn’t think I could either, and I didn’t mean to do it. It happened on its own, and it was so strong. What about you? Why were you looking at him that way? That boy, Fjolar, I mean. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you talk to anyone like that.”
Her nose wrinkled again, as if she couldn’t help it. “He just sounded so . . . one-note? He really didn’t mean it, that he was sorry about Mama. Or maybe he did, a little, but there wasn’t much room for that. I’ve never heard anyone sound so single-minded before.”
“And what was it? The one note?”
She shuddered, shoulders twitching. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“Well, do it anyway. Sing it, I don’t care. If it bothered you so much, I need to know.”
She made a disgruntled sound, then hummed a perfunctory snatch of song, but it was enough. I caught the sense of voracious hunger-lust, conjuring images of me with tousled hair and dewy lips, straddling Fjolar with his arms flung over his head in abandon, his eyes latched to mine.
I let out my breath in a long rush, rubbing at my arms.
“Yes,” Lina said emphatically. “It was just like that. Pure wanting. Hungry. Like he really meant it when he called you a fruit, something to eat. It was disgusting.”
I didn’t think it was at all. It should have bothered me, coming from a stranger, but instead the idea of it made my insides feel like they’d been melted into molasses and twirled around a spoon. I dipped into my tunic pocket for my phone when Lina looked away, and found an entry for Fjolar Winnnerr of bet: owe two warm sticky kiss to!!
I hastily tucked my phone away.
“You’re not Tata, Luka,” Niko was saying as I forced my attention back to them, my cheeks burning. “You don’t get to ‘let’ anything happen. No one made you Grand Deciding Vizier of Significant Decision Things just because Mama died. I’m saying that I’m going, so I’m going. You literally cannot stop me unless you punch me in the face hard enough to knock me out, and you always say—super annoyingly, I might add—that that causes permanent brain damage when it happens in movies. Are you prepared to brain damage me, brother? Are you, truly? Go on, peer deep into that patriarchal soul.”
Luka put a hand over his face.
“Why, Heavenly Father?” he moaned into his own palm. “Why saddle me with this brat, when everything was so fine without her for three glorious years? Why give her the will of a thousand mules in this incredibly tiny gnat body?”
“Oh, stop it, beast, you’re not even religious,” Niko said, bouncing up and down on her toes as she smelled victory, the bell around her ankle tinkling merrily. “Besides, brats are your favorite. Look how you like Iris.”
“Hey!” I protested. “My brattiness, which is not even a thing, is beside the point here. If we don’t go now, we’ll miss the last ferry from Perast to Our Lady today; there won’t be any after five. We don’t have time for this.”
“Luka,” Niko began again, taking a softer tack this time. “I know how you feel. Probably better than anyone. And that’s why I have to come. I can’t not be there. You understand me, right?”
They stared at each other for a long moment, and Luka finally slapped his palm on the counter in defeat. “Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “Fine, Nikoleta. But only because—”
“Yes, yes, thank you,” she broke in, grabbing his hand and giving it a sound kiss. I watched the two of them uncertainly, not sure what had shifted the tide, but I put the thought aside as anticipation surged through me. We were going. We were doing something.
HALF AN HOUR later, all four of us had somehow jammed ourselves into Luka’s ancient cherry-red Mazda. As we set off north along the Adriatic Highway I still felt a little giddy, a helium sort of high that buoyed me up even though I knew it would leave me dizzy and deflated once it faded. Luka glanced at me a few times, as if he wanted to say something, but each time he bit back whatever it was.
Outside, the narrow highway wound along the contours of the bay, overhung with the cliffs above us. The surface of the water had swallowed both the mountains and sky, reflecting slick, blurred replicas of blinding blue, gray stone, and even the whites of the clouds that had settled midway down the cliffs like curls of exhaled breath. Beside us, neat ranks and files of buoys bobbed in the water, hosting acres of mussel plantations.
Barely twenty minutes later, the highway dipped west and the first stone houses of Perast came into view. The little fishermen’s town nestled at the gently sloping base of Mount Saint Elias, sheltered from the northern winds during winter, and angled toward the cool breezes that funneled through the Verige Strait in high summer.
“Look,” Luka said, and I followed his gaze. Across from Perast, stranded in the middle of the bay and dwarfed by the granite loom of the mountains all around, two islets stood guard like tiny, twinned versions of lost Avalon. “You can see them from here. Saint George, and Our Lady of the Rocks.”
Malina stirred in the backseat, propping herself up in the space between us. “Saint George is abandoned, right? Just the old Benedictine abbey.”