Basilisk (The Korsak Brothers #2)(6)
That, ironically, surprised me too.
I liked Oregon and I was lucky to be able to have an opinion one way or the other, which made me like it more. I didn’t mind the lack of ocean. I’d seen it in South Carolina for a short time, and I’d have liked to have seen more, but if I needed water, there was also the river. But more than that, there was Stefan.
He was overprotective and he called me kid, but he was my brother—mine—and I sort of loved him. Not that I’d say that. You couldn’t just go and say things like that aloud. TV said so. Movies said so. General guy culture said so—I’d learned that from close observation. Everything said so.
Almost three years with him and the possibility of losing him said so.
Funny the things you don’t want to say and tempt fate, the things you don’t want to admit to yourself, no matter how often you think them. We were free and alive now, but that might not always be true.
“I’m not a kid and that ladder is too high. You could break a leg,” I said. Yet there I was, thinking it again. People were fragile. They were like ancient glass found in Roman ruins waiting to shatter into pieces at one simple touch, thousands of pieces that could never be glued back together. Easily . . . extraordinarily easily broken, those normal people.
I wasn’t normal. I tried to be, but I wasn’t. The Institute had made certain of that.
Stefan was painting Mrs. Adelaide Sloot’s house today. Every morning before he left, I made him leave a schedule pinned to the refrigerator with my Albert Einstein magnet. Fine. I was forced to admit it: the babysitting thing went both ways. Now with my showing up, he let the brush fall back in the can of mint green paint and looked the ladder’s entire ten feet plus half of his own size down at me and my scowl from where he perched on top. “Okay, that’s out of nowhere.” He meant the kid part, not the ladder complaint. He’d made it clear I was profoundly overprotective lots of times before. Profound was an exaggeration, as was pathological. I thought he’d been carrying around a dictionary that particular day—stuck on the letter P. I was cautious, that was all. Besides, considering what he’d done to protect me in the past, I wasn’t sure I came anywhere close to falling in the same category.
Anatoly’s death and Stefan’s not telling me about it proved that, didn’t they?
He ran a hand through his short, wavy black hair, leaving flecks of green. “I promise to be extremely careful with this Tower of Babel–tall ladder.” He said it solemnly enough, but I had my doubts. “Why aren’t you at work? You fought kicking and screaming to work in a public place, and now you’re skipping?”
“I did not kick or scream. Are you mocking me?” And I had to be out in public eventually. I couldn’t live my entire life sitting in the house, afraid I’d be spotted by employees of the Institute. I wasn’t letting them take more years away from me. They weren’t taking any more of my life. This wasn’t about me, though. This was about Anatoly, what Stefan had done, and how to approach the subject without making him dig in his heels harder. He was stubborn. I was too.
As I thought about it, I swung a bag in my hand that I could easily throw up to him or at him, depending on his mentioning kicking or screaming again. I added, “And, I repeat, yet again, I’m not a kid.”
“I would never mock you. Make fun of you or tease you, maybe, but never mock.” That was twice as solemn and earnest and a flat-out lie. Maybe his head. I could hit him in the head with the bag. No. Then his chances of falling that treacherous ten feet only increased. Revenge was tricky that way. “And what’s up with the kid thing? Am I wearing a T-shirt that says you’re a kid?” he went on with a grin. “Did you hear me talking in my sleep last night and going down the hall to the bathroom, calling you cute names? Things like ‘puppy’ or ‘skipper’? Something that made you resent me enough to chase me down while I paint gingerbread?”
Cascade Falls was a long way from Miami, or Bolivia, where we’d spent two years before coming to this tiny Oregon town of “homey” but expensive restaurants; small artsy stores; happy, pleasant people—or unhappy, unpleasant people with excellent acting skills. I was still debating the last part. Caution and suspicion—they kept you alive. There were also tourists, the newlywed or nature type—and the puking type, thanks to me—but definitely not the mob types Stefan was doing his best to avoid. The town also had several bed-and-breakfasts, as did the surrounding small cities.
Bed-and-breakfasts, like Mrs. Sloot’s, seemed odd to me. It didn’t matter that all the Web sites and brochures talked about your “home away from home.” Why would I want to stay in the home of someone I didn’t know, didn’t trust, and didn’t have a thorough background check on? At least, theoretically didn’t have a background check on. White lies didn’t hurt when your brother thought you spent too much time on the computer.
Despite all that, there was one positive to bed-and-breakfasts—they always had gingerbread trim in need of painting. Stefan now had more than enough money in offshore accounts his father—our father, he kept telling me—had given him before we’d left for Bolivia. Anatoly Korsak had made a massive amount of it in his time running the majority of the Miami mob for twenty or so years. Now, part of that money let Stefan work as a handyman and still afford to feed us.