Dasha peeled herself away from Violetta's shoulder, rubbing the burning tears from her cheeks with a fist. Her voice trembled.
"I don't care what color it is. Just—anything but yellow, please. Do something."
"Hush, sweetheart," Viola murmured, pulling her close again, her tone soft and steady. "Hush."
Viola gave me a quick look, a silent signal to get moving and put the plan into action. Expecting her to drive now would've been ridiculous; at that moment, Dasha wanted nothing but Viola's shoulder. Thinking fast about who else could help, I headed for the room where, I hoped, Diana, Max, and Arthur were still asleep.
Who would have guessed vampires could sleep so soundly? I knocked, called them by name, but the only response from the other side of the door was the steady, synchronized breathing of the lucky ones who'd spent the whole night talking. Apparently, sensitivity to noise was a selective trait: the more anxious you were by nature, the easier it was to slip out of Morpheus's sweet embrace.
I didn't dare return and tear Viola away from inconsolable Dasha for a trip to the store. So instead, I went down to the lobby in search of someone—anyone—who might help.
Downstairs, the place was nearly empty, and, unfortunately, none of the faces belonged to anyone I knew by name. Probably kids from the sports teams who had arrived at the hotel with our year group. With no better option, I made for the front desk.
"Excuse me," I began politely, "could you call a taxi for me?"
"Good afternoon!" The girl behind the desk, immaculate in a white blouse buttoned to the throat, greeted me with a bright smile and immediately began typing something into her computer. "Of course. Where to?"
I tried to think of a suitable store, but nothing came to mind except the supermarket owned by Nick's parents. Yet I'd sworn off setting foot on their property. Not just for groceries—I'd even begged Kostya to move my grandfather from their nursery to ours, promising to care for him properly, but my father had only laughed and told me I had no idea what I was asking.
I didn't know how Karimov's adoptive parents lived now, or whether they'd changed their opinion of me. And for obvious reasons, I had no desire to cross paths with them again—or stir up memories by going there. The last thing I needed was a fresh pile of problems.
"Is there a big supermarket nearby?"
The girl cast me a wary, ambiguous look, which I couldn't quite read until she asked:
"With alcohol?"
Of course. Everyone expects new graduates to be hunting for booze.
"No. With hair dye."
Her brows arched in pointed surprise, but she said nothing. Her fingers fluttered across the keyboard, entering a search online. When at last she found a suitable address, she lifted the receiver from the desk phone and held it to her ear. After a brief conversation—presumably with the taxi service—she quoted me the fare.
"One-way only?" I asked, swallowing hard, secretly hoping for a "no." But to my misfortune, she nodded.
Great. The taxi cost a small fortune.
"Shall I confirm?"
I shook my head emphatically. I didn't even have that much cash on me. Unlike Rostov, Xertonia still had no easy app-based taxi service, and transferring money directly to a driver's card without a lengthy argument was out of the question. I'd learned that back at Halloween, when I had to call a cab for the girls using the number Dad had left me.
When the girl hung up, I asked whether it was possible to reach the supermarket by public transport. In return I got a long, detailed explanation of how to get out of the labyrinth of the "Edelweiss Garden," how many kilometers and which road to follow, where the bus stop was and what it looked like—and learned that buses came about once an hour. Why did they have to build a trendy resort complex somewhere you could only reach with a driver?
Turning my phone over in my hands, I began scrolling through my contacts, wondering who else I could call. My eyes landed on Stas's name, and my heart clenched. Yesterday's courage—the impulse to finally set things straight between us—had dissolved into nothing.
A swirl of questions filled my head, and the answers that surfaced on their own seemed to drive another nail into the fragile dream-castle that sheltered my last hopes for a happily ever after.
The "ever after" part was guaranteed to us by birthright. But the "happily"…
It was all too easy to imagine Stas saying, in an offhand voice, that he wasn't looking for anything serious, that he'd soon be leaving for the capital anyway. Easier still to picture my eyes filling with tears at his words. Running through every possible scenario in my head, I felt as if I were living them all at once, each potential branch of the future sinking its roots into my mind and leaving an imprint there.
But I was so tired of living like this—when a hundred images flickered before my eyes, yet not one of them reflected the reality I had to inhabit.
I tried to convince myself that Stas hadn't yet returned to the spa grounds, and somehow managed to resist calling him. I genuinely wanted to take the situation into my own hands and handle everything alone. I needed that—like a breath of fresh morning air. So little in my life truly belonged to me anymore, free from the shadow of my dark companion and the power that coursed through my veins. Even the smallest personal victory, even if it meant solving a problem I hadn't created, could serve as a precious anchor these days.
Getting off the grounds of the Edelweiss Garden was no easy feat, though not impossible. The ridiculous road signs only made things more confusing instead of helping, but I refused to give in. Again and again, I returned to the main road after taking the wrong turn, until it finally struck me that the widest road had to be the right one. And, as it turned out, my logic held true: soon I stood before the wrought-iron gates I had once seen with my father.
The hardest part was still ahead—finding the wretched bus stop three kilometers away. At first, the map on my phone tracked my location just fine. Honestly, in the beginning I didn't even need it, since all I had to do was follow the main road as it wound along the edge of the forest and past scattered village houses. But as the houses thinned and the landscape deepened into a vivid emerald, thick with firs and pines, the signal vanished. My dot on the screen froze, though my feet carried me farther and farther.
The monotony of the road offered my restless mind a strange kind of reprieve, yet the silence pressed down on me. I regretted leaving my headphones behind in my rush—at least music would have kept me company.
Not even the birds were singing. The whole forest had stilled, as though holding its breath, watching me—an intruder—with wary eyes: Would I pass through, or would I bring harm to its hidden inhabitants? I noticed that after my first transformation, each time I stepped deeper into the woods, a suffocating hush would seep into the air. Animals, unlike people, were not fooled by the fragile disguise of a teenage girl. They sensed what I truly was, and they suspected the power buried beneath the convenient mask of a schoolgirl.
The neighborhood cats no longer brushed against my legs, and the dog next door barked without fail whenever I set foot inside the building. The only dogs that treated me normally were those at the kennels, where I sometimes went with my father to clean and walk my grandfather.
Father found it odd, the way I treated Grandfather—who must have been trapped forever in his animal form by choice—as though he were nothing more than an ordinary dog. But I had no memories of Svetozar in any other shape. Unlike my grandmother, I knew him only from old photographs, and had always believed he'd died long before I was born—until the family secret revealed itself to me.
Grandfather, however, welcomed the change. Or at least his wagging tail and his eagerness to trot beside me on a leash through the forest looked very much like joy. He came alive when Father and I visited. Among his own kind at the kennels, though, he seemed diminished. Most of the time he lay curled in the corner of his pen, his massive, elongated muzzle resting on his paws, gazing blankly ahead with no interest in the world around him. And I couldn't blame him. From what the caretakers said, the place was quiet, almost lifeless. The weak-blooded vampires steered clear of the Karimov kennels, preferring to sneak into the city from the south. Kostya and I suspected it had to do with the proximity of the Smirnov estate—enough sense remained in the attackers to avoid rushing headlong into Ksertoni's first line of defense.
The forest's hush was broken at last by the low rumble of an engine. A car was approaching fast, its growl swelling with every second. Soon, a familiar sedan appeared around the bend, and I silently prayed to every god I could name that it wasn't Stas behind the wheel.
But of course—by the law of spite—it was him.