Dead Certain (Eve Benson: Vampire Book 3) by P. S. Power Read Free Book Online Page B

after all, and she needed the practice.
    “That’s right. Bey sent us? This
is the right place, then?” She hoped the woman would be able to understand her.
    That seemed likely, since there
was a soft exhalation, rather than the lady asking if she could please save her
ears by speaking English.
    “Ah, you speak very properly.
Very well, it will save a lot of effort. I haven’t used the tongue of the
English for more than a century. I do not think what I know is even accurate
anymore. Come, be welcome. Do you need food, or drink? I have some vodka that
I’ve been saving for guests?” She seemed pleased by that announcement, but Eve
didn’t really drink. Not that they’d get drunk, but there was too great
a chance that it would be poisoned, or make her sick somehow. Wasn’t alcohol
mainly carbs? She’d been warned away from those well enough that she hadn’t
even been tempted to try any real food yet.
    Nikki however nodded, and spoke
in flawless Russian to the woman. Naturally, and like that was why she’d been
asked to come in the first place. It was hard to remember how old she was
sometimes, looking like a punk rock reject like she did. Young, and decently
pretty. Face piercings, and leather jackets, could throw a person off in some
ways. There it was though. She sounded nearly like a native.
    “That sounds wonderful, thank you.
It was a long trip. We ran in on foot, from America.”
    It was a bit of a surprise, as
they went in, but Nikki, for all she was a lazy, wimpy, whining waste of space
as far as travel, or being up all day, went, was actually pretty good when it
came down to making nice with the natives. The woman, Iryna, was totally
charmed within a few minutes, and chatting away with them both like they were
all old friends, no more than an hour later. She was, as it turned out, for all
that she seemed like a housewife, actually the local area ambassador. That put
her in charge of the eastern half of Russia, more or less.
    “I have held that position here
for seven years now. Before that I worked in Moscow. I was a dentist. There was
much call for one of those that worked the night shift. I don’t really do well
in the daytime. It’s a weakness of mine, but no one else wanted the job, and it
pays enough to be worth doing. How about the two of you? The Lord, he did not
tell me why you were coming here, to our country?”
    Nikki started to speak, her voice
harsher in this language. It even changed the way she held her face and body,
which was interesting. She was more upright, and scowled a bit the whole time.
Holding her small, clear colored glass of vodka she seemed very at home, too.
Eve had skipped it, and was amazed that the other woman could even keep the
stuff down, after catching a whiff of it. It had to be magical powers,
since she wouldn’t have been able to manage it herself.
    “There have been some problems,
and…” Eve didn’t reach out and hit her, not even playfully, because it might
start a real fight. She needed to do something to get the other woman to shut
up though, so she wouldn’t give away everything to a person that was, for all
they knew, a spy. Iryna had just told them that she’d worked in Moscow until
recently. That was where the problems were coming from, as far as Eve had been
told.
    So she laughed out loud, and then
made a face at Iryna that she hoped would be funny, even in a different
language.
    “Eh… Well, I guess I should let
the other shoe drop then?” She glanced over at the punker, and winked, then
spoke to their host directly. Lying her ass off, even if she didn’t know why at
the moment past a few tiny suspicions that were probably wrong. “Nikki is being
groomed for a new job, back home, and Bey wanted to make sure that she learned
to stay up all day for it. I don’t know all the…” She wanted to say
specifications, but didn’t know how to in Russian, so scrambled for a bit. “I
don’t know exactly what it is. It’s a big thing though. An