“Yes, that’s right.” Anneliese’s tone was lighter now. “A selkie comes from a lake too, but she’s the Scottish version, not quite so malevolent. In Germany they have stories of a lorelei, who sits on a rock above the water, combing her hair. Go farther east, though, and she becomes much much more dangerous—a rusalka.” Anneliese’s blue eyes dropped to the table. “A rusalka only comes out in the night, dressed in the lake. And if you cross her, she will kill you.”

A little silence fell. “Well,” Jordan offered at last. “I feel lucky I only ever had bad dreams about bats. And about walking down the school hall in nothing but my brassiere, like a Maidenform ad.”

“And now I’ve given you ideas about night witches! I’m sorry, Jordan. I should never have told you something so gruesome. At the witching hour too.” Anneliese glanced at the clock, rueful. “I’m not myself after these dreams; they make me very fearful, and I babble. Very unlike me.”

“Did it help?”

“I think it did.” Anneliese drank off the rest of her cocoa. “I might be able to sleep now.”

“Then I’m glad you told me.” Jordan rose, collecting both mugs to put in the sink. “Can I just say . . .”

Her stepmother paused halfway to the kitchen door, Taro padding behind her. “Yes?”

“I’m so glad I have you.” Jordan met those blue eyes square. “We didn’t exactly get off on the right foot, thanks to my wild imagination. But I don’t know what I’d do without you, now.”

“You’d be just fine without me, Jordan.” Anneliese reached out and touched her hair. “You’re a tower of strength, just like your father.”

They hugged fiercely. Just us now, Jordan thought. Us two holding everything together for the sake of Ruth and a dog and a business. The notion was perhaps not as frightening as it had been.

“Maybe you could walk me down the aisle next spring,” Jordan said as they broke the hug. “What do you think, should we shatter tradition?”

“Of course, if you like.” Anneliese’s lips quirked. “There’s only one small problem.”

“What?”

“You have no desire at all to marry Garrett Byrne.” Anneliese kissed Jordan’s cheek good night. “There. I’ve given you something to dream about rather than night witches crawling out of lakes.”

Chapter 29

Ian

June 1950

Boston

Bad news, boss.” Tony’s voice reverberated at the other end of the phone like he was on the bottom of Nina’s Siberian lake rather than a short distance away on Clarendon and Newbury.

Ian shifted the receiver from his bad ear to the good, still doing up the buttons of his shirt and wincing at the scratches Nina had left down his back. “Let’s have it.”

“Befriending Kolb has been a dead end. He won’t get drawn in to talk. Just a grunt, and then some excuse to skitter away.”

Disappointing, Ian thought, but not surprising. Tony’s efforts to charm their suspect had been met by a stone wall for weeks now. Nina wandered in from the bedroom, wearing one of Ian’s shirts and nothing else, and looked inquiring.

“I hate to admit failure,” Tony concluded, “but the carrot approach has officially failed.”

Nina stood on tiptoe so she could cock her own ear to the receiver. “Is our turn?”

“Have at it,” Tony answered. “Right now Kolb thinks I’m just a dumb Yank too thick to notice I’m getting the cold shoulder, but if I keep on, he’ll get suspicious. I’m down on strikes; you’re up to bat.”

Ian fumbled for a pencil stub. “Is that a baseball metaphor?”

“You’re in the land of the brave and the home of the free now, boss, it’s time to abandon cricket. I’ll be here until closing; the pretty Miss McBride is bringing her stepmother to give me the nod of approval, but Kolb is off work this afternoon. Two more hours, if you want to take a run at him.”

“Why not?” Ian looked down at Nina. “We don’t have tickets for the symphony this evening, do we, darling?”

“Am not your darling, you capitalist mudak.”

Ian grinned. “Give me Kolb’s address.” By the time he rang off, Nina had located her trousers in the trail of clothing that led toward the bedroom. Ian scrutinized them, patches and all. “Do you own anything that would make you look like a pinch-mouthed secretary?” She stared as though he were speaking Chinese. He sighed. “I suppose as a married man, this moment was inevitable.”

Nina sounded suspicious. “What?”

“I’m taking you shopping.”

“BLYADT,” NINA BREATHED as they entered the spacious double doors of Filene’s at Downtown Crossing. Ian could only imagine how strange it must look—how strange this whole, noisy, prosperous American city would look to a woman who had spent most of her life either on the far eastern edge of the world, in the Red Air Force, or in ration-locked war-torn England. She’d been astounded enough by the corner dime store off Scollay Square; now her eyes nearly glowed. “Everything just lying here? For sale, to anyone?”

“That’s the idea.”

“No lines out the door, no haggling, no rationing . . .” She stared at the perfume counter. “Even in England, is not like this. Shelves are empty, things are scarce. This is like . . .” She said a Russian word.

“Cornucopia?” Ian guessed. “Overflowing bounty?”

“Decadent industrialist filth. Everything my Komsomol meetings ever said, how the West is wasteful and corrupt. Der’mo, I wish I come sooner.”

“Try not to comment on capitalist or socialist anything where anyone can hear you.” Ian deposited his wife with a salesgirl in the ladies’ department and grinned to watch an exceedingly dubious Nina hauled into a dressing room with an armload of skirts. “Men always think women take too long,” the salesgirl twinkled, seeing him check his watch as she went off to find more clothes. Ian barely heard. Herr Kolb would be arriving home in two hours. If they could surprise him at his door, tired and off guard after a long day . . .

“Is what secretaries wear?” Nina came out of the dressing room in a flowered summer dress with a froth of crinoline.

“Definitely not. You need to look like a joyless soulless cow who hates everyone and everything, especially ungrateful little foreigners who lie about their war record. Surely you’ve met someone who—”

“My Komsomol leader from Irkutsk,” she said at once.

“Perfect. Turn yourself into her.”

“Nu, ladno.” Nina vanished back into the dressing room, her voice floating out. “Is another reason I like it here—no political meetings.”

“I assure you the decadent West does have them, and they’re every bit as boring. You’ve never been a cub journalist taking notes in the gallery as the MP for Upper Snelgrove drones on about combating district root rot.”

The salesgirl bustled back with an armload of blouses. “She’ll look ravishing in these—”

“No pink. No bows—” Ian rifled through the frilly stack. “Do you have anything in puce?”

“Your wife doesn’t have the skin tone for puce, Mr. Graham. To be honest I don’t think any woman has the skin tone for puce . . .” The salesgirl headed off shaking her head, and Nina came out in a flat brown skirt and short-sleeved blouse.

“Yes?”

“Longer sleeves. Something that covers up the fact that you spent years being strafed by Messerschmitts rather than taking stenography courses.” Ian knew more of the history behind those scars now—Nina had been so entertained by his astonishment when she told him about meeting General Secretary Stalin, she’d unbent into telling a good many more stories up on the rooftop.

“I see other men in this store sitting outside dressing rooms.” Nina vanished inside hers, already pulling the blouse over her head. “Is a thing American men do? Look annoyed while women try clothes?”

“Not so much an American thing as a marriage thing.” Ian leaned against the wall, realizing how much he was enjoying himself. “Russian men don’t wait for four hours as their wives try on dresses?”

“Russian men only wait four hours queuing for vodka.” A snort. “At least is better vodka than here. You Westerners, you don’t know how to drink.”

“You have clearly never seen a roomful of war correspondents playing seven-card stud in Weymouth.”

“Get some good vodka, and I drink you under the table, luchik.”

“Make it scotch and you’re welcome to try, you little Cossack.”

Nina swept out in a navy-blue blouse, long sleeved and high necked. “Yes?”

She set hands on hips and face in a steely scowl, narrowing her eyes. “You look like an executioner who knows her shorthand,” Ian admired.

“Is this hateful fucking blouse,” she agreed, looking in the mirror. “Deserves to die in an arctic gulag, this blouse. Deserves to wrap fish guts on a whaler and filter gasoline into jerricans.”

The salesgirl bustled up with something bright over one arm. “Are you sure you don’t want something more colorful, Mrs. Graham?” She held up the dress by Nina’s face. Red as a Soviet flag, and a hem that would show a lot of strong, curved leg. “Isn’t she just born to wear red?”

“She certainly is,” Ian said, straight-faced. “We’ll take it.”

Nina scowled. “Why?”

“Can’t I buy my wife a dress?”

“We divorce, remember?”