Chapter 5

I’d left the keys lying inside the apartment, but at least I somehow managed not to let my purse slip off my shoulder—and my phone with it. Repeating over and over what I was going to do to Hulk when I got my hands on him, I pulled on my boots, took three deep breaths, and dialed Ded Moroz Agency with determination, ready to give them a piece of my mind.

It was almost midnight, but that didn’t bother me one bit. If they’d screwed up, they could sort it out and apologize! I wasn’t going anywhere! I wasn’t the kind of person to just give up!

Alyona Morozova’s phone, however, was silent. Completely silent. It didn’t even give a muffled ring in response to my increasingly insistent calls, as if it had been shut off altogether. Now that was a surprise!

For the first time in my life, I had to call the police—after all, I honestly paid my taxes. And ask them to help me. Let them come and figure out why a proud, single young woman who’d worked all day like Papa Carlo was sitting God knows where at half past eleven at night instead of in the warm apartment she had every right to occupy!

I called. I made the call so menacingly that I scared myself. What if they sent a special tactical unit? What if they came with assault rifles? A police tactical unit, maybe? I’d heard there was such a thing. They’d burst through the windows after rappelling down from helicopters, leap into the living room—and there would be Hulk and his half-naked girl recharging their energy connection, once again in that “intimacy from below” position. The poor things wouldn’t survive that kind of shock twice. At this rate, something more substantial than a hair might get stuck in the lock.

Bursting out laughing, I sat down on my suitcase and waited.

Five minutes… Fifteen… Twenty…

“H-hello, Fairy! Still sitting there?” a coaxing voice suddenly asked, and I jumped at the unexpected sound.

“Huh? Who’s there?!”

I looked over my right shoulder… then over my left… but there was no one around. Only a big black cat quietly jumped down onto the landing from the stairway. More like a huge cat.

He stretched luxuriously, purred lazily, raised his tail, and came over. After rubbing against my leg, he sat beside me—what a yellow-eyed sweetheart! Even though my family had always kept dogs, I reached out and stroked his glossy fur. I broke off a piece of sausage and let him chew on it. Waiting for the police was more fun with company, after all.

And the voice… Well, what about it? On a dead-quiet landing, you can imagine all sorts of things, especially when your eyes are already starting to droop.

So the cat and I sampled some sausage and picked at the cake Hulk had mangled—me with my finger, him with his paw. The cake was delicious, rich with chocolate. I had no idea cats liked that sort of thing, but it wasn’t as if I’d begrudge him a bite.

“H-hello there, ma’am! You called the police?”

The elevator opened without a sound, and a cop stepped onto the landing—a formidable little guy. Well-fed, stocky, and, for some reason, shaggy.

He gave a grand salute with his uniform cap, stopped in front of me, and flourished his official ID in front of my face. He did it so deftly I didn’t have time to make out a thing. As if he wasn’t a lawman but some kind of stage illusionist with a deck of marked cards in his hands. Whoosh—and gone!

“Sergeant Leshenko! Thirteenth Police Precinct, Lesnoy District! You called the duty desk, ma’am?” The cop pulled a notepad from his breast pocket and grandly read the information aloud: “Natalya Sergeyevna Feyakina, we’ll skip the date of birth? Temporarily residing at this address?”

I stood up from my suitcase and nodded.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Your identification, please! Including the lease agreement.”

“Yes, just a second…”

I stared at my unimpressive little protector in bewilderment and disappointment. I really wish they’d sent a tactical team. I hadn’t gotten a proper look at Hulk, but I’d noticed that he was strong and cocky. A guy like that could take a cop with ease! Still, I obediently handed over my documents.

Watching the sergeant study my file with painstaking care, I asked, disappointed:

“You came alone? All by yourself?”

“Why alone? I came with a partner.”

I peered into the elevator in surprise, then looked toward the stairs. It was quiet there; only the cat was jumping up the steps, scrabbling with his paws as if he were chasing an invisible mouse.

“Where is he, then? Your partner?” I asked. “Don’t you respond to calls in pairs? What about safety protocols and all that?”

The sergeant’s brown eyes narrowed suspiciously at once.

“Why are you asking, Ms. Feyakina?” He handed back my documents and adjusted his cap. “What’s it to you? I’m the one asking questions here. Clear?”

I was indignant. How could he not understand?!

“Because it absolutely is my business! I’m worried about you, Sergeant!” I tried to explain. “What if we need backup? I didn’t call you here for nothing! Don’t let the quiet fool you. In there”—I nodded toward the apartment—“there’s a real bandit, a full head taller than you! You can’t take a guy like that barehanded!”

And then I nearly jumped with frustration at myself when I remembered what weapon I had in my purse. Dad’s gift for a rainy day.

“Oh, Sergeant! I have a stun gun! A brand-new one! Why don’t we give the bandit a good zap, just once, huh? Please? So he’ll be scared of us right away! You should have seen how he shoved me out of the apartment!”

I pulled the stun gun out of my purse and pressed it into the cop’s hand.

“Here!”

“Are you out of your mind?!” He tried to hand it back to me.

“No, no! I don’t know how. You do it! This little button…”

“Stop this immediately!”

“Or maybe this one…”

I don’t know which of us found the right button first, but the stun gun crackled and spat a dangerous arc, and Leshenko and I went flying like a pair of bowling pins. We hit the floor—he landed on the cat, and I landed on the Christmas-tree box. The box gave a suspicious crunch; the long-tailed one yowled in outrage. “Oh!”

“Ms. Feyakina!” The cop was crouching and trying to retrieve the cap that had rolled under someone else’s stroller, pick up his folder, and pet the cat all at once. “That’s assault on an officer! I’ll throw you in the lockup for twelve days over this!”

I fussed around beside him, straightening the box and trying to shake the cake off it.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was trying to help!”

“Twenty-five… prime marrying age for a dryad! And you’re not ashamed? Maybe this bandit you keep talking about is a good man! Loves birds! And you want to zap him right away!”

“Maybe I love birds too! And he started it! He even called me names! He says he wasn’t expecting me. As if I’d been waiting for him my whole life!”

“Maybe you scared him?”

“Why is he such a scaredy-cat? If he’s afraid of girls, he should take vitamins.”

We probably would have gone on arguing with the sergeant about who was to blame if the door to “my” apartment hadn’t suddenly opened and the man who’d wronged me hadn’t appeared on the landing. He stood in the doorway, puffing out his shoulders—the unshaven bastard!