My Trojan Horse Majesty (The Russian Witch’s Curse #5)

9. Leonid

Chapter 9

Leonid

U tah weather in the fall is nothing compared to a Russian winter.

In fact, in the time I’ve been here, I haven’t even needed a jacket. The temperatures have dropped quite a bit in the last few days, and still, I’m fine. In fact, as a horse, I’ve been quite comfortable. When the weather becomes colder overnight, my fur fluffs up and I stay comfortable enough to have no cause for complaint.

I have a newfound appreciation for the ingenious design of a horse’s coat. Because right now, now that I’m naked, I’m completely freezing , and I feel far, far too exposed.

Not that I’d ever show it.

“Isabel Brooks.” I shake my head. “Finally I’m able to speak.”

Her lovely blue eyes widen even further. “You—you can speak?” She shakes her head and stands, averting her eyes. “Of course you can speak. You aren’t really a horse who just turned into a naked man. Who are you, and what happened to Drago?”

“I am Drago,” I say. “Or rather, you called me Drago when I was in my horse form, but I’m actually Leonid Ivanovich, Czar of Russia, currently visiting America for the first time.”

She coughs and turns toward me, her eyes meeting mine and then dropping downward. Her entire face flushes bright red again.

I can’t help my smile.

She’s not a child, and yet she’s so innocent about everything.

“Now that I’m in my human form, if you would be willing to loan me some clothing, I can accompany you on your errand as you wished.”

“As I. . .” Her jaw drops. “If I loan you some—” She nods vigorously. “Yes. Clothing. You obviously need clothing. Wait here.”

I spread my arms. “I can’t go anywhere else. You’ve locked me into a pasture, have you not?”

She gulps. “I mean, you were a horse . That’s what people do with horses.”

“We do the same in Russia, yes.” I’m smiling again. “I’m not angry for the way you treated me, given what you knew, but clothing would be most appreciated.”

She nods and sprints away, stopping about halfway to the house. She turns around slowly and then looks out toward the road. “I—I can’t just leave you out here.” She swallows. “Not naked like that.” She points down, at the parts she’s trying not to look directly at.

I can’t help my smile again. “I doubt I’d be harmed by a small wait, but I’d be just as happy to follow you inside.” I bite my lower lip. “I promise not to bite .”

She blinks, nods slowly, and then jogs over to the gate. She keeps her eyes intently focused on the lock until it’s open, and then she’s careful to look at the ground as we walk back toward the house. “You must be really cold.”

“I could do with a hot shower, if you have time to allow for it.”

She opens the front door by entering the number 0735 on a keypad, and then she waves me in. “Of course. You’ll find a shower there, on the left.” She points. “I’ll find you some clothes and leave them outside the door.”

The bathroom’s small, as befits a man as unworthy as her boyfriend, but the hot shower feels heavenly. It’s interesting that even the lowliest of men in the present age live better than the kings did in my time. Hot water at the turn of a knob. Prepared foods of every taste and variety, frozen, fresh, or dried, stacked up in row upon row at grocery stores. Fruits and vegetables out of season, still readily available year round.

When I reach through a crack in the doorway, I can’t help noticing that she’s watching me from the corner of the family room. When our eyes meet, she squeaks and backs away until she’s out of sight.

I can’t help my smile.

With her blonde hair and her bright eyes, she’s like the sunshine the room lacks, thanks to the closed drapes. My solnyshko. My very own sunshine.

The clothing she left for me isn’t exceptionally fine, but it’s manageable. The jeans appear to be worn here often by males, and the shirt’s a nice, deep blue. It’s not overlarge on my lean frame, which is nice. When I emerge, dressed, I’m almost disappointed. I knew she wasn’t going to blush and stammer anymore.

But I’m not prepared for her not to even notice I’ve emerged.

She’s too busy staring at the computer in front of her. I walk closer, my feet clad only in socks. No shoes were provided, so my steps are also virtually silent. It gives me a chance to study her a little, and not from the perspective of a horse in a pen.

Izzy Brooks is absolutely beautiful.

I’m not sure I’d noticed that before. I blame the fact that I was stuck in an equine form, but until this moment, I didn’t even realize quite how stunning she is. Her hair’s cut into a short blonde bob. Her eyes are a bright, light blue, and they’re focused entirely on a news report. . .about me . She may not have been waiting on me, but she was studying me in her own way.

I sigh with a little bit of pleasure.

She jumps, shoving the chair back behind her. It’s loud as it rolls, but she’s off-balance, and she nearly falls. I grab her arm to steady her, and she spins, almost crashing into me.

Then she straightens abruptly. “I’m so sorry.”

She’s nearly as tall as I am then, maybe only three or four inches shorter. It’s a nice change from all the terribly short Russian women I’ve been surrounded by lately, and even worse, the bossy, pint-sized Latvian women who’ve plagued me. “Are you alright?”

She nods and extricates her arm from my grasp.

The news anchor’s yammering on. “—an extraordinary individual for an extraordinary time in Russian history.” She beams at the screen. “Now we’re going to interview some people here in Times Square to see what they think of Leonid Ivanovich’s visit.”

A small woman with a child beside her looks a little startled when she’s asked. “Um, well, he’s really, really good looking,” she says. “And he seems nice enough.” She frowns. “I’m not sure about all the people he’s killed, but at least they all seem to be bad men.”

I snort.

“You killed people.” I feel her eyes on me. “Is that really true?”

“That’s your first question?” My lip twitches.

“Well, obviously I want to know how you were a horse and what on earth you were doing at my parents’ house.”

“I was touring the farmlands of America,” I say, “when I happened on some very bad men.”

“Did you kill them?” She folds her arms.

I shake my head. “I didn’t kill anyone—but they trapped me in my horse form.”

“You keep saying that, like you can turn into a horse whenever you want.”

I shrug. “It’s true, though I rarely exercise that ability.”

“Wait.” She throws her hands up in front of me, her fingers nearly touching my chest. “My brother Gabe used to carry around these old comic books he made, and in them, there were Russian people who could turn into horses.”

“You don’t say.”

She shakes her head. “This is so weird.”

“Weird,” I say. “I agree.”

“So can you do it right now?” she asks. “Turn into a horse, I mean?”

“Something happened to me,” I say. “When you found me, I had already been trapped, penned up like I really was just a stallion.”

“I know. Oliver, one of my dad’s grooms, said you were going to be killed.”

“They were going to try,” I say. “Normally, they’d have had no chance of killing me.”

“Who?” she asks. “Who wants you dead?” She drops her arms.

I can hardly tell her that her own mother’s among them. I hate doing it, but I change the subject. “The bigger issue is why they want me dead.” I tilt my head. “I have a lot of magic, you see. Transforming into a horse is the least of it, I assure you, but it’s currently been suppressed somehow, by someone. I don’t know who, and I don’t know how.” I step closer, her face just inches from mine. “But I do know that you’re involved somehow.”

“Me?” She blinks, and her eyes distract me. . .again. She’s so surprisingly beautiful.

I have to focus, though. Now that I can talk, we can finally try to discover how exactly we’re linked and consequently, how we can undo it. “There’s some kind of magic tying you to me. On the day we arrived here, I tried to run away from you.”

“Yes.” She backs up a step and narrows her eyes. “I remember.”

“You thought I passed out from the tranquilizers you tried to administer, but I assure you, that wasn’t the reason.”

“No?” She arches one eyebrow. “Why, then?”

“If you draw farther from me than this house to that road.” I point. “Then I fall unconscious.”

“That makes no sense. I wasn’t anywhere near you until I saw you that morning a few days ago. There’s no connection between us, I swear.”

“When you’ve been a part of my world a bit longer, you won’t struggle with things that make no sense quite as much. Most things make no sense until you uncover the truth of them.”

She shakes a little, like a dog divesting itself of water. “Okay, but I really do have an errand to run. I have to go talk to my boyfriend.”

“The loser who’s in jail?” I can’t help my scowl.

“He’s not—well, he is, but it’s complicated.”

“So he’s no longer in jail?” I raise both eyebrows. “How did you come up with the bail, when you refused to sell me?”

“You understood all that?” She exhales, pointing one finger at my face. “I knew it.”

“Yes, if you’d trusted your judgment a bit more, we might have gotten here faster.”

“Why?” She cocks one hip. “Would you have written something in the dirt? Tried to change me into a horse too?” She laughs then. “This is such a weird day.”

“What do you need to do at the jail?”

Her entire face shutters.

“Please tell me that you’re dumping your boyfriend.”

“Dumping him?” She frowns.

“Is that not the correct word here? Breaking up with him?”

Her scowl deepens. “Why would you assume that?”

“You are staying at his house,” I say. “Which isn’t promising, but while you were here, he encouraged you to illegally sell a horse to someone using false papers. That exposes you to criminal prosecution, does it not?”

“Well, it was my idea.” Her lips compress.

“And he’s done things bad enough that men have come here, threatening you. You either must pay his debts or be punished in his place.”

“Did you get shot?” Her eyes brighten. “I swear, you got shot, right?”

“I had a residual protection spell that prevented it from harming me, but yes, the man shot me.”

She backs up a step, shaking her head and making a strange sound, almost like a horse whuffling. “I knew that, too. I swear, I have felt so crazy, but?—”

“I know you think that stealing me was insane on your part, but I’m sure you felt the connection between us. That’s why you felt compelled to act as you did, and it’s also why you trusted me even when you knew nothing about me.”

“Maybe.” She looks like she wants to argue with me, but it’s hard to argue when she saw me turn from a horse into a man.

“I’ll ask again, since you appear to be disinclined to answer. What business do you have at the jail?”

“Well, for one, Tim’s going to be royally ticked that I don’t have his bail money yet.”

“It’s not reasonable for a criminal like him to expect you to clean up his messes.”

She sighs. “Well, that’s another thing I want to ask him about. Until today, I hadn’t even considered that he might be guilty of what he’s accused of doing.” Her shoulders slump. “He’s not the kind of person who would ever need to break the law. He’s got everything going for him—” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. I need to ask him about something I saw, and he’s going to be really upset when I do.”

“I’m already upset,” I say. “I don’t think you should go. Don’t give that man another moment of your time.”

“You sound like Paige.”

“Paige is clearly both intelligent and wise,” I say. “Who is she?”

“My best friend.” She grabs the rolling chair, yanks it over, and sits down. “Or, you know, she was. I don’t see her that often anymore. She hates Tim, and no matter what I said, she wouldn’t change her mind about it.”

“Okay, so we’ve decided. You won’t go to the jail. We’ll stay here.”

She stands. “No, we haven’t decided that at all. You can’t just tell me someone’s bad—just because you think it, or Paige thinks it—and expect that to be that. This is an important person to me, and I never let people in my life down. No matter what questions I may have, that’s not who I am.”

She’s magnificent.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a woman stand up for a terrible guy quite so vehemently. “Alright.”

“Alright?” She blinks. “Alright, what?”

“You want this man to be released from jail, and you require a hundred thousand dollars to do it. Yes?”

She nods.

“I’ll pay the bail for his release, and then you can confirm that he’s not worth your time. After that, I’ll kill him so you can focus on me.”

She laughs. “Sure. You’ll kill him.”

“But I need to go by a bank first.”

“Wait.” She peers at me. “Why aren’t you laughing? It’s a joke, right, the killing thing?”

I force a smile. “Sure. It was a joke.”

She stares at me for a long moment before deciding it must have been. “I can’t possibly let you pay for his bail, but I can call the Russian Embassy for you. I’m assuming you lost your phone in the ‘stuck-as-a-horse’ debacle. The media hasn’t mentioned that you’re missing, but you’re either a crazy impersonator, or you’re really their new czar.” Her brow furrows. “At least if the Russian embassy comes and picks you up, my parents don’t ever need to know I stole a horse from them.” She still looks sad, though.

“I’m serious about the money,” I say. “It’s nothing to me, and then you can stop scrounging around, trying to sell your meager belongings or earn the money in other ways.”

“You hate him even though you haven’t met him.”

“You work with horses a lot, right?”

She frowns, but then she nods.

“Have you ever watched someone having a problem on a horse, and it’s been plain to you exactly what’s wrong?” I wait. “Maybe they have no idea what’s going on, or they’re blaming the horse, but you can see what’s happening, and it’s their error?”

“Are you saying I’m an idiot? That even a stolen horse-man can see that my boyfriend’s a jerk, but I can’t?” She scowls. “Because?—”

I lower my voice until she can barely hear it. “ You said he was like the sun and you’re the moon.”

Her eyes widen and she rolls several feet away from me. “I—I wasn’t—you were a horse when I said all that.”

I step closer, almost stalking her now. “You said you were the moon, but I think that’s wrong. I think you have no idea how brightly you could shine if he wasn’t actively dimming your light. I’ve known enough men like him that I don’t even have to meet him. Hearing your conversation on the phone was enough.”

“You’re saying that you hate this guy, and you think he’s trash, but you’ll just give me a hundred grand to save him?”

“Not to save him,” I clarify. “To save you from him. While he’s tied up in there, you’re tied up on him.”

“So to help me , someone you barely know, you’ll just drop a hundred thousand dollars.”

“It’s a smart move for me,” I say. “I’m connected to you, and you recently saved me. But you’re distracted. You’ve been distracted since whatever connected us connected us. I need you to focus, because I need your help. I have to regain my powers immediately. I can’t have you distracted anymore, and I’m willing to buy your attention.” I lift both eyebrows.

“Do we have a deal?”

She stands. “I want to test your statement.”

“What?”

“I want to see you pass out when I walk away.”

I roll my eyes. “For the—you must be kidding. What possible reason could I have to lie about that?”

She shrugs. “It’s easy to test, is it not?”

“Not if I don’t fancy going face-first in the dirt.”

“I’ll sit you in a chair,” she says. “I just want to see whether we’re really connected like you say, because if we aren’t. . .”

“Then I’m just a creepy horse-man who’s pushing you into doing things and giving you large sums of money for inexplicable reasons.”

“It seems odd,” she says. “I know you say we’re connected, but I can’t feel it, and I can’t see it, and I have no idea how we possibly could be when we’d never even met.”

“Fine.” I grab the chair by the back and pick it up on my way out the front door. I have to set it down to rummage around for a pair of shoes from the rack near the door. In addition to being an idiot, Mr. Heaston’s also got terrible taste in shoes for his small feet. I finally manage to shove my feet into a pair of ghastly sneakers, and then I pick up the chair and continue outside.

After watching my shoe troubles with a half-smile, Izzy trots after me. “Okay, so I’ll leave you here by the house, and I’ll jog off, and then if what you’re saying is true?—”

I point. “Set up your phone over there. You can run the video so you can see up close exactly what happens when you move away from me. I’d hardly have time to tamper with it while you run back. I’ll be unconscious.”

“That’s actually a pretty decent idea.”

“Because I’m telling the truth.” I drop the chair and sit. “But I want you to do something for me, too. A show of good faith, if you will.”

She stiffens.

“Not something gross. I want you to try and feel a connection between us when you jog away. I want you to try and sense whatever it is that binds us, so you might be able to work with me on figuring this out. I need a partner, not a jailer.”

“Fine.” She nods. “Sure.” And then she sets up her phone, and she jogs away from me. I spin around in the chair a few times. Then my vision starts to darken and then everything goes black.

Moments later, when I wake up, I’m flat on my face, and she’s tugging me over onto my back. “Sorry.” She’s grimacing. “I really thought you’d slump—I didn’t think you’d fall forward like that.”

I brush the dust from my borrowed clothing. “It’s fine.” I stand. “Are you ready to head to that bank now? We have some forms to fill out, I’m sure.”

Izzy once again grabs her jacket, heads out the front door, and locks the keypad with a sequence of numbers. Only this time, instead of seeing her from across the property and panicking, I’m walking beside her. It’s a much nicer feeling. Not that I care about her, of course. It’s just not a great feeling to have her moving away from me. Watching that made me panicky, and I haven’t felt out of control like that in a very long time.

Which is why, a moment later, when I circle the car and finally see the same stupid sedan parked behind Izzy’s truck, I say a very bad, very rude word. The men who were here to collect money from that criminal Tim are back.

And I don’t have my powers.

I’m barely better than useless, which makes me very, very angry.