New and collected works in the far-flung universe from:
@Fromthebar
@benjammies
@Matt_Weber
@elveloy
@Holly_Gonzalez
@krazydiamond
@Lynn_Vroman
@Red_Harvey
And four contest winners!
Cover credit: @benjammies
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Lissa licked blood off her cheek. A cuckoo called up in the trees. Green light of the late afternoon in a dense wood was fading. She had lost one of her grey pumps. A designer suit and heels were hardly ideal attire for crawling through a wet forest.
At least she had left the state agents behind. Couldn't believe they fell for letting her pee by the roadside. The way she ran, zigzagging like a deranged rabbit, they probably would have missed her even if they were shooting. But of course they didn't shoot. They wouldn't dare. Something to be said for being a foreigner in Russia.
She pulled herself up from the muddy path by the grey trunk of the rowan tree. Red rowan berries burned in dark green of the leaves. Lisa wound up her long wheaten braid, pinned it up with a twig.
From her shirt, Lissa pulled out a locket Andrey had given her two days ago.
"Don't look for me, if I'm gone," he had said. She was lying on his chest at the time, and thinking idly that this was the happiest she had ever been.
"Of course I'd look for you," she rolled over, looked into his blue eyes, smoothed the dark-blond hair off his broad forehead. "What do you expect me to do, pretend you never existed?"
"That would be best." Andrey kissed the tip of her nose. "Seriously. You think that being a CFO of FinEast would protect you? If I'm arrested, you run. Take the first plane out of here and don't look back."
"This is not a Dostoyevsky novel. Don't be dramatic. You aren't doing anything wrong. You are an inventor, a scientist. The Feather is fantastic tech. You exaggerate."
"Figures that you wouldn't listen. Here." Andrey reached under the pillow and held the locket out to her. "At least wear this. If I'm gone. Or, rather, 'when.'"
The locket, a gold heart, pulsated in Lissa's hand now. Its right side glowed red, hot to the touch. The other side, a pale blue, shocked Lissa's palm with the cold of a first November snowfall. Lissa turned away from the rowan tree, and the blue and red sides re-oriented themselves, while the locket emitted a low ear-splitting whine.
"A compass?" Lissa turned the locket over. She had no use for a compass. She did not know where she was supposed to go. She did know a kids' game, though. Andrey's nieces played it, during one of the rowdy family gatherings he had taken her to, at his country house. "Hot, hot, hotter ..." the smallest girl, her head barely visible between two huge pink bows, had shrieked.
"An ideal way of pointing a way to the hidden things," Andrey tightened his arm around Lissa's shoulder. "No directions that could fall into the enemy's hands, nothing incriminating. Should be available only to the rightful owner, of course, DNA-based. Activated remotely ..." he trailed off.
"Paranoia is a terrible disease," Lissa had laughed. Andrey laughed too. And then, a week after that conversation, he talked to her about being arrested and gave her the locket.
