us. Last night's breakdown might as well have never happened. It turned out he'd been dying for coffee and had patiently waited for us, not wanting to leave us sleeping and undefended. I shooed him off, and twenty minutes later, he returned with coffee and a box of donuts. He also had purchased an industrial-strength chain at a hardware store across the street "for when we find Sonya,' which made me uneasy. By then Sydney and I were ready to go, and I decided to hold off on my questions. I wasn't crazy about wearing shorts again, not with my legs in this condition, but I was too eager to get to Sonya to insist we stop at a mall.
I did, however, decide it was time to get my companions up to speed.
"So,' I began casually, "Victor Dashkov might be joining us soon.'
It was to Sydney's credit that she didn't drive off the road. "What? That guy who escaped?' I could see in Dimitri's eyes that he was just as shocked, but he kept cool and under control, like always. "Why,' he began slowly, "is Victor Dashkov joining us?'
"Well, it's kind of a funny story ...'
And with that intro, I gave them as brief yet thorough a recap as I could, starting with the background on Robert Doru and ending with the brothers' recent dream visits. I glossed over Victor's "mysterious' escape a few weeks ago, but something told me that Dimitri, in that uncanny way we had of guessing each other's thoughts, was probably putting the pieces together. Both Lissa and I had told Dimitri we'd gone through a lot to learn how to restore him, but we'd never explained the full story--especially the part about breaking out Victor so that he could help us find his brother.
"Look, whether he can help or not, this is our chance to catch him,' I added hastily. "That's a good thing, right?'
"Its an issue we'll deal with ... later.' I recognized the tone in Dimitri's voice. He'd used it a lot at St. Vladimir's. It usually meant there was a private talk in my future, where I'd be grilled for more details.
Kentucky turned out to be pretty beautiful as we drove out to Paris. The land was rolling and green as we got out of the city, and it was easy to imagine wanting to live in a little house out here. I wondered idly if that had been Sonya's motivation and then caught myself. I'd just told Dimitri that Strigoi saw no beauty. Was I wrong? Would gorgeous scenery matter to her?
I found my answer when our GPS led us to Martin Lake. There were only a few houses scattered around it, and among those, only one was blue. Stopping a fair distance away from the house, Sydney parked the car off to the side of the road as much as she could. It was narrow, the shoulders covered in trees and high grass. We all got out of the car and walked a little ways, still keeping our distance.
"Well. It's a blue house,' declared Sydney pragmatically. "But is it hers? I don't see a mailbox or anything.'
I looked closer at the yard. Rose bushes, full of pink and red blossoms, grew in front of the porch. Baskets thick with white flowers I didn't know the names of hung from the roof, and blue morning glories climbed up a trellis. Around the house, I could just barely make out a wood fence. A vine with orange, trumpet-shaped flowers crawled over it.
Then, an image flickered into my mind, gone as quickly as it had come. Ms. Karp watering pots of flowers in her classroom, flowers that seemed to grow impossibly fast and tall. As a teenager more interested in dodging homework, I hadn't thought much about them. It was only later, after watching Lissa make plants grow and bloom during spirit experiments, that I understood what had been happening in Ms. Karp's classroom. And now, even deprived of spirit and possessed by evil, Sonya Karp was still tending her flowers.
"Yeah,' I said. "This is her house.' Dimitri approached the front porch, studying every detail. I started to follow but held back. "What are you doing?' I kept my voice low. "She might see you.'
He returned to my side. "Those are black-out curtains. They aren't letting in any light, so she isn't going to see anything. It also means she likely spends her time on the house's main floor, rather than a basement.'