No windows. We must still be below the earth.

Vanya walked on ahead, eclipsing the oil lamp’s glow. Trailing behind him, I was once more seized by a gut-wrenching foreboding that something would happen to him here.

“Vanya,” I whispered, and he looked back at me.

“What is it?”

“Just... Just be careful, okay?”

He smiled a little. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

As he turned ahead again, I bit my inner cheek to keep from telling him what I truly wanted to say: I can’t bear the thought of losing you again. I love you. Please, don’t go. Stay here. Let me protect you.

The corridor opened into a large room. Cages were stacked along the walls; most were empty, but some contained sickly-looking dogs and cats, and one held something even stranger. Surrounded by harsh electrical lights positioned on all sides of his cage, a drekavac knocked his swollen head against the bars, his shadow shriveled to an inkblot.

Deeper into the room, a water tank was nestled between two bookshelves. An indignant rusalka glowered at us through the algae-streaked pane; there wasn’t enough room for her to swim, so she treaded water.

Vanya walked over to her.

“We can’t just leave her like this,” Vanya murmured, pressing his hand against the glass.

“If we break her out, will she be able to walk on dry land?” I asked.

He sighed, his hand falling. “No. I don’t think so.”

“We need to keep going,” I said, pressing my hand over his. “We can come for her later, after we find my sister and Mikhail. Maybe we can find a way to carry her down to the caverns.”

“You’re right,” he said, and continued across the room.

I looked at the rusalka, staring into her unblinking silver eyes. I wanted to believe that if we freed her, she wouldn’t turn on us. My encounters with Vanya’s mother and the mavki had only reinforced my certainty that the monsters of this world weren’t all that they appeared to be.

We stepped through the next door into a room set up like an office, containing a table draped in a white cloth, a desk, and counters covered in glass bottles and vials. A brown-haired man dressed in a medic’s gray coat stood with his back to us, scrubbing his hands at the porcelain washstand.

As we neared, he turned. He had the tight, triangular face of a mink and concave cheeks that bristled with stubble. His gaze swept to the pistol in my hand, before straying to Vanya.

“You fools do realize that the sign is up on the door for a reason?” he said levelly, narrowing his eyes. “I need absolute solitude in my work.”

He spoke to us so boldly, it took me aback. Then I realized I was still wearing the Fraktsiya medic’s uniform, while Vanya was dressed in a soldier’s garb. For all the man knew, we were comrades to him.

“Your work is the last thing you should be worrying about,” I snarled, leveling the pistol I had taken from Dronov. “Where’s my sister?”