Walking Dead Read Free Page A

her lessons, while the other students often seemed to find the obligation of showing up just once a week to be a superior challenge. Some days after school she would simply appear with her ballet slippers in hand, asking if she could use the studio to practice. We always said yes, and if Alena was around, she'd stand by and observe, granting the equivalent of a free lesson.
     
Today, Tiasa had come while Alena was in town seeking fish for our dinner. I'd let Tiasa into the studio-slash-gym, turned to leave, when she'd spoken.
     
“Alena said that?” It surprised me. It wasn't like her to offer anything personal, or at least, nothing that was both personal and accurate.
     
“She says she taught you.”
     
“I wouldn't call what I do dancing.” It wasn't false modesty.I'd been practicing ballet for almost six years at that point, and while the physical conditioning and control it had granted me were certainly worthwhile, I'd yet to achieve anything that I would, even at my most charitable, describe as art.
     
Tiasa began stretching at the barre. Like her brother, she was tall, but unlike him, she was growing into it, beginning to form the body of the woman she would be. Her hair was black, and she'd neglected to tie it back today, and it flopped about as she bent and twisted, loosening up. I realized that she was styling it the same way Alena did, and wondered when that had happened.
     
“We don't have any boys who dance,” Tiasa said to me, as she started practicing her positions. “Only girls take lessons.”
     
“There's Jarji,” I said.
     
“He stopped coming.” She fixed me with a stare, then looked away. Like her father, her eyes were blue.
     
“You want me to dance with you?” I asked.
     
Suddenly shy, she mumbled her response.
     
“All right,” I said. “I'll dance with you.”
     
     
Like all the others, the door to Tiasa's room was ajar, and once again, I saw only darkness within. I used the barrel of the AK to push it further open, stepped inside, reaching out for the switch and finding it.
     
I didn't want to see what they'd done to her.
     
I didn't think I had a choice.
     
I threw the light, and, in its way, it was worse than everything I'd seen before.
     
There was no blood. There was no body.
     
Tiasa Lagidze was gone.
     
They'd taken her.
     
     
    CHAPTER
Three
The regional head of the police in Kobuleti, Mgelika Iashvili, was in his late forties, tall and broad and thick through the neck and shoulders. Georgian pride runs to many things: their wine, their tea, their nearly four-thousand-year history. Stalin. They're also very proud of their weight lifters, and the rumor was that Iashvili had trained as a powerlifter for the Soviets back in the day, before everything had changed. Whether he still kept with it was unknown, but it did nothing to detract from his thuggish air, one that was well earned.
     
“And neither of you heard anything last night?” he asked. “Anything at all?”
     
Alena, at the stove and preparing tea, shook her head. Shelet her lower lip jut just enough beneath her upper to indicate both sincerity and bewilderment.
     
“I sleep very deep,” she lied. “Just ask David.”
     
“Like a log,” I agreed. In fact, the previous night had been the only one I could ever remember when I'd had difficulty waking her. “Are you going to tell us what this is about, Chief? Did something happen?”
     
Iashvili kept his eyes on Alena, watching her. He did it not so much because he suspected she might be lying, I thought, but rather because he liked looking at her. It wasn't unusual. A lot of people did, and if they noticed that she was sometimes a little slow, sometimes seemed to favor her right leg over her left, they still watched. Given that once upon a time, she had excelled at being someone who was barely noticed, I think Alena had come to even enjoy it.
     
The chief turned his attention reluctantly to me. After a moment for thought, he said, “You'll