Carrying two steaming mugs, Yesenia stepped into the room. Her eyes darted from face to face, uncertain. Her hand trembled slightly, and a dark droplet slid slowly down the side of one cup.
"Ildar?" she asked, her voice edged with confusion as she scanned the room. There was wariness in her posture, a quiet tension that made me watch her closely. Did she know what he really was? And for how long?
Perhaps, like Mark, she hadn't the faintest idea that the world she lived in followed no laws of physics or reason—but the old, merciless logic of legend.
With a playful bounce in his step, Ildar moved toward her, but she didn't return his smile. Her gray eyes stayed wide, blinking only now and then, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing.
"Rough morning?" he teased. "You needed coffee that badly?"
"It would've been a lot worse if I hadn't met Lisa," she replied, nodding toward me. When Ildar came too close for comfort, she raised her hands protectively, shielding the cups. "Ildar, stop—you'll make me spill!"
Her mild indignation was almost endearing—childlike, innocent. That's how girls act when the one they love is watching: a little shy before strangers, adorably clumsy, trying not to reveal too much of what's already blazing quietly inside their hearts.
Spreading her arms wide to protect the hard-won coffee she'd managed to find in this wilderness, Yessenia stretched up and brushed the tip of Ildar's nose with her lips before twisting deftly to slip past him—as though he were the greatest threat to her drink—and headed toward me.
When she handed me a mug, I wrapped my hands around its warm surface with something close to gratitude. I had no illusions that the coffee would taste even remotely decent, but caffeine was caffeine. I'd long since noticed how it dulled the thirst—an effect I needed more than ever right now.
I couldn't help but wonder if Yesenia smelled as unpleasant to Ildar as she did to me. A flicker of envy burned in my chest. My life with Mark would have been so much easier if his natural scent were even a fraction as tolerable as hers. Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to reject his idea of getting a dog, imagining only how disgusting our clothes and furniture would smell afterward. I'd thought that decision would benefit only Mark—but after meeting these two, after seeing how natural and composed Ildar seemed, I found myself reconsidering.
I took a sip and grimaced.
"A little better than I expected," I admitted reluctantly. "Where did you find it?"
"Leftovers from breakfast in the main hall," she said. "They hadn't cleaned up yet."
"How fortunate," I murmured, studying the smooth, dark surface of the liquid.
"So, ladies," Mark's voice drew us back to the moment, "what do you think about lunch?"
I shrugged. Regular food had little appeal to me, so my opinion hardly mattered.
"I wouldn't mind a bite," Yessenia said after a sip. "But not for too long—I've still got a lot to finish before the deadline." She nodded toward my closed laptop. "Did you manage to transfer anything?"
I gave the men a meaningful look.
"Unfortunately, I got distracted," I said lightly. "But don't worry—I'll finish it quickly once we're back."
Yessenia nodded in understanding and started draining her mug in one go. Out of courtesy, I followed suit—after all, she'd gone to the trouble of finding it. A few gulps would be enough to dull the thirst. I craved real coffee desperately, but whatever this was, it certainly wasn't it.
While Yesenia finished her drink, Ildar joined Mark, gesturing at his phone as he explained the route to that "family restaurant." I bit back a smirk. Men. Cars and directions—always the same story. I'd mentioned that my car was parked right outside, but Ildar seemed to have let that detail slip straight past him.
I liked him less with every passing minute.
Mark nodded thoughtfully, examining the map on Ildar's screen, and soon after, Yesenia and I began stacking the scattered books into neat piles. We hoped we wouldn't have to hunt them down again tomorrow. Taking them with us wasn't an option—and there was no one around to ask permission anyway. The owners hardly ever came into the library themselves, and clearly didn't expect their guests to take much interest in the shelves.
It was strange how often the older generation underestimated the younger's love for books. If they were right, book fairs would have long since drowned in a haze of snobbery and boredom—writers chasing after immortality in print while forgetting to touch the reader's heart. But that's not what we came to literature for.
We sought emotion between the lines. The thrill that stirred the heart, the echo of another soul that reminded you you weren't alone. We looked for reflections of our private pain—the kind that stings on quiet nights when it's just you and your thoughts. Sometimes, it felt as though the text itself understood you in ways people never could.
The internet was supposed to bring people closer, to make knowledge accessible. But didn't it, in truth, push one soul even farther from another?
In the end, we were all bound together by the same echo—the shared loneliness of our days, carried through the words of the authors we loved.
When the four of us finally left the library hall, it turned out that none of us had much sense of direction inside the building. I tried to lead the way from memory, and at first it even seemed like I knew where I was going. But that illusion quickly shattered when, after another turn, we once again came upon the long cabinet lined with glass doors. Behind the dusty panes sat old, yellowed photographs and pages torn from personal letters.
On our way to the library earlier, I'd passed it without much interest, but Mark's face lit up as if he'd found buried treasure.
"I saw this yesterday," he said, crouching down and resting his palms on his knees as he peered at the photos on the lower shelf. "Liz, come here! Look—so many old portraits."
He fished his phone out of his pocket and began carefully photographing each display. Ildar and Yesenia joined him, studying one of the letters. Yesenia squinted, trying to decipher the handwriting, while I watched them with mild boredom. The lives of strangers, long gone and forgotten, didn't stir anything in me. My clan's archives were overflowing with portraits and mementos from different eras—some even featuring our own kind—so these relics of the past rarely moved me. What was an image, after all, without the story behind it? Nothing but paper.
Mark, however, saw it differently. He had a habit of preserving everything he could get his hands on, even if he didn't know the names or faces of the people in the photographs.
"The old custom of not smiling in pictures makes them look so eerie," he remarked, snapping another photo.
"Just wait," Ildar snorted, "fifty years from now, a new generation will be laughing at selfies. Imagine them trying to decode the duck-face trend—maybe they'll think it was some kind of charm against evil spirits."
"Unlikely," Mark said thoughtfully. "People today hardly believe in superstitions anymore."
"Oh really?" Ildar gave him a sharp look. "So you're telling me that if you had to go back home after stepping outside, you wouldn't glance in the mirror to ward off bad luck?"
Mark chuckled.
"I'm from the generation that used to slip a five-ruble coin into their shoe before exams."
"God, what are you, pushing thirty?"
"Guys, look what I found!" Yesenia interrupted, tapping excitedly on the glass.
"Whoa, that's… something," Ildar grinned at whatever his girlfriend had discovered. But Mark froze, his expression darkening. The phone stilled in his hands. Seeing his reaction, I leaned closer despite myself—expecting nothing remarkable.
The faded yellow-green photograph behind the glass looked half-burned, the edges charred as if it had survived a fire. At its center stood a tall, shadowy figure cloaked in heavy fabric that dragged along the floor, far too long for its wearer. The hood—broad and deep—fell over the shoulders like a collar, concealing the neck entirely. Against the dark weight of the garment, the figure's pale hands stood out starkly, folded together in a gesture of prayer. Their skin, lined as though with veins, was marked with circular patterns filled with tiny, intricate details that time had blurred beyond recognition.
Yet it wasn't the robe or even the markings that caught my breath—it was the mask. Bone-white and fractured, shaped from a deer's skull, its jagged teeth broken and its antlers reaching upward like twisted branches. Staring into the empty eye sockets gave the unsettling illusion that the image was staring back—pulling you inward, trying to make you a witness to a story you were never meant to know. A chill crept along my spine, a sense that the ghost of that moment had stretched its arms around us, offering an embrace no one could escape.
"What a creepy bastard," Mark muttered, zooming in to photograph the mask. "I wonder what he dressed up for."
"Some kind of ritual, maybe?" Ildar suggested. I shot him a sidelong glance. How much did this vampire really know about witchcraft? What if his presence here wasn't as coincidental as it seemed—what if he had some connection to the cursed text that kept appearing on my laptop?
"The outfit doesn't look particularly pagan," Yesenia remarked in her usual know-it-all tone. "And judging by the photograph, it's definitely from long after the Christianization of Rus'."
"True. And Halloween was never a thing here," Mark added, straightening and stretching his back. "Maybe some Christmas caroling, but this doesn't look like winter. It's… something else."
"Got all the pictures you wanted?" I asked, eager to move on. I was looking forward to observing our new companions more closely—and figuring out how accidental this meeting really was. The best place for uncomfortable questions was a car: no polite excuses, no sudden phone calls, no easy escape.
"Yeah, we can go," Mark said, then pulled me close by the waist and brushed his lips softly against mine.
When we finally found our way back to the main hall, we were met at the exit by the owner of the glamping park—Elena—standing with her arms crossed over her chest. Her lips tightened in visible displeasure as soon as she spotted us, and the look she cast toward Ildar could have set him ablaze.
"Your dog," she began, her voice trembling with indignation, "is not the good boy you claimed he was, but a spawn of hell that's scared off all my guests!"
Ildar put on a theatrical show of looking around the hall, as if searching for any guests other than the four of us.
"Really? And where might these so-called guests be right now? I don't seem to see anyone else here."
"Don't play dumb with me, young man." She jabbed a finger toward the courtyard. "Take your dog and make sure I never see so much as a whisker of him again."
"You don't seem too fond of animals for someone who proudly listed this place as dog-friendly on the website," Ildar replied coolly.
"Not all dogs are the same!" Elena's face flushed crimson, and for a moment it looked like fury itself would shake her to pieces. But Ildar appeared entirely unbothered. I offered the hostess a conciliatory smile and slipped past her stern frame through the narrow gap in the doorway, eager to escape outside. Mark followed close behind, snickering under his breath.
Then came a sharp, startled gasp behind me—a sound that froze my blood. I turned just in time to see Mark's foot twist unnaturally on one of the steps. His balance broke, and his body lurched forward into a fall. Another heartbeat, and he would have crashed down the stairs, bones counting every edge on the way—but my reaction came too fast. Far too fast for humans to pass.
Before his foot had even left the step completely, I was already beside him. My fingers clamped around his forearm, yanking him back and steadying his weight.
Mark slipped on the stairs and broke his neck.
The words flashed in my mind like text on my laptop screen, and something inside me clenched tight.
No. It had to be a coincidence. Anyone could lose their footing. Anyone could stumble on a step and think nothing of it. People trip, they stub their toes on bed frames, slam shoulders into doorways—Mark was no different. Each of those moments didn't have to mean inevitable death.
And yet, my throat went dry from the thought.