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“I was just thinking that if Quicksilver goes out there and breaks a lot of world records, I could make an absolute killing selling his frozen semen.”

It’s worth a little irreverence to hear Alexei’s strangled cough.

“You don’t think the world needs a few more little Quicksilvers running around?”

Alexei turns toward me, and then he kicks his legs up on the coffee table right beside mine. “Actually, I think that’s a great idea. Were you volunteering?”

My stomach does a cartwheel, and suddenly everyone’s laughing—at my expense.

“All I’m saying,” Kris says, “is that we need to keep things under a tighter leash on the day of the race.”

“Agreed.” I may be blushing, and they may have flipped my joke around on me, but Kristiana’s point is a valid one. These are strange circumstances, so we need to be on our guard.

We all agree on a training schedule and begin planning the logistics and the times we think Leonid might show up. We’ve also crafted the press release saying that a horse jointly owned by Kristiana and me is racing. If that doesn’t lure him, nothing will.

“How are the wedding plans coming?” I ask.

“Fine,” Kristiana says.

“Liar. She’s stopped doing anything,” Mirdza says. “She’s been too focused on this.”

I’m sure it’s hard to get excited about bridesmaids and wedding registries when you know someone wants to snatch you and do who knows what to you.

Her phone rings, then. It’s a client—their horse is tangled in barbed wire. I can’t believe people still use that to pen animals in paddocks. Horses are always getting spooked and startled and running into it. The results are always catastrophic.

“I’ll go with and help,” Mirdza says.

“Me too,” Grigoriy offers.

Aleks is meeting with someone about some kind of business thing—I suppose someone has to manage all their ridiculous piles of money. But when Alexei bangs on my front door, freaking out, there’s no one else around to help.

“There’s water going everywhere.” It’s moments like this that remind me that he missed a hundred years. “It seems to be coming from massive pipes at the front of the property. I throttled the flow, but now the entire property isn’t getting water, and doesn’t it need to go places, like water troughs?”

I follow him as calmly as I can manage, and after telling him to release the water pressure, I discover that it’s coming from a busted water main. The men who were working on the power lines last week probably bumped one and with enough pressure, a leak can eventually become a burst. It takes me nearly ten minutes to figure out where the shut-off valve is, but then I can finally cut water to the entire barn without making Alexei stand there and do it himself.

But for a horse barn, no water is an emergency. Horses need water or they can colic and die.

“I’ll fill the water troughs,” Alexei says. “That’s not a big deal.”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” I hiss, “there are a dozen people on this property who have no idea what you can do. Or did you think it would be a good plan to just wander around, materializing water out of thin air?”

He frowns.

Kristiana doesn’t pick up when I call, which means she’s in the middle of saving a horse. I sigh as I start calling plumbers, but none of them are answering. Daugavpils isn’t exactly a booming metropolis, so once I’ve worked my way through the first twenty, I’m down to just two left. I’ve officially reached the bottom of the barrel.

The second to last number’s out of service. I dial the very last one without a lot of hope.

A woman answers.

“Hey there,” I say. “I’ve got a busted water main, and I have over a hundred horses on property that need water. I’m hoping you can send your plumber out today to look at it.”

“Of course,” the young woman says. “I’ll be there in less than an hour.”

“Wait, you’re the plumber?”

“I am,” she says. “Is that a problem?”

“Of course not,” I say. “You just don’t meet too many female plumbers.”