Sleight of Fantasy
2019 Heat 5/5
Sleight of Fantasy by Dima Zales is a 2019 romance. Tropes: boss-employee-forbidden-romance, found-family-under-siege, hurt-comfort-slow-burn, immortal-assassin-antagonist, mentor-mentee-power-imbalance, Mystery, otherworld-portal-quest, prophecy-and-mutable-futures, Psychic, psychic-seer-heroine, supernatural-political-intrigue, Urban Fantasy. Heat 5/5. Book 4 of Sasha Urban.
What happened in Sleight of Fantasy?
My deal with Nero and my growing powers are supposed to keep me and my loved ones safe—yet the unthinkable happens. When lines are crossed and blood is spilled, nothing will ever be the same again.
What tropes are in Sleight of Fantasy?
Where does Sleight of Fantasy fall in Sasha Urban?
Book 4 of Sasha Urban. Reading order
What should I read next?
Paranormal Misdirection by Dima Zales.
Chapters
Chapter 2
Sasha Urban wakes to her doorbell on her first day back at work, already running late after a night of disturbing dreams. Her elderly neighbor Rose lures her in with breakfast and a favor: watch Lucifur, her demon cat, while Rose and her immortal lover Vlad vacation. Over tea, Sasha confesses the revelation that her boss Nero is also her biological father—Grigori Rasputin—and has manipulated her life for decades. Rose confides her own taboo romance with the centuries-old vampire Vlad, urging Sasha to embrace love despite impossible circumstances. The conversation circles back to the charged kiss Sasha shared with Nero the previous night, leaving Sasha spiraling with guilt and desire. After accepting the babysitting gig, Sasha rushes to the office only to find her workspace erased and a handwritten summons from Nero waiting where her desk once stood.
Chapter 3
Venessa storms into Nero’s office demanding her missing workstation, wrapping the confrontation in flirtatious provocation as she deliberately crosses and uncrosses her legs to rattle him. When Nero, her imperious Mentor, presses her for details about her dangerous encounter with Baba Yaga, she recounts how the witch demanded a sexual bargain with the bannik Yaroslav in exchange for a false memory—a demand she refused—and how the rescue of the kidnapped Ariel brought her back to Nero’s door. Blaming him for hiding her parentage, she begs for answers about her father and mother, but Nero invokes their binding secrecy clause and redirects her to Lucretia, noting that this Mentorship time won’t count against her work allotment. When puppy eyes fail to sway him, Nero’s demeanor shifts to something terrifying; his supernatural speed blurs him to the doorway, and with a growl he expels her, leaving the truth about her origins locked away and the tension between them crackling at a breaking point.
Chapter 4
Sasha reluctantly attends a therapy session with Lucretia, an ancient pre-vamp empath who holds a binding privacy contract with Nero. She recounts the recent chaos—zombie attacks, necromancers, and her uneasy alliance with Ariel—while wrestling with guilt over Ariel's vampire blood addiction and the men she killed defending herself. Lucretia reveals she secretly treats Yaroslav, the bannik bound to Baba Yaga, meeting him in the banya's privacy, and probes Sasha's fear of abandonment and emotional walls. Through empathic insight, Lucretia suggests Nero fears losing someone he loves, hinting at vulnerability beneath his cruelty. The session ends with an uneasy truce: Sasha agrees to return for more sessions and breakfast, while dreading her inevitable confrontation with Nero.
Chapter 5
Jittery with caffeine, Alexandra confronts Nero about her mysterious 'work allotment,' only to be led to basement level B01—a soundproof, 900-square-foot room disguised as a safe. Trapped inside for eight mandatory hours with no technology and only a countdown timer, she must generate a lucrative stock tip using her Seer visions. Though furious at the claustrophobic conditions and Nero's manipulative smirk, she realizes the isolation is designed to facilitate her entry into Headspace. After considering petty revenge via fake stock tickers, she meditates and drifts into the bodiless dreamscape. There, while pondering her absent ally Darian, a sentient, kaleidoscopic entity appears—triggered specifically by her thoughts of him. Reaching out, she is pulled into a vision-like black hole, leaving the chapter on the precipice of revelation.
Chapter 6
The narrator finds herself trapped inside Darian's memory of their first meeting at a restaurant, unable to control her own body but perceiving through his senses. As she watches an idealized doppelganger of herself perform card tricks with supernatural precision, she experiences his physical arousal bleeding into her consciousness, realizing that memory distorts reality into fantasy. The washed-out, dreamlike quality of the scene and the 'beer goggles' effect—where she appears as a perfected version of herself—reveal she is witnessing Darian's subjective impression rather than objective truth. When his thoughts compare her to another woman named Matilda, the intimacy of the mental invasion deepens, leaving her suspended in his recollection as the scene dissolves into another memory, the unresolved tension of this psychic trespass hanging over her.
Chapter 7
Darian awakens inside a fractured memory of his own bathroom, where a pregnant Matilda confronts him with devastating knowledge. Having hired a Dreamwalker and enlisted Chester to shield her from his seer sight, she has uncovered the terrible truth he has hidden: he has foreseen the death of their unborn child. What begins as playful banter curdles into panic as Darian leaps into Headspace, cycling through grief-stricken visions of fresh graves and realizing the future remains malleable. The chapter pivots from domestic tension to supernatural stakes as Darian confronts the weight of his silence, the fragility of his bond with Matilda, and the urgent need to alter a fate he has already witnessed. The unresolved pressure hangs heavy: he stands on the precipice of a vision, knowing he must change what is coming or live with the loss.
Chapter 8
Sasha enters Headspace and experiences Darian's intimate vision, discovering he is involved with a woman who reveals herself to be her own future self, Kit. The vision exposes a hidden past affair between Darian and Matilda, Chester's wife, and the prophecy that drove her to despair over their daughter Roxy. Sasha realizes Chester's hatred stems from believing Darian desired her, explaining his past attacks. As Darian compares this future intimacy to his lost love Matilda, Sasha grapples with whether to embrace this possible future or fear becoming a substitute, ending the chapter suspended between desire and dread as the vision dissolves.
Chapter 9
Sasha awakens in Headspace as a translucent synapse-hologram, floating in vacuum-like darkness beside Darian's ghostly projection. The seer explains that Headspace is a shared realm outside time where all seers can meet in secret, untraceable by visions. As they hover face-to-face, he warns of the dangers: hallucinations, power drainage, and the risk of a stronger seer stealing abilities—or reading private memories, including embarrassing or intimate ones. He reveals how to summon others by evoking their essence and how to exit by touching one's own form, while emotions literally lift or drag them through the void. When Darian cautions her against falling for Nero despite his ultimatum, and insists she must master her powers for an imminent life-or-death crisis, the connection suddenly severs, leaving the warning unfinished.
Chapter 10
The narrator awakens from a psychic vision with the seer Darian, abruptly cut off inside Nero’s metal cage with a crucial warning left unspoken. Trapped with no internet and only one hour of her eight-hour allotment completed, she retreats into unexpected luxuries—gourmet escargot and a Jacuzzi—before re-entering Headspace. There she discovers the shared dream-dimension is vast, possibly universe-sized, and confirms she still has seer mojo remaining. Attempts to summon her biological father, the legendary seer Grigori Rasputin, fail, underscoring the risk of draining one’s psychic reserves. The chapter closes on her resolve to master controlled entry and exit from Headspace, while Nero’s digital countdown ticks toward an unseen deadline.
Chapter 11
Trapped in Nero’s metal cell for her eight-hour work allotment, Bailey Spade masters exiting Headspace through stubborn practice, discovering she can slip out of the dream realm using her ethereal wisp without triggering a vision. When she attempts to summon a happy vision of her captor for a stock tip, her future self instead punches him in the jaw—revealing a violent subconscious rebellion. Nero releases her into a chauffeured limo but demands she meet him at the gym at seven a.m. in workout gear, framing their arrangement as survival through power rather than profit. Back home, Bailey finds her apartment miraculously repaired and learns from Felix that their friend Ariel remains in an uncertain state in Gomorrah. Choosing revealing yoga pants for her rendezvous, Bailey plots a pungent revenge prank before her thoughts drift into charged dreams about Nero, leaving the chapter’s tension unresolved.
Chapter 12
Sasha wakes to find her domovoi Fluffster distracting the imperious cat Lucifur with a game of hide-and-seek beneath her royal blanket. After a quick limo ride to the office, she meets her Mentor Nero at the gym for an early morning sparring session. Nero introduces Bentley, a panda-like Cognizant martial arts trainer, but quickly dismisses him after Bentley's crude commentary. Nero reveals he knows the fighting style of the fasting nuns of Voikomlya's Jinto mountains and demonstrates its cobra-like strikes. He bets Sasha ten thousand dollars that she cannot land a hit, then lets her connect with his jaw—fulfilling a vision she'd seen the day prior—before effortlessly countering her subsequent attacks. As physical tension mounts between them during form corrections and grappling, they tumble together on the mat, stopping just short of a kiss, leaving the challenge of mastering the proper style—and the hundred-thousand-dollar wager—unresolved for tomorrow's session.
Chapter 13
Trapped in a high-tech metal cell for an eight-hour Mentorship session with Nero, Sasha must deliver a winning stock tip or face doubled punishment. While experimenting with Headspace, she discovers that faster entry hides her seer powers from observers, offering a potential way to evade the Mandate during combat. After recommending BioTelemetry as a short position, a failed attempt to punch Nero in the elevator leaves her nursing a bruised hand and another refusal about her parents. Later, at the apartment, she learns from Felix that Ariel remains under mind control at rehab, prompting him to build a remote-controlled robot named Golem to aid future rescues. The chapter closes with Nero invading her dreams, ratcheting up the tension between duty and desire.
Chapter 14
Sasha spends two days in brutal sparring sessions with Nero, refining her combat skills while struggling to master Headspace entry without the Focusall drug. Desperate to win Nero's hundred-thousand-dollar prize for landing a clean punch when his mitts are down, she cheats by taking a pill mid-fight. The strategy works: she enters Headspace, receives a prophetic vision of the exact winning move, and executes it perfectly, earning the cash and a bonus. But victory comes with a cost—Nero announces his departure for Europe and introduces Thalia, a waif-thin silent nun from the Jinto order, as her new trainer. When they begin real sparring, Thalia's deceptive speed and power overwhelm Sasha, who collapses after a single blow, leaving her wondering what she's gotten into.
Chapter 15
The narrator wakes on a gym mat after being knocked out by Thalia, a mute warrior nun from a mountain order on another world. Sent by Nero to train her in combat, Thalia subjects the narrator to a brutal, wordless sparring session where she repeatedly knocks the narrator down—each strike varying to prevent blocking. The narrator struggles to access her Headspace ability to predict moves, finally succeeding after calming her breathing, landing her first solid hit. Despite exhaustion, thirst, and a full bladder, she keeps fighting until she lands five hits, earning dismissal for the day. Exhausted but victorious, she escapes to her limo, gorges on sushi, and collapses into a rare, dreamless sleep free of Nero’s influence.
Chapter 16
Sasha wakes unbruised after Thalia's fight, her morning interrupted by Rose retrieving her unruly cat, Luci. Preparing a needle-swallowing spectacle to cheer up Ariel at rehab, Sasha rehearses the macabre trick, planning to pierce her own finger for authenticity. At the facility, they discover Ariel has vanished—apparently drawn away by Gaius, the vampire whose blood triggered her addiction. Councilor Kit, impersonating Ariel in a brazen flirtation, offers a ride to Brooklyn where she plans to meet Gaius. After negotiating for a seer vision and temporary lodging, Sasha and Felix secure passage with the shapeshifter. En route, Sasha attempts to use her Headspace abilities to divine Ariel's location by focusing on her friend's essence, spiraling into a vision as the chapter ends.
Chapter 17
Sasha struggles to interpret a haunting vision of Ariel trapped in a stark, windowless room—fearing Baba Yaga has seized control, signaled by all-black eyes. While riding with Kit and Felix toward One Hotel to confront Gaius, she recaps recent Council politics: Kit’s votes kept Chester off and blocked Baba Yaga’s ascension, while illusionist Hekima claimed the open seat, cementing his power. Sasha resents being bound to Nero’s mentorship as her only shield against Baba Yaga’s inevitable rise. At the industrial-chic hotel near the Brooklyn Bridge, a mischievous moment dragging Felix into the unisex restroom gives way to a sudden, overwhelming psychic dread. Trapped in the stall, Sasha attempts to summon another vision to identify the threat, ending on a knife-edge of unseen danger.
Chapter 18
Trapped in a Headspace bathroom with time frozen outside, the narrator attempts to summon Felix’s essence to glimpse their shared future, only to discover the shapes before them may already be the visions they seek. Exiting the stall, they encounter two hulking men whose bouncer facade cracks to reveal possible Baba Yaga enforcers—maybe mind-controlled, maybe not. When Kit emerges from another stall, the strangers reveal concealed firearms and open fire. The chapter pivots from surreal psychological tension to visceral action, leaving the narrator suspended between stopped time and deadly aim, the outside world paused while bullets fly in the dreamlike lavatory.
Chapter 19
Sasha uses her prophetic vision to ambush two assassins in a hotel bathroom, fighting alongside Kit—who transforms into a fifteen-foot alligator—to neutralize the threat. Discovering the dead men bear Baba Yaga's star tattoos, they realize the attack violated a truce with Nero, escalating stakes. After Kit cleans the scene by transforming into Pada, the group retreats to the pool deck where Sasha urgently video-calls Nero for protection. Their respite ends when they find Gaius's hotel room empty and learn both Gaius and the missing Ariel have vanished. Kit's frantic, profane rant contrasts with Sasha's mounting dread as they speculate whether the pair were kidnapped or simply fled. Returning to their apartment, they confirm Ariel isn't home and debate whether to force her into rehab, with Sasha briefly entertaining the idea of imprisonment before rejecting it. The chapter ends with Nero calling back, leaving the rescue mission unresolved.
Chapter 20
Nero jogs through his Vatican City apartment, video-calling Sasha to warn her to stay home after an assassination attempt, invoking his authority as her Mentor to enforce a protective lockdown. When she resists, he bargains: she remains under her domovoi's protection except for tomorrow's Orientation, which Kevin will drive her to, in exchange for proof that Ariel isn't kidnapped. He emails security footage showing Ariel alive at Nero's Earth Club in Gomorrah, sitting with Gaius—revealing the vampire as an enabler rather than an abductor. Nero seals the deal with a terrifying display of his limbal ring expanding across his eyes, threatening consequences if she breaks her word. Alone, Sasha practices entering Headspace while angry, touches an eerie cuboid shape, and receives a devastating vision: a polished redwood coffin containing a dead body, the anguish confirming that someone she loves is going to die.
Chapter 21
A cryptic funeral vision—showing only an unidentified coffin—plunges the narrator into dread over which loved one might die. Racing to avert fate, they video-call their parents, manipulating Mom into extending her stay in France and talking Dad out of a Bahamas trip, redirecting him to Grand Cayman instead. They warn housemate Felix to carry a weapon and work from home, while shapeshifter Kit and furry companion Fluffster brainstorm suspects. Using Headspace, the narrator probes possible futures: Mom appears safe at the Louvre, Dad snorkeling in Cayman, and Ariel alive walking Midtown with Gaius, though the timing remains unclear. Exhaustion finally breaks the vision streak before Felix’s future can be checked. As 3 a.m. arrives, the narrator collapses, the coffin’s occupant still a deadly mystery and the threat unresolved.
Chapter 22
Sasha wakes up nearly missing Orientation and joins Felix and Maya in Nero's limo to Queens, where Dr. Hekima terrifies the class with illusions of Otherlands horrors—a drekavac's fatal touch, the cannibalistic wastes of Tartarus, and Lilith's divine prison world. After Sasha pesters him with questions about the mythical gate makers, the b-hive pursues them to the limo, forcing a hasty escape. Sasha calls her Mentor Nero to confess a funeral vision she had been hiding; he orders her to stay locked down until he returns. Later, Maya coaxes Felix into showing her his Golem project in his bedroom while Sasha discovers her shapeshifter Kit mid-transformation with the telepathic domovoi Fluffster. The chapter closes as Sasha feels a wave of empathic agony, confirming someone she loves is in mortal danger.
Chapter 23
Sasha struggles to enter Headspace and witnesses a terrifying vision: at 5:34 p.m., Koschei murders her roommate Felix and his friend Maya in their apartment elevator. Realizing the clock matches reality, she races armed to intercept them, forcing the pair back inside just as the elevator opens. But when Koschei's footsteps retreat instead of approaching, she realizes the vision may be a decoy. As doubt festers over whether Nero has betrayed her trust or if Baba Yaga has deceived them both, Sasha is struck by an overwhelming seer dread, leaving the chapter on a knife-edge of unresolved danger.
Chapter 24
Sasha barely has time to react when Koschei the Immortal crashes the hallway outside Rose's door, claiming Baba Yaga sent him on business. What follows is a brutal, one-sided assault: Sasha empties her gun into the assassin, yet Koschei's Cognizant aura simply flares back to life as Rose bleeds out on the doorstep. In her final moments, Rose begs for the Jubilee stone Nero gave her, pressing it into Sasha's hand as she transfers her life force into the gem and dies. Devastated, Sasha watches Rose's aura extinguish, calls Nero to voicemail, then phones Vlad—only to hear him lose control and storm off in a rage that threatens his standing with the Council. Retreating into Headspace to confirm this isn't another deadly vision, Sasha glimpses Vlad torturing Baba Yaga's men and Koschei breaking into Lucretia's apartment at 14N, where she meets his blade with a hidden rapier.
Chapter 25
Awakening from a terrifying vision, the narrator realizes their therapist Lucretia is in imminent mortal danger, with the sorcerer Koschei due at her door within the hour. Racing against the clock at 6:21 p.m., they grab an unloaded weapon and dash through a damaged hallway, hoping to find ammunition from Nero's driver Kevin. A loyal furry helper named Fluffster warns them in frantic mental bursts that going will only add another victim, but the narrator is driven by grief and rage. Along the way, they learn that Felix and Maya have already fled with an escort, and Rose's cat Lucifur mourns a recent loss. Reaching the elevator, they find their escape blocked by Roxy and two minions, ending the chapter on a tense standoff with time running out.
Chapter 26
Three werewolf teens block the narrator's escape from a limo, seeking vengeance for Rose stripping one of them of her powers. Enraged by insults to her dead girlfriend, the narrator brutally overpowers them until each performs a submission ritual that surges energy through her. With bodyguard Kevin disarming the trio, she races through Manhattan traffic to Midtown, posing as his wife to reach therapist Lucretia Rossi's apartment at 14N. They find the door splintered, the Russian attacker Koschei fled, and Lucretia dead on the floor bearing knife wounds identical to Rose's with no Mandate aura remaining. The chapter closes on the narrator collapsing in grief over the body, the serial pattern of murder now unmistakable.
Chapter 27
The narrator discovers Lucretia's lifeless body and grapples with the impossible: as a Pre-vamp, she should have risen as a vampire. Piecing together fragments from their last session, they realize Lucretia drank Gaius's blood after a past injury, triggering the transformation and binding her to him as sire. The revelation sharpens into horror—Koschei and Baba Yaga must have known this vulnerability, deliberately killing her to weaponize her resurrection. Yet the math doesn't add up; if she turned, how did they kill her again? As the question hangs in the air, Lucretia's fangs sink into the narrator's neck, ending the chapter on a visceral cliffhanger of sudden violence and an uncertain infection.
Chapter 28
Sasha discovers that Gaius—Ariel’s nemesis—has arrived to claim Lucretia, the newly turned vampire. Using hypnotic glamour, Gaius disarms Kevin and commands Lucretia, as her sire, to feed on the driver despite her empathic horror. Sasha’s attempts to intervene fail against Gaius’s supernatural dominance, and Kevin dies from the blood loss. Traumatized by the second death she feels responsible for, Sasha collapses beside the body, only to hear footsteps at the door as Lucretia flees with her captor, leaving Sasha alone with the corpse and the crushing knowledge that Ariel is missing and her friend is now bound to a monster for a decade.
Chapter 29
Nero finds Sasha wounded and shaken after a violent confrontation that left Kevin dead and Lucretia inexplicably resurrected under Gaius’s control. With puncture wounds on her neck and a haunting vision of funerals looming over her loved ones, she fears she is a danger to everyone she cares about—especially Nero. He carries her to his penthouse, where he tends to her injuries with quiet competence and offers physical comfort that breaks through her emotional walls. As she sobs in his arms, the chapter pivots from crisis to fragile intimacy, ending on the unresolved tension of her fear that loving her means becoming a target, and the question of who might die next.
Chapter 30
After a traumatic rescue mission leaves Sasha shaken, she finds refuge in Nero's apartment, where he tends to her emotional wounds with tea, gourmet food, and unexpected levity—playing K-Pop while revealing he speaks every language of his contacts to avoid interpreter deception. As she eats and soaks in a candlelit Jacuzzi he prepares for her, the warmth soothes her grief, yet memories of Baba Yaga's assassins and Koschei's threats linger beneath the surface. When drowsiness finally overtakes her in the tub, the chapter closes on the fragile boundary between safety and the danger still waiting outside.
Chapter 31
Sasha wakes naked in Nero’s penthouse after collapsing in his hot tub, greeted by an elaborate brunch that reveals he hasn’t taken a day off since 1825. As they share mimosas and stock tips, she discovers her “random” picks earned his fund forty-nine million dollars, complicating her self-doubt with new proof of her seer abilities. When a traumatic vision of Rose resurfaces, Nero’s comfort sparks a charged moment where they nearly kiss—until Sasha pulls back, paralyzed by their boss-mentor dynamic and fear of abandonment. After an intense workout in his private gym, she attempts to leave, but Nero blocks the door, leaving the morning’s tenderness suspended in unresolved tension.
Chapter 32
Alexandra confronts Nero in his opulent penthouse, accusing Baba Yaga of plotting against her while Nero insists on keeping her safe and reveals he has hired Cognizant detective Bailey Spade—alias Freda Krueger—to investigate. To distract her, Nero leads her to his private poker room, where she performs an impressive card magic set ending with a needle-through-card flourish. When she presses him about her father, Nero accidentally confirms that Rasputin is alive and shares his resourceful, loyal nature, but stubbornly refuses to disclose his location. Stung by the secrecy, Alexandra retreats to the living room, then slips into Headspace to check on Vlad, only to fall into a harrowing vision saturated with fear and loss.
Chapter 33
Nero watches bodiless from the St. George Staten Island Ferry Terminal as Vlad faces his own allies. What begins as a tense standoff erupts into brutal combat when Gaius, Koschei, Ariel, and Lucretia turn on Vlad, backed by three Enforcers. Despite dispatching the soldiers with devastating force, Vlad is overwhelmed by numbers and betrayal. After a vicious exchange that leaves him gravely wounded, Koschei and Gaius deliver the killing blow, decapitating the vampire as his Cognizant aura fades into nothing. The chapter closes on the attackers' triumph cut short, leaving the fate of Vlad's legacy and the conspirators' next move hanging in the salt air.
Chapter 34
The narrator returns to Nero’s penthouse with adrenaline spiking after a terrifying vision shows Vlad attacking the unkillable Koschei on a Staten Island dock—a reckless suicide mission that also endangers the glamoured Ariel and the newly turned vampire Lucretia. Desperate to intervene, she races through the penthouse to beg Nero for help, but he initially refuses, citing a magical contract that forbids him from entering Baba Yaga’s territory at Brighton Beach and suggesting Vlad may actually want to die so the Council will destroy Koschei posthumously. After she breaks down emotionally and reminds him of Rose’s murder and past bloodshed, Nero relents, handing her a gun and revealing a helicopter waiting on the roof, launching them into a frantic race against time to save Vlad’s life.
Chapter 35
The narrator accompanies Nero on a helicopter flight over New York City while eavesdropping on a confidential call with Bailey Spade, a dream therapist who reveals dangerous intelligence: the witch Baba Yaga is dreaming of securing a seat on the Council and has forged an alliance with Gaius, who murdered her enemy in Russia and now plots to seize Vlad's position as Leader of the Enforcers. Bailey also discloses that Ariel, recovering in rehab from addiction, remains vulnerable to vampiric glamour but is likely not backsliding. As the helicopter descends toward the Staten Island Yankees stadium, the stakes crystallize around Ariel's safety and Vlad's impending confrontation with Gaius's conspiracy. Racing across the pier toward Vlad and the gang, the narrator arrives to find them already gone—or already taken—leaving the chapter on a cliffhanger of unresolved tension.
Chapter 36
Following a premonition, Vlad violently dispatches vampire Enforcers on the pier while Nero intervenes, and Sasha shoots the immortal Koschei to protect her allies. When Gaius orders his group into the water, Vlad pursues Koschei beneath the waves while Ariel escapes in a civilian car. Nero secures a cab for Sasha—questioning the driver with a hundred-dollar bill—and insists she shelter at his penthouse, though she demands to go home. In the car, Sasha enters Headspace to check on her friends, confirming Ariel rides safely toward New Jersey yet remains under glamour, and discovers an unprecedented cluster of Vlad-related vision shapes. Unable to reach Darian, she summons Yaroslav the bannik to help interpret the ominous visions, ending the chapter with the underwater pursuit unresolved and new psychic questions arising.
Chapter 37
Opens with the narrator trapped in a vivid memory of Yaroslav's banya session with therapist Lucretia, where steam and sensual tension blur into a Headspace training session. As a synapse-hologram, the narrator consults the bannik about seer abilities, learning to initiate multiple visions simultaneously and confirming that Headspace connections expose fragments of each other's memories. Yaroslav reveals a gruesome price for his defiance: Koschei had his index finger chewed off as punishment, fueling his vendetta. Despite the injury and time pressure—Headspace conversations drain power—Yaroslav shares a prophetic glimpse of how to permanently destroy Koschei, involving a journey to the Otherland Buyan and the Golden Hare Inn. The chapter ends on this lethal secret, blending erotic memory, body horror, and desperate hope.
Chapter 38
The narrator returns to the car nursing regrets—Yaroslav vanished mid-conversation in Headspace before revealing how to permanently destroy Koschei or how to exit the mental plane cleanly, and the narrator never got to mention Lucretia. After failing to summon the mentor again, attention shifts to fresh visions of Vlad, Rose’s beau, whose new psychic impressions swirl with darker, more varied violence than before. Following the bannik’s advice, the narrator abandons the single-wisp approach and imagines a multilimbed, octopus-like form, allowing consciousness to fragment across several ethereal wisps and activate multiple visions at once. The screen floods with Vlad’s brutal work: dismantling an Enforcer named Gaius, erasing evidence in a basement, mesmerizing an armory clerk into handing over weapons, slaughtering Russian goons, draining comatose Johnnies, dousing a bound man in gasoline and setting him alight, and massacring a banya. The chapter closes on Vlad’s relentless killing, leaving the narrator awash in the horror of her beau’s true nature.
Chapter 39
Sasha awakens from a draining multi-vision of Vlad's brutal revenge fantasies, her nerves shredded by the carnage. Hired muscle Bentley and Thalia now shadow her at Nero's command, refusing to leave until he personally calls. At home, she debriefs Felix, Kit, and the domovoi Fluffster on Lucretia's turning, the revelation that Bailey Spade is the infamous Freda Krueger, and the werewolves' permanent submission to her dominance. When Kit sketches a gate-map to Buyan, Sasha resolves to help Vlad assassinate the unkillable Koschei—despite Nero's contract with Baba Yaga barring him from the kill. As the trio commandeers a limo toward JFK hub, Bentley absconds with Kit's Lamborghini to repark it, only for the sports car to detonate in a thunderous explosion, leaving their guardian's fate hanging in the smoke.
Chapter 40
A car bomb detonates outside the group, throwing the narrator into Kit while Felix crashes to the pavement. As Thalia—a nun bound by a vow of silence—extinguishes the burning driver Bentley, the group realizes Baba Yaga has targeted them. With Enforcers handling the police, they flee in Nero's bulletproof limo to JFK, where Thalia silently farewells them before they vanish through secret passages into the Otherlands. Traveling via colored gates through caverns, deserts, and bazaars, they reach Buyan, a fairy-tale forest where a giant tomcat in pince-nez glasses directs them to the Golden Hare Inn. Kit shapeshifts into a horse to carry them, then into a reindeer at a mystical three-way fork where she chooses the path that saves herself over her mount. They gallop toward a looming giant head, the chapter ending on the threshold of this impossible new threat.
Chapter 41
Travelers encounter a colossal giant head sprouting from the earth, besieged by resurrecting bogatyrs—Cognizant warriors who cannot be permanently killed by conventional means. Witnessing a firebird egg explode against the giant before the attacker resurrects again, the group realizes these legendary anti-vampire weapons won't defeat Koschei. Navigating around the carnage with their shapeshifting companion Kit, they reach the Golden Hare Inn, a rustic tavern populated by dangerous mythical beings including a kikimora and a menacing leshy. When Kit's loud Russian request silences the room and draws the leshy's hostile attention, the travelers find themselves trapped in a tense standoff in a place where folklore predators gather.
Chapter 42
When a leshy ambushes Kit in a roadside inn, the narrator's gun misfires due to inconsistent physics in certain Otherlands, compelling Kit to shapeshift into a towering female leshy to fling the attacker through a wall. After the waitress surrenders a Fabergé-style firebird egg, the trio escapes on horseback, only to be hunted by a battalion of bogatyrs wielding arrows and incendiary eggs. Trapped between the pursuing warriors and a fresh ambush emerging from the distant forest, they brace for a lethal barrage that threatens to turn them into 'shish kebabs,' leaving their survival hanging in the balance.
Chapter 43
The narrator and companions escape on the back of Kit, who has transformed into a massive Roc, soaring above projectiles toward a meadow hub in Buyan. After landing and evading pursuing bogatyrs through a gate, they traverse the hub network to exit at JFK. There, they examine Kit's prize—an ornate egg containing an unbreakable silvery needle that neither human strength nor orc jaws can snap. While the narrator secretly stashes the needle in a hollow tongue piercing, Felix reveals he already knows the trick, heightening their tension. The chapter closes on a new pressure: Otherland's time dilation has skipped them to Monday morning, leaving the narrator dangerously late for work while unread messages pile up from Nero and Thalia.
Chapter 44
The narrator receives an urgent summons from Nero and arrives at work with Thalia, Kit, and Felix after a harrowing journey. Nero, visibly furious, personally escorts the narrator into a locked safe-cell office to interrogate them about a recent car bombing and their trip through the Otherlands—specifically the dangerous dimension of Buyan. Despite the narrator's protests, Nero seals the metal door, leaving them confined. Trapped and restless, the narrator attempts to use their Seer abilities to check on Vlad through Headspace, but their power remains depleted from previous use. After what feels like days of pacing the cell, the connection finally succeeds, plunging the narrator into a disturbing vision of Vlad's impending actions, ending on a note of creeping dread.
Chapter 45
Vlad arrives at the Izbushka restaurant at sunset, expecting a closed venue but finding armed mobsters inside. After neutralizing the bouncers with a hypnotic command through his mirrored eyes, he storms the empty disco where lasers spin and Russian music plays. Gunfire erupts as Vlad unleashes automatic fire on the gangsters, absorbing a shoulder wound without flinching until his weapon runs dry. He finishes the fight with brutal hand-to-hand strikes and another mass command to sleep, leaving bodies scattered across the marble floor. Just as the smoke clears, three powerful allies—Lucretia, Ariel, and Gaius—drop from above to surround him, signaling that the real confrontation is only beginning.
Chapter 46
Vlad ambushes the vampire Gaius with a smoke grenade, executing him at point-blank range and shattering the sire bond that held his thralls. When the enraged Ariel attacks, Lucretia intervenes, and Vlad turns his machete on a wave of Baba Yaga’s black-eyed johnnies before decapitating the resurrecting Koschei. But the ancient witch emerges from the smoke with a plan to seize Vlad’s Council seat, forcing his hand through dark mind-control until he slashes his own throat. In the final heartbeat, a firebird egg hidden in Vlad’s coat detonates, reducing Vlad, Baba Yaga, and Koschei to ash as gasoline flames engulf the restaurant.
Chapter 47
Trapped in a penal cell with mere minutes remaining on her work allotment, Alexandra receives a terrifying Seer vision: Vlad is walking into a suicide trap at Brighton Beach, timed to ignite at sunset. When she begs Nero for help via videoconference, he refuses—citing a contract with Baba Yaga that forbids him from entering Brighton Beach—and punishes her defiance by repeatedly doubling her sentence. Desperate, Alexandra turns to Headspace, splitting her consciousness into ten thousand simultaneous vision-shapes to brute-force the cell’s four-digit passcode. The psychic assault tears at her mind, but she persists until the green light flashes on 7735. The door unlocks, leaving her free to race against the clock to save Vlad, though Nero’s building still stands between her and escape.
Chapter 48
Sasha bolts from the office after cracking a password—SELL—that points to a trap, desperate to intercept Vlad before he enters the Izbushka in Brighton Beach. With her seer abilities depleted, she recruits Councilor Kit, whose Mandate bars her from touching Baba Yaga directly, and Felix’s remote-controlled robot Golem to evade mind control. Racing a cab against the setting sun, the trio dons masks to avoid witnesses since no Enforcers will erase memories afterward. They arrive to find the bouncers unconscious, fearing they’ve arrived too late to save Vlad, Lucretia, and Ariel from whatever waits inside.
Chapter 49
Sasha and Kit rush into a blood-spattered hideout to extract Vlad, with Felix directing them through an earbud as automatic gunfire erupts across the glossy floor. Acting on a precognitive vision of the rescue, they watch Vlad mow down goons with a shotgun and Uzi—and take another bullet to the shoulder—while his weaponized gaze forces the survivors to sleep. But when Golem crushes the last two attackers instead of Vlad performing his signature somersault, the timeline shifts: Lucretia, Ariel, and Gaius drop from above, disarm Vlad, and haul him away as Gaius strikes his face. The extraction meant to save Vlad instead hands him to his captors, closing the chapter on betrayal and unresolved violence.
Chapter 50
In a dim, laser-lit room, the narrator fights alongside Felix and Kit to protect Lucretia and Ariel from the vampire Gaius, who is brutally battling Vlad. When Gaius slaps a grenade from Vlad's hand and disarms him, the narrator grabs a shotgun but is swatted into a bloody marble wall, suffering cracked ribs and a winded lung. Despite the agony, they crawl to retrieve the grenade and shotgun, debating whether to use smoke cover—knowing the sprinklers could ignite the volatile firebird egg nearby and kill everyone. With Vlad taking machete wounds and Gaius gaining the upper hand, the narrator gambles on a point-blank shot, squeezing the trigger in a desperate bid to turn the tide before the egg detonates.
Chapter 51
The reckoning arrives in a hail of gunfire. When Gaius falls, the Mandate aura shatters and the sire bond snaps—freeing Lucretia even as Ariel remains bound by glamour. Vlad, grievously wounded, pays the ultimate price to decapitate the tyrant, collapsing in a pool of blood as Kit rushes to transfuse him. With the back exit crawling with Johnnies, Koschei, and Baba Yaga, Nero holds the line, firing into the dark while the team drags the wounded out. In a desperate gambit, Nero plunges into Headspace mid-battle for the first time, diving into a pyramid-shaped vision to glimpse the future and decide whether to unleash a smoke grenade into the gasoline-soaked room. The chapter ends on a knife-edge: will the vision save them, or will the fire consume them all?
Chapter 52
Baba Yaga stands over a broken body arranged like a crime scene, wielding a blood-smeared skillet. When Kit attempts to intervene with a shotgun, the weapon jams, and the witch hurls the skillet into Kit’s head. As Baba Yaga channels black energy from her fingertips—aging decades in the effort—the blast arcs toward Sasha but is absorbed by the Jubilee necklace on the prone body, a posthumous safeguard arranged by Rose. Sensing the shift, Kit transforms into a drekavac and dispatches the witch in a horrific display of dissolving flesh. She then shifts into an orc and carries the narrator’s inert body toward the restaurant exit, leaving Baba Yaga dead on the floor.
Chapter 53
The narrator snaps back from a harrowing Headspace vision into the chaos of an active restaurant gunfight, physically recoiling from the horror of what Kit did to Baba Yaga and Bentley’s burned corpse. Piecing together recent attacks, they realize the car bomb and bathroom ambush were both misdirected strikes aimed at Kit, not at them—explaining Baba Yaga’s honest denial to Nero. With Baba Yaga now confirmed as the murderer of Rose, Kevin, and Bentley, the narrator’s resolve hardens into grim determination to prevent the vision of their own death. The fight escalates as two Johnnies emerge and are dispatched, but Koschei appears with a blade, surviving a headshot before disarming and hurling the narrator against a wall, their consciousness fleeing as the chapter ends on the brink of unconsciousness.
Chapter 54
A metal Golem ambushes Koschei, shattering his leg and battering him to apparent death before the immortal villain resurrects and turns the tide, dismantling the robot limb by limb. While the clash rages, the wounded narrator—ribs cracked, back bloodied—drags himself across marble toward a shotgun, desperate to intervene. Adrenaline fuels his crawl until rough hands seize him, slamming his spine against stone. Koschei lifts him by the throat, leering, as the chapter cuts to black on the narrator's helpless gasp. The scene delivers a visceral display of Koschei's unkillable resilience and the narrator's fragile desperation, building unbearable tension for the confrontation to come.
Chapter 55
Koschei has the upper hand in a brutal struggle, throttling the narrator with sadistic glee as the trachea crushes under his grip. Drawing on every lesson from Thalia and years of combat training, the narrator fights back with blocks, punches, and kicks against impossible odds, the pain of a cracking forearm ignored in favor of survival. When Koschei leans in to taunt, the narrator unleashes a hidden gambit—spitting a needle from Buyan directly into the sorcerer's eye. The moment it pierces the iris, the exposed metal ignites with a supernatural glow, turning the tables in a split second and leaving the chapter on the precipice of a possible turning point.
Chapter 56
After Koschei releases his chokehold, the narrator collapses to the floor in agony but forces himself to crawl toward a shotgun. Channeling raw vengeance for Rose and Kevin, he executes the fallen tyrant at point-blank range, watching as Koschei's Mandate aura flickers and dies while glowing needle shards absorb his final essence before the body crumbles to ash and vanishes without a trace. The narrator immediately recognizes this as the exact fulfillment of a prior vision involving Kit and an empty weapon, but before he can fully process the prophecy's weight, Baba Yaga ambushes him from behind with a giant skillet, the impact sending him into blackness and leaving his consciousness suspended at the chapter's brutal cliffhanger.
Chapter 57
Sasha awakens in agony after Baba Yaga's attack, cradled by the orc Kit, who reveals she slew the witch by shifting into a drekavac. As Felix explains via comms that he summoned Nero, a limo screeches to the curb bearing the vampire and Isis, an expensive healer. While Vlad and Lucretia secure the street, Isis pours golden energy into Sasha's shattered body, her own skin paling and hair graying with each surge. At Sasha's urging, Nero hurls a smoke grenade to shatter the restaurant glass while Vlad tosses a firebird egg inside, reducing the Izbushka to flames. The healer then lulls Sasha into a healing sleep, but not before Sasha wakes in Nero's bedroom, nearly kissing him amid the lingering euphoria of the magic, only to drift off again as Nero pulls away.
Chapter 58
Sasha awakens fully healed from her near-fatal injuries, cuddled between her telepathic pets Fluffster and Lucifur, only to discover Nero has grounded her while her friends convene to plan an elaborate cover-up for the murders of Koschei, Baba Yaga, and Gaius. As Ariel announces her departure for rehab in Gomorrah to confront her trauma and cravings—while a funeral for Rose looms over the household—Sasha retreats into Headspace. There, she successfully makes contact with her biological father, Rasputin, whose presence pulses with curiosity and dread, leaving her suspended between recovery and a revelation about her past, with unresolved questions about a recent intimate dream still burning.
Chapter 59
The narrator slips into Rasputin's memories, beginning with an intimate, sensual moment of grooming a lover, then shifting to a vision of Rasputin in an Orthodox church conferring with a young Nero about a prophecy: a child will live peacefully until age twenty-four, when her fate splinters beyond prediction. The memory cuts to JFK airport, where Rasputin abandons his frightened infant—the narrator herself—to adoptive parents drinking at a bar, whispering that it is the only way. Finally, the vision drops into darkness: Rasputin bound and tortured in an underground chamber, gasping that he deserves every blow for leaving his child. The chapter closes on raw guilt and physical agony, pressing the narrator to sever the connection before the pain consumes her.
Chapter 60
In the vacuum-dark of Headspace, Sasha confronts a synapse-hologram of Grigori Rasputin—a bald, translucent figure bearing her own chin and eyes. Despite a brutal language barrier, they exchange urgent warnings: 'opasno' means danger, and 'proschay' signals a farewell never to meet again. Rasputin's pained insistence that she stay away reveals he is being tortured, likely daily, wherever he is imprisoned. When her father's seer powers rip her back to the real world, Sasha deciphers the message but ignores the warning. Pacing her room with Fluffster, she studies the map to Buyan and realizes it mirrors a diagram she glimpsed in Nero's safe—a potential path to her father hidden in photos of his contracts. Driven by certainty and filial defiance, Sasha resolves to find Rasputin, even if the trail leads into hell itself.
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Sleight of Fantasy by Dima Zales. https://books.mozaikallc.com/en/works/dima-zales/sleight-of-fantasy Plot summaries, not full text.