by Joy Preble
Finally, I can see. I’m in a forest of some sort, thick with trees. My nostrils fill with the heavy odor of rotting wood and leaves—and something else, something thick and sweet. Too sweet. My memory flashes to the day I came home to find my family murdered, to the jars of plum preserves my mother had just made, the fruit still warm from the stove. They lay broken and spattered on the floor, their pungent aroma mingling thickly with my family’s blood as it seeped back into the earth through the cracks in our wooden floor. It was the smell of death.
I hear a soft rustle behind me. When I turn, Anne is standing in front of me. Even with the scent of rot around us, I can smell the freshness of her skin, the soap she’s used, something that smells of peaches and vanilla. She’s wearing a thin, blue nightshirt that falls to about mid-thigh. Her legs are bare, and that auburn hair I’ve always seen pulled back falls softly about her face. She doesn’t belong here, I know, but all I can think is that she looks so good, so young, so pretty.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she says. “I thought you’d never wake up.”
She walks over me, cups her slender hands around my face. “Oh, Ethan,” she murmurs, her face bending in to mine. “Hold me.”
Some small part of my brain is telling me this isn’t real, that I’m in danger, that we’re both in danger. But still, I reach out and wrap my arms around her, embrace her. My body thrums with the feel of her against me. I’ve needed her for so long, I think, and even as I think it, it seems true. How could I have existed without her? So many years without her.
I close my eyes again and just breathe in her scent.
“Kiss me,” Anne says. Her lips brush against mine.
So I kiss her. Her mouth is warm and wonderfully soft. I could stay like this forever, I think. Dimly, I know something is wrong, but the thought doesn’t stay with me long.
Anne pulls back. I raise my heavy eyelids again. She looks at me with those deep brown eyes, reaches up, and runs a finger across my lips.
“Don’t leave me,” she says. “Promise me you won’t leave.”
I dip my head and kiss her again. “I won’t,” I tell her. My head is spinning. I’m finding it hard to put words to thoughts. I wanted to kiss her, but this feels forced. Off. As if someone else is controlling what I think, what I do, what I desire.
“I’m supposed to do something,” I say. Her lips are still on mine, warmer now, burning against my mouth. “I know there’s something. I just can’t remember. Do you know what I’m supposed to do?”
“Of course,” Anne says. My hands slide up to stroke her neck. “Of course I know. Do you want me to tell you?”
“Yes,” I say. “Please tell me. I need to know.”
But when she opens her mouth to speak, no words come out. I stare into her eyes and realize they’ve gone dark and blank.
Then, against my own will, my hands tighten around her neck.
Thursday, 4:45 am
Anne
Searing panic fills me as I pound my hands against Ethan’s chest. His mouth burns against mine, pulling the life from me. His hands are squeezing my neck, cutting off my air.
Stay calm, I tell myself. It’s just another dream. This can’t be real. It simply can’t be. I’ve seen those movies. I love them—the ones where the hero gets rid of the bad guy by realizing that he’s just a vision or a hologram or something.
But I can’t breathe. I can’t think.
“It will be over soon,” a voice says. It’s not Ethan’s voice, but someone else’s—someone else’s voice vying for space in my rapidly emptying brain.
“Let go.” The voice slithers softly into my ears. “It won’t hurt so much if you just give in.”
I have no breath left to say no. All I can do is shake my head. No, I think. No. I can’t die this way.
My hands keep pounding against Ethan’s chest. He clutches me to him, his mouth wresting the breath from my body, his hands squeezing tighter and tighter around my neck.
It’s an illusion. I know it’s just an illusion, just a dream. But I still feel like I’m dying.
Ethan’s hands squeeze even tighter.
“You trusted him,” the voice says. “You trusted him, and now see how he’s repaying you.” At that moment, I know who’s speaking: the man who wants me dead, who doesn’t want me to reach Anastasia. Viktor, my own distant ancestor, who seems determined to get rid of me. He’s found some way to get into my head, into my dreams. Ethan—the real Ethan—would never do this. But that won’t matter if I can’t stop it. I’ll still be dead.
Dead.
I let my hands slide limply to my sides, will my body to go heavy.
Viktor takes the bait.
The dream Ethan lifts his mouth from mine just a fraction of an inch. His grip loosens.
Wonderful air rushes back into my lungs.
“I’m not quite as dead as you think, Grandpa,” I tell Viktor, wherever he is, and this time, it’s my own voice that echoes in my ears. I yank the dream Ethan’s arms away from me and shove my fists into and through his chest.
The illusion explodes.
Gasping, I sit up in bed, awake and alive.
Thursday, 4:47 am
Ethan
Christ. I wrench myself awake. My hands still feel like they’re around Anne’s neck. I’m up and off the bed, shoving on my shoes and jacket even before my legs are steady underneath me.
I stumble into what’s left of the kitchen, turn on the faucet at the sink, bend over, and gulp some mouthfuls of water. My throat is dry as dust.
He’d used me against her—stretched out his will with magic, burrowed into my head, and made me…
I flip on the light over the sink, the one fixture that still has a working bulb after yesterday’s whirlwind, and look at my watch. It’s almost morning. Shit. I’ve got to get to her.
I pull my cell phone from my jacket pocket. My hands shake as I fumble to open it. I take a breath and punch in the numbers for Olensky’s office. I need to get to him, but I need to get to Anne first.
“Ethan?” Alex’s voice sounds thick with exhaustion.
“Are you all right?” I ask him, skipping any other preliminaries. “Is anything wrong there?”
“Wrong? No, friend, nothing is wrong. What—what time is it?” In the background, I hear him shuffling some papers.
“It’s almost morning, Alex. Viktor came after Anne. He made me—I can’t explain now—there’s no time. I need to go to her. Stay where you are. We’ll be there soon.”
I don’t wait for a response. I simply flip the phone closed and jam it in my pocket. Then I grab Anne’s battered backpack from the floor and head out. This time, I don’t bother with a warding spell. I have nothing left worth protecting.
Except the girl I hope remains safe until I can reach her.
Thursday, 5:30 am
Ethan
I barely take the time to pull the keys from the ignition when I park the Mercedes in front of Anne’s house. I should be more cautious, park out of view, but I don’t care about any of that—only that Anne is safe.
I scan the house. Through the blinds of a window facing the street—a bedroom?—I can see a vague glow of light. Other than that, the front of the house is dark.
Somewhere down the block, a dog barks as I walk around to the back of Anne’s house, open the gate, and slip into the yard. Then I stop dead in my tracks as the unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke filters through the damp morning air.
Anne’s mother is standing on the patio smoking. Through the dim morning light, I can make out the red tip of her cigarette; I watch it flicker as she inhales. I edge closer. She sighs as she exhales and pulls her long robe tighter around her slender figure.
It’s not just the lingering odor of the tobacco that stops me. Right now, not even a cigarette would undo the tension that’s knotted itself into every fiber of my body. It’s her. She just looks so—sad. I can see it in her stance, hear it in her sigh. It cloaks itself about her like a mist.
A few seconds later, she senses me, looks up, and screams. A loud, piercing scream, in fact.
So much for sympathy. Or stealth.
“Who are you?” She drops the cigarette to the patio floor and stomps into the yard until she’s directly in front of me. I’m more than a little aware that Anne has not developed her personality out of thin air.
“I—uh, I’m Ethan,” I say. “Ethan.” God, could I sound any more foolish? “A friend of Anne’s from school.”
“I’ve never heard her mention you,” she says. There’s an edge to her voice that I’d rather not be hearing.
“I—well, I’m new. We don’t live too far from here.” I gesture vaguely to my right.
“Uh-huh.” She places her hands on her hips, which I’m assuming is not a good sign. Even in the dim light, I can see the frown in her eyes. “So, Ethan who doesn’t live very far from here, what are you doing in my yard at five thirty in the morning?” Her tone is sharp enough that I find myself backing up a few steps.
Unfortunately, she follows me.
“Yard? Well, I—uh…” I pause, hoping wildly for inspiration. Anne’s mother continues to glare at me, her eyes flashing. An idea flits though my head, and I grab it like a life preserver.
“I—I told Anne I’d give her ride to school today. I’ve been tutoring her in history and she has a test today. She wanted to review before school.”
“Really?” she says. “You know, most mornings I have to drag my daughter out of bed. You truly want me to believe that she arranged to meet you before dawn so she could study for history?”
Well, yes. But clearly, she’s not buying it. And if I’m not mistaken, she’s also sizing up the idea that I was part of whatever made her daughter so late last night. I suppose at this point I might as well drag the backpack and cell phone out my car, dangle them in front of her, and just call it a day.
I’m still contemplating a response when the patio door creaks and then opens. Anne emerges, a thick terry-cloth robe wrapped around her, auburn hair wet and slicked back. Relief floods through me.
“Mom?” she says. Her voice is tired but steady. “Is something wrong?” She sniffs the air. “Are you smoking again? You promised me—” She stops and peers beyond her mother to me.
“Ethan?” Anne angles her head slightly. She glances from me to her mother and back again.
Now I’m grinning like an idiot. “Anne,” I say, and start to walk to her. “Anne, you’re—”
Mrs. Michaelson’s slender arm is remarkably sturdy as it snakes out and grabs me by the shoulder. “Not so fast, Ethan,” she says.
And then she tightens her grip on me.
The Forest, Early Morning
Anastasia
Through the eyes of the skull as it hovers in the flames, Ethan smiles at Anne. I am happy to know their names now. To know the name of the man who was there that day. The one I was sure was part of Viktor’s betrayal, but who, it seems, is not what I thought at all.
My face is still wet with tears. I felt Viktor rip Anne from this hut, or rather, from the vision of it that Auntie had given her. Felt the violation of her body, of her mind. Just as she has felt what I feel in her dreams, so did I feel this now. He tried to make her believe that Ethan would hurt her. But she was too strong for him. Too clever.
She is what I hoped to be but learned I am not.
Still, I remember what it is to be the tsar’s daughter. Ya khachu videt, I commanded this skull. “I want to see.” And so, while Auntie stands outside, speaking to her horsemen, I get what I want. I watch this girl who is trying so desperately to figure out how to free me. Even if I no longer know what freedom means.
My father’s blood is in me still. As is my mother’s. Royal lines that go back many generations. Ruler after ruler now reduced to bleached white bones like this skull. It too was once covered with flesh. Blood pulsed through its veins. As somehow blood still courses through me.
Baba Yaga is right. It all comes down to blood. The blood of royal lines. The blood of an ordinary man who wants more than he deserves. Anne’s blood, spilling on this table as Baba Yaga sliced into her flesh. The blood of family, slaughtered without regard.
Outside the hut, Auntie’s body casts a shadow over the skulls that line the yard on their wooden spikes. Her hands feed oats to the three horses—one red, one white, one black. They scuttle back and forth on their calloused fingertips to the bucket that rests near the gate, scooping out handfuls of brown grain.
My secret brother, Viktor, is not done. My own blood—the thing that connects us, even if I wish it did not—tells me this. He will go after them again. I do not know how, but I know he will. He has always wanted what he could not have. Only too late have I understood that the price for what he wanted was my life.
Like Auntie Yaga, I stretch out my arms. I take one last glance at Ethan and Anne and at the woman I think must be her mother. As my precious matroyshka —the doll my own mother gave me so long ago—shifts inside my pocket, I wait for the skull to float back to me.
Thursday, 6:30 am
Anne
I can’t believe they let me go with you.” I buckle my seat belt as Ethan pulls away from my house. “I figured once they started tag teaming, it’d be all over, but they really seemed to like you.”
No kidding. Within a few minutes of listening to Ethan’s story about his father the petroleum engineer who’d moved the family to Russia for a few years and had now brought them back to the States, my parents were feeding him orange juice and doughnuts and talking to him like he was an old pal or something—which really had me freaked, until I reminded myself that he was them, and then some. Not too hard to relate to the adults in the room when you’ve been one for longer than they’ve been alive.
Of course, my concentration during the entire event wasn’t helped by the fact that Ethan was wearing a pair of jeans that hung low at his hips and the same gray sweater he’d stripped off in my dream. I was wondering—okay, obsessing would be a better description—if that sexy little lion’s-head tattoo was really there on his well-muscled shoulder.
“Are you okay?” he’d whispered to me as we’d settled around the kitchen table and my mother had continued to fix him with one of those make-a-move-toward-my-daughter-and-I’ll-drop-you-in-your-tracks looks. He’d rested his hand on my thigh under the table and studied me with those blue eyes.
I’d nodded my head, then sipped my juice and tried to ignore the hand on my leg. And the memory of his naked back and funky tattoo.
What I couldn’t ignore was that unless I was really mistaken, I had almost died. And great-great-grandpa Viktor—if that’s what he really is—had wanted me to think it was Ethan. That was the thing that had my throat so dry and my hands so clammy I could barely bring the juice to my lips, barely swallow it down.
Now, here in Ethan’s car, I’m still finding it hard to swallow. My head’s still swimming. I’m wearing a clean sweater under my denim jacket, but my jeans have now graduated to three-day jeans from two, because they were all I could manage to find after I put on the sweater.
Near-death experiences don’t exactly encourage high fashion standards.
Ethan, having kept a cheery smile on his face at my house, looks as grim as I feel. He sort of glanced at me out of the corner of his eye after my comment about my parents liking him but said nothing. Still silent, he’s clutching the steering wheel tightly enough to make his knuckles white. His face is drawn and pale, and those blue eyes are clouded with a frown that doesn’t seem like it’s going to disappear anytime soon.
In the life I used to live, I’d have been in Tess’s car right now, her dad at the wheel. I’d be worried about the homework I just remembered I didn’t do and the test I didn’t study for. But in this new life, where witches bring visions of their huts and mad monks try to kill me in my sleep, I called Tess from upstairs while I was getting dressed. I left her a voice mail when she didn’t answer and told her I was going to go with Ethan. I
also told her that I would probably be skipping school for another day—something the old me would never have done either—and felt my throat constrict when I told her I’d be careful. Because after what just happened, I’m not sure if that’s even possible.
“We’ve got to get back to Olensky’s,” Ethan says, breaking his silence. I watch his jaw muscles move as he speaks. “I talked to him before I came for you, and he was fine. We’ll get back there, see what he’s found. I—” He keeps one hand on the wheel and rakes the other one through his hair. “I’m sorry, Anne,” he says. His eyes stay focused on the road. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, have someone—God, that you had to have someone in your head like that. He used me against you. So I’m sorry.”
I run one hand along the sleeve of my jacket, pull at a stray thread on the hem. The look on his face is so painful that it hurts to watch him. “Don’t be sorry, Ethan,” I say, rolling the thread into a ball in the palm of my hand. “He did it to you too. I—I knew it was him and not you. You would never do that to me. I may not be certain of much right now, but I’m pretty clear on that.” I roll the ball of thread some more until it’s a hard little knot.
Ethan puts both hands back on the wheel, then yanks it hard to the right and maneuvers the car into a parking space. With a suddenness that whooshes the breath from my body—thankfully, not in a bad way this time—he reaches over and wraps me in his arms. My stomach does a nifty little free-fall thing.
“You’re right,” he tells me, although it’s hard to listen because he’s hugging me, and unlike last night in front of Tess’s house, this hug feels like he means it. “I would never hurt you. You have to believe that, Anne. I know you barely know me, but you really have to believe that.”
I do believe it, and I tell him so. And in that moment, I remember something.
“There was more to the dream,” I say to Ethan. He’s still got his arms wrapped around me, so I kind of give him a shove so he’ll give it a rest. He pulls away from me and I continue. “Before Viktor got in our heads and tried to get you to suck the life out of me, I was at Baba Yaga’s. I can’t believe that I almost forgot that part. Ethan, it felt like I was really in there with her. Anastasia too. Baba Yaga was telling me all this stuff about blood. Then she took her nail and sliced into my hand, and it started to drip blood on the table. And she told me a story about her three horsemen—you know, like the ones on the Vasilisa the Brave lacquer box that my—shit. I forgot the box. Ethan, we need to go back.”