“Who’s Ada?” I ask, unsure if I want to know. “And how can she help?”
“She might be able to tell us who’s trying to contact you,” says Todd.
“She’s the ghost who was haunting my house,” says Piper with a huge exhale. “And I’m so sorry, Everly. I just can’t do it.”
The earth tilts. Even if she was willing to, I’m not sure I’d ask. Nikolay’s mention of spells, his father’s voodoo, and Piper’s haunted house? Whether I like it or not, it’s happening to me too.
As if reading my thoughts, a soft caw floats on the air.
I reel around, scanning the darkening orange sky.
“Everly?”
A faint tickling scuttles from ear to shoulder to sternum, prying its way between layers of skin and heightening my senses. The wind cradles its own sense of dread, swirling against my back, leaving me that much more exposed.
My ears ring, drowning out every sound but the flapping of wings. They grow closer. Closer. Something touches my back, and I scream, whirling around and ramming against the truck though I don’t remember rushing toward it.
Piper and Todd run to follow, staring at me, wide-eyed concern evident on their faces, their breath ghosting out in puffs. My chest works, unable to catch my breath.
“It’s here, it’s coming.”
“It’s just us,” Todd says.
A drum beats against my ribs, sweat pooling beneath my shoulders. I take in the setting sun, the smoky clouds and lack of black anything flying through them.
“It’s okay,” Piper says. “You’re just…you’ll be okay.”
This isn’t real, I try to tell myself. It’s all in my head. But deep down I know that’s not true. “How did you say you got your ghost to stop? How can I stop this?”
“I—it won’t work for your situation, Everly. Yours is so different from mine.”
I close my eyes. The icy wind stabs at me. Our situations are different. I didn’t want to believe any of this was possible, but it’s clear it’s not going to just go away. And after hearing Piper’s story, after seeing Sierra’s episodes, I’ve got to put a stop to it sooner rather than later.
Which means I only have one option left.
“Todd, can you take me back to the bookstore?”
Piper bites her lip. “Everly, I’m not sure—”
“She’s right,” Todd says. “If it’s true that her boss helped Sierra, then maybe Everly should go to him too.”
The words offer an instant release. I lay my head back against the window, eyes grazing upward. “He’s going to think I’m a nut job.”
“He’ll just see you as a new patient,” Todd says with a grin, climbing back into the driver’s side. Piper pulls me into a hug, and the warmth of her touch is so reassuring tears sting my eyes.
“If he’s some kind of doctor for the paranormal, I’m not sure I want to know what his fees are,” I say.
Todd and Piper try to make small talk as we head back into town, but I can’t help dragging my good palm across my legs in attempt to control this copious sweating and to slow my hammering pulse.
“You guys—I’m losing my mind.”
“You’ll be fine,” Piper says, the words contradicting her tone. She rubs a small circle on my back, and I welcome the touch, closing my eyes, wishing I could call Jerry and that he would actually be supportive. Even if I told him about this, he probably wouldn’t listen.
The disappointment from that realization proves to be enough of a distraction until Todd parks in front of Terekhov and Son’s. Piper opens the door and helps me slide out after her.
“Do you want us to go with you?” she asks.
“I kind of want to.” Todd leans across the seat toward us. “I have some questions. And maybe Sierra is still in there—”
“This is embarrassing enough,” I say, remembering how Sierra made a fool of herself in front of me merely hours before. It’s not like I need to go about making all of her mistakes. “I’ve got this.”
“Do you want us to wait?” Piper’s eyes crest with concern.
I sniff and stare up at the now starry sky. The smell of burning wood tints the air. “It’s late. Your parents and brother are probably worried about you.”
Piper offers a final hug and climbs back in. Todd leans across Piper to look right at me.
“If you give me a call, I’ll come pick you up when you’re done,” he says. I give them a grateful smile. I barely know these two. Yet here they are, understanding instead of ridiculing. Not only believing me, but helping me.
I extend my empty hands. “Thanks, but no phone, remember?”
Todd’s brow twitches. He and Piper exchange a look.
“I’ll be okay, guys. Thanks for listening to me. I’m okay, really,” I add, when neither of them moves.
Todd shifts the truck into gear. “There’s a party at my house tomorrow night,” he says. “You should come.”
After all this, they still want to hang out with me?
Unable to form words, I wave my agreement and close the door. Todd’s truck guns, rumbling behind me and emitting too much exhaust. Piper gives me a little wave while Todd idles, no doubt ensuring I make it inside okay.
I stare up at the store sign, wondering what I’ve gotten myself into. If I go in, Nikolay will talk to me. I’m sure. He seemed ready to answer my questions earlier.
“I don’t have to talk to his dad,” I tell myself. “I just have a few questions. That’s all.”
I inhale and knock on the glass, disturbing the Closed sign dangling in the center.
eleven
Nikolay answers the door, still in the same button-up shirt and tan pants meeting ankle boots he was wearing earlier. Delight flickers in his eyes, and he steps aside and welcomes me in.
“Good evening, Everly,” he says, locking the door behind me. “You have come back for your book?”
“I—oh.” This throws me for a moment. “Yes, but first…” I get my thoughts back on track. “Nikolay. I came to say I’m sorry.”
His brows crease. “For what?”
The jittery feeling I had during the whole drive here hasn’t yet faded. I begin to pace, just for something to do with this excess energy. I tighten my hands into fists only to loosen them again at the pain.
“I asked you about Sierra earlier.”
“Thaumaturgy, yes.”
“And then I didn’t listen to what you had to say. That was rude of me. I’m sorry.”
He rubs a hand across his jaw and steps a few paces away. “It can be a lot for a person to handle if she is not used to it.”
I turn in place, tailing his movements. “I just wanted to say I believe you.”
He leans behind, his elbows resting on the register desk’s rich mahogany surface. That’s a good sign. A comfortable sign. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
I cross the few paces, prop my arms on the wood beside him, and stare down at the natural grains in the polished wood. “I didn’t think I was scared,” I admit. “But some things have been happening to me lately, and then seeing Sierra freak out at school and here too…”
He waits for me to sort through my thoughts.
“I don’t know what I was expecting—for you to deny my questions, maybe? And then when the answers hit a little too close to home, it threw me off, I guess.”
“What things have been happening to you lately?” His voice is deep, the Russian accent dancing on his tongue.
I inhale. Sherlock pads from one of the shelves and hops onto the counter, greeting me with those mysterious, glass blue eyes. I pet his soft fur, trying to think how to begin.
“I told you a little about it. That I was seeing crows and then they attacked my cousin the day I met you.”
“I remember,” he says.
I try to figure out where to go from here.
“There’s something going on here, isn’t there? There’s a feeling by that door. It’s not anywhere else in the store. Just there.”
“What feeling?” Nikolay moves closer to me, his shoulder brushing mine.
“That feeling.” I spread my palms across the wood, trying to ignore the dizzying effect his nearness has over me. “The one where chills brush your arms, where eyes see everything yours don’t.”
“You may have noticed we are not an ordinary bookstore. We dabble in…other types of books than your typical Barnes and Noble.”
“Like what?”
“One of the reasons my father came to this country was to answer the distressing pleas of many Americans dealing with supernatural contacts.”
“Like Sierra?” I ask, unsure of exactly what he’s talking about. Sherlock rubs against my hand, begging more attention. I pick him up, grateful for something warm to hold onto. A low purr begins to rumble from his ribcage.
“Like Sierra. She came in contact with a fusion spell, something that was causing her to see into the mind of your friend, Piper Crenshaw.”
I inhale, but don’t interrupt him.
“In the process, Sierra also began to get residual side effects that lingered long after the ghost crossed over to the spirit world.”
“How do you know all of this?” I ask.
“My father and I work together. I help him in his attempts to help others. While my father worked his thaumaturgy, I wrote Miss Thompson’s story in one of our smert zhizn—
“Smear jeezin?” I repeat, the words tasting strange.
“Our books,” he clarifies, “to ensure the fusion spell would relocate itself there instead of in her.”
“One of your books, like those in that display room?” He nods. “Like the one you gave me?” Another nod. He leans forward and retrieves mine from a shelf below the register, placing it on the counter before me.
I stroke its rugged binding and dip my chin for a whiff of the distinct leather. “Is my book jinxed somehow, then?”
He places his palm on its surface. “This book I gave you has some herbs woven into the spine. But other than that it is an ordinary book. You may write in it and be just fine.” He slides it to me, and I take it with my good hand, hugging it to my chest.
“You gave one to Sierra too, then? To write her story into?” I can’t help the twinge of jealousy at the thought.
“I wrote her story into one of ours here. I don’t normally give them out to just anyone.”
“But you did to me?”
The corners of his lips twitch. “Only for you.”
I dip my chin, a shiver of heat stirring my spine.
Nikolay clears his throat. “Sierra was still plagued with memories and flashbacks of the things Piper witnessed in her house. Horrific things, Everly.”
Chills skitter down my back. “She told me a little of it.”
“My father helped to break that connection. To free the unfortunate girl.”
“So now Sierra isn’t hallucinating anymore?”
“They weren’t hallucinations,” he says, staring away. “It was like a haunting of the mind.”
Sherlock wriggles from my arms. I don’t realize I’ve been squeezing him until he leaps free, scratching my arm in the process.
Nikolay examines me. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I don’t know,” I say, letting the cogs turn. “My brain tells me not to. But after today, after talking to Piper…” I lift my hand to stare at the burn there. “Your story just confirms things. I don’t think I can not believe.”
“What happened today?” His tone is a stroke, a gentle touch. He’s stepped closer to me again, and I lock eyes with his blue ones.
I wait for a warning to settle in. Yet his face, the welcoming openness in his eyes and the lure to reach out and touch him draws me in, holding me in place. It’s stupid, I know. Every word my mother would say about this thuds in my skull. But I stay.
Besides, I need answers. “I saw your father lead Sierra toward that door upstairs. When I followed, my phone heated, burning my hand. And then later—”
“This hand?” His fingers skim from my elbow to my wrist. Heat flares through me at the touch of his soft skin, and he guides my hand from my side to hold it in his warm one. Tiny electric pulses fire between us, charging the air.
He traces near the red burn with his fingertip. My lids flutter, my thoughts scurrying. Jerry kissed me almost right after we first met, and we spent most of our time together locking lips, barely talking or connecting in ways that matter. Being near Nikolay is a slow melting, giving whatever is happening time to take shape instead of heating quickly and shattering the instant the first rock strikes.
Jerry and I kept trying so hard to make things work that things crumbled to bits the more we forced it. This touch from Nikolay answers another question that’s been trampled down under the weight of everything else going on. It’s time to be open with Jerry. It’s time to let him go.
I work to clear my throat, heart pounding at the realization. “Can I ask you something?”
Nikolay’s eyes burn beneath his lashes. I take his lack of response as a confirmation.
“I need to talk to your father. I need help.”
Something like disappointment flashes across his expression. I’m not sure what he was hoping I would say, but that obviously wasn’t it. He steps away, breaking the charge his proximity created. I take a deep breath, the world seemingly bigger than it was moments before.
“Of course.”
Minutes later we’re sitting, not in Andrei’s office as we did that first night, but in the apartment the father and son share. Dated furniture in peak condition adorns the room—antique mirrors with wooden frames, striped wallpaper on the walls, stained with burn marks from when candles were used to light them. Electric lighting hangs over our heads, and Andrei rubs a hand over wearied eyes before offering me a place to sit.
“What is troubling you, Miss James?” he asks. “I am sure it was disconcerting to see Miss Thompson behave in such a way this afternoon. She told me what happened at school, and the times before that.”
Andrei twines his fingers with the others, waiting for me to spill the details. He helped Sierra, I tell myself. Uneasiness worms its way through to my bones. Again, I consider what his price could be. Whatever it is, I’ll make it work.
Nikolay sits beside me on the couch. He gives me an encouraging nod, as if telling me I can trust his father. I grip his book tighter.
“No, it’s not about Sierra. It’s about me. It all started with this dream. It’s always the same,” I say. “I’m in a town I can’t name, and I’m running. The air is thick with smog, and something—a crow—is chasing me. No matter how fast I go, it keeps up. For some reason I’ve got to cross a certain point in order to avoid the crow coming after me, but I never make it in time. I either feel its beak literally stab me, or I shock awake, covered in sweat, my heart hammering as though I really was being chased.”
“And you think whatever is chasing you is a crow.”
Nikolay slides closer to me on the couch, concern troubling his brow.
“I know it is,” I say.
“And you think it’s real?” Nikolay asks.
“I’m not sure. I could have sworn I saw crows attacking my cousin Layla.” I wince, pushing the words out. “But then they vanished. And my phone…”
I quickly explain the details, refusing to look at Nikolay again in case he takes my hand once more. I’m not sure I can handle him touching me in front of his father.
“It’s real to you,” Andrei says. “That’s why you see them.” He rises and heads to the ceiling-high bookshelf. He searches the spines, selects a book and opens it, dipping his pen into an ink bottle on the table. Nikolay presses my shoulder, a friendly offering of reassu
rance. Or so I think. His hand lingering there makes me think it’s something more.
Folding my lips into what I hope is a warm return, I slide away, rise to my feet, and approach his father’s desk, as an excuse to move more than anything else. Whether I want the attention or not, I’m still with Jerry.
“Are you writing this down?” I ask.
Andrei lifts his glasses from his nose. “It’s important information, Miss James. Crows are omens. Some cultures believe seeing a crow means imminent death, or that it bodes some kind of warning. Some think crows are harbingers that eat a dead person’s soul.”
I cringe.
“The Celtics believed they were shape-shifting fairies, that they lived in the void between our living world and that of the dead, that they carry messages back and forth between the two. This is what I believe also.”
This sounds way too much like what Piper and Todd were trying to say as well. “You think this crow is carrying a message to me somehow? By pecking me in the back every night in my sleep and now coming to taunt me even during the day? Are you going to take me through that door, will that get it to stop?”
Andrei pauses, holding his antiquated pen above the paper. “Where did you hear that?”
“I saw you take Sierra there.”
He sets his pen down. “That is only for very special circumstances. We needed to contact the person who cast Sierra’s spell in the first place.”
The person who cast it first… “You’re talking about Piper’s ghost?”
Father and son catch eyes. I move in closer.
“Is it a séance door or something? A way for you to contact the dead? Can you do it for me too, and get whatever this is to stop?”
Andrei is way calmer than I feel. He shows no sign of agitation or discomfort. “Unlike with Miss Thompson, I do not know who is trying to contact you.”
“Can you find out?”
He steeples his fingers. “Tell me exactly what you’d like to have happen, Miss James. I can try to stop this for you. But you may never know what your messenger is after. Is that something you’d like to know?”
I shake my head. “I just want it to go away,” I say weakly.
The Forbidden Doors Box Set Page 36