by Joy Preble
“Something you’re not telling me? Seriously, Anne. The dude looks like he’s hiding something. Don’t you think?”
“No,” I tell Ben firmly. “I don’t think that at all.”
***
Having dropped Ben off, then gone home, showered, and changed into a denim skirt, layered tank tops, and my black “Yes, I’m a salesgirl in a vintage jewelry shop” cardigan, I sit in the back room of the Jewel Box, attempting to do my job, still totally clueless about what—if anything—I should do, other than tell more lies like the ones I just fed to Ben.
I slip a price tag around one link of a chunky turquoise bracelet—stones the size of small eyes embedded in heavy twists of gold—and listen to the chatter coming from the front of the store. We’re getting ready for a private show, and this involves arranging boxes full of pieces with special tags and signs. It’s costume jewelry, mostly—stuff from the 1950s and 1960s—but real pieces too, like the blue twists of flapper beads from the 1920s, long necklaces that catch the light and swing against you when you wear them. It’s boring work putting tiny jewelry tags on necklaces and bracelets and then cataloging them on the Jewel Box worksheets, but boring is okay right now—more than okay.
“Are you sure you don’t mind working in the back, dear?” Mrs. Benson had asked when I’d walked in the door almost twenty minutes late, hoping she wouldn’t notice. “I suppose I can continue to manage up here alone. But I do enjoy your company. Your mother could arrange the pieces tomorrow, you know.”
Her voice was nothing but polite, except that I know she’s angry. At me for being late, obviously, and at my mother for taking the afternoon off without enough notice, which is something she’s been doing a lot lately and something Mrs. Benson has chosen to ignore. At least to Mom’s face.
My mother hasn’t been the same since my brother David died of cancer almost three years ago. She goes out for hours and doesn’t tell Dad or me where she is. I actually followed her a couple of times once I’d realized that no one was going to do something about her frequent disappearing act. She doesn’t go far—usually just for a long walk or to a matinee at the little movie theater about a mile from the Jewel Box. But she’s dropped enough weight that she’s wearing a size double-zero, and even then, her clothes hang on her. She’d gotten better, but after last fall, when the Jewel Box roof collapsed on her, she wasn’t better anymore.
My dad pretends not to notice. But maybe that’s because while I was standing next to my mother—all doped up on painkillers in the hospital emergency room—he was still at the front desk, filling out paperwork. So he didn’t hear her whisper that she wished she was dead so she could be with her son. Only I did.
I don’t talk about this stuff with my dad because I don’t think he wants to hear it. I don’t tell Ben, even when we’re kissing and we’re pressed together close enough that I feel—if not safe, at least like a regular girl, and not one with a destiny. Most days, I don’t even tell Tess, although I know she’d listen. It’s the stuff I thought I might tell Ethan, because somehow, I thought he’d understand. Only then he left, and everything felt different.
But it surprises me that Mrs. Benson lets my mom’s behavior go. She’s usually not one to hold her tongue about things that piss her off, except that I guess with my mother, it’s different, since it was Mrs. Benson’s store roof that smashed into her when Baba Yaga followed us back from the forest.
Not that either my mother or Mrs. Benson seems to remember that this is what really happened. They both think it was a freak thunderstorm and possibly a tornado. Neither of them remembers the crazy Russian lacquer box—the one that’s currently shoved under my bed—that held the key to Baba Yaga’s hut. Only I do. It’s part of a long list of things that I’ve chosen to keep to myself. Things like: 1) Witches are real, and so, it turns out, are Russian mermaids called rusalkas who try to kill your boyfriend; 2) My mother and I are both descended from the Romanovs through the tsar’s wacky evil illegitimate son; 3) Tess is absolutely right. I haven’t lost any of the power inside me. In fact, it’s only gotten stronger. And the dreams of Baba Yaga have too.
“Careful with those stones, dear,” Mrs. Benson’s deep voice booms behind me. The bracelet slips from my hand and falls with a heavy thud onto the carpeted floor. I add silent and sneaky to my mental checklist of things that annoy me about my boss.
I bend quickly and scoop the bracelet from the floor. Mrs. Benson plucks it from my hand. “Sorry, dear. Didn’t mean to startle you. I had no idea you wouldn’t hear me come in.” She arches an already perfectly arched eyebrow at me and seems to be waiting for some kind of response. Unfortunately, I don’t have one.
“Turquoise is pretty sturdy,” she says after a few uncomfortable seconds. She taps one of the turquoise nuggets. “But the prongs are delicate. And no one wants to buy damaged goods.”
I ponder that tidbit. Seriously, I rarely know what to say to this woman. I love the stories behind the jewelry, love that everything in the store was owned by someone else at some point. But the whole place makes me uneasy these days.
Maybe it’s because I watched it get smacked to smithereens by lightning that day I brought Anastasia back. Maybe it’s because this is where my mother first handed me the Russian lacquer box that turned out to hold the key to Baba Yaga’s hut. Maybe it’s just Mrs. Benson—frosted, blond, chin-length hair never out of place, nails always manicured, pin-thin in her wardrobe of gray pantsuits, white blouses, and tasteful scarves that she always fastens with an antique cameo pin. The perfection of it just bugs me somehow.
Still, when she offered me a summer job, I snapped it up. Tess wanted me to teach beginning ballet with her at Miss Amy’s, where we’ve both taken dance since we were toddlers, but I took the Jewel Box job instead. I told Tess it was because it pays more—only that wasn’t the entire truth. Mrs. Benson is, in fact, paying me more per hour. But I’m here because it’s easier. Neither Mrs. Benson nor my mother chooses to have much conversation with me at all; Mrs. Benson because that’s just how she is, and my mother because that’s just how she is these days too.
At Miss Amy’s, I’d see Tess every day. She’d poke and prod at me and dig out the stuff I’d rather she not know. The stuff I think she’s safer not knowing. Stuff I’m just not ready to say—even to myself sometimes. Just the other day, she asked me if I loved Ben—and what kind of crazy girl doesn’t love a boy like Ben, who’s cute and smart and tells her over and over that he loves her? Who am I these days that I have to lie about something like that?
“I’ll be more careful,” I tell Mrs. Benson. “I’m sorry I dropped it.”
“So—your mother.” Mrs. Benson sets the bracelet on the work table and flicks at an imaginary speck of dust with one exactly oval nail. “What appointment did she have today?”
I shrug. “Don’t know. She doesn’t run her schedule by me for approval.”
“Dear girl, I’m sure she doesn’t. But perhaps you should pay better attention anyway.”
“I—what?” I’d been looking at the bracelet, but now I meet Mrs. Benson’s gaze. Her eyes are a really vivid green with these little flecks of gold. Both of them are fixed on me more sharply than I’d like. What’s the deal with this woman today?
“Anne, dear, I’m worried. Your mother has been with me since I opened this shop. Seven years now. I count on her, you know. She knows this business as well as I do.”
“She took the afternoon off. That’s all I know.” And if you want to bitch at someone, bitch at her, not me. Because personally, I’m sitting here willing my hands to stop tingling so I don’t melt this stupid bracelet when I tag it. Or maybe get my inventory pencil to poke you in the eye. Then maybe you’d have something to talk about with my mother when she finally shows up. “Laura, dear, do you know that while you’ve been off moping, depressed, and on the verge of an eating disorder, your darling daughter has developed powers she can’t control? Why, just this afternoon, she burned a hole in my Alfred Dunner slacks. It w
as horrendous.”
What I actually say is, “But I’ll see what I can find out.” I know I don’t really mean it, but she nods her head and graces me with a toothy smile, so I guess it’s what she wanted to hear.
I’m turning my attention back to the inventory sheet when the images slam into me like a wall of concrete. The rusalka. Mrs. Benson. My mother. Ben. Viktor. Anastasia. Their faces rush at me through a haze of color. A wave of nausea rises in my throat. “Steady, girl.” Baba Yaga’s voice echoes in my head. At least, I think it’s in my head. “Swallow the fear. Do not let it control you. You are stronger than that.”
“But I’m not,” I say to her as the vision clears out of my head. Like always, it’s been quick. Just zip-zap, and it’s over. No wonder I’m such a master at pretending it hasn’t happened.
“Not what, dear?” Mrs. Benson asks. Her expression is as bland as always. Clearly she hasn’t just been treated to my ride down the rabbit hole.
“Um,” I manage. My voice sounds as tight and knotted as my stomach feels. “I’m not done.”
“Oh, dear, I know you’re not done. Why, you’ve barely started. But don’t worry. You’ll get there. I have the utmost faith in you. You are your mother’s daughter, after all.”
Huh. That clears things up.
In the front of the store, the bell tinkles, indicating that someone has walked in the door.
“Oh, my. Look at me.” Mrs. Benson straightens her already perfectly affixed cameo locket pin on her perfectly knotted floral pattern scarf. “Standing here chatting with you when I should be out there greeting our customers, silly woman that I am.” She bustles out to the front of the store.
Baba Yaga is wrong. I’m not strong. I don’t want to be strong. I don’t want to worry about saving anyone. That’s the thing I’ve realized lately too. Sometimes, you have to be more than what you want to be. Especially when right now, I can still see myself in the water pulling at Ben’s arm, still remember how the rusalka and I locked eyes, and for just a second or two, I felt what she felt.
It was like it used to be when I dreamed I was Anastasia. For those few seconds underwater, I was me, but I was also her: this woman who didn’t want to be what she was. Who was so overcome by loss that when I felt it, my grip loosened from Ben’s arm, and my brain filled with the thought that she might pull him even deeper—which was impossible, since she was already on the bottom of the pool. She needed him. She wanted him. She had no choice. These were thoughts that came to me right before I heard her speak. Right before—
“Hey.” Ethan, dressed in a different pair of jeans and a navy T-shirt, his hair dry and bangs brushed neatly to the side, stands in the back doorway, looking at me with those ridiculously blue eyes.
Everything inside me gives a little quiver. This does not make me happy. Stupid blue eyes.
He walks to the far side of the little room, picks up a folding chair, sets it down next to me, and lowers himself into it. Even sitting, he’s taller than I am.
“You should really lock that better,” he says.
“And you should tell me why you’re really here. What is it that you plan on doing now that you’re back? Besides saving Ben from drowning and stuff like that?”
He rests his hands on his thighs and seems to consider the question. “I was telling the truth to Ben about the Prague fellowship. I’ll be finishing my studies in Slavic Folklore at Northwestern.”
That knot tightens in my throat again. He’s following in Professor Olensky’s footsteps. This shouldn’t surprise me. “You didn’t tell me.”
Ethan shrugs. It’s hard to read the expression on his face.
“How’s Ben?” His attempt at changing the subject needs a little work.
“Fine. He’s home. He’s supposed to be resting. I doubt that he is. Speaking of which, you were supposed to just call me, remember? Not come to my work.”
Ethan looks at me. I look at him. I should tell him to go. I really should. He’s nothing but trouble. My trouble. Like a stalker mermaid who tried to kill my boyfriend.
I should call Tess. Or Ben. Or check on my mother’s whereabouts, since, according to Mrs. Benson, this should be a priority for me.
But none of that is what I feel like doing right now.
“Oh, the hell with it.” Feeling more than a little disloyal to Ben, I reach under the table and grab my purse. Whatever’s going on, Ethan’s part of it, and in any case, I’m in no mood to tag more jewelry. “C’mon. By the time she misses me, maybe we’ll be back.”
“Do you want me to say that this isn’t like you?”
“No.”
“I’m going to say it anyway. This isn’t like you.”
That said, he follows me through the back door of the Jewel Box.
THURSDAY, 4:10 pm
ANNE
So, now where?” I buckle myself into the leather seat of Ethan’s black Mercedes sedan. It’s the same car he had last year, and I wonder who’s been taking care of it for him, although I don’t ask.
“Back to the pool.” He shifts the car into gear and starts to pull out of his parking space. “It’s where the rusalka appeared. You’ve seen her before this. I gathered that much. But she hasn’t done anything like this before, right? So we need to go back there. See if she—”
“Wait.” Like everything that Ethan has brought into my world since last fall, this is going too fast. “You can’t just drop into my life and start giving me orders. It isn’t going to work like that this time, Ethan. It can’t. I won’t let it.”
He steps on the brake, and we sit there, half in, half out of the street. A Lexus SUV maneuvers around us, and the driver honks his horn—a sharp blast. Ethan’s gaze is on me, though, not the traffic.
“Oh, my God, Ethan. Let’s not get mushed while we’re deciding what to do! Besides, I just snuck out on my job, which is definitely not going to win me any bonus points with Mrs. Benson. Or Ben, for that matter. So if we’re going somewhere, we need to go. But we’ll decide all that together. Okay?” I don’t have a plan if he disagrees. I only know that just because he’s back doesn’t mean that I’m going to let him call the shots. About anything.
We stare at each other for another few seconds before he shifts his attention to driving and heads out into traffic. We hang a right on Lake Street, drive another block in silence. He really does look older now—not a lot, but it’s noticeable. The mortality thing is sticking. This is what I’m thinking when, in my skirt pocket, my phone begins to vibrate.
“Did you seriously just cut out of work?” is what Tess whispers to me when I answer.
“You know this how? And why are you whispering?”
“Because I’m in the back of the stupid jewelry store, having just walked in to see you on my way to Miss Amy’s to teach spoiled five-year-olds how to tap dance. Your boss told me you were cataloging crap in the work room. Only I’m standing here alone. So unless you’re freakin’ invisible, I’m assuming that Mr. Stealthy is up to his old tricks and that’s who you’re with. Am I warm?”
“Shit.”
“You can say that again—only not too loud. Your boss is up front selling some god-awful bracelet to a woman with shellacked helmet hair. Any second now, I’m going to have to explain to her why I’m back here and you’re not.”
“Oh, my God, Tess! You’re going to have to tell her something!”
“So it was fine for you to sneak out with Ethan, but now I have to tell her something?”
“Well, yes. I mean, you’re there and all—and now it’s just too complicated. You’re good at this. You’ll come up with something.”
There is an ominous silence on Tess’s end.
Then she says, “And if I do, where exactly are you? Because don’t think I’m going to let you go off with him alone. I did that before, and you’re wicked crazy if you think I’m going to do it again.”
Tess has not used her old favorite, wicked, in a long time. This is my clue that she has shifted into pit bull mode and wil
l track me down by any means possible if I don’t tell her where I’m going.
“We’re headed back to the Aqua Creek pool.”
“I thought we weren’t going there,” Ethan comments sort of testily from the driver’s seat.
“Hush. Let me finish telling Tess.”
“Tess? Anne, you have got to be—”
“My way, remember?” I narrow my eyes at him, and I guess he gets the message because he sighs and keeps on driving in the general direction of the pool.
“I’ll figure something out,” Tess mutters in my ear. “And then you need to pick me up in front of the Wrap Hut. I am so not letting you drive around with the Russian hunk of trouble without me.”
I contemplate telling her no—but only for a second. “Sounds like a plan,” I say instead. “We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
“You owe me, Michaelson. And you better be careful. You know I don’t trust the guy. Now all this stuff with Ben and crazy Russian mermaids and—”
She stops mid-sentence, but it’s too late. She’s been talking with Ethan behind my back, and I’ve caught them. I glance over at Ethan, but his eyes are on the road.
“Hey,” I say to Tess. “I didn’t tell you about that last part. I mean, I was going to, but—”
“Like I said, Anne, I don’t trust him. But he knows stuff. So yes, while you were holed up, macking on Ben or whatever, I talked to Ethan.”
“I would have told you, Tess.”
“But you didn’t. You haven’t been telling me. And you know it.”
We both digest that.
“I’m going to make up some story for your boss,” Tess says eventually. “If you’ve got all that power now, you could at least have put some spell on her so she wouldn’t ask any questions. But no, you just leave. You’d think you’d at least embrace this a little bit, use it for something more than poking asshats in the leg with number-two pencils.”
She clicks off before I can respond. I glance over at Ethan. He glances back at me.
I’m thinking fast about what should really happen here. We could just double back, and I could get out of the car and tell Ethan to leave. He would, I think. Does he want all this anymore? He doesn’t have to be part of it. He’s mortal because of me, and he left so he could figure out what he wants. Does he know that I’ve got magic flipping around inside me like dozens of out-of-control ping-pong balls? Maybe that’s the reason he’s back. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe only I feel this crazy dangerous pull—like we’re part of each other on some weird cellular level. But maybe for him, it’s different.