by Joy Preble
“Ethan!” I shout. “Ethan.” It was a mistake to go to Baba Yaga’s without him. I thought I was protecting him. I wasn’t. I was just protecting myself. Baba Yaga was right. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him. So much easier if he has to lose me.
No. Not easier. Just selfish and afraid. If you don’t commit to love someone, no matter how oddly they’ve fallen into your life, then what are you? Really, what would I be? I would be her—that huge witch reflected in the glass-tower fountain. Powerful but alone. So lonely that she allowed herself to be used just so she could pretend Anastasia was her daughter.
But it’s so hard. So much easier to run. To hide. I think of what I told Tess in Baba Yaga’s hut. People die. History is full of bodies. But we go on anyway, don’t we? I can accept Baba Yaga’s power, but maybe I don’t have to be her. And I don’t have to be Lily either. Or even my mom. I don’t want to be so crushed by loss that I lose myself to it. But it’s a chance I have to take. A chance I want to take. Maybe my heart is more resilient than I think.
“Ethan!” I call to him again. I could lose him right this second. He could lose me. So I have to chance it. I have to try.
Ethan turns. Yay, I think. Oh yay. His shirt is ripped at the bottom and his hair matted, but he’s in one piece. He’s Ethan. I made it back to him. I wade through the water…
Ethan’s eyes are all wrong again. Dark. Angry.
Also, unless my memory got shaken loose in the wild ride in the police car, that’s Dimitri with him. Dimitri—the man who not too long ago was willing to kill me because Viktor told him to.
“Give it back,” Dimitri growls at him. “You can reverse it, Ethan. You don’t want it anyway. Give it to me.”
“I can’t,” Ethan says. “Wouldn’t if I could.”
Can’t what? Give him what?
“He’ll just use you, you know. And you’re too much of a coward to kill him if you get the chance. Concentrate, Ethan. Get rid of what you don’t want. I’ll do the rest.”
I hear Ethan’s voice inside my head. Run. Go.
Is he kidding? I’ve just gotten here. I’ve had a romantic epiphany. If I can get this soul out of my pocket, maybe there can be more peanuts! More kissing! Other stuff!
“Anne.” Baba Yaga’s voice fills the air. Or maybe just my head. Her hand has climbed back up to her. Now it’s only her face looming in the glass fountain, her jaw still open impossibly wide. She locks on to me with those hideous skull eyes I know so well. My panic mixes oddly with the familiar feel of her.
“You think you know me,” she says. “You think you understand. Girl, you know nothing. But you are about to find out.”
Blip. She’s gone. The glass tower fills with the image of some normal-looking woman. A general sigh of relief rises from the crowd. Possibly they hadn’t been as much terrified as grossed out.
Dimitri is still focused only on Ethan. “We can work together,” he says. “Find a way to give me back that power.”
“No.” Ethan’s pale. Sort of shaky looking. Dark flickers of power dance at his fingertips.
When Dimitri hits him in the jaw, Ethan staggers. Dimitri punches him again.
“Don’t,” Ethan says. “You really don’t want to do this.”
Dimitri’s fist plows into Ethan’s belly. “Go on,” Dimitri says. “Stop me.”
I start to move toward them. Everything is going crazy and Dimitri wants to fight him? It makes no sense.
Run, says Ethan’s voice in my head. I need you to run.
Dimitri grabs him by the shoulder. Ethan’s hands glow darkly as he shoves Dimitri off him.
The air around them sizzles. What the hell is going on?
Dimitri laughs. Lunges at Ethan again.
“It should be mine,” he says. “All of it. You know what he’s taken from me. Give this back.”
“I can’t,” Ethan says. “I wouldn’t if I could.” He holds up a hand. Sends Dimitri skimming across the water.
A tall guy in khakis and a dress shirt helps Dimitri to his feet. “Should I call the cops?” he asks. Dimitri shoves him aside.
A woman with two kids on either side of her hollers for them stop it.
“I’ll handle it,” I tell her.
“Are those contacts?” the boy on her left asks me. “Those skulls in your eyes are really scary. Like that witch lady in the tower.”
The three of them run before I can respond.
“Anne,” Ethan says. “You need to get out of here. Now.” His body begins to vibrate. A low hum fills the air. “Shit.” He doubles over. “Go, Anne. Please.”
Dimitri comes running, a grim look on his face as he plows through the shallow water.
In that moment, I recognize the darkness that I’ve been feeling. I don’t understand how it’s happened, but the dark power inside Ethan is enormous now. The power that Viktor has somehow forced on him just like Baba Yaga has placed her own magic in me.
“No!” Screaming the word, I start to run. Not away but toward him. Please don’t let me have been too late. Please. Please. “Ethan! No!”
He tries to stand, then doubles over again. The magic streams from his hands.
Wednesday, 12:43 pm
Viktor
I feel it begin. I smile. Ethan, Ethan. I told you it would be fun. Of course, you are a tough one. Lucky you have Dimitri with you. No one can force an issue quite like Dimitri. Except, of course, for me.
The boy, Ben, lies on the ground, unconscious. Better to let him live. I am not like the witch. Not a monster. Just Koschei come to life. He was a hindrance, this Ben Logan. Now he is not. But to kill him—I am not cruel, just a pragmatist.
“Let me go.” Tess Edwards struggles against me. Her eyes show the terror that her voice does not betray. A strong girl. A loyal girl. Worthy of Anne’s friendship.
But friendships are liabilities. Like love, they make us weak.
“She’s going to come after you, you know,” Tess says.
“Not yet,” I tell her. “But soon. I’m counting on it, actually.”
When she struggles again, I point to Ben Logan. “If you’d like him to stay alive, I suggest you do as I say.”
Wednesday, 12:43 pm
Ethan
The magic pours from me. I will it not to, but still it moves, even as Anne approaches, running.
“What’s happening?” Anne grabs me, and her momentum has us stumbling, falling into the water.
No. She shouldn’t be here. She can’t be here. Where the hell is Dimitri? How much glass is in two fifty-foot towers? How much death?
Seconds. Mere seconds. This is all I have. No time to counter the spell that is not mine but has come from my hands nonetheless.
Protect. It’s all I can do.
We hit the water.
Slow. Protect. Minimize.
One second. Two. Three.
The spell hits its target. First one, then the other fifty-foot glass tower explodes.
Wednesday, 12:43 pm
Anne
We’re falling too fast to right ourselves. We smash together to the shallow pool, skid along the bottom as glass begins to rain from the sky.
Ethan pulls me under him. Covers my body with his own.
“Ya dolzhen,” I hear him say. I must…The rest of his words are blotted out by rain and falling glass.
Must what? Stop what’s already happened?
I do what I can to slow it down. Visualize rounded ends, not jagged. Small nuggets, not huge shards. At one point, I think I even push some of it back into the air. But the rain and wind work against us. Glass flies everywhere, swirls in the wind like millions of tiny daggers.
Nearby, someone screams. Harsh. Loud. Then the sound is gone, sucked into the huge noise of falling glass and rushing wate
r.
A wall. I work to build that invisible wall. But there are so many people, so many bodies to protect. My own body heaves with the effort. Power bursts from me—more than I’ve ever used. More than I’ve ever felt. Protect. Protect. Protect.
Magic streams from every inch of me as I lie with Ethan in the shallow water. It burns my hands, my arms, my insides. Does my life flash in front of me? Not really. I think stupid thoughts. Will Buster the cat miss me? And not so stupid. My parents. Tess. Ben. When they find our bodies—Ethan’s and mine—under a mountain of glass, will someone be able to identify us?
And the biggest thought. Don’t let me die. Not here. Not now. Not yet. Not when I finally figured out how I feel about him. About us.
Ethan presses his body against me. The world continues to explode.
Eventually, it’s over. One fountain tower completely destroyed. The other missing only a few blocks of glass. What I felt as we hit the ground—that I’d collided with Ethan in time to divert part of it. A small miracle. The rain eases to a drizzle.
We stagger to our feet. I’m shaking hard, and my nose is bleeding freely. I lick my lip and taste blood. Sirens are wailing and people are screaming. The back of my head feels like it’s been hit with a sledgehammer.
Ethan’s shocky, pale. There’s glass in his hair and blood—his or someone else’s. He coughs. When he wipes his mouth, there’s blood on the back of his hand.
“Viktor,” he rasps. “He’d given magic to Dimitri too. Dimitri’s gone mad, Anne. He’d come back to try to kill Viktor. But Viktor knew. He took the magic from him. Put it in me. I still don’t know why. But Dimitri wanted the power. He thought I could…I couldn’t—it…”
He looks away and stiffens. I track his gaze.
We wade a few feet through water and glass to the body lying face up in the shallow water, a huge piece of glass protruding from his chest.
Dimitri.
Crouching down, Ethan feels for a pulse. I stare at the piece of glass. It must have sliced right through his heart.
What happens next is a blur. We try to revive him. Briefly, we discuss removing the piece of glass. I press my hand to his chest. Feel magic rise again in my fingers, flow into his body. This comes easily to me now, I realize. Even in panic. Even in terror. My body seems to know what to do.
But here is what I also know. Nature has its price. Death—at least in the real world—is still death. Some things cannot be undone.
Ethan stares at Dimitri’s body.
“He wanted someone to die,” he says. It sounds as cold as I feel. “I guess he got his wish.”
It’s my turn to throw up. After, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. My head throbs. I see a man limping—his leg is cut. A woman helps a guy who looks about fourteen to stand. Here and there, more of the same. Cuts. Bruises. A girl walks by, crying but ambulatory, a deep cut on her forearm.
I brush my hand over it. Close the wound. Not completely enough to freak her out, but enough for me not to worry.
We’re lucky. Most people had cleared out once a witch appeared in the fountain. Dimitri’s is the only body.
He won’t lie here for long. On Michigan Avenue, a stream of cop cars, ambulances, fire trucks. Two helicopters, then three swing into view.
We leave. Fast.
“There was a cop with us,” I say, remembering. We’re sprinting now, getting out of sight. We can cut through the garden that runs by the Art Institute, I tell Ethan. Get back out to the street that way. “He gave us a ride here because we got stuck in traffic right after we crossed the river.”
“We?”
“Tess and Ben. They’re here somewhere. Ben drove. We need to find them.”
Ethan looks at me blankly. “You shouldn’t even be near me,” he says. His tone is as blank as his expression.
Guilt. His. Mine. No shortage, that’s for sure.
We wind our way through a garden that was probably full of people until a few minutes ago. The huge lawn ahead of us makes me nervous—so big and out in the open. No choice but to chance it. I scan the sky—no Baba Yaga
“I’m sorry I left like that at IHOP.” I reach for his hand. He pulls away. “I thought I was protecting you. Maybe I was. But I only made things worse, didn’t I? I mean if I was there, would you have gone with Dimitri to meet Viktor? I don’t think you—oh!”
I pat my hip. Feel relief when my fingers meet the doll’s hard shape. “Wait,” I say. “God, Ethan, it’s been so crazy, I haven’t even told you—showed you. Whatever.” Gently, I pull the matryoshka doll from my pocket. “Look.”
“Where did you get that?”
I talk quickly as we move through the garden and cross the huge lawn that leads to the street. I tell him everything. What Baba Yaga showed me about her past. Her loneliness. What she said about using Anastasia. How she, too, thought that Viktor believed himself to be like Koschei. And how she was certain that he had accessed Anastasia’s past memories while Baba Yaga watched them in the fire.
“So we went to the Romanovs,” I say. And then I tell him the rest of it. He cradles the doll in his hand. I tell him about Anastasia. And Rasputin and the Tsarina. Even about annoying Jimmy the spaniel.
We’re walking west on Randolph Street back toward Michigan by the time I finish.
“I always hated that damn dog,” Ethan says, and I roll my eyes.
He studies the tiny doll as we reach Michigan Avenue, now a sea of people and emergency vehicles. We need to get out of here. It isn’t going to take long for someone to recognize one of us. Or connect us to the dead man lying by the smashed fountain.
“Do you think it’s really in there?” I ask as he hands the doll back to me—possibly so he’s not holding on to it if he goes dark again. He’s still pale as a ghost and keeping his distance.
“Only one way to find out.”
“Now? I mean, like, just what? Slam it to the ground? Crush it? What? Everything went wonky when it bounced on the carpet in 1911. So I brought it back with us. Tess thinks that…”
Tess. I stop walking.
I’d shoved my phone back in my pocket so I didn’t have to answer the message from my father. It’s vibrated on and off, but I’ve ignored it.
I pull out my phone. Check my missed calls.
Dad.
Dad.
Dad.
Dad.
Tess.
Then nothing. The last message from Tess is a text.
Vktr, she’s typed. Nothing more.
Shit. My pulse quickens.
“Something’s really wrong,” I say, showing Ethan the text. “Why would she text that unless he had her. Or almost had her. Or…”
I press Tess’s number. Her phone goes immediately to voice mail.
I do the same with Ben’s number. Same result. Why did I leave them? Why did I run?
“He knew you’d come to me,” Ethan says. “This whole thing—it was some kind of distraction.”
Is he right? Are we that predictable? Okay, we are. But that doesn’t explain it all. There are lots of ways to distract someone. Why juice him up with power and make him more dangerous? Only to kill Dimitri? A million easier ways to do that. There’s something we’re not seeing. But there’s no time. Where the hell are Ben and Tess?
“Hey!” a voice behind me booms. “Tess’s friend? Anne, right?”
Officer Shanahan, his uniform torn, his face weary. Relief washes over me. Officer Shanahan. Tess must be okay.
Except what he says is, “The guy who was with you? Tess’s boyfriend? I just put him in an ambulance. He must have been hit by something in that freak storm that blew up. I thought he was dead. But he was just unconscious. They’ve taken him to Rush.”
My brain doesn’t shift gears fast enough. “They what?” Ben? Hos
pital? “Did Tess go with him?”
“He’ll be okay. One of the paramedics is my wife’s brother Nick. He knows what he’s doing.” Then, “Tess?” The cop stares at me. “I thought she was with you.”
No. No. No.
In my hand, my phone vibrates. Dad again.
“Hi,” I snap. “I’m okay, Dad. I just can’t talk right now. I—”
“Have you talked to your mother?” Dad’s voice is panicked. In my head, I see him all wild-haired like when Lily made her guest appearance and he was standing in our backyard.
“Mom? Why?” The words come out strained. My throat dries up. How long has it been since I’ve had something to drink?
“You’re okay, though?” my father says, and I realize how much I love him. “Sweetie. Anne. You’re safe, right?”
This is highly questionable, but I tell him yes.
“Your mother’s disappeared,” Dad says then. “I’d gotten her to bed after you—well, after. I thought she’d finally fallen asleep. I must have dozed off. When I woke up, she was gone.”
“Gone? Like gone somewhere? Or just gone? Did she leave a note? Did you call her cell?” I try not to shriek but fail.
“Just gone,” he says. “She left her phone on the kitchen table. She was telling me all these things, Anne. I don’t know what to believe anymore. That woman in the yard. Ethan. You. It’s like I got out of bed and fell into some alternate…Your mother kept insisting that the thing in the backyard was her birth mother. That she wanted to be with her. That this Lily was the only one who could understand. That she knew what it was like to have no more hope. That Lily was the only one who could help. ‘She told me where it happened,’ your mother kept saying. ‘She showed me.’”
My father’s voice breaks. “Anne. Who is this Ethan, really? What’s been going on in my house? Where is your mother?”
“She went to find Lily,” I say, and as the words come out of my mouth, every molecule in my body tells me that they’re true. But where?
“I even drove to the cemetery.” My father’s crying on the phone now. “I thought if she was upset like this she’d go to David’s grave. She’s done that before, you know. Some of those times when she’s disappeared. She’ll walk. Or go to the movies. Or sometimes she just sits at the cemetery.”