Anastasia Forever (11 page)

Holy crap. This is not about to happen.
Only I think it is.

Hey, there,
I scream into Tasha's head.
Seriously, missy. Stop touching him. Back away from the lips. I don't have time to deal with this. I have to get out of your body and get Ethan back to normal and tell him that you're a snake in the grass and that there's this story about some guy named Koschei the Deathless that maybe we ought to research, in addition to the whole Giselle-rusalka thing. So stop it.

She doesn't listen to me.

We head toward her bedroom. I get her to pause a couple of times. Ethan in the past doesn't seem bothered, just like he didn't notice how wrong things were when I got her to tell him to stop smoking. My God, how clueless is he? He just keeps kissing her.

Are
you
in
there
too, my Ethan? It's me you want to kiss, not her. And if any other touching goes on, I want it just you and me. Things are a little too crowded right now. Don't you know that?

He kisses her some more, and I feel each of those kisses like he's kissing me. I think I start to cry, but it's only in my head. I hate that when he touches her I know how good it feels. I hate that this is happening.

Be
present
, the voice that may or may not be Baba Yaga's, booms in my ears.
Do
not
be
a
frightened
little
girl.
And then:
Daughter, it will be fine. No matter what. You are strong. Just as I am.

It isn't particularly comforting.

Ethan kisses her lips, her nose, her cheeks, her chin. He trails kisses down the sensitive skin of her neck to where her cleavage is shoved up by the fancy dress. She gives a small moan of pleasure. I hate her for that. Luckily she's got a lot of clothes on. It's going to take him a while to unpeel all those layers.

Tasha reaches up and unpins her hair.

Or maybe it won't take that long at all.

He kisses her again. And again. And so many times that I lose track. He rakes his hands through her hair. Her tongue flicks against his finger as it traces her lips.

Ethan lifts Tasha's hand and kisses the center of her palm. It's familiar and horrifying all at once. You kissed my hand like that, Ethan, I shout at him. You have to snap out of this. You have to remember. You have to—

The memories pound in my brain. Ethan and me, making out in his apartment the night the rusalka—my crazy grandmother Lily—showed herself to us in his shower. We'd run our fingertips over each other's faces, and I'd wondered if people could memorize the feel of one another. That if time and circumstance made something happen, you'd just know. You couldn't forget.

He has to remember. How can he not remember? Was it important only to me?

Touch his face, I tell Tasha. Touch his face and open your eyes.

He kisses her so deeply that if I had breath, it would be taken away. She kisses him back, opens her mouth so his tongue can explore. I try to stop her from making a low, sexy sound in the back of her throat, but she does it anyway as Ethan's teeth graze her lower lip. I hear her thinking—
God, I hate her
—that she's doing what Viktor wants. She's distracting Ethan by letting him love her.

Open
your
damn
eyes, Tasha
.

She opens them.

They kiss again, a deep kiss that I want to be mine alone. Time feels like it's standing still.

Ethan's blue eyes—eyes I know, deep as oceans—look into Tasha's. His hands are everywhere, his body pressed to hers. I stare through Tasha's eyes, willing him to somehow know I'm here.

“Ethan!” I shout. “Ethan. Please.” He needs to hear me. My Ethan would hear me. That's been the whole problem, only now I need it to happen.

He hugs her. His grip is very strong. She doesn't seem to mind. Her hands stroke his back, and even through his clothes, I knew when her fingers reach that lion tattoo on his back, the sign of the Brotherhood that has never left him. My own fingertips feel the heat of it just as Tasha's do.

“Ethan,” I say again in my head. “Ethan.”

Something shifts. In those blue eyes—there's—

Ethan
.

“Anne?” he says. “Anne.”

I'm sobbing now, and this time I think he can hear me.

“Ethan,” I say again. “Thank God.”

The world contracts and folds.

And just like that, we're us again, and then we're gone.

Leaving was tumultuous. Returning is just sudden. One second we're in London in the past. The next we're back in Anne's room, my arms around her, our lips pressed together in a kiss.

She pushes me away with a force that reminds me exactly how strong she is. For a few beats we just stare at each other. There are no words for what I feel right now. Shame. Anger. Fear. Sorrow. Nothing makes sense except maybe violation. If I hadn't realized when I did—

I clear my throat. “That was—”

“I know,” she says. Her eyes are huge and tears slip from them. She blows out a breath, wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

“You know I'd never—if I'd understood sooner, I'd never have…God, Anne. I tried to hold on to who I was. But everything melded together. And then I heard you. I saw you. In Tasha's eyes. It wasn't her. It was you. I don't understand how it happened—any of it. I'm so sorry. My God, I'm—”

“I thought you'd never know me. It took you so long. I—shit.” She makes a sound that's half laugh, half sob. “That was crazy. Was it real? I mean if you hadn't figured it out—if I hadn't been able to…”

She doesn't have to finish. We both know how it would have been. If somehow after that we'd come back, things would never have been the same. I would never have been able to forgive myself.

I move to wrap my arms around her, but she holds up a hand. “Don't. I—just don't. Give me a minute, okay?”

I nod. Then glance at her alarm clock. We've been gone mere moments. Impossible. But like everything else that just happened, it seems to be true.

“My God, Ethan.” Anne sits on the edge of her bed, then stands up again and paces the room. “They were playing you. That whole time. He wanted her to keep you distracted so he could go do something. Make sure you didn't find any potential girl who could save Anastasia, probably. That's why she wanted you to—well, you know. He promised to make her one of you. Immortal.”

Her words shock but not completely. In the moment that I'd recognized her in Tasha's eyes, everything else had come to me too. In a rush, it washes over me. Tasha. Viktor. Total and utter betrayal. The last things in my former life that I thought were true—they were all a lie. Everything she and I shared together. Everything I have felt guilt for all these years—leaving her, never telling her the truth—it was all a lie. How stupid can one man be?

“It was a long time ago,” I begin, grasping for some way to make sense of how I never knew. “I suppose—”

“Suppose what? And lower your voice. My parents are asleep down the hall. Are you going to justify what she and Viktor did to you? Say it was okay because it was a long time ago and you—what? Still believed that everything was goodness and light?”

Anne strides to the window, and I follow her, the moon full in the sky behind us. “How long did you go on justifying what you helped do to Anastasia? That it was okay because you believed that you could restore her to the throne or whatever? I mean, I know it's Viktor who had the plan. I know he screwed with your head—in more ways than you ever knew, obviously. But Jesus, Ethan. Didn't you ever once think that something was off? When that evening happened in real time—without us guest-appearing in other people's bodies—didn't it seem suspicious?”

She grasps my hands in hers. “I love you, Ethan. At least I think I do. But it scares me. Not what just almost happened with me along for the ride. That was totally gross and unsettling, but I'd have dealt with it. Somehow. But how could you love someone who didn't love you back? How could you not know?”

The words tumble from her, each one an indictment.
You
didn't know. You didn't know. How could you not know?

And for the first time, I realize—really understand—my complicity in Anastasia's destruction. She is dead and gone now, and would have been in any case. But what I did? It made it worse. It took everything from her. I am as guilty as Viktor, perhaps even more because it's clear that I had opportunity after opportunity to figure out what he was doing. To stop him. To help Anastasia sooner. So many days, so many minutes, year after year, she remained at Baba Yaga's. And I—I let it happen to her.

Just as I let Tasha betray me. Blind to the truth. Over and over and over again.

And once again, even in the past, I've hurt Anne with the consequences. I think of meeting—was it just yesterday?—with Dimitri, something I've yet to fully tell her about. I hear his voice.
You
are
not
an
innocent
in
this, Ethan.
Yet another accurate indictment of my past mistakes.

“We need to talk about the rest of it,” I say. “Giselle, the Wilis—”

“And Koschei. Viktor talked to Tasha about some guy named Koschei the Deathless. Do you know that story?”

“Koschei? Of course, everyone knows…” I stop mid-sentence. A chill passes through me—and in my head, I see shadows. Fragments of images—a hand clenched into a fist, colors, faces, too blurred to be familiar. For one horrible moment, I think we're about to travel again. But it's not that. Not at all. Inside me, the dark something that's been simmering starts to rise.

In my head, a voice.
No
one
can
destroy
Koschei. No one.

Anne lets go of my hands. “Your eyes,” she says. There's fear in her voice.

“What?” I shake my head. Focus on Anne.

“Look.” She drags me to the mirror over her dresser. We stand together and stare into the glass.

My blue eyes grow darker, then darker still. But that's only part of it.

Reflected in the mirror, Anne's eyes glow just as dark as mine—and in the center of each, a tiny skull.

“Your eyes,” I say again because it's slightly less crazy-making than saying “our eyes,” which obviously would be more accurate.

Except I can explain mine. And if I concentrate hard enough, I can probably make them go away—at least for now. But what explains his?

Ethan presses his hands to his eyes. Pulls his hands away and looks back into the mirror. It's like he's wearing Prince of Darkness contacts.

“There's something,” he says. “Inside me. I—”

Panic gives my own insides a healthy smackdown. I want to stay put. I don't want to go anywhere again. I sure as hell don't want to be shoved inside some bimbo with an evil agenda. Can't we stay just us?

“Focus, Ethan,” I say and struggle to keep my voice calm. “Maybe it's just a leftover of what just happened. Like some sort of mystical fallout or something. Travel through time—eyes go black. You know. Probably happens all the time, right?”

He offers up a grim smile, and I try not to let my growing panic eat me alive. We're home at least. That's got to count for something.

I smile back encouragingly. “Maybe I can help,” I say. I reach out and clasp his hands in mine.

An electrical storm ignites. My magic, his magic—he has magic again and a lot of it—entwine, combine, explode. My body vibrates. I think my eyes roll back in my head.

The magic sizzles between us, in us, around us. Ethan's face lights with it. His eyes darken more, the irises disappearing. Memories—mine, his, someone else's?—slam into me over and over. Lily in the river drowning, the rusalki swimming toward her. Ethan's father, dead on the ground. Viktor offering food to a skinny boy with blue eyes. David dying. Anastasia screaming as Baba Yaga grabs her. Viktor on the speeding El train, holding a gun to my head. Tasha Levin smiling at Ethan as they sit at the piano. Me—with Anastasia—holding the matryoshka doll between us just before I sent her back to die.

And then more. A ballerina dancing Giselle, protecting her true love from the Wilis. Anastasia sitting on the edge of a quilt-covered bed in Baba Yaga's hut—holding the matryoshka. She opens it and pulls out a smaller version of the same doll. Opens it and pulls out another. Opens it and suddenly I'm seeing inside it—an endless cavern of space that makes me feel like I'm falling. Viktor's face looms up from inside, leering and smug.

I gasp, trying to get air down to my lungs. I need to breathe. I can't breathe. I can't think.
God, I
—

I rip free of Ethan's hands. My own hands are glowing—blue, white, blue. Sizzles of power flickering from my fingertips. And something new this time—dark veins surfacing at the tops of my hands, running down my fingers and up my arms to the elbow. For a few beats, my hands look larger, coarser. Impossible. But it fades before I can even be sure it really happened.

“I need—” I manage. But I don't know what I need. I'm dizzy. I can't breathe.

I yank open the door.

“Don't follow me.” I scramble down the stairs with no plan other than to put distance between us.

I'm thirsty, I realize. Terribly thirsty. What do people drink in times of blind panic? Not Diet Coke.

I skid into the kitchen, skim my hand along the wall, and flip on the small light over the sink. No sense turning on the overhead. I'll take my full-on freak-out in the dark, thank you. Stray flickers of light continue careening off my fingertips.

They illuminate the pantry as I scan inside. Brandy. People drink brandy during a crisis, right? There's a bottle on the back shelf. Mom bought it last week when she decided that the best way to cure her “My daughter is a witch; my birth mother is a crazy mermaid” blues was to attempt to flambé desserts. Her Cherries Jubilee had been more scorched than jubilant.

I'm reaching for it when I hear a noise. I try not to be annoyed. I don't want Ethan right now. I want my swig of brandy and possibly a good cry and maybe a sandwich. On top of everything else, I'm suddenly ridiculously ravenous. Like side-of-beef-on-a-roll hungry.

I turn.

My mother—dressed in a thin, white sleeveless nightgown—is sitting at the breakfast-room table, her head in her arms.

My heart knots itself into a hard little ball, then swoops into my throat.

“Mommy? What's wrong?” I stand where I am, suddenly afraid to move. But also afraid not to.

She doesn't answer.

Somewhere in another room, I hear footsteps. Fabulous. I still don't want Ethan down here. I'd rather not add to the situation by letting my mother know that it's one in the morning and I've got a boy in my room. Man. Whatever.

“Mom.” The white tile is very cold under my feet as I move to rest my hand lightly on her shaking shoulders. Against her bare skin, my fingers feel the outline of each vertebra. A shiver works its way up my own spine. When did she get this thin again? “Mom. What's wrong?”

She raises her head but doesn't look at me. Instead, her gaze tracks out the sliding glass door into the backyard.

No.

Pulse thundering in my ears, I walk to the door. Press my face against the glass. The moon is very bright. So it doesn't take me long to see. Our sprinkler is on. In the moonlight, I watch the arc of water move back and forth, back and forth. Close enough to the house that stray droplets hit the window—tiny pecks of sound.
Pop. Pop. Pop.

Standing in the spray of water, her face lifted to the night sky, Lily holds out her arms. Her rusalka body is impossibly gaunt, her ravaged face etched with thin dark lines that cling to her cheeks like seaweed. The sleeves of her gown are gone, and her bare arms look pale and brittle. Underneath her tattered lilac gown, her mermaid's tale swishes in our grass.

My heart—that tiny knot—freezes. Now? She chooses now to come back here?

And then I see him.

Next to her stands my brother, David. He's dressed in the outfit we buried him in—khaki pants and his favorite maroon polo shirt and the stupid brown dress shoes he hated. I cried when I saw that was what my father had packed in the bag we had to bring to the funeral home.

“You should have brought his Doc Martens,” I remember screaming. But really, it was just a pair of shoes. That our elm tree is visible through his clothing is my only relief because it means he's not real. Oh God, make that be true.

“I thought it was a dream,” my mother says. She moves to stand next to me, and briefly I see her reflected next to me in the glass, insubstantial as a ghost. “I heard a noise. Your father's still sleeping. She came to me.” Mom is crying audibly now, huge choking sobs. “Lily came to me. She brought your brother. You see them, don't you? I don't have the magic like you do, but she came to me anyway. She knew what I needed. No one else knew. Just Lily. See?”

“Mom, no. Don't look out there. Please. Don't. It's only going to make things worse. Trust me. It's a trick of some sort. Please.”

She slips her arm around me, presses herself close. Her nightgown is damp.

“Mom, have you been outside? Were you out there with them?” I don't know if it even matters. But suddenly I feel as violated as I had inside Tasha's body. My family is being ripped apart. And it's not going to stop.

My mother nods, a barely perceptible jerk of her chin. And it occurs to me to wonder why she'd come back inside. Why, if they were out there—her mother the mermaid and my brother come back from the dead—she would leave them and come to cry at our kitchen table.

“She says you could take me to the past,” Mom whispers. “That you have that power. Do you, honey?”

Her tone is oddly normal, like she's asking me if I can pick up milk at the grocery store. “Lily says you could take me. I wouldn't have to go for long. I just want to see him before. When he was well. You don't know that things are going to change, you know? You have no idea how precious every second is. You're just going along and making dinner and nagging him to do his homework and trying to get through your own life.

“That day your brother came home and told me he had that lump under his arm, you know what I was worried about? That one of our jewelry shipments hadn't come in. Your brother was standing there telling me there was goddamn cancer under his arm, and you know what I was thinking? I don't have time for this. I have two customers who expected certain pieces to wear to events and now I have to find some way of making them happy. That's what I was thinking.”

In the glass, I see that Ethan is now standing a few feet behind us. I turn—put my finger to my lips. Still, relief floods through me. I'm glad he didn't do what I asked. Suddenly, my mother knowing that he's spent the night is the least of my worries.

“Can you?” My mother turns her gaze to me. Tears sit on her lashes. “You have to do this for me, Anne. I'm your mother. And I'm asking you. Please.”

I try to swallow, the knot in my throat grown to a boulder. “Mom. Mommy. No.”

Despite myself, I flick my gaze outside again. Lily snakes her arm around David. He beckons to me, a slow twist of the wrist. It takes every ounce of strength I have not to run to him. The way his hair curls a little at the nape of his neck, the broad familiar shape of his hands, the little mole at the corner of his left eye, like one tiny freckle. The tilt of his head as he looks at me. This is not David, I tell myself. But everything I see screams at me that it is.

“It's not real.” I force myself to say what must be true. “Mom. She wants something. She's tricking us. She's making us see something that's not there. He's not there, Mom. David's dead. He's not coming back.”

My mother reaches up and I think she's going to stroke my hair. Instead, she slaps me, sharply, across the face. I gasp. Grab her wrist harder than I mean to. She cries out, a sound of real pain. In the glass, I see Ethan move forward. Again, I hold up my hand. We need to let her say what she needs to say.

My mother seems oblivious to the fact that she's just slapped me. Her voice rises. “You can, can't you? You can take me to the past. Please, Anne. Just for a few minutes, a second or two. Let me see him. I thought it was Lily I wanted to see. I thought that was what would make me happy. But it isn't that at all. I have a mother. Your Grandma Ellen. I was wrong. I don't need Lily. But I need my son. I want my son. Please, Anne, he's your brother. I'm not asking you to bring him back from the dead. Just let me see him in the past. How could it hurt?”

I shake my head. How do I even begin to tell her that the past isn't always what you think? That even if I did what she asked, it wouldn't make things better. It would only open old wounds and confuse things. I've seen the past, I want to scream. I'm probably destined to see more of it. And if I had any choice right now, I'd never go there again.

“No,” I say softly. “I won't do that, Mom. You don't want it. Trust me. You have to understand. You don't want it.”

“Don't tell me what I want!” My mother's hand rears back again.

Ethan crosses the distance between us with one long stride. In the dim light from the sink, I can see that his eyes are blue again. But the darkness flickers just underneath.

He grabs Mom's arm. “Mrs. Michaelson. Laura. No. This isn't you. Stop it. Leave her alone. You have no idea what you're asking of her.”

If Mom has been unaware of his presence in the room up until now, that little mystery is over.

And here's the thing about mothers that I totally get now: even when they're wacked-out by grief and eating disorders and rusalka birth mothers with crazy agendas who make them see their dead sons and ask their daughters to do the impossible, they're still mothers.

“Anne?” Ethan still gripping her arm, my mother turns her attention to me. “What is Ethan doing here? It's the middle of the night. Has he been here all this time? In your room? With you?”

On the periphery of my vision, I see Lily and David edge closer to our house. She moves with him gracefully through the arc of sprinkle spray like some sort of creepy water ballet.

“Let me explain,” I start.

“Are you sleeping with my daughter?”

The question doesn't come from my mother. It comes from my father, who has chosen this moment to come downstairs and join the party. I sense immediately that our previous plan to “keep Dad out of the crazy loop” has just failed.

My father steams across the kitchen wearing boxer shorts, an ancient U of I T-shirt, and a dumbfounded expression. His hair stands up in messy little clumps.

But at least he's asked a question to which I can give an honest answer.

“Daddy, no. No.”

The look on his face tells me that he doesn't believe me. The look he gives Ethan is just plain dangerous.

“Steve,” my mother says as Ethan lets go of her arm. “Go back to bed.”

Like that's going to happen. My hands start to do their glow thing again, and my pulse races off the charts to the kind of territory where doctors bring in the crash cart and charge up the paddles.

Lily and David press their bodies to our sliding glass door. Lily's rusalka tail beats rhythmically against the glass.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Her dress is so destroyed that most of her body is visible. Almost naked mermaid breasts flatten against the glass. She stretches her mouth into a hideous grin, all pointed teeth and flecks of seaweed.

“Answer me, young man,” my father goes on. This is bizarre on so many levels that I don't know where to begin. For whatever reason—most likely situational blindness brought on by his assumption that Ethan and I were having sex in my room—my father has yet to acknowledge that there's a mermaid with her boobs smashed against the sliding glass door. Or that the ghost of David is holding her hand. If we all live through this, I am going to need years of therapy.

“It's not what you think,” Ethan observes helpfully. Then to my mother: “Laura. It's going to be all right. You have to believe me. We'll figure this out. We'll stop it. But you have to trust your daughter. You have to trust me.”