Anastasia Forever (20 page)

“Ow.”

She presses a finger to her lips. I follow her gaze. My heart sticks in my throat, beats there furiously like a trapped bird trying to free itself.

Anastasia Romanov—about ten years old—stands at the doorway a few feet from us. It is in some ways like watching myself. I've been her, dreamed of her, watched her life in one way or another over and over. Saved her and sent her back to die.

Her eyes are blue like her father's. It's a softer blue than Ethan's but just as familiar. Her hair falls down her back in gentle waves, her bangs curving slightly on her forehead. Her nose is long and straight. She's wearing a dark skirt and a white blouse tucked in, and a tiny strand of pearls adorns her neck.

“Why so sad, brother?” she says softly, and at first I think it must be Alexei that she's talking to. That would make sense. Her mom was just down here with horrible Father Grigory. Alexei must have been sick again. She's trying to cheer him up.

Tess and I edge closer. If I wasn't invisible, I could talk to Anastasia again like I did that horrible day in front of the Jewel Box when everything went both right and wrong. This is what I'm thinking as her brother walks out of the room.

In that moment it's like lots of things we wish for, search for, hope for. Sometimes getting what you want is as painful as wanting it.

“I am of the Brotherhood now,” Viktor says as he steps from the room to Anastasia's left. He looks just like he did when Ethan and I made our brief guest appearance yesterday. Younger. Thin. Dark eyes. Long, angular face. I hate every inch of him.

Next to me, I feel Tess stiffen. My little flapping-bird heart beats its wings some more in my throat. I try to swallow, but my mouth has dried up.

“Like Father Grigory?” Anastasia says. She makes a face that looks a lot like Tess's ick face. If I wasn't frozen with fear, this might make me smile. “He was just here, you know. Talking to Mama.”

Viktor arches his dark brows. “Was he now? I thought as much. But I came today to speak to your father. To show him what I have become. Not like Father Grigory, sister. Do not fear. I would never be like that man.” His lips curve in his own look of disgust. I guess that's the one thing he and I finally agree on.

“Papa will be happy.” Anastasia smiles shyly at him. For like the zillionth time, I want to run up and shake her. Tell her no, no, no. Don't smile at him. Don't trust him. No. Don't.

“Perhaps he will, sister. But somehow I doubt it. Your father does not approve of me.” He pauses, seems to consider whether or not he should go on. Then adds, “If he did, then perhaps my portrait would also grace that lovely new addition to his desk in the study.”

Anastasia frowns. “I will tell Papa, then. He will listen to me. I am sure of it.”

Viktor's eyes glitter. He gives a short laugh.

Tess grips my arm.

“So,” he says to Anastasia, “you are Anastasia the Brave now?”

She nods. “Like the story Mama tells. Like Vasilisa. I will go into the forest of my father's study and tell him that you are very nice. And if there are any witches in there like Baba Yaga, I will beat them over the head until they are gone.”

I listen to her tell him this, and suddenly I know how someone's heart can break. Mine feels crushed right now. Smashed into the tiniest of bits possible.

Viktor leans and brushes a kiss to Anastasia's head. Stoops so they are eye to eye. “Be careful, little girl. I have met Baba Yaga. She is not particularly nice. You would not want to be eaten. Although I do thank you for your kind wishes on my behalf.”

Like Rasputin, when he walks by Tess and me, he stops. Just inches from my face, he stands and sort of sniffs the air.

“Yaga,” he says so softly that even though he's just like an inch from me, I can barely make out the word. “Is that you? I thought you did not leave your forest. Perhaps I have more to learn. Or perhaps you just can't stay away from me.” He chuckles. “A witch, yes. But still a woman. So predictable. Do you hear me, Yaga? Perhaps my sister would appreciate a visit.”

Wonderful. He sniffs the air around me and smells witch. Fabulous.

When he's gone, Anastasia steps into the room. We follow her.

“Do you smell me?” I whisper to Tess. “Do I smell like a witch?”

“You smell kind of sweaty.”

“I smell?”

“You asked.”

I look around. More chandeliers. A bunch of paintings. A fireplace and a pool table. And a huge desk cluttered with papers and pictures and various clocks and knickknacks.

I came to speak to your father, Viktor had said.

We are in Tsar Nicholas's study. But it's just me and Tess and Anastasia. No Tsar. Maybe there's another exit. Maybe he never was in here in the first place. That would make sense, wouldn't it? To be seen with his illegitimate son right in his own house? Out there in the park, maybe, like I'd seen in one of my dreams. But not here. Not on his own home turf.

“Now what?” Anastasia still doesn't see us, but still Tess whispers her question.

The answer happens quickly, almost too quickly, like maybe I'm dreaming. Only I'm not.

Anastasia walks to the desk. Moves past the clutter of stuff and bends to look at something displayed on a little stand at the far end.

“Oh,” I say. A tiny sound that makes Tess shift her gaze to me.

It's not just a random something that Anastasia's studying. It's something I know. The last thing she thought about before I sent her back to die.

In my head, I go there again. See myself standing on Second Street, the Jewel Box destroyed, rain streaming in buckets. Baba Yaga's tears pouring from the sky. Anastasia and I had held her matryoshka doll between us and I'd placed my other hand over my heart. I was supposed to be sending her back. I
would
send her back a few seconds later. But right then, our minds linked together, Anastasia and I weren't thinking about death. We were thinking about this room and this Fabergé egg that sits on her father's desk.

The egg with all their pictures on it. Anastasia's and her brother and sisters'.

Perhaps
my
portrait
would
also
grace
that
lovely
new
addition
to
his
desk
in
the
study.

Every part of me starts to tingle. Magic. Fear. Memories.

Sometimes you just know.

“It's the egg,” I whisper. “All those pictures. Oh my God. It's the one thing Viktor wanted and never got—to be an official part of the Romanovs. This is the moment. This is the memory. I can feel it.”

My impulse is to grab it. But would Anastasia see? Would she realize she wasn't alone? That could ruin everything.

So we wait. One minute. Two. Three. Five excruciating minutes click by on the clock on the Tsar's desk. Then six. Seven minutes she stands there studying the damn egg.

In the hall, a female voice calls out. “Anastasia. Anastasia. You are supposed to be at your lessons. I saw you come down here, Anastasia. Answer me.”

Anastasia hesitates. Sighs. I hear my own heart beating.

When the door closes behind her, Tess huffs out a huge breath.

Pulse flying, I step to the desk. Will I be able to touch it? I half expect that my hand will just slide right through.

But my hand tightens around the egg just fine.

If I were in a museum, I'd admire how beautiful it is. So white and shiny, the decorations exquisite. The little picture panels each exactly perfect in shape and size. Each one with a picture. And seven of those pictures of the family. Nicholas. Alexandra. Alexei, the heir to the throne. Anastasia and her sisters—OTMA, they called themselves—Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia.

I turn it every which way as I look at it. And then I turn it upside down.

An eighth picture panel.

Viktor. The panel underneath is an image of Viktor.

“Holy shit.” Tess touches a finger to the picture.

“Don't,” I snap, a whip of panic hitting me. “What if it disappears or something?”

She snatches her hand away like the egg is on fire.

“This is it.” I'm half crying, half laughing, mostly feeling so giddy that I think I'm going to float up to the ceiling.

“Does it open? It has to open, right?”

“Here. On top. Shit, Tess. He did it. He changed this one thing in history. This has to be it.”

I'm having trouble getting my brain around it. This Fabergé egg is in someone's art collection in the present. In the present, it has just seven portraits. But in the past, it's been altered to have eight. How can that even be? But it is. I'm looking at it.

“It's perfect,” Tess says. “It's what he always wanted, isn't it? For his dad the Tsar to acknowledge him. So he can't get that in real life. But he can fake it here. He had to wait until he was Baba Yaga's prisoner, but he got what he wanted. He found his way into Anastasia's memories. He changed the thing that pissed him most.”

And if we're lucky, it's where he hid what we're looking for.

“How big was that doll of hers anyway? Bigger than this egg, right?”

“The whole doll, maybe. But not the ones inside. Dolls within dolls. Stories within stories. The littlest doll. That's all he'd need.”

“So are you gonna open it?” Tess looks at me. I look at the egg.

I find the tiny hidden clasp. Ease it open with my finger.

We peer inside.

A wooden doll just slightly larger than my little fingernail stares up at us.

I lean back in case it leaps up or says something. But it just lies there with its painted eyes and thin painted smile.

“That's it?” Tess tilts her head. What did she expect? “So, is Viktor's soul really in there? Like how? Taped inside with magic Gorilla Glue or something?”

“Um, yeah?” Our command of the existential is a little rocky. We've leaped into the past with no planning whatsoever, other than a limited working knowledge of the Koschei fairy tale. It's like feeling qualified to do brain surgery because I've watched
Grey's Anatomy
.

The door to the study creaks, then opens enough for a brown little spaniel to trot into the room.

The dog yips.

I jump. Smack heads with Tess.

The egg slips from my hand, but I manage to catch it. The doll, however, flies out and nosedives to the floor, bounces when it hits. Bounce. Bounce.

Spaniel chases it.

Noooooo
, I think in slow motion.
Holy shit. No.

For a second I think I'm going to black out. I see stars. My skin feels like ice.

Spaniel noses the doll. Its pink, spitty tongue licks it.

Get it
, my brain commands. But I feel like everything is moving in slow motion. Vomit rises in my throat. A wave of dizziness spins my head.

“Anne!” Tess's cry is sharp, but when she repeats my name, her voice fades.

My brain tries to process what's happening.

Viktor's soul is in the doll in the egg. That's what we think. Not that I want to hurt this wonderful historical egg, which I haven't because I just caught it and I'm clutching it in both hands, but so? I didn't hide
my
soul in it. The doll smacking the floor should be a good thing, right? Okay, the dog possibly eating it isn't good, but isn't that how all those Koschei the Deathless stories go? Break the egg or toss the egg, and his soul gets knocked around and then goes back where it belongs so he can die like he's supposed to? Maybe we've done it. Maybe this will all be over.

Then why do I feel like I'm about to pass out? Or vomit? Or worse?

Tess falls to the floor. Her head hits the carpet with a muffled thud.

My knees buckle. My head feels strange and floaty. My vision blurs.

“Here, doggy,” I say weakly. “Give me the doll. C'mon, dog. Open your mouth and spit it out.”

My jumbled brain attempts to work. Egg—jostled. Doll—falls. Doll—bounces on carpet. Tess—lying on floor looking really bad. Me—fading fast. Somebody's spaniel swallowing the doll with Viktor's soul attached like it's a magical Milk Bone. All of the above not working well for Tess and me. Well, one question is answered. What would happen if we tried to destroy the doll right here rather than bringing it back to our time?

Someone's damn dog would try to eat it and kill us in the process, that's what.

“The doll!” I hit the floor on my knees. “We need to get the doll away from the dog.”

We both start to crawl. Spaniel thinks we're playing. He runs in happy circles, the doll still in his mouth.

How do I know it's in his mouth and not crushed between his doggy teeth? Because I'm still here thinking these absurd thoughts.

“Dog!” I say. “Oh, please, doggy. This cannot be happening.”

Behind me, I hear the door creak again. Does it open? I can't turn my head.

“The doll,” I say, more weakly this time. “We have to get the doll.”

“Jimmy!” a girl's voice says. Then she says something else in Russian.
Jimmy? Wait. I remember this. Jimmy is the dog. Bad Jimmy. Give me the damn doll back, Jimbo
.

“Jimmy!” the voice says again. The spaniel stops racing in circles. Sits.
Good
Jimmy
.

Through blurred vision, I see the dog drop the saliva-covered matryoshka doll into someone's hand. The hand places it gently on the Tsar's desk. Then reaches down for me.

My head clears.

Anastasia Romanov, still holding my hand, stares at me like she sort of knows me. Says something in Russian. Then looks curiously at the egg, the doll, the dog, and me.

“So what now?” We come to a stop at the huge sculpture in one of the tourist-jammed plazas of Millennium Park. “Just stand here and wait?”

Dimitri scowls.

I check my phone—just like I've been doing every minute or so. Nothing. It's almost ten in the morning. Anne and Tess have been gone for over three hours. Three hours real-world time. Who knows how long—or how short—a time frame has passed in Baba Yaga's forest. If that's even where they still are. For so long, Anne and I have drifted in and out of each other's thoughts. Now there is nothing. The absence of that connection frightens me. Where is she?

A quick phone call from Ben. “Anything?” he asks.

“Not yet,” I say.

The unsaid commentary is much longer.

Ben is right. I never should have let Anne go without me.

Ben is wrong. My presence would have changed nothing. Would have made it harder for her. A rule of combat: never risk something you are not willing to lose.

A problem: Anne is not willing to lose me. But in going she has asked me to accept the possibility of losing her.

Thus the one thing on which Ben and I agree: to lose her is unthinkable.

“Americans and their art,” Dimitri comments dismissively. He's looking at the sculpture—the one everyone calls the “Bean”—made of smooth curved panels of stainless steel more than thirty feet high with an arch beneath it, tall enough for people to walk under.

“Sculptor's British,” I tell him. As though it matters. The mirrorlike surface reflects the crowd. I can see the two of us at the left corner. Even close up we'd be warped by the curved shape.
Like the truth of us
, I think. The steel's reflection altering what we are, just as we ourselves are not what we seem. Dimitri and I are from another age, another place.

“The Brits aren't much better.” His nostrils flare in disdain. “God, Ethan, don't you miss it sometimes? Russia? The old days. We were men, then. Now—look at us. Still waiting for that bastard to show his face and your little girl to wrestle information from a witch we once thought was beneath our concern.”

“No.” The one-word answer suffices. I have no interest in listening to him wax poetic about Mother Russia. I have never known him well, and now is not the time to start. He came from a more privileged background than I did—that much I had gathered long ago. As for me, I had thought there was nothing left to lose when Viktor took me in. Offered me the Brotherhood's protection.

Now, I wonder. Was my family's death not just random destruction? Was that Cossack who killed my father actually connected to Viktor? Did he make me an orphan so that I would be of use?

I scan the plaza. No Viktor. Just Dimitri and me and a crowd of strangers.

And this: “What did he promise you?” I ask him. “Before he promised you Anastasia. When you had a choice. What made you join the Brotherhood?”

He stares at me oddly, as though this is the first time he's considered this particular question. I don't expect him to answer. But he does.

“I'd been sleeping with one of our maids—Sonia was her name. We lived in Minsk, a nice house. Nice for then, at least. When she told me she was pregnant, I said I would marry her. My father disagreed. He fired her on the spot. Sent her packing in the middle of the night. It was weeks before I tracked her to an aunt's little house in some country village.”

Something hard and cold flickers in Dimitri's eyes. “Sonia's father had his own opinion on the subject of her having my child. There were ways—even back then. The women, they knew how to take care of unfortunate circumstances. Sonia wouldn't speak to me. I told my father to go to hell. He disowned me, told me to get out. A few weeks later, someone introduced me to Viktor.”

His gaze rests on the curved steel sculpture. “I should have fought for Sonia. But I didn't. I don't even know why. Stupidity. Fear. Arrogance. But Anastasia—she didn't see that. She saw only a shallow fool who was kind to her. Who was a friend of her ‘secret brother.' The truth? She had no idea how I felt about her. But I saw in her everything I had lost with Sonia. And when Viktor promised that he would help make the match, I believed that too.”

“You were young.”

He shakes his head. His dark eyes focus somewhere that only he can see. “What fitting punishment our lives have been, eh, Brother? To keep repeating one age over and over, and still we never get it right.”

“We're moving forward now,” I remind him. “Things are not the same.”

“People don't change, Ethan. All these years, and this is what I believe. What is that saying? ‘A tiger can't change his stripes.' I think that is it. If I had it to do over again, any of it, would I behave differently? Would I choose more wisely? You tell me. We are what we are, my friend. No more. No less.”

“What are you prepared to do?” The question slips out without me being consciously aware that I was about to ask it.

He hesitates for a long moment. Long enough that I grow uneasy.

“Kill him if I can. If death isn't possible, then destruction, suffering. Whatever I can manage. We have part of his power now. Who knows what will happen?” He tilts his head, then flicks a finger toward my throat. Against my will, my breath seizes in my lungs.

“I know you remember this trick, Ethan. He's used it on you, after all. So I ask myself: even if a man could live forever, what life would he have if he couldn't breathe? He might not die. But my power would still squeeze at his neck. It is an interesting conundrum, wouldn't you say?”

The finger flicks again. Air rushes back where it belongs.

And I realize that I'm standing here with a madman.

He moves his hand again, but this time I'm quicker. The magic I've been repressing, holding deep inside me, rises swiftly, hungrily.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” I say. His feet lift from the ground because I tell them to. He shoots across the plaza toward the sculpture, knocking a few tourists off their feet as he goes. The back of his head smacks against the left side of the curved steel. He slumps to the cement.

Part of me registers shock at what I've done. Part of me finds it amusing.

“Ah, Ethan,” says a voice behind me. “Showing your true colors at last. Perhaps our friend Dimitri was wrong. People can change. Look at you—finally enjoying yourself.”

Viktor, thin but no longer skeletal, claps his hands in slow applause. His dark hair is streaked with white. Deep lines etch the skin around his eyes. A small scar runs from the corner of his mouth to his chin. Dimitri struggles to his feet, a crowd—as yet unaware that I'm responsible for what just happened—gathering around him.

“I'd thought to share with both of you,” he says. “A man needs options, you see. But I see now that I need to make some alterations in that plan. Don't worry, Ethan. This won't hurt. Not much anyway.”

Dimitri has shaken off the crowd. I see when he recognizes the man who's joined me. He walks faster, then seems to change his mind. Stops.

Inside me, the magic anticipates.
Block
him. Hurt him. Do damage. Survive at all costs
. This is what my brain interprets from the power.

No
, I tell myself.
This was a mistake.

Viktor clears his throat. Angles his gaze to our old friend who stands reflected in foot after foot of dark, curved steel.

Dimitri raises his arms.

I double over in searing pain. Fall to my knees on the concrete. My body feels like it's on fire. What has he done? I was going to stop him, wasn't I? But the pain burns and my mind blurs. Through the haze of red, I manage a glimpse at Dimitri. He is standing in the middle of the plaza, a perplexed look on his face.

Every movement an agony, I hold out my hand. My brain struggles for a spell to stop him. And then my gaze falls on the swirling dark tendrils of power flickering at my fingertips.

What
the
hell
is
this?

Viktor pulls me to my feet. “You know,” he says. “There are so few surprises for us, Ethan. We have seen so much, after all. But who knew that after all this time, Dimitri would share his sad, pathetic tale with you. Who knew that he would prove such a liability. But you—this is a much better plan. I can feel the difference already, can't you?”

He claps me on the back. “Enjoy, Ethan. Enjoy. This will all be over soon, I'd imagine. We will all go our separate ways—some more permanent than others. But until then, live a little. Let loose. See how much fun it really is.”

He smiles, then walks in front of me toward Dimitri, moving purposefully but with the casual stride of a man who is in no particular hurry. One step away. Two. Three. Understanding washes over me.

“Don't worry, Ethan,” Viktor calls over his shoulder. “Even that is only a small taste of what I've managed to get back.”

Asking why is pointless right now. The why will come later. Now I only know one thing. He has transferred more power to me. It writhes inside me, darkening my own thoughts, smudging the lines between what is me and what is not.

No. I control what I do or don't do. I will not give in. I need to wait for Anne. We need to find Viktor's soul. We need to stop him. I have to protect her from Baba Yaga. Anne, who's given her life for mine. That is who I am. Not this. Not…

Viktor closes the distance between himself and Dimitri.

A smile tugs, unbidden, at my lips.

The power surges from me. Smashes into the ground. The concrete plaza cracks, spiderwebs of lines running everywhere, ground buckling and bending. The enormous steel sculpture groans as the earth beneath it vibrates.

“No!” I yell it aloud.

The power screams back. And keeps on going.