Dreaming Anastasia (16 page)

“Huh,” I say. Something about the story has tickled the back of my brain, but I have no idea what it is, and I'm on such information overload right now that it's probably nothing. “You get letters like this all the time? People claiming these connections to the Romanovs?”

The professor nods. “Yes,” he says, “although this one was particularly heartbreaking to read.”

Ethan points to the monitor. “Like you say, Alex, we could certainly contemplate the possibility that if the great-grandfather was Nicholas, then there is also a relation to Viktor—although I'm not sure where that gets us.”

“Plus,” says Tess, “how would you know? She's listed only mothers' names here.”

I read through the names with Tess. Lily, daughter of Natasha, granddaughter of a ballerina named Irina, great-granddaughter of an unnamed woman who had an affair with Tsar Nicholas.

“So if Nicholas was really Viktor's father, then this Irina could have been Viktor's lover,” Tess says. “Cool.”

I glance over at Ethan on that one. His expression is pretty guarded—which makes sense, since what do you say when someone you've known and trusted turns out to be someone else entirely?

“We could only make that connection if we were certain these claims were valid,” Professor Olensky says, and there's an edge of frustration in his voice. “But I lost contact with Nadia, and through her, Lily. There's really no way to document any of this at this point.”

“What about the baby?” I ask as I get to the bottom of the page. “Does it say what happened to the poor baby?”

Olensky scrolls to the next page. “According to this, she was adopted by a family here in Chicago,” he says. “See?” He points to a sentence in the middle of the next page. “Baby girl, Laura, born in 1965. Closed adoption.”

I read the sentence. And then I read it again. My hands turn to ice. I know what was tickling at the back of my brain.

“Oh,” I say. “I think I'm going to be sick.” I swallow hard, fighting back the bile that's rising in my throat. I'd told them that maybe I was the only one who could see the clues. I didn't know what it would feel like to be right.

“What's wrong?” Ethan places his hand on my shoulder. Tess and Olensky are both looking at me as well.

“What is it?” Tess asks. “Anne, what's going on?”

“Lily,” I say. “She had a daughter named Laura, born in 1965 and given up for adoption.”

“I got that,” Ethan says slowly, as though if he speaks too fast, I might just freak out and bolt away. “Anne, what is it?”

I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. But when I open them, the words on the screen still say the same thing.

“It's my mother,” I tell them. “Laura—she's my mother. I—I'm Lily's granddaughter.”

Wednesday, 9:15 pm

Ethan

Lily's granddaughter?” I say to Anne. “Explain yourself. Certainly you know your grandparents.”

“Well, no, I don't. Not really.” Anne's face has drained of color. She looks scared and young—too young.

“Oh,” says Tess, and once more, I have to resist the overwhelming urge to just throttle the girl. “This is the Grandma Ellen story, isn't it? You guys are gonna love this one. Her grandmother is the biggest bi—”

“For God's sake, please, please just let her tell it.” I grab the pack of Winstons from the desk. “May I?” I ask Alex, although I'm already pulling matches from my pocket.

“Go on,” I tell Anne as Alex nods, and I slide a cigarette from the pack, light up, and take a deep drag. “Let's hear it.”

“Two years ago,” she begins, “my older brother David died of cancer.” She bites her lip, and I know the telling of this tale is costing her. It is a price I understand all too well.

“It was horrible,” she says, “and it was quick. Too quick. One day at football practice, he went out for a pass, and he dropped it. Coach yelled at him, ‘Michaelson, what the hell are you doing?' David told us he wondered the same thing. But he had this horrible pain under his arm when he reached up to catch the ball, and when the trainer felt around to see if it was a muscle tear, he found this lump.”

Anne pauses, and once again, her eyes well with tears. “Turns out he had lymphoma. So the doctors began treatment, and he was supposed to be okay. He was young and an athlete. Only it didn't matter because the cancer had spread to his lungs and his brain. That was September. We buried him that following January. It was the worst thing our family had ever gone through. It still is.”

A tear traces its way down Anne's cheek, and as it does, the images of my own family flicker through my memory. I take another drag of the cigarette and flick ashes into a mug that still holds a few swallows of old tea. After so many years, I'm still surprised that the longing can be so great.

“Here,” Alex says to Anne. He fumbles around, unearths an empty tissue box, then finally hands her a couple of unused napkins. She smiles, takes one, and dabs at her eyes.

“Thanks,” she says. “I hate getting all…I hate being that person—the one everybody feels sorry for. You know, that was my first thought when David died. We walked out of his hospital room, and we had to start calling people. To tell them. And I—I kept thinking how I didn't want to do that, because once we told them, I wouldn't be just Anne anymore. I'd be Anne whose brother David died. And I hated it.”

“But what does this have to do with the woman named Lily?” Olensky asks.

“I'm getting to that,” Anne says, “but you need to see the whole story to understand. After the funeral, we were all back at our house. The neighbors had brought food, and Grandma Ellen was trying to get my mother to eat something. ‘Just
something,
' she said to her. I remember she tried to hand my mother a deviled egg. Now, my mother hates deviled eggs, but Grandma Ellen said to her, ‘Laura, dear, Mrs. Lewis made these. She's such a lovely young woman.' And suddenly, my mother was screaming. See, you have to understand, my Grandma Ellen is the type of person who's super-polite on the surface. It's all about appearances with her. You don't raise your voice, you call everyone a lovely young man or woman. It drives us all crazy. So my mother was screaming. She knocked the egg out of Grandma's hand, and it splattered all over the floor. ‘I don't want to eat!' she yelled at Grandma Ellen. ‘My son is dead! I don't want a goddamned deviled egg!'”

“See what I mean?” Tess interrupts. “Her grandma—”

“Let her finish, dear,” Olensky tells her. He reaches over and pats Tess on the arm. Then he fixes his gaze back on Anne.

“So my grandma,” Anne says, “she just looked at my mom like she'd slapped her. And that's when my mother said it. She yelled, ‘Maybe you don't understand what it's like to lose a child, but
she
would! Lily would. You've never understood me, and you've proven that today!' Then she ran, crying, into her bedroom.”

Slowly, I drop the remains of the Winston in the teacup. If this is the same Lily, then Anne, and Viktor, and, yes, Anastasia, all come from the same line. The girl I've been trying to save, the man who's betrayed me, and the young woman who's sitting here telling her story—all of them Romanovs.

Olensky's gaze catches mine. His eyes are shining.

“After that,” Anne says, “it was like we all pretended it hadn't happened. I guess we were too busy pulling the pieces of our lives back together—trying to be a family again after David's death. But later the next month, my mom and I spent a day together. She seemed to want to tell me something, so even though it was freezing out, I went walking with her on the beach—not too far from where we just were, in fact. And that's when she told me she was adopted, that Grandma Ellen and Grandpa Sam weren't her birth parents. I guess when she was little, you didn't talk about stuff like that—not like we do today.”

“But what did she know?” A note of urgency creeps into Olensky's voice. “About Lily, I mean?”

“Not much.” Anne shrugs her shoulders. “But she said her birth mom's name was Lily, and that her birth father had died, and Lily couldn't raise her on her own. That all seems to agree with what that Nadia wrote to you. My mom didn't really dwell on the details much. She just wanted me to understand why she'd said what she did the day of the funeral, let me know that even though Grandma drives her insane, she still loves her. After that, we never really talked about it. But when I read the name Lily, I knew I'd heard it.”

Anne sucks in a quick breath. “Oh my God,” she says. “My mother—do you know she used to dream she was Anastasia? That's what she told me. This morning, before school, when I was—well, freaking out, I asked her if she'd ever dreamed something over and over. I don't know why I said it, except she looked worried about me, so I had to say something. And she didn't even hesitate. She just blurted out that, oh, yeah, she used to have this recurring dream that she was Anastasia.”

“It sort of makes sense,” Tess says. “I mean, she's your mother and—hey, wait a second.” Tess stares at Anne. Her eyes grow huge. “If you're really related to Lily, then that means…that would mean that you're—” Tess just stares, her mouth popping open and closed, like a fish out of water.

“A princess,” Olensky says. He's beaming. “A princess.”

“Well,” Anne tells him, “let's get it right. An illegitimate princess. Not quite the same thing.”

“Way better,” Tess says. “Much more interesting. Think about it. Maybe Coach Wicker will let you guest lecture in world history or something.”

“Just shut up,” Anne tells her and then laughs. “Seriously.”

I just stand there. Surely there is more than one woman in the world named Lily who gave her baby up for adoption. But more than one who gave birth in the same year, in the same place, to a girl named Laura? Who just happened to have had a dream that mirrored her own daughter's?

Viktor's secret affair, and the tryst of his father before him, have resulted in the very person the Brotherhood had pledged to find.

It is a pledge that Viktor now seems determined to break.

But why? And how much of this does Viktor actually know? Does he have knowledge of Anne's lineage? Or does he just see her as the girl foretold by prophecy?

“We still don't understand why Viktor has turned,” I say. Dozens of questions hurtle their way through my brain—dozens of questions, but no answers.

“I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that some witch from a fairy tale really managed to somehow change history,” Anne says. “Even if I've seen her. It just seems so damn impossible—but I guess so did seeing her hut move on that Russian lacquer box.” She smiles. “You know, my mother figured I was so fascinated with that box that she bought it for me. She gave it to me this morning. It really is beautiful. And I love that little key shape inside.”

“Key?” My heart gives a little thump. “The box has a key?”

“It does now,” Anne says, and my heart smacks again because this is something new. “Raised up in the center. Like if you could just find a way to get it out, you could—”

This time, all four of us suck in a breath almost simultaneously.

“So what now?” Tess asks. “You figure out a way to get that key out, and you can let yourself into the witch's house and spring Anastasia—if, that is, you can find the place?”

Alex strides over to his bookshelves, scans through the volumes, then reaches up for a thick volume on the top shelf. “Why didn't I think of this before?” he says.

He turns to me, his eyes glittering. “It's a story, Ethan. We've never thought of it that way, but it is.” He taps two thick fingers on the book he's pulled from the shelf,
Slavic Folklore.
“We've been treating Baba Yaga as though she's real. It's never occurred to us to think about her as though she's not. It's the story, Ethan. That's where the clues lie. I'm sure of it. A pattern of some sort in the fairy tales like Vasilisa's. How Baba Yaga's hut is accessed in those stories. Maybe it's as simple as that.”

My pulse skips a beat. “Then we need to read,” I tell him. “Figure this out. Here.” I take the book from his hand. “Let me—”

Alex glances at the clock. I do the same. It's after ten. He pulls the book back from me. “What an evening this has been, my friend. Take these two lovely young women home. Let Anne get some rest. I'm certain her parents are worried about her by now. Give me some time alone with all this.” He raises a graying eyebrow. “Without distraction.”

I hesitate. We need to go to Anne's house at some point, if only for the lacquer box. But if Viktor's men came after us once, they can find us again. It's safer for us to stay together.

Nevertheless, Alex is right. Anne's parents are probably more than worried at this point, and with good reason, if only because they've already lost one child.

“Okay,” I say, even though I don't think it's okay at all. “Come on.” I motion to Anne and Tess. “Get all your things. I'll drive you home.”

I reach in my jacket pocket and pull out the gun I'd taken from Dimitri's partner. “Here.” I toss the gun to Olensky. “If you need it. I'll be back in a few hours. I'll drop them off and then go check the loft. That should give you enough time to search this out.” I start to say more, but he's already settled at his desk with the book. His thick fingers rustle through the pages.

So I leave him, and, with Anne and her friend in tow, head out into the night.

Wednesday, 10:48 pm

Anne

You simply can't involve her in this anymore,” Ethan mutters as we watch Tess make her way up the driveway to her house. “This whole situation is dangerous enough without adding another person to the mix. You have some power now to protect yourself, Anne. Tess doesn't. She's a smart girl, but that's not going to matter if something comes after her.”

Ethan's mood has darkened ever since we left the professor's office, stopping first so Ethan could ward it with his magic. Not that those wards had stopped Viktor at Ethan's loft, which is something neither of us has mentioned.

“It's not like I forced her to come find us,” I say. My own temper spikes a bit at his annoyance, but I stamp the irritation back down. It's late, I'm exhausted, and he's right—at least, mostly. Regardless of what he thinks about Tess, he's right to be concerned about her safety and her impulsive behavior.

He shifts the Mercedes back in gear and starts to pull away from the curb in front of Tess's house. “Hey, wait,” I remind him. “Aren't you going to do the same hocus-pocus protection thing you did when we left the professor's? You know—the warding spell?”

“Don't treat the magic like it's something frivolous,” Ethan says as he parks again and turns off the engine. “It's not some party game or circus trick. It is never, ever something to take lightly.” A scold-the-stupid-schoolgirl tone edges into his voice. He pushes the driver's door open, unfolds from the car, and stalks off in the direction of Tess's house.

I open my door, slide out, and jog after him until he stops in the deep shadows of the large spruce tree on the far edge of Tess's front yard. “Ethan,” I say quietly. “Wait.”

I place my hand on his arm. He shakes it off. “Let's get this done,” he says tersely. “We need to get you home, remember? And then I need to swing by the loft and then back to Olensky's.” He looks like he's about to say more, but he doesn't. He just stands there, jaw clenched, and starts to stretch out his arms to do the spell. The air around us begins to crackle.

“Wait,” I say again. “Stop, Ethan.”

I can see him pull back into himself. The air settles. Next to me, the spruce actually gives a little shiver and sprinkles some of its needles on the ground. “What?” That dangerous tone in his voice moves from simmer to boil. Even in the darkness, I can see the straight line of his mouth.

I decide to ignore the pissy gaze he's giving me. “Show me,” I say. I place my hand back on his arm. “I need to know what you're doing, Ethan. If—well, if I've got all this power juicing up inside me, don't I need to know how to use it? I mean, isn't that the point? That I need to understand how to control what's there so I can use it—somehow—to save Anastasia?”

Like the spruce tree next to us, Ethan gives a little shake. I can see some of the tension slough off him. A sliver of a smile plucks at his lips, and for what I suppose is the millionth time tonight, he sighs.

“Yes,” he says, running a hand over his chin. “Yes, you do.”

“Well, yay,” I say, although I'm certain there's a more sophisticated response floating around in my brain somewhere. Unfortunately, I can't think of it.

“Here.” He moves so I'm in front of him. “We'll do this together.”

We stand in the blue-black shadows of the spruce tree. Ethan edges forward, not quite pressing against me, but close enough that I can feel the warmth of his breath against my neck as he speaks.

“Place your arms in front of you,” Ethan tells me. “I need you to concentrate. You need to feel the power inside you. And then you—well, you need to imagine what you want it to do.”

Ignoring the fact that I can still feel his breath tickling the hairs on the back of my neck and the fact that he's so close I can smell the cotton of his blue shirt and the sort of woodsy, musky smell that's him inside it, I do as he asks. At first, I don't feel much. I can hear the wind rustling through the spruce, a few cars whooshing by on the main street a few blocks over, and the even sound of Ethan's breathing behind me. I close my eyes and try to block out everything but what's inside me.

Think,
I tell myself. I picture what my hands looked like when I first saw that blue-white glow; when the sparks flickered as we fought to open that elevator door back in the loft; when I'd shoved Ethan and watched him fly across the room; when I'd realized that maybe whatever was now mine gave me the power to escape Dimitri.

When it begins, it feels like something fluttering lightly in my chest. Not my heart beating, but sort of similar. It's electrical and pulsing. And powerful.

“That's it,” Ethan says. He stretches his arms out and rests his hands gently on top of mine. His palms are warm, like they'd been when he held my hand out at the lake.

“Now you just have to use it,” he says quietly. “Look over at the house, and imagine a wall around it—something sturdy that will keep out things that don't belong there.”

In my mind, I build that wall. Big, gray bricks, thick and wide. Heavy mortar slathered between them. All around Tess's house it stretches, towering to the rooftop and then a short way beyond. My eyes still closed, I add more bricks, feel their heft and weight as they strengthen the barrier. Around me, I can feel the wind pick up just a little. The spruce tree wavers, its fresh, green scent perfuming the air.

I open my eyes. In front of me, Tess's house looks just like it always does—a two-story Cape Cod model with brown wood and white trim. But as I look down at my hands, still buzzing with that good old glow, and at Ethan's hands, doing the same, I know the house isn't exactly the same as it was. I can't see it, but I can feel it—the wall I've constructed is there, under the surface of things, keeping Tess safe.

“Wow,” I say, and let out a breath I didn't even realizing I was holding. “Wow.” Ethan drops his arms, steps back.

Without thinking about it, I turn around and hug him. “I did it!” I say as I squeeze my arms around him. “I could feel it. It's amazing! I—I had no idea. I just didn't—is it real? I mean, did I really do that? Is that wall really there, even though we can't see it?”

“Hope so,” he says. His face is very close to mine when he smiles at me. “Yes, it's there. Not forever, remember. But for now—if anything tries to harm people in that house, it will stop them, keep them from getting inside. By force or by magic.”

Even in the darkness, I see a flicker of worry cross his face. We both know that the whirlwind in his loft got through despite Ethan's magic.

“Let's get you home now.” He steps back from me—and for one tiny second, I think I might wish he hadn't. But only for a second.

We head back to the car, then drive the couple of blocks to my house, stopping a few doors down so that, if I'm lucky, I won't have to explain my getting out of a stranger's car over an hour past my weeknight curfew of ten o'clock. I may be able to put a magic wall around Tess's entire house, but if there's a spell for dealing with two irate parents, Ethan hasn't mentioned it.

“I'll put the wards around your house too,” is what he does say. “And you need to get that lacquer box. Don't let it out of your sight.”

“Look for my backpack,” I tell him as I ease quietly out of the car. “My parents are going to freak if I lose that cell phone.”

He just shakes his head and gives what sounds like a little laugh. “I'll see what I can do,” he tells me. “Try to get some sleep, if you can. The magic drains you. You need to—well, recharge.”

I don't hear him turn over the engine until I'm at the door, trying to insert my house key as noiselessly as possible. Then the door yanks open from the other side, my mother frowns at me, and my normal world hits me like a pile of those bricks I just conjured up a few minutes before.