Rescued (6 page)

Katherine's words, “If you want to live . . .” had come at him like a rope thrown at a drowning man, like a ladder leading out of a burning building. It was, finally, a choice, presented at a moment when he thought he had no choices left.

Of course he'd wanted to live. Of course.

“Do you still want to live now?” Anastasia asked. “Or do you want to stay here?”

“I want to live,” Leonid said. “I want to live.”

Just as the door began to open again, just as he saw the tip of a bayonet scratching the wood, he threw himself at the two grand duchesses.

“Take us to the future!” he hissed. “Take us where we belong now!”

Nothing happened. Nothing changed. Leonid and the grand duchesses stayed in the darkness of Clothilde's hovel and 1918.

But the door kept swinging open.

*    *    *

“Remember, the chances for getting in or out of 1918 are spotty,” Maria whispered into Leonid's ear. “I've got everything timed on the Elucidator JB gave us, but our next chance is almost two minutes away. In the meantime . . .”

In the meantime, the door to Clothilde's hovel was opening even wider. Leonid hunched down with the grand duchesses, hiding his glowing spoon behind his back. Had he moved his hand quickly enough?

In the doorway he could see men in belted tunics—were those uniforms? Were the men soldiers? Police?

“The enemies of the revolution in this house do not even dare to greet us,” the man in the lead roared.

Men spilled into the room, holding lanterns and bayonets and handguns.

“Show your faces!” the leader called. “Admit your crimes!”

Leonid, Maria, and Anastasia stayed silent. As if they were all thinking together, they slid back toward the wall, away from the lantern light and the guns. Leonid tried to reach for Clothilde, to pull her out of sight too, but it was too late.

One of the men found her.

“Just a dead body,” he said scornfully, kicking her. “Probably died of fright. Deprived us of the chance to kill her, the coward!”

Thank you, God, for not letting them kill her
, Leonid prayed.
And please, let us escape before they kill us. . . .

“Thirty seconds,” Maria whispered in Leonid's ear.

The man nearest to them held his lantern higher, so the light spread farther. Leonid pulled his knees up against his chest as tightly as he could. But the circle of light was almost to the tip of his boot.

The man with the lantern took a step closer.

“Get us out of here!” Maria hissed, so softly that Leonid wasn't sure either Elucidator could hear her.

But one must have. Because, suddenly, everything vanished.

*    *    *

Leonid zoomed through time, clutching on to Maria and Anastasia. His heart pounded in his chest; his eyes kept seeing the edge of light that had come within a hair's distance of his boots.

Another second, and the soldiers would have seen Leonid.

Another two seconds, and they probably would have killed him. Him and Maria and Anastasia . . .

“I had to be rescued
again
,” Leonid said with a groan. “Rescuing me just endangered you.”

“No—rescuing you got us all out of there safely,” Anastasia said, with some of her usual sassiness back.

“But—you didn't have to be in danger,” Leonid said. “Why in the world did JB send the two of you? If someone had seen you—if someone had recognized you—”

“JB said we were the only ones who could get in and out fast enough, since that was our native time,” Maria said. “Katherine or Chip might still have been lying on the ground with timesickness when the soldiers showed up.”

“And—we're the ones who need you in the twenty-first century,” Anastasia added.

“Why would you need me there?” Leonid asked. “You're royalty. I'm just a kitchen boy.”

“None of us will be the same people where we're going,” Maria said. “We'll all need one another.”

Leonid thought about Clothilde affecting a French accent. He thought about his Uncle Ivan bringing peasant boy Leonid to the palace. They were people who knew how to change. And Leonid had thought they were the ones he needed, the ones who needed him. But he hadn't been able to save either of them.

“Why did JB even let me
try
to save Clothilde?” Leonid asked. He jerked away from Maria and Anastasia, so they were all three floating separately through the empty darkness. “He could have stopped me, right? Didn't he know it was for nothing?”

“He couldn't tell for sure,” Anastasia said. “There was a chance, and that's why he had to let you. If Clothilde had wanted to go with you, maybe . . .”

But she didn't
, Leonid thought, his heart aching.

He thought about all the sadness and sorrow he'd seen, about all the people he'd lost.

“Leonid—if we hadn't gotten out of 1918 just then, our next opportunity wouldn't have come until four days later,” Maria said. “
That's
how much JB believed in you. And that's how much we wanted to rescue you.”

This time he wasn't horrified by the risks they'd taken.

He was honored.

Even with everyone I lost, these are the people I kept
, Leonid thought.
And—they've kept me too. They've kept me alive, and they've kept me in their hearts. Katherine, Chip, JB. Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei.

Then he corrected himself:
No, not Anastasia and Alexei. Daniella and Gavin.

As they approached the point of time travel where time itself seemed determined to tear everyone apart, Leonid reached out and grabbed Maria's and Daniella's hands. It wasn't because he was scared. It wasn't because he thought
they
might be scared. It was because they all needed one another.

Leonid and the two girls landed on some sort of hard surface—Leonid remembered that JB had called it a sidewalk. A split second later, Katherine, Jonah, and Chip were there too.

“Later!” the three of them called, following JB's orders to run toward their homes.

Leonid rolled toward the bushes alongside Maria, Daniella, and Gavin. Even Gavin moved smoothly, seeming not to worry at all about hitting any small twig or sharp blade of grass that might cut him.

“Are
you
all right, Lenka?” Gavin asked.

“Yes,” Leonid said. “But . . . just to let you know . . . I think I'm going to take Katherine's advice and go by ‘Leo' here.”

“Whatever,” Gavin said. “It's your choice.”

Alexei never would have said those words to Leonid back in 1918.

Leonid drew air into his lungs, letting go of the strange feeling of traveling through time. He heard a car coming toward them, and its engine sounded oddly smooth and even, not sputtering and cranky like engines back in 1918.

He'd kind of grasped from Chip and Katherine that there might still be problems in the world of the twenty-first century—there might still be children who starved, soldiers who died in battle, people who fought over governments. But all that seemed far away and unbelievable right now. The air around Leonid seemed full only of possibilities—maybe even the possibility that Leonid himself could help fix some of those problems.

“I want to live,” he whispered. “I get to live.”

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