Haunted (16 page)

My mother and Mrs. Benson shriek in unison.

And then—as in my dream, only this time it’s real—the roof of the Jewel Box just opens up and disappears. Rain begins pouring in, buckets of water drenching us and the store. The thunder cracks, and another flash of lightning rips jaggedly through the sky. Now I’m screaming. Ben’s trying to drag me somewhere. I grab for my mother’s hand. Mrs. Benson clutches at her chest and sinks to her knees.

A howling cackle fills the air above us. The same voice sounds my name. I look up. Rain smacks hard against my face. And through a sky that’s black as midnight, Baba Yaga streaks above us in her mortar.

Ethan

Thought you quit those.”

The unlit cigarette drops from my hand to the grass near Alex Olensky’s grave. He’s sitting on the little bench a few feet from where I’m standing. My toes are at the edge of the small stone plaque that bears his name—the one I’d had placed there a few months ago so the grave site wouldn’t be so anonymous.

“You real?” I bend to retrieve the Marlboro. It’s the last in the pack that I’d told myself I wasn’t going to smoke but did anyway, and I figure if I’m going to talk to a ghost, I’ll need this one. So I slide my lighter from my pocket, stick the cigarette in my mouth, and, once it’s lit, inhale deeply. It does little to settle me, but old habits linger just as long as I have.

“Real as you’d like me to be, dear boy.” He grins at the last word. I’m a boy now, I guess. And Alex Olensky is very, very dead, even if he doesn’t look it right now.

I lower myself onto the bench, since it feels awkward standing there while he’s sitting. The cold air around him hints that he’s not real, but he’s real enough for right now. I pull in another drag on the cigarette. It tastes far too good.

“So. You love her, eh?” Alex looks not at me but at the cigarette that’s between my fingers. I offer it to him, but he shakes his head. “Can’t. Tried it, but I can’t inhale. Fascinating, really. But I can smell it. At least there’s that.” He flares his nostrils. “You haven’t answered me, have you?”

Nothing much makes sense today, so I suppose discussing my love life with the ghost of my friend is about as sensible as anything else. I’ve done what I told myself I’d never do and let myself love her—so completely and utterly that I know there’s no going back from it. I’ll be in love with Anne as long as she wants me. I’ll be in love with her even if she doesn’t.

“Seems that way.”

“Good.” Alex’s ghost claps his hands together and gives them a little shake. It’s a gesture I’ve seen him do many times. He was always a fan of the physical punctuation of an idea or comment. “But then, what are you doing here? If you love her, you should be with her—not here with an old man like me, especially in my current condition.” He gestures to his gravestone. “Although I do appreciate the sentiment. Haven’t seen you around for a while.”

“Been away. Since everything last fall. Once it was over, I needed to—well, I don’t really know what I needed. But I went looking for it anyway.” I study Alex’s face. The features are right. His hair is as silver and wild as always. He still smells of paper, tobacco, and ink. Still, there’s something off—not that this surprises me. What
does
surprise me is that I don’t feel edgy, that I don’t feel the need to leave. That in the midst of everything going on—the rusalka, Anne and me, all of it—I’m sitting here talking to a ghost.

“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t there when Viktor murdered him. Of the many, many things in my life that I regret, this one looms painfully large. “You paid a very large price, my friend. If I could undo what happened to you, I would. You know that, don’t you?”

Alex is quiet for a moment. He sniffs at my cigarette and watches it with what looks like longing as I take one last puff, then stub it out on the bench, flick away the remaining ashes, and tuck the butt into my pocket. I don’t like the thought of leaving it lying here between people’s graves.

“You did what you had to do. Was it right? Only you can tell. Was it worth it? Hard to say, isn’t it? But you have that beautiful girl now. That’s something, isn’t it? A girl like that, a girl of substance—she’s worth some sacrifice, wouldn’t you say?”

“It wasn’t about that, Alex.”

“Wasn’t it?” The cold seeping from him gets a little colder. My skin prickles. “Come now, Ethan. What does the world come down to really? Love? Power? Fear? Maybe a righteous cause now and then? Look at the Romanovs. Someone wanted what they had or didn’t want them to have it—it all amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?—and so history played itself out. It’s the way of the world, dear fellow. It’s how we all behave. It’s what we’re made of. Nobility is quite the illusion.”

In my head, I see Anne standing with Anastasia in the middle of the street and feel the wrenching sadness and regret that ripped through me when Anastasia chose to go back to die. What if the rusalka—Lily—is telling the truth? What if that’s not what happened? What if there really was some other possible outcome for this whole mess that I helped create?

“Nobility isn’t an illusion,” I argue. “You know it was more than that. You know I thought it was more than that.” But I wonder, as I say the words, if I can even believe them. What did I really hope to gain from helping Viktor save Anastasia back then? Was it an act of altruism or did I just feel indebted to him for taking me in when I had no place to go? And why am I arguing with a ghost?

Alex’s ghost makes a chuckling sound. “So you’re the noble hero then, Ethan? Good to know. I suppose that’s why I hung on while I was bleeding to death on the floor: so I could thank you for your great sacrifices on my behalf. I get to be here,” he spreads out his arms, “and you get to do it all over again—only this time with the girl. Yes, it’s quite the sacrifice. I can see why you had to run off to brood in Paris.”

He looks disappointed when I force myself not to react—not an easy task when some piece of me feels he’s right. Every day I was in Europe, I told myself that I had done the best I knew how to do. Still, when I got on the plane to return to the States, I had yet to convince myself that this was true.

“Clever man.” Ghost Alex smiles.
Can he somehow read my mind?
In the distance, there’s a long peal of thunder. The breeze that’s been rustling the leaves of the trees in the cemetery blows a little stronger. The air smells like rain.

“Perhaps I have underestimated you, after all.” Alex rises from the bench and paces a few steps to stand in the middle of the grass that covers his grave. He bends and studies his gravestone, then straightens and turns back to face me.

“What is it that people want, Ethan? Why do we do what we do? What crafts our destiny? Did Anastasia wake up one morning and just decide that she should trust that bastard half-brother of hers? Or did she come to it slowly, day by day? Your friend, Viktor. What forces made him choose vengeance? Or you, my friend. Did you wake up one morning and just decide that you wanted to be the hero? How much would you have to lose before you chose a different path? What would it take? What would it be? Is there something that you could not bear to lose?”

Two faces float into my mind. One is Anne’s. The other—perhaps not so strangely, since I was speaking of her only hours ago—is Tasha Levin. Natasha, who was lost to me long ago—that day I left her without a word. Even before that, really, because I knew that while Anastasia remained trapped, so did I. I bore the pain of that for decades, but it did not change my course. It has not altered who or what I am. Only Anne has done that—Anne who gave me back my life.

Ghost Alex tips back his head and laughs. The sound echoes in the quiet cemetery, bounces off the oak trees, with their wide branches covered in leaves, and the mausoleums, thick with the sleeping dead. He steps around his own grave and leans against a large tombstone that reads
Oberman Family
, crossing his arms and observing me with an expression of amusement. A storm cloud settles overhead, and a few small raindrops begin to sprinkle.

“Well, well,” he says. “Our hero has a few secrets, eh? Does your girl know what a coward you were back then? Sad, tortured Ethan. Had to give up the one he loved. Did she feel sorry for you when you told her? Did she tell you that you didn’t have a choice, like our dear Anne told you that day you brought her to see me? When she realized you’d killed one of Viktor’s men before you went after her?” Alex moves his lips to speak again, but it’s Anne’s voice that emerges from his mouth.
You saved my life
, I hear her say.
If you killed him, it’s because you had no other choice.
And in my head, I hear myself reminding her that there’s always a choice.

“You’re not Alex,” I declare. “So let’s cut to the chase here. Who the hell are you? And what do want?”

The Alex thing shakes its head. “Just when we were having such fun. I don’t have much fun lately. And here you have to go and ruin it all. Perhaps your friend Viktor was right about you. Too damn virtuous for your own good. You’d really be so much more fun if you’d just let it all go once in a while. Imagine the havoc you could wreak if you did, Ethan! Women, riches, whatever you want. Like we’ve been discussing. Everyone wants something. And here you are, getting a second chance at it all. Why would someone who knows the way the world works not want to use it to his advantage? Shake loose, friend. Just let it all go! I did.”

This isn’t Alex—or his ghost. I rise from the bench and the rain starts to pelt harder, drops smacking my face, the ground, the thing that looks like Alex, the graves. A bolt of lightning shivers through the sky above us. In the brief seconds during which my gaze shifts skyward, the figure leaning against the Oberman Family tombstone changes. When I look back, it’s not Alex Olensky looking at me. It’s Viktor.

He’s horribly, horribly aged: pale, gaunt, white-haired, with deep crevices of lines etched into the sagging flesh of his face. The skin on his hands is paper-thin, the joints huge and stiff and knotted. He looks every year of what he really is. And more.

“Ah, yes, Brother Etanovich. Look your fill. I’m not even sure what you’re seeing. She keeps no mirrors in her place, our girl Baba Yaga. I can catch my reflection now and then in her eyes. But I don’t want to bore you with what happens when I get too close to her. Let us just say that I should have thought twice about letting her take me in place of my half-sister. But that’s the thing about sacrifice, isn’t it? You don’t really get to control how it all turns out. Not that I haven’t been trying to find a way to fix things, although I haven’t quite stumbled on it yet. But these are my concern, not yours. You’ve been too busy with your little girlfriend. Sweet, sweet Anne. I really would have thought she’d have better taste in men. It must really
eat
at you that she took up with the lifeguard while you were gone. Or is our friend Alex right? Perhaps you’re too virtuous to think about such things.”

My hands tighten into fists, but the thing shifts again before I can hit it. The rusalka stands in front of me, her lilac gown soaked to the skin, strands of her black hair twisting about her like snakes. Even as the smell of rain surrounds us, the salty scent of the sea washes over me as intensely as it had in my apartment. She smiles. Her sharp white teeth gleam in the jagged flash of lightning that bursts over us again.

“You really shouldn’t listen to him.” Briefly, she lifts her face to the rain. “He’s never told you the truth, and I doubt that he’s going to start now. Then again, you don’t know whether I’m lying either, do you? But you know my kind. That girl from your village—Lena. You saw what happened to her that day. So you know.”

I swallow the fear that’s risen inside me. I
do
know. The memory of those other bodies flickers in my mind: the men that Lena and her rusalka sisters dragged to their doom. The body of her father, a man too big to drown in such a shallow stream.

“You planning on changing again?” I keep my voice low and even. It’s not easy over the increasing thunder. I’m as soaked as she is now, and the rain shows no sign of letting up. The sky continues to darken. A man and a woman rush past us on the little path. I see no indication that they notice me talking to a mermaid.

“No need.” The rusalka grins through the downpour. “I’ve kept you here long enough. My sisters are taking care of the rest of it for me.”

I must look confused—which I am, since I’m not sure what she means. Maybe I’m too busy trying to figure out how she’s been in my head long enough to create images of Alex and Viktor that feel real to me. Or maybe I’m still not sure if this last image is the one I can believe. Is this Lily? Is this the rusalka? What does she hope to gain by her little charade here in the cemetery? If she wants vengeance on Viktor, if she thinks that will change things for her, why waste time talking to me and showing me illusions? What good will it do her?

“What does my granddaughter see in you? She’s such a clever, sharp girl. So lively and amusing. I’ve been explaining it to you this whole time—although perhaps I went a little too far with all the impersonations. But I really needed to get your attention, make you understand. We all come to the truth in different ways. I came to mine when it was too late. So I thought I’d make things simpler for you. But I see that it’s not working.”

“Well, then,” I say, “why don’t you save us both the effort and just tell me? I’ve been around for longer than you have. I think I’ll catch on.”

She wags a bony finger at me. “Temper, temper, Ethan. I do believe that my darling granddaughter is rubbing off on you.” She nods her head as though considering that. Rain flies from her hair and pelts against me. I shiver violently.

“I told Anne what I wanted. But I see that she needs some extra motivation to get it for me. So I’ve decided to give it to her. And here you are. Her hero. Visiting your friend’s grave rather than protecting her when she needs you. She and I are going to have to chat about this. My Misha wouldn’t have left me in the face of danger. He knew I was strong, but he didn’t make assumptions about things beyond what we understand. On the other hand, he hadn’t been away from the Old Country as long as you have. He hadn’t forgotten. And still, Viktor killed him.”

In that moment, I understand what she wants from me. Bait for Anne.

The rusalka’s spell is as fast as the lightning in the sky above us and more potent than any magic that I have left inside me. She’s gripping my hand before I can move. The coldness of it shoots ice through my veins. The world around me slows to a crawl. I need to do something—conjure a spell, even though I have no real magic left. But all I can do is look at her. Every fiber of my body tells me that she’s the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. Only one tiny fragment of my brain screams that it’s a lie—and also reminds me that because I’m now mortal, it is quite possible that I will die.