Haunted (17 page)

“She’s the only one who can set Viktor free,” Lily says to me. “Baba Yaga is still compelled because your foolish Brotherhood didn’t have any idea what they were dealing with. You thought the power came from you. But it didn’t. It’s her. It’s always been her. I knew it all those years ago, and I know it now. I couldn’t get to her then unless I went with one of you. And you had no idea what Viktor was up to—no idea that he’d found me and planned on getting rid of me. Or that he killed Misha instead. But Viktor himself didn’t know everything about the witch. Not really. And Laura—my baby—she has no idea about any of this. Then there was you. You found Anne and set the rest of it motion. Only there are rules—aren’t there always with magic? I can haunt her, but Anne has to know me. And she has to want to help me. And that’s where you come in, Ethan.”

We drift together across Alex Olensky’s grave and wind our way out of the cemetery. The rain never ceases. If my feet are touching the ground, I can’t feel it. Blank-brained, I keep pace with the rusalka, my hand bound to hers as though with invisible ropes. I don’t have to ask where we’re going. This much I understand as we move east through the rain, passing by cars and people with umbrellas as though we are both now invisible. In Chicago, heading east eventually means only one thing: Lake Michigan.

Anne

The plate glass window in the front of the Jewel Box cracks—one thin line down the middle, then hundreds of them all over as the rusalkas press themselves against the glass. The window shatters. Thousands and thousands of tiny shards of glass crash in a heap onto the soaked wooden floor. Rusalka after rusalka swishes inside. They move slowly toward us, their bodies soaked with rainwater, their hair long and tangled.

“Don’t look at them!” Baba Yaga calls from the sky. “You know better than that, my girl. Don’t look at them! Don’t let them fool you!”

Oh, right. Because that’s going to make a difference right now.

“One of
those
—that’s what I saw yesterday,” Ben says. I can hear the terror in his voice. “Carter said I was seeing things. But you knew it was real, didn’t you? When you jumped in the water to help me—you knew what was down there. Your friend Ethan did too, didn’t he, Anne? What is this? Last night, you—shit, Anne. Whatever this is, we need to get out of here. Now.” He yanks me toward the back of the store. The rusalkas edge a little closer. The smell of seawater is overpowering. Even in the steady downpour, I feel dizzy from the heavy odor of salt and seaweed. I gag. It’s filling my lungs like sludge and making me cough. It feels like drowning.

My mother’s coughing, but she hooks her arms under Mrs. Benson’s and pulls her up from the floor. I try to collect my thoughts, but my own fear is pounding in my veins like a crazy drumbeat. I’ve called Baba Yaga, and she’s come to me somehow, even though she couldn’t before. All the rules—did I ever understand them?—have changed again. And where’s Ethan? He was supposed to call, wasn’t he? The drumbeats of fear inside me pound harder.

“What have you done?” Mrs. Benson wrenches herself free from my mother and stumbles over to me. She’s gasping for air that’s clear of the thick scent of the rusalkas. “What are you? Why is this happening?”

“What do you mean, what is she?” My mother grabs Mrs. Benson’s shoulder. “She’s my daughter! She hasn’t done anything here! You’re the one with the secrets and the lies. You’re the one who knew what happened to my mother and never told me. What kind of person are you?”

“No, no.” Mrs. Benson sloshes through the water that’s pooling heavily on the floor. “Oh, Laura.” She coughs violently, spits what looks—impossibly—like a clump of seaweed onto the floor. “No. I wanted to find you. Do you hear me? I wanted to make sure you were safe.”

“We need to move,” I yell at them. My lungs feel tight. Every word hurts my chest. “Ben’s right. We need to get out of here!” Baba Yaga makes another swoop above, but the rusalkas are almost on us, and it doesn’t look like she’s planning on stopping them. Why did I bother to call for her? Or is it part of the magic that I don’t understand? Maybe she can’t help us, after all. Maybe she doesn’t want to. All those dreams, all those conversations—possibly all lies. But why should this surprise me?

“Ben Logan,” one of the rusalkas croons to him. “Dearest Ben Logan. Take my hand. Be with me. I need you, Ben. I want you. Don’t you like to be wanted? I can give you everything. More than she can. Just ask her. Ask her if she truly loves you. And when she doesn’t answer, just look into my eyes.”

“Shut up!” I shout at it. “Leave him alone!” But Ben is already letting go of me. His body is moving toward this thing with blond hair and eyes dark as the seaweed that’s clinging to her hair.

“Pretty,” he says. “You’re so pretty. What’s up, pretty girl?” He smiles goofily, the same sweet, half-drunk smile he’d given me right before the first time he’d kissed me—really kissed me—at a party at Carter’s. We’d wandered off to the study and made out, and for the first time since Ethan had dropped into my life, I’d felt like maybe I could pretend I was still the old me. A nice illusion while I could get it.

“Don’t listen to it, Ben!” I pull him back to me, gripping his arm hard. I even think about slapping him, but the faint mark where my fingers had burned his cheek stops me.

With an effort, since he’s still sweet-talking the mermaid, I drag Ben toward the back of the store with one hand and grab my mother’s hand with the other. She’s got her other arm linked around Mrs. Benson.

“Do something!” I shout up to Baba Yaga. “Damn it! What’s it going to take for you to help me?” But she still refuses to answer.

“Wonderful! You yak up a storm while I visit you in my dreams, and now what? You’re just going to hang out up there and watch the show? What kind of witch are you, anyway?”

“We’re going to die!” Mrs. Benson begins to moan. Her voice is a wheeze, and I know why, because I’m choking again myself. “We’re all going to die! They’re coming for us the way they came for Lily! The rusalkas took her. They made her one of them. I couldn’t make myself believe it. But I knew. I’ve always known. ”

“Lily?” Ben tries to squirm away again. “Who’s Lily? Is she pretty too? Like that girl over there? Isn’t she pretty, Anne?”

“She’s a mermaid, Ben. And no offense, but she’s probably trying to kill you.”

“This can’t be real,” my mother comments weakly. “How can this be real?”

“It’s real, Mom. I’ll fill you in later. But trust me, it’s real.”

She’s about to argue with me about this—at least, that’s what I figure, since she’s squinched up her forehead in that way she does sometimes when she’s about to launch into a rant. Except she doesn’t, because that’s when the back door of the Jewel Box—the same door I was trying to get us to—crashes open. Dozens of rusalkas flood into the store.

My gaze whips from mermaid to mermaid. Some are dark-haired. Others are blond. Some have light skin, others dark. There are tall rusalkas and short ones. It’s a veritable buffet of mermaid madness, all moving steadily toward us. I search frantically for the one mermaid face familiar to me, but Lily isn’t there. So if she’s not here, then where the hell is she? Why are all these others here, but not her? I’m already beyond freaked, but the questions amp up the fear.

Tess’s voice runs through my head. “
It all ties in to you, but it ties in to him too. So why not this also? Which means I ask again—what does she want from Ethan?”

“Think, my girl!” Baba Yaga calls to me. Could she seriously be any more useless to me at this particular moment? “Think! Have you learned nothing from me? Have I been wrong about you? Is this what you are deep down? Just a fearful little girl who asks her Baba Yaga to help her? Is this all you are?”

Still in full mermaid-induced daze, Ben asks, “Is that witch up there talking to
you
, Anne? ’Cause she is one ugly lady. You know that, right? Not pretty like you. Not like these other girls. Do you see them? You need to let me go with them and stop holding my hand so hard. You really should try out for wrestling or something this year. You’ve got grip like iron, baby.”

“Shut up, Ben. I’m not letting you go. Just look at me, okay? Not the pretty mermaids. Mermaids are bad, Ben. Just look at me.” But Ben is not a particularly good listener right now either. He continues to strain toward the rusalkas.

The air thickens even more. I start to cough again, only it just makes things worse. The air is humid and wet and almost solid, and it feels like the cough doesn’t even leave my mouth.

“We’re going to have to try to push through them,” I say to my little group, although I don’t know why I’m even bothering. Between the rusalka magic that’s tempting Ben and the fact that my mother and Mrs. Benson are standing frozen with crazy fear, it’s not like they’re even paying attention to me. The only things that I’m sure of right now are that Baba Yaga doesn’t plan on helping me anytime soon, and that in my jeans pocket, my battered cell phone has begun vibrating every few seconds.

The rain continues to soak us. Once again, because of me, the Jewel Box is being destroyed. The water’s now lapping at our ankles, and things keep crashing to the floor. We’re trapped in the middle of the rusalka brigade, and if the water keeps rising, the mermaids will be the only ones equipped to survive. Already I see tails under some of their gowns, swishing heavily as they advance.

“You’re really part of all this, aren’t you?” My mother’s still gripping my hand as hard as I’m gripping Ben’s—maybe harder, since I’m suddenly registering that our palms feel like they’re on fire. “Is Amelia right, Anne? When I was hurt last fall, was that part of this too?”

“Yes. Mom, yes.”

“My birth mother’s a mermaid?” She’s gasping, but I don’t know if it’s from the weirdness of what she’s asking, or because we are all having difficulty breathing due to the thick rusalka sea smell.

“Well, not originally. I mean, you’re not from a line of sea creatures, Mom. But yes, I think so. And there’s more. If we get out of here, I’ll explain. I promise. I should have explained it to you before. But—well, I will. Really.”

“There’s more?”

“Lots more. I—it has to do with the Romanovs. And Anastasia. And this secret Brotherhood. Like Mrs. Benson just told you. It all started when Ethan—we don’t have time for this right now, Mom. We need to figure out how to get out of here. Then we can talk.”

“Ethan,” she says. “Your friend Ethan is part of them?” Her hands aren’t free, so she gestures to the rusalkas with her chin.

I snort out a crazy-sounding laugh. “A mermaid? No, Mom. Ethan’s not a mermaid. Or merman. Or—he’s a guy. But he’s part of that Brotherhood—or he was, only now he—”

“Ethan?” This manages to snap Ben out of his trance. “So I was right? There’s something going on between the two of you?” How he’s made this intuitive leap in his general condition is beyond me.

The sound of Baba Yaga’s laughter echoes around us. When I glance briefly skyward, I can see her iron teeth gleaming as she tilts her head back and cackles. Terrific.

The burning of my hand against my mother’s stops me from trying to come up with some sort of answer for Ben. Besides, whether I confess to him or not, if I don’t figure out a way to get us all out of here, it won’t matter anyway. I’ll just be the dead girl who cheated on her boyfriend—the boyfriend that the crazy mermaids will drag away once I’m out of the picture. Or possibly even before that, if I don’t do something soon.

Another coughing spasm hits me. I feel my hands start their glow thing and glance down— and realize that the one holding my mom’s hand is shining brighter.

“What is that?” Mom’s voice is shrill. She’s staring at our clasped hands. They’re both glowing. Not just mine, but Mom’s too. My heart—already racing—zooms faster.

“You guys are all lit up,” Ben comments.

It’s just our hands, but he’s right. In that moment, I think I understand something. Lily gave up my mom for adoption and took her out of the loop of knowledge of our line of descent. But adoption didn’t undo who my mother was. She’s got Romanov blood just like I do. Maybe this connects her to my power too.

Overhead, Baba Yaga calls to me. “Stories within stories, my girl. Like your rusalka has reminded you. Like the doll that your Anastasia showed you. It is woven inside the insides. It is never what it seems. Think, Anne! I can only cross into your world so far until you open the right doors. So think!”

I don’t want to think. I don’t want to figure out riddles. I don’t want to stand here choking to death while it washes over me that not even Ethan and Viktor really ever understood anything—that maybe we’ve all been used, and the answers lie so far back that I don’t have a clue how we’ll ever find them. I just want out.

“What am I?” I scream. “What is this all about? If you’d just tell me, then I could do something! I can’t help anyone if I don’t understand! Think about what happened with Anastasia! Is this just more of the same thing? Are you using me like Viktor used her? Is that all this really is?”

She doesn’t answer. So I stop thinking. I hold tight to my mother’s hand, because she’s part of me, and this somehow makes whatever it is inside me feel that much stronger. I close my eyes, try to breathe whatever air there is to breathe. When I feel the magic build, I yank our two hands out in front of us, visualize what I want to happen, and let it all free.

We’re facing the back of the store, so the power that hurtles from us—blue flashes streaming from our hands—smashes into the newer group of rusalkas first. I pivot quickly—my mother a little less willing to cooperate this time but having no real alternative—and smack the rest of the mermaids with the same thing. They scream and shriek, and some of them clutch at their heads, because even with the rain steadily pouring on all of us, their long, wild hair flickers with sparks of fire. Their hair is burning. The harsh odor of it adds to everything else in the air. Blood runs freely from my nose and down to my lips. I can taste the salt of it in the already salty sea air around us.

“Anne! Anne! What did we just do?” My mother struggles to free herself from me and so does Ben, and I know it’s only a matter of time before one or the other of them is successful. Or before Mrs. Benson—who’s become scarily mute in the past few minutes—does something wacky herself.

In the commotion that’s started—lots of mermaids slithering here and there, lots of screaming and all that burning hair—I see my opportunity. “This way!” I yell. “We can make it out the back! But we have to be quick.” My vibrating cell phone continues to beat a consistent pattern against my thigh. A loud
whoosh
from above us has me glancing skyward again. Baba Yaga motors her mortar into the thunderclouds and out of view.

“Where are you going?” I call to her. “I’m doing what you want! I’m thinking! So why did you just disappear?” I don’t really expect a response, so it doesn’t surprise me when I don’t get one.

“You hurt them,” Ben says. “You hurt the pretty girls. That’s not nice, Anne. You’re making them cry.” At least he’s not asking about Ethan anymore.

I keep dragging everyone toward the parking lot. My mother typically keeps her car keys in her pocket. If we can get out of here, maybe I can just hustle everyone into the Volvo and drive us somewhere. I have no idea if Swedish sedans can outrun pissed-off mystical Russian mermaids—some of whom are on fire—but there’s no time like the present to find out.