Anastasia Forever (21 page)

She sees me. Anastasia sees me. Holy crap, she sees me. Like little Ethan saw me. I really do need an instruction manual for all of this.

“Um, hi,” I say. “Hello.”

“I speak English,” she says. “You are English?”

“American.” I gesture to Tess, still sprawled on the Tsar's carpet in a rather unladylike position. “Both of us.”

Anastasia's forehead wrinkles. “I am sorry about Jimmy. He is not an obedient dog.” Then, “Do I know you? I think I know you. What are you doing in my papa's study? Did Viktor bring you with him?”

Tess snorts. I flash her a look of warning.

“Sort of,” I say slowly. “But we need to get going now.”
And
take
the
dog-spit matryoshka doll with us, which is going to be problematic since it's sitting on your father's desk and Tess and I don't belong here and any second now you're going to sic your spaniel on us. Or the dog is going to swallow the doll, and Tess and I will be lying dead on your carpet
.

“That's mine.” I point to the doll. “The dog startled me and I dropped it. Thanks for getting it back. He's quite the scamp, huh?”

Anastasia looks from me to the doll to the dog to Tess. Then back at me. Or rather, at my hands. More specifically, at the Fabergé egg I'm still holding on to for dear life. The one that Viktor has altered by adding his picture. Will it stay that way? Or if we get his soul back where it belongs, will everything else revert to normal too? Unless Tess and I don't make it out of here because Jimmy is a bad little spaniel.

“You cannot touch that,” she says, holding out her hand. “Those are very special.”

I hand her the egg. “Sorry. And yeah, Viktor brought us. I guess we got turned around or something.”

I can tell she doesn't believe me. She shouldn't believe me. I wouldn't believe me. Hell, the dog doesn't believe me.

Any second now, here's what's going to happen: she's going to call for help. Scream to a guard or her father or a servant or someone. Will they see us too? That's anyone's guess. If they do, we're in even bigger trouble. And if they don't, then guess what? I'm hurting Anastasia even more than she's already destined to be hurt. This is the last thing I want for her—to be the girl who gets in trouble for messing around with her father's things and spinning some crazy story about two girls and a little doll. A piece of the same doll her mother hasn't even given her yet.

Slowly, gently, so I won't spook her, I rest my hand on Anastasia's. Look into her eyes. Hold her gaze and let my magic do the rest. Manipulate a person I care about. A person who deserves the truth but is never going to get it, not even from me.

She hands me the soggy matryoshka doll. Careful not to jostle it, I slip it into my pocket. For a second, I feel a ripple, but I will it to stay still. Use Baba Yaga's magic to weave a protection around it so it can stay whole and solid until I need it to be otherwise. Would have been nice if I'd have thought of this before. I'm learning. Slowly. Painfully.

You won't remember us, I tell Anastasia in my mind. You will think that you have come in here to find your dog. That you found him and he bumped your dad's desk and you had to put the egg back on its stand.

I motion to Tess. She stands. I'm going to take us out of here and get back to Ethan and Ben and our world. Fix this whole mess and then go home and deal with that mess too.

I don't consciously plan what I do next. Or if I do, I don't admit it to myself.

“Anastasia,” I say. “You won't remember me the next time you see me. But I want you to remember this. Viktor is going to promise you all sorts of stuff. Don't believe him. Terrible things may be happening. But you're going to have to stay strong. Your mom is going to give you a bigger doll, just like the one you just saw. She's going to tell you to hold on to it, and she's right. Do what she says. But not Viktor. You can't trust him. I know you think you can, but you can't.”

“Anne.” Tess's eyes are wide. “You can't do that, can you? I mean, isn't that going to…”

She's right. I know she's right. Everything we've been doing—even everything good that's come from this, like Ethan and me—I might have just ruined it. In my head, I do my best to take it back. Is it too late? I guess we'll know soon enough.

“We've got to go now,” I say. “You won't remember that we've been here. At least I hope you won't.”

I pat my pocket. Make sure the doll is still inside.

Jimmy the spaniel gives a cheery woof.

I take Tess's hand.

And find myself turning again to Anastasia.

“I'm Anne,” I say. “Anne Michaelson.” Will she remember? When she sees me again when I come for her in the forest, will some tiny molecule of her recognize me? How nice it would be to know that in her grief and terror, she remembered a girl named Anne who told her to be careful.

I close my eyes. The world folds and contracts. My stomach pitches.

Just like that, the Alexander Palace disappears.

In its place stand the IHOP parking lot and Ben.

Just Ben.

“Thank God,” he says. “Are you guys okay?”

Tess leaps on Ben like a crazed spider monkey. “You are so not going to believe what happened.”

“Wish that were true,” Ben says. “You can tell me in the car. We need to go. This guy named Dimitri showed up right after you guys left. Ethan's gone with him to confront Viktor. At least that's what they said. Who knows what's really going on.”

“Dimitri? Gone where? Ethan left? Before we got back?” Why? Why? He should be here.

“Downtown to Millennium Park.”

“It's a public place,” Tess says. “That should be safe, huh?”

“No. Shit. Where's your car?” My head is still spinning from the time travel. Does Ben even drive a car?

Ben points, and the three of us sprint across the parking lot.

To his Saturn two-seat convertible.

We head downtown, Ben driving, Tess in my lap.

Chaos. The entire park is in total chaos.

The plaza buckles and cracks. People fall, scream. They stream toward Michigan Avenue. They back away as the huge sculpture groans and shakes. The steel plates reflect the scene like some horrible Bosch painting.

“Get away from there!” someone shouts. The Bean's arch shudders as people run under it, escaping to the plaza beyond.

“More!” shouts the power that's not mine. No. No. Everything inside me continues to burn, smolder. I have to stop this. Whatever Viktor's purpose, whatever he's about to do or reveal, I can deal with that later.

Spells streak through my head. Dark. Wrong. Unfamiliar.

“
Ya
dolzhen
,” I begin.
I
must
. Must what? I struggle to pull the words from the heaving mass of magic that's been forced into me.

Viktor strides into the maelstrom. The crowd swallows him.

“He's getting away!” Dimitri is somehow next to me now, gesturing, shouting.

Everything in my world reduces to one desire: control the magic. If I don't, nothing else will matter. It will all be gone.

In my head, a voice. Anne.

“Ethan. We're coming.”

“He gave it all to you, didn't he?” Dimitri grabs me by the shoulders. “He took it from me and gave it to you. I have nothing left.”

I can feel the lie pulse from him. Viktor's power is gone. Yes. But not Dimitri's own. Like me, it wouldn't be much. But maybe it's enough. So here's the question: can I convince a man who's no longer sane—probably hasn't been for years—to help me?

Across the plaza, a hundred tons of steel rise into the air.

“The Bean!” someone yells. “It's floating.”

“Work with me,” I tell Dimitri urgently. “Please.”

The sculpture undulates, shifting over the crowd like silver mercury. A panel falls. Someone screams.

“I need to tether myself to something,” I tell him. “And it's going to have to be you. Now, Dimitri! Before anyone else gets hurt.”

I sense this is not a priority for him.

The sculpture dips right, then left.

My nose begins to bleed.

I let my magic twist Dimitri's arm. Literally, that is.

He squawks in pain. I twist it tighter.

“
Ya
dolzhen
,” I say again. The rest of the spell follows—slowly, agonizingly reining the magic in.

It settles below my skin, an unwilling truce.

Concentrating, clearer now, with Dimitri rubbing his arm and now my very unwilling accomplice, I force the heavy steel sculpture back to earth. It hits with a thud, but stays more or less in one piece. Emphasis on the less rather than the more. The arch is considerably lower now.

I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding. And realize that our little display has gathered quite a crowd. Mostly they're staring at the ruined mound of stainless steel. But some of them are watching us…putting two and two together.

“Go,” I tell Dimitri. “Now.” We walk across the plaza, now pockmarked with cracks and holes, increase our pace to a jog, then sprint toward where Viktor disappeared. On the streets bordering the park, sirens have begun a persistent wail. Two squad cars bump over the curb and squeal to a stop somewhere behind us.

We run faster. Work our way into the crowd, which is as yet unaware that we're the cause of what's happened. In front of me, a man in plaid shorts and walking shoes stumbles. I grab him before he falls. Keep moving. It's impossible to see or hear beyond the sea of bodies. Safer to stay with the group at this point.

Viktor is probably long gone.

The crowd winds around the regrounded sculpture. People try to squeeze into the restaurant that's on the far end. But the place is already packed. A cop shouts something through his bullhorn.

Under my skin, the magic growls in frustration. How long can I keep it at bay?

We keep moving. Stumble down. Under my feet, water.

We're wading in the reflecting pool.

The noise begins as a low hum, then rises to shouts and gasps.

Dimitri points. “Look!”

Tourists come to Millennium Park for many reasons. Music, gardens, the sculpture I have now half destroyed. But they also come for this:

Two fifty-foot towers of glass, one on each end of the shallow pool which is now soaking its way up my pants legs. Each tower projecting images of faces. And from the mouth of each face that fades in and then out of the glass tower, water streams into the pool. It is designed to mimic the mythological gargoyles of older architecture—life-giving water flowing from their mouths. Like magic.

“Jesus,” says the guy next to me, the earbuds of his iPod hanging at his neck. “That is one unfortunate-looking old lady. Who wants to look at a picture of that?”

I lift my gaze to the top of the tower. Stare into Baba Yaga's eyes, skulls gleaming. Water spouts from her huge mouth, glints off her hideous iron teeth.

The sky darkens. Thunder peals, and above the fountain, lightning sears the sky.

“Mommy,” says a boy about five or six, clinging to his mother's hand. “Is that a witch?”

In the glass tower, Baba Yaga smiles. The water gushes faster. Then she purses her lips and blows.

“Give me my magic back,” Dimitri says. “You can do it.”

We drive across the bridge over the river, and the traffic on Michigan Avenue slows to a dead halt.

Five minutes later, we've moved exactly half a car length.

“Sit still,” I tell Tess. She slides half off my lap, but there's no place to go.

“Screw it,” Ben says. “C'mon.”

He slams the Saturn into a no-parking parking space off Wacker. We climb out. My legs are sweaty. Tess is more solid than she looks.

“Can you three read?” A very large, very cranky policeman poses this question.

Well, yes, officer. But obviously we can't read, panic, fight the bad guy, and notice that Ben has parked—illegally—behind your squad car. Guess who was also stuck in traffic?

Tess grabs the keys out of Ben's hands. “My boyfriend isn't the brightest,” she informs the cop. “I told you that wasn't a legal space, honey.”

The cop lowers his sunglasses and eyeballs Tess a little more closely.

Everything inside me turns to a jittery mess. We need to get to the park. Now. Before now, actually, but I'm not up for any more time travel.

“What's the big hurry, folks?” the cop asks. He peers into the backseat of the Saturn. Clearly we're headed into search-the-car-for-drugs territory.

“Well.” Tess smiles sweetly. “We were going to meet my brother downtown for lunch. Only I had to help Anne here with something first. An important something. And I really never drive down here. My dad says taking the train is always the better option. But the something took so long that I had to ask my boyfriend, Ben, for a ride.

“Say hi, Ben. He's so sweet. Sometimes I call him Benbo, but he doesn't like that, do you, Benbo? Anyway, we're really sorry. I'll move the car, and they'll go ahead and tell my brother that I'll be there as soon as I can, okay?”

Turns out it's not okay. And that he plans on doing a search of the car.

“You try,” Tess hisses in my ear. “Magic, girl, remember?”

“He's a policeman.”

“You just told the future to Anastasia. You're choosing a funny time to draw a moral line in the sand.”

The cop's walkie-talkie blares. He answers. Listens. Looks down Michigan Avenue.

I begin to get a really bad feeling. This is saying a lot since I'm in full panic mode and I've got a magic doll in my pocket with someone's soul attached to it. I hope.

The cop's face turns serious.

“You three need to turn around and go back the way you came,” he says. “Some kind of riot at Millennium Park. Just get the hell out of here. Now.”

Tess starts to cry. Hysterical cartoon crying. Damsel in distress crying. Huge tears pour from her eyes and stream down her cheeks. She sounds like she's hyperventilating. Ben looks at her like he's staring at an alien.

“My brother's down there,” she wails. “That's where we're meeting him. At that restaurant right by the Bean. He's waiting tables there until he gets into medical school. He needs to take his MCAT again.” She clutches at the cop's arm. “You have to take us with you. If something happens to Zach, I don't know what I'd do. Our parents are in Belgium on business.”

I gape at her.

There's a slight pause in the action while the cop contemplates. His radio is screeching, and the traffic keeps building, and some guy gets out of his Ford Focus waving his BlackBerry and yelling that the world is ending and we'd all better repent.

Officer Shanahan—this is the name on his badge—makes up his mind. Or maybe he just decides that he can't leave Tess here squalling like a crazy person. “Get in,” he huffs at us, opening the rear door. “All of you. We'll find your brother.”

We squeeze into the backseat—me in the middle, Tess on my right, Ben on my left.

“Was any of that the truth?” Ben whispers in my ear.

“Her brother's name,” I whisper back.

Officer Shanahan cranks up the siren, makes a U-turn into traffic, and heads us up Wacker.

Tess's tears dry up. She is seriously the best fake crier I've ever seen.

“Gonna have to detour around the river,” Officer Shanahan says.

“Did you put a whammy on him?” Tess's mouth is wet from all the crying when she breathes this in my other ear.

I shake my head. I would have. But he decided all on his own.

“Do you think it's terrorists?” Ben's brow furrows.

“Probably not,” I whisper, although obviously I'm not totally certain about this. “But I bet Ethan and Dimitri have found Viktor.”

The whispering is getting annoying, so for the millionth time since we headed downtown, I try Ethan's phone. For the millionth time, he doesn't answer.

For the first time, I notice a missed-call message from my dad's phone.

I so can't deal with that right now.

Later, I tell myself. If there is a later.

•••

I lose track of how many different turns and back alleys we take. Twice, we drive down the sidewalk, siren screaming, horn honking. About two blocks out, we bounce so hard that the matryoshka doll flops against my hip. I press my hand over it as we sway back and forth. At one point I think Tess throws up in her mouth.

“Stay in the car!” Officer Shanahan directs us. “Your brother's Zach, right?”

“Zach Edwards,” Tess says. Why she gives him her real last name is a mystery to me. But that's Tess.

“I'll find him,” the cop says. “But you three need to hunker down and not move. Understand?”

Of course we understand. We just don't plan on listening.

Actually, we shouldn't have worried.

Because one look at the glass walls of the fountain in the reflecting pool is all it takes.

Officer Shanahan's mouth hangs open.

Even then I don't think he'd have unlocked the door to let us out. But Baba Yaga leans out of the glass, and her huge jaw drops and unhinges.

“Jesus Christ,” says Officer Shanahan. “What is that? Some kind of hologram?”

“Let us out.” Tess bangs on the window. “You want it on your head when Baba Yaga eats your squad car with us inside like the cream in a Twinkie?”

“Baba who? You know what that thing is?”

“Don't worry,” Tess says. “Anne's a superhero. It'll be okay. Really.”

Overhead, thunder booms so close it feels like it's in the squad car with us. Raindrops start to pelt the car. I lean over Ben to the window and crane my neck. It's pouring rain—complete with lightning and thunder—but only on Millennium Park. I can actually see the lines of demarcation in the sky.

“What the hell?” says Officer Shanahan.

“You have to let us out,” I holler. “Please.”

And when he doesn't act fast enough, I take matters into my own hands, just as one of Baba Yaga's hands detaches from her wrist and scampers down the glass tower to splash in the reflecting pool.

Officer Shanahan leaps from the front seat at the same moment I use my magic to pop the locks. We scramble out of the police car behind him and into the pounding rain.

Ben's face drains of color—not that there'd been much left from the crazy police car ride.

“Shit.” Tess grabs his hand.

“We have to move,” I say. “Now.”

“Is that a hand?” Officer Shanahan's brow furrows as he tries to make sense of what he's seeing.

“Her hands unscrew,” Tess says. “It's really gross. But you get used to it.”

My own panic tightens. Spreads through my belly, legs, arms. Can a person actually break into a million pieces? Because that's what it feels like I'm about to do.

The wind has picked up and not because of me. A garbage can flies into the air and smashes into some guy's head. He crumbles to the ground and people trample over him, fleeing the witch in the glass tower that they've obviously decided is real and not a hologram.

Officer Shanahan doesn't offer any further direction, just muscles his way through the wind and rain toward the fallen man.

Baba Yaga leans farther from the tower. Rain is falling into that enormous, extended mouth. Somewhere deep in my veins, the magic she's given me begins to simmer. The sides of my own jaw begin to ache. My wrists tingle. And deeper still, something else. Something very dark and wrong that I can't quite name.

“Daughter,” she says. She doesn't say my name. She doesn't have to. “I know you are here. Are you ready to show the world what's inside you?”

The memory she'd forced into me comes streaming back. That mixture of horror and hunger as she'd swallowed that little boy the day she turned into Baba Yaga and left her human self behind.

Is that what's going to happen to me? Is that my future?

I press my hand against my pocket. The doll is still there. If I do this and make Viktor mortal once again, what happens next? Does Viktor have to die to free Lily? Will I end up with Baba Yaga, two crazy witches dancing around the forest? I feel like it's the last minutes of the Super Bowl and I still don't understand the rules of the game.

And none of it can ever undo the tragedy that's Anastasia. She probably thinks she dreamed the whole thing with me and Tess and the doll and the dog. The stuff I told her—it will fade away just like things do. She'll believe Viktor and she'll let Baba Yaga take her because she'll think she's saving her family. By the time she realizes that it's all a lie, it will be too late. But Ethan will find me and I'll do what I have to do and eventually she'll end up dying.

“This is crazy,” I scream to Tess and Ben. “It's just an endless loop of crazy over and over. Every time we solve one part, something else just takes its place. I can't do this anymore,” I tell them. Suddenly that's all I feel. “I just can't. It won't make any difference. What's changed? Except”—I gesture to the rain and the people running and falling and the hand splashing and the witch in the tower—“that now I get to add Millennium Park to the list of things I've destroyed.”

Tess grabs my hands and pulls me eyeball to eyeball with her in the rain.

“It'll be okay,” she says. “We haven't come this far for it not to be okay.”

It is the absolutely worst thing she could possibly say right now.

“No.” I rip my hands from hers and step back. Then back again. “How can you know me and then say that? Sometimes things aren't okay. Things don't work out. People die. People suffer. Don't you get it, Tess? Weren't you just with me at the Alexander Palace? This isn't some Disney fairy tale where everyone lives happily ever after. Or even where everyone lives. So just shut up.”

I have never told my best friend in the world to shut up. Not like that. Not like I meant it.

I see the hurt on her face. And the pissy look on Ben's.

And I don't care.

I could lie and say that it's just Baba Yaga's fault. Her power is making me angry and angsty. Soon I'll be dressing in all black and listening to emo music and writing sad poetry about how I want to beat my head against a brick wall. Or trying not to eat people. Tess would believe this.

But it's all me. I'm scared and exhausted, and I have my insane ancestor's soul in my pocket. How could things possibly be okay?

The only thing I'm sure of is that I need to see this thing through because if I don't, it will keep following me. More bad stuff will happen and it will never be over.

Only one person really understands this. Only one person that I need to find. The person I keep running from.

I don't look back at Tess and Ben when I push into the crowd and race toward the glass-wall fountain. I just go.

Magic and fear surge through me in equal doses. Is this how Baba Yaga felt that day she changed? Is this how Lily felt as she opened her mouth to the water and found herself changing into a rusalka rather than dying?

When I see him standing in the reflecting pool, I feel a sharp pang of relief. I run faster. Almost there now. Did he hear my thoughts when I told him I was on my way?

“Ethan!” I shout. “Ethan.” It was a mistake to go to Baba Yaga's without him. I thought I was protecting him. I wasn't. I was just protecting myself. Baba Yaga was right. I couldn't stand the thought of losing him. So much easier if he has to lose me.

No. Not easier. Just selfish and afraid. If you don't commit to love someone, no matter how oddly they've fallen into your life, then what are you? Really, what would I be? I would be her—that huge witch reflected in the glass-tower fountain. Powerful but alone. So lonely that she allowed herself to be used just so she could pretend Anastasia was her daughter.

But it's so hard. So much easier to run. To hide. I think of what I told Tess in Baba Yaga's hut.
People
die. History is full of bodies.
But we go on anyway, don't we? I can accept Baba Yaga's power, but maybe I don't have to be her. And I don't have to be Lily either. Or even my mom. I don't want to be so crushed by loss that I lose myself to it. But it's a chance I have to take. A chance I want to take. Maybe my heart is more resilient than I think.

“Ethan!” I call to him again. I could lose him right this second. He could lose me. So I have to chance it. I have to try.

Ethan turns.
Yay
, I think.
Oh yay.
His shirt is ripped at the bottom and his hair matted, but he's in one piece. He's Ethan. I made it back to him. I wade through the water…

Ethan's eyes are all wrong again. Dark. Angry.

Also, unless my memory got shaken loose in the wild ride in the police car, that's Dimitri with him. Dimitri—the man who not too long ago was willing to kill me because Viktor told him to.

“Give it back,” Dimitri growls at him. “You can reverse it, Ethan. You don't want it anyway. Give it to me.”

“I can't,” Ethan says. “Wouldn't if I could.”

Can't what? Give him what?