Anastasia Forever (8 page)

I stomp by him into the theater. It's a good thing I'm invisible to everyone else because that way no one will notice when I kick him in the shin. Does he have any idea how creepy it feels to have him dip into my thoughts like he's looking for something in a crowded closet? Okay, I was peeking into his brain too. But I didn't mean to. I just don't seem to have an option to avoid it. It's like the channel is open and neither of us can close it.

I glance at him, but his expression is pretty neutral. Does he know that I'm wondering—for not the first time—what secret stuff he's still keeping from me?

I don't know if he can read everything in my head.
But
if
you're in there, Ethan, here's what I hate right now: that I know how much you cared about Tasha
. Clearly you guys did stuff together, but I'd have preferred to avoid the video clip. It's one thing to know that your boyfriend had a love life before you. It's another thing to catch him reliving it. Call me petty, but that's the way it is.

And here's what else I hate right now: that I can't think these thoughts in private. Okay, you can't think yours either, but that doesn't make me feel any better. It just makes me scared and frustrated
. I mean seriously, Ethan—I don't want to read your “Hey, we used to have lots of sex” thoughts about your ex any more than you want to know about Ben's post-latte peck on the lips.
Not that those two compare by any vast stretch of the imagination.

Ethan's brows are knitted together. I try not to think that this makes him look cute, which would certainly dilute the “I think this sucks” vibe that I'd prefer to give off.

And then someone bustles past us into the theater and I look up.

It's absolutely beautiful. This is the first thought I have. And the second. And the third.

I forget that I'm arguing with Ethan. I forget how scared I am or how I hate that I'm jealous of this girl who doesn't even really exist anymore. I don't bother to scan the lobby for Tasha and the Ethan doppelgänger. Or for Viktor. For the first time in a long while, I don't feel guilty about Ben or worried about my parents. Or freaked about Baba Yaga and sad for Anastasia and Lily, my rusalka grandmother.

Instead, I let myself just look. I gaze around the old theater—with its curving stage and high ceiling and ornate box seats and balcony—and breathe in what I've missed so very much. Ballet.

The dancers aren't on stage yet, but I can sense them behind the red velvet curtain getting ready. As if I'm back there too, I can see them shimmying into costumes and warming up. Smell the rosin as they rub it into the soles of their slippers. See the girls rising en pointe as they ready themselves to perform.

My eyes fill with tears. My throat tightens. I was never going to be a great ballerina. I'm not thin enough or dedicated enough. I hated what it did to my feet. My talent is only middle of the road.

But I loved dancing. The pure joy of it. I liked how it made my body feel—lithe and limber, as though if I tried hard enough, I could float above the stage. In those months when my brother was dying, I practiced harder. It was the only thing that let me forget that my family was imploding.

And then one afternoon Tess and I went to see
Swan
Lake
in a different gorgeous theater and noticed this handsome blue-eyed guy watching me. The guy who turned out to be Ethan. The one who changed everything.

I'm angry with him still, for reasons I can name and some I can't. And I can tell he's not totally happy either.

But I let him slip his arm around me and feel the strange thrill of knowing that we're basically invisible to everyone else. If he kissed me right now, no one would see us. People might sense it—like you sense a ghost or get déjà vu. But they'd go on anyway and walk to their seats and
Giselle
would start, and no one would know that we were standing behind them, his lips pressed against mine. Tess will definitely appreciate this story if I choose to share it with her. This is the kind of stuff she loves.

Ethan's arm tightens around my shoulders. My heart hammers harder—both at the thought of losing myself into a kiss and the realization that he probably knows what I'm thinking. I feel my face grow warm.

“Look,” Ethan says, and my thoughts refocus. He gestures.

In the box seats above us to our right, Tasha and the other Ethan settle themselves into plush chairs. The two of them, but no Viktor.

My Ethan's blue eyes scan the auditorium, then his gaze returns to the box seats. He scrubs a hand over his face. If he's sensed my kissing thoughts, his expression doesn't show it. He looks tired and serious, a hint of five-o'clock shadow on his cheeks and chin. Of course, I'm standing in a beautiful old theater wearing shorts, a tank top, and
bedazzled
black flip-flops. It is totally unfair that he looks as hot as always, while I probably look like I fell out of bed and into a whirlwind—which is basically what happened.

“I remember something,” Ethan says. His eyes brighten. Still no sign that he read my make-out fantasies.

“Viktor had arranged for the box seats—and that bothered me. It would have been private, but it also called attention. People always want to see who's sitting up there. That wasn't usually the way we did things. We rarely made ourselves obvious.”

The auditorium begins to darken. The other Ethan leans in to whisper something in Tasha's ear. In the dimming light, I can see her smile, then tilt her head back like she was laughing. And then they both look behind them as a third figure comes into view.

Even with his face in partial shadow, I have no trouble identifying Viktor. All arrogance, he stalks into the room, and when past Ethan stands to shake Viktor's hand, the light from the stage catches Viktor's face. His dark eyes glitter in a way that makes my stomach clench, and goose bumps prickle my arms and legs.

Next to me, my Ethan links his fingers with mine. “Nothing to be afraid of,” he says. “Not from him.”

His tone is neutral, pleasant even. But underneath, I feel his anger mingle with my own. Viktor has caused so much hurt, so much damage. I need to use that fear and anger to figure out why we're here and what we need to see.

“Looks like they're staying put,” Ethan says. “C'mon.” He squeezes my hand. And we head toward the staircase that leads to the box seats.

The music begins as we're walking. Again, I'm reminded of how much I love dance—the grace of it, the stories of the ballets, the feeling that I can almost defy gravity.

“I don't know
Giselle
,” I say as we reach the first landing and move to the second flight of stairs.

“Giselle's a girl with a weak heart. She falls in love with a nobleman. Only she has no idea that he's already betrothed to someone else. When she finds out, this weakens her even more and she dies. Her friend the gamekeeper, who loved her deeply, mourns at her grave. And then—this is a tragic ballet—the wilis rise.”

“Wilis?”

“They're Slavic. Spirits of—oh.” Ethan stops dead still on the last stair before the second landing. He drops my hand. A strange look crosses his face. “I really had forgotten. This is—”

“Is what?” My heart skips half a beat. Isn't going back in time and watching another Ethan with another girl enough without adding in some Slavic folklore craziness? By the look on his face, the answer is a resounding no.

“The Wilis take her. It's another name for rusalka—female spirits who've been jilted by their lovers. They seek revenge on men. They take Giselle. And then they go after her nobleman. Because they think he should die.”

My beat-skipping heart moves to racing. “And? Do I want to know?”

We step onto the landing, empty of people except for us. “And Giselle saves him,” Ethan says. “It's the inevitable. She protects him and the Wilis can't drown him. She doesn't give in to their hatred. Her nobleman lives, and she can rest in peace.”

My mouth goes dry. “Like Lily. Except Lily can't go free without my help. Unless…”

“I don't know, Anne.
Giselle
is about love, about forgiveness. Lily's a rusalka, a wili, yes. But the rest of it…”

I push away the thought. “She forgives her nobleman. She doesn't give in. Lily could do that, right? It could happen.”

It could. Anything could, I guess. But I know what he's thinking because I'm thinking it too. What if Lily does forgive Viktor for trying to kill her, for making her so desperate to protect her daughter from him that she gave her up for adoption—so he wouldn't know she existed—and then leaped into the river? Will it be enough to free her from her curse? Or will Viktor still have to die? And my promise to Baba Yaga—what about that? I still haven't found the source of Viktor's new immortality.

“It's a ballet, Anne,” Ethan says softly. “Maybe it's just a ballet.”

“This whole thing is so twisted,” I say because it is and neither of us seems able to untwist it, no matter what we do. “My family is so far from normal it's not even funny. I'm never going to be a regular person again, am I?”

“You never were,” Ethan says, his voice husky enough that I shiver pleasantly in spite of my crankiness and confusion. “That's a good thing, you know.”

Is it? I can trace myself back through a sea of crazies to Tsar Nicholas himself…and my power to a witch named Baba Yaga. I count off my ancestors, the ones we've discovered since the day Ethan and I collided and life as I knew it changed forever: Viktor, Tsar Nicholas's love child. Their daughter, Natasha. And her daughter, a woman named Lily—my birth grandmother who Viktor tried to kill because she posed a threat to his plan to stay immortal by keeping Anastasia with Baba Yaga. Lily, my tragic birth grandmother who jumped into the Chicago River and, instead of dying, became a rusalka.

Is she like Giselle? Could she be?

In the auditorium, the music swells. I know the dancers are onstage now. The story has begun to spin itself out. We should be spying on the other Ethan and Tasha and Viktor. Doing what we've been brought here to do—or at least that's what it seems. But now this new thing. My brain hurts trying to make sense of it all.

Ridiculously, I wait for Ethan to tell me not to worry.
Sure, Anne, no problem
, I want him to say.
If
Lily
does
a
360 and forgives him, Viktor will just go away. No harm, no foul. And your nutty Russian mermaid grandmother? She'll sort things out. It'll be fine. But don't worry. No way did mystical forces we don't understand send us back here to connect all this to a ballet.

Instead, he takes my hand again, his long fingers curling around mine, and we start to the box where the other Ethan is sitting with Tasha and Viktor. His grip is warm and familiar. Soothing. It will all be okay, I think. Stop worrying. Then with a suddenness that swoops my breath away, I read his thoughts again. My hand, still in his, goes cold.

“You went to see Dimitri?” I'm shocked at what I'm pulling from his head. How could he do that? Maybe I'm wrong. I have to be wrong.

Ethan purses his lips together. And when he stays silent for one beat too long, I know I'm not wrong at all.

He tries to blow it off. “This isn't the time, Anne.”

“Oh? I think it's the perfect time.”

“He's on our side. I'm as sure of that as I can be. We need him. He was Viktor's protégé. He's an asset, not a liability.” Ethan says this like he believes it, but something in his eye—a brief flash of wariness—tells me he's not as sure as he sounds.

“Like when he tried to kill us? That kind of asset?” Don't we have enough problems right now without him adding Viktor's best bud to the mix?

I struggle to stay calm.
Think
happy
thoughts, Anne. Puppies and clouds and Lou Malnati cheese pizza
. We're in no position to argue. We need to be a solid unit until we get back to our own time. Back to where we have a little more control. But Dimitri? Seriously?

“Things changed when we all became mortal again,” Ethan says.

“Maybe.” I contemplate whether this is really true. “Maybe not. Look at Viktor. He wanted us to think he was a hero when he gave himself to Baba Yaga. But he was only looking out for himself, same as always. Maybe Dimitri just wants you to think he's changed. But really, nothing's different.”

I can tell that he's got more to say about the subject, but then some man in a fancy black tux hurries by us down the hall, and both Ethan and I are reminded of where we are and what we're supposed to be doing—which is definitely not standing here arguing.

“When we get back,” Ethan says, “we'll deal with it. I should have told you. I was going to tell you. I would have told you. I promise.”

Would he? I hope so. And because I don't read anything else in his mind to contradict, I say, “Things have been a bit crazy. I get it.” Then I add: “You and me, Ethan. Whatever's linking us is getting stronger, isn't it? Even here in the past. Maybe especially here.”

As I say it, I know it's true. Fear prickles my skin. The momentary calm when Ethan took my hand is gone. A single thought reverberates in my head: something bad is about to break loose.

“We'll deal with that too,” Ethan says. “It's what we do.”

“This whole mind-reading thing sucks,” I tell him.

Ethan grins, a calm-before-the-storm smile. We open the door to the box seats and step inside.

If we'd thought things were crazy up until then, we were wrong. The crazy was just getting warmed up.

Two steps into the small room on the second level of the theater, I know that something is off. The ballet continues to play out onstage. We are still in the past. Only then, things change. Time rips. The past wavers, then flickers into something more immediate—as though it is happening for the first time, not the second. I feel myself falter, try to step back into the hall. But my body moves forward and I take Anne with me.

Do we cause this to happen? Does Viktor? Is it somehow Baba Yaga or our combined powers or some other force that doesn't come immediately to mind? I just know that when we enter, there are two of me—my current self and my past. Anne stands at my side, my hand wrapped around hers, a solid connection, her thoughts flowing into mine as mine ripple into hers.

Viktor is about to sit in one of the plush chairs. Tasha—the girl I loved but not enough to tell the truth—leans slightly toward him, as though when he seats himself, she plans on telling him something.

And the man I once was—who because of magic and circumstance I still fully resemble—sits alert, part of his attention on the stage, part on Viktor and Tasha. He is pulled between two stories, both of which will have tragic endings. Does he—did I—know that then? I try to remember.

What comes to me is this: I sat there looking eighteen because I'd committed myself to a cause that by then I had begun to question. I loved a woman who I knew I was going to abandon. And I had become suspicious of the man whose cause I'd followed blindly, without question. But never suspicious enough. I will regret that forever. I know I am paying for my blindness.

But now, a rush of heat spreads up my arms. Something is suddenly terribly wrong. In one dizzying moment, everything inside me shifts, hard and jagged, like shoving a round peg in a square hole. Not like our journey through time. That was external. What happens now is inside me. I double over with the force of it. Something is attempting to wrench me from my own body. I struggle against it. Try to remain conscious of who I am.

“Ethan!” Dimly I hear Anne shout my name. My vision fogs. She shimmers in and out, or maybe I'm the one shimmering. For one brief moment, I see her panicked face. She says something else. Her lips move, her hands gesture. But it's too late.

I am me. My past self is me. And then in a sickening rush, we become one. I feel the essence of what I am slip away to combine with what I was. Everything I know, everything I've been, starts to ebb.

I fight against it. The dark power whose source I still don't understand rises inside me—angry and harsh. I focus, latch on to its wild, furious, swirling depths. Wrench myself away to hover in and out of both bodies, both versions of me. For that moment, there's nothingness, like plummeting from an airplane through piles of clouds.

Then—something dark and empty. Like a vessel that wants to be filled. That needs to be filled. It slithers through me like oil, pulling any power I can use with it, and everything begins to slip. I struggle to hold on to my thoughts.
I
am
Ethan
who
is
now
mortal. I am Ethan who was betrayed by Viktor. I am Ethan who loves Anne. I am…

“No!” I say it aloud. Use the word to try to hold back the inevitable. “No.” I say again. But I hear my voice fading. Somewhere a thought: my past self will know. Or my current self will. If past and present merge, I'll still know what's happened in between. Those years won't be—

What? Was I thinking something?

I shake my head. Clear my vision.

“Ethan,” says a deep voice next to me. “I had no idea your young woman was so lovely. She's quite the treasure, yes? But it seems she is quite in her own world right now. That, my friend, is the power of the ballet.”

I look to my left. Tasha stares at the stage. Her brown eyes seem somewhat vacant.

“Tasha,” I say softly. My voice sounds unfamiliar to my ears. Odd.

She startles, then turns to me and, after a beat or two, smiles.
My
lovely
Tasha
. The strange feeling that has washed over me begins to pass.

“Where was I?” she whispers. “Caught in the story, I suppose.” She brushes a strand of brown hair off her forehead, then looks at her hand as though it's something unfamiliar.

My mouth curves into a smile, and again I have the briefest sense that my movements are not quite my own. Strange.

Tasha turns to Viktor. “My apologies. I'm not usually this impolite. I just don't feel like myself today. Or perhaps it is
Giselle.
Such a tragic story, no? It took me quite away. You and Ethan will have to forgive me.”

“It is quite easy to forgive such beauty,” Viktor says. “There.” He snaps his fingers. “The moment never happened. We won't even remember it five minutes from now.”

For a moment, the fogginess in my head returns, like the feeling one gets upon awakening and trying to remember a dream. I shake my head, trying to clear it. What an odd thing for Viktor to say—Viktor who never forgets anything.

We
are
not
quite
human, Ethan
, he once observed.
The
life
of
an
immortal
requires
a
special
level
of
care. We must look. Learn. Listen. We never know when something will be of use.

I look up and realize that he's watching us—Tasha and me. His dark eyes glitter in the light from the stage. I know he disapproves of this relationship. Believes that it is foolhardy of me to allow anyone too close. But I do not agree with him. And I think in this regard that he has his own secrets. We all do—the Brotherhood members who are now immortal. Time has had a way of making this occur. Viktor is entitled to his privacy. But so am I.

“Are you all right, Ethan?” Tasha rests one cool palm on my hand and tilts her head to look at me.

“Fine,” I tell her. “Never better.” And in that moment, this becomes true. The fog that's clouding my thinking lifts. Something seems off still, but I push the thought away. This is Tasha—so beautiful, so talented—Tasha whose long graceful fingers I love to watch as they move, quick as birds, across the piano keys. I will tell her later, I think. I will tell her that I love her. And someday, I will tell her what I am. Maybe soon. Yes. Soon.

Onstage, Giselle starts to go mad. Her lover loves someone else.

“Tragic tale,” Viktor whispers. “To love someone who will leave you.”

Tasha leans across me toward Viktor. “But she forgives him,” she says with a small, tight smile.

My vision hazes. For half a beat in time, I get the distinct sense that I don't belong here. Images of another place, another girl—pale face, hair auburn, with brown eyes like Tasha's, only deeper—flash through my head. But nothing stays. The mental pictures flicker away like smoke from a lit match.

I struggle to regain myself. Why are my thoughts drifting like this? I am not some idle old man playing chess and drinking tea and dreaming of days gone by. Possibly, I never will be.

I am not just Ethan, after all. I am of the Brotherhood. To me there are no coincidences. The magic—the power—that allowed us to save Anastasia by compelling a witch who most of the world think is just part of a child's fairy tale—is real. And the prophecy that teaches of a girl who will release our Grand Duchess—that is real too. I have pledged my life to it. I am what I am because of it. Immortal until I find the girl who will complete our mission. She could appear at any time. In any place. Even here at the ballet.

How wonderful that would be, I think now. To end this. If I found her now, this mysterious girl for whom we've been searching, then it would be over. She would help us free Anastasia. Bring her back from the dead. Release her from that witch with the iron teeth and enormous hands. Baba Yaga, the mighty Bone Mother who I never believed existed. What has life been like for Anastasia? It is something I cannot contemplate. I chanted the spell. I saw the witch take her. There is no purpose in looking back. I have no regrets.

But what if the girl of the prophecy really is close? The world would gasp in shock. The foolish and short-sighted who believed it was necessary to murder the Romanovs for what Russia has now become, they would see that we have saved them from even more misery—from Stalin and his cronies. Having one of Nicholas and Alexandra's children alive would be a miracle. It would change everything.

It
would
free
me
.

The thought startles me. Never have I put my current existence in those terms. Why now? What has changed?

Perhaps Viktor is right. I am allowing myself to be distracted from our cause.

Tasha pats my hand. She smiles. And I let all those thoughts pass.