“Everly, why did you let go of me?”
“How old are you?”
He rubs his forehead and ignores my question. “Do you realize if you’d kept walking you could have ended up in the Middle Ages? You could have walked right onto a murky street in 1340s London and contracted the plague or something worse. What you’ve done is highly dangerous!”
My mouth drops. “The Middle Ages?”
“I’m serious.”
“I’m sorry!”
“I’m sorry too. I apologize for not being more straight-forward with you. It’s a good thing you spoke when you did or I might never have known where you ended up.”
“You heard me?”
“You were close enough. We are fortunate. Very fortunate.”
I shudder. “I want to get out of here. Please, take me back out.”
His hand finds mine again, no sign of worry since the last time I pulled mine free. “I’ll gladly escort you out. But there is one thing we must do before we leave, and it will go better with you here.”
“What is that? Where are we?”
Nikolay glances around. “370 Hemlock Avenue. Around 2014, possibly earlier; the time keeps shifting. See how the air ripples?” Sure enough, the air splotches, the colors waving as though I have spots in my vision. “Piper Crenshaw’s house,” he adds when I show no sign of recognition.
“The knob you pulled from the wreckage,” I say, putting the pieces together. “That knob makes it possible for you to travel time?”
“The right knob in the right door,” he says without looking at me. “I happen to have both.” His calculating gaze scans the books from shelf to shelf, segment to segment.
“What are you looking for? Is Piper living here right now?”
His focused attention continues scanning the room. “I was hoping to find something that connects you to all of this.”
“Like what?” I ask.
He wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know. A book, a clue, perhaps something you might recognize here. Or perhaps to speak with one of Piper’s ancestors, if I could. But I am not permitted to handle the doors once they’re installed. Our agreements are made with the understanding that we will not interfere.”
I glance around, waiting for exactly what he described. But nothing becomes clear or recognizable, not the books, the small figurines on the mantle, not the pictures on the walls.
“Then why are you interfering now?” I ask.
His gaze darkens. I’m seized by that look, by the spark in his eyes, which flick down to my mouth and back up again. His hand still in mine, he draws me to him. “If you will permit me, I’ll show you instead of explaining that as well.”
I’m frozen in place, wanting to move, unable to move. “You’re from 1917,” I breathe.
“I am.”
I close my eyes, unable to tell what I want more. His lips or more distance to sort my thoughts. Overriding everything else is his unspoken confession. He’s interfering with old agreements for me. He’s doing all of this for me.
Smoke hangs thickly in the air, snaking its way into my lungs and shattering his spell. I cough a few times, stepping back to wave it away.
“What is that?” I ask, still coughing. Nikolay crosses the rug, guiding me along behind him. The fireplace is empty, blackened bricks the only sign flames were there, until a flicker catches the corner of my eye. Movement.
A figure appears, a girl in a dress, sweeping her skirts aside to kneel before that very fireplace. She’s faint at first, blurred over like the spots in my vision, until trickle by trickle, colors bring her to life.
Heat follows. Flames blossom in the fireplace before her as she stokes the budding fire with a metal stick. I huddle closer to Nikolay.
The woman is beautiful, young, maybe twenty, and garbed in a black dress and soiled white pinafore. She glances over her shoulder in fear, revealing a cut marring her cheek.
“Who is that?” I ask, but Nikolay secures me to his side with a hand circling my waist.
He puts a finger to his lips and whispers in my ear. “Ada.”
“Piper’s ghost?” I ask in surprise, my voice too loud.
She gasps, whirling around. “Who said that?” she asks the room, pausing, tense and edgy. “I know I heard it.”
She is no apparition. Her body is as fully fleshed as mine. Despite that, though we stand several feet away, she looks right through us, making me wonder who the ghost is in this moment.
She finishes setting the fire and scrambles out, stealing another worried glance behind her before shutting the door. The air ripples once more, and though I still smell the smoke, the girl is no longer there.
I cough a few more times, expelling some of my own tension. “What was that?”
Nikolay frowns, scanning, searching. “I told you, we keep shifting in time.”
“Is that normal? Have you—have you traveled through time, much?” I mentally berate myself. What kind of a question is that?
A relevant one, it turns out.
His brows pinch. “No, it isn’t normal. Something is off with this path. First in England, now here, too.”
I glance around, not daring to have more than a few inches between Nikolay and myself. “Maybe this happens when you try to visit places that no longer exist.”
“Maybe,” he says, sidestepping and trailing fingers along the books. “But I doubt it. This house was here during the time we’re visiting. It shouldn’t matter.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
A clacking sound comes from the window beside the door. I shriek, nearly slipping from Nikolay’s grasp. He tightens his hand through mine and makes his way to the glass. He parts the curtains, and there, in the misty gloom of the night, perches a crow staring straight back at us.
Pain lodges in my chest, and my heartbeat nearly explodes. They’re here. They found me here, in the past.
“What are they doing here?”
Nikolay’s eyes betray the first sign of fear I’ve seen since he caught me here. The crow blinks. It cocks its birdlike head, lets out a squawk, and pecks at the glass again. Once. Twice.
“Nikolay?”
More pecking comes, this time from the side window. We whirl around, his arm bracing me to his side. Three more birds flock just outside the glass.
“Is this normal?”
“This is definitely not normal. They’ve followed you here.”
“But how?” Panic rises in my throat. I search for an escape. A door stands to my left, Though hidden from view when we’d been standing on the opposite side of the room by the fire place, the door is fully visible now. It’s intricate and beautifully carved, like the one back at Terekhov’s. But this one has two circles, one stacked above the other and laced with gold.
More pecking comes, this time from within the door as surely as someone knocking from the other side. I shriek again, pressing into Nikolay.
“What’s going on?”
More crows have joined the first few, and soon a clatter of pecking surrounds us, birds trying to break through the glass. The knob on the mysterious door rattles, its screws whining with each turn as unseen hands twist each one.
Beaks crack through the glass like splintered ice. Nikolay takes me by the shoulders and bends to look directly into my eyes.
“Think of my store, Everly!” he commands. “2017, Terekhov and Son’s. Think of nothing else!”
Glass crashes open. A flutter of birds cascades into the room, filling it with black wings and croaking sounds. The smoky smell increases, and soon flames are licking the walls. A space heater is visible, its vent gleaming red and left too close to the long curtains. The birds flutter around Nikolay’s head, knocking him over.
“Think of my store!” he shouts.
I sink with him, determined to not let them separate us.
<
br /> Terekhov and Son’s, 2017, I think, pressing the thoughts into being. Terekhov and Son’s, 2017.
The air ripples again, and the bookstore tries taking shape, its stacks fitting strangely around the desk and the fireplace that refuses to fade. Terekhov and Son’s. Terekhov and Son’s.
A bird flies for my head. I duck, bending myself across Nikolay’s chest. Their cawing is incessant; the flames continue licking the walls, blackening every space.
Terekhov and Son’s. Terekhov and Son’s, 2017.
Finally, the shelves take over. The romance section appears as surely as if we’ve returned to it, and there, in its place, is Nikolay’s door. Something tells me we aren’t back yet though. How can anyone tell what reality is here?
“There it is,” he says weakly, trying to push to his feet.
“Come on!” I help him up and we stagger toward it. The air continues quivering and shifting. A crow makes for my face. I bat it away and reach for the knob.
Miraculously, the door opens, not to another room, but to blinding light. Nikolay and I leap through and I kick it closed behind us just as the knob thunks back to the wooden floor of the bookstore, and we’re back near the romance section as if nothing happened.
We sit there side by side, panting. The crows’ cawing echoes in my mind. It takes several seconds for my body to register the events. Nikolay’s hands brace on the floor on either side of him, and he stares straight ahead, chest heaving.
Nikolay and I sit in the arm chairs on the balcony. Shakily, I swallow the last bit of water in the paper cup he offered me when we returned and sink into the leather chair, steadying myself. Nikolay’s empty cup rests on the small table between our chairs, and he watches me.
I haven’t said much about it since we returned. It was all too much. But now that my pulse has slowed and my thoughts have cleared, I’m ready to ask him.
“Why do you have time traveling doors in your bookstore?”
He clears his throat and readjusts himself on the chair. “To help others as we have helped you and Sierra. No matter the time period, we can reach others with similar paranormal disturbances.”
“But something has gone wrong, hasn’t it? What’s wrong with the doors, Nikolay?”
“I’m beginning to wonder the same thing myself.” He pauses for several breaths, raking hands through his hair.
“How many doors are there?” I ask.
“Five,” he says.
“Why five?”
“Five is a highly magical number. You’ll find it’s significant throughout history, in religion, in science, even in folklore.”
“Like what?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“There are five elements, for example. Earth, water, air, fire, spirit. Five fingers on each hand. Five senses. There are five points in a pentagram, which represents the five elements. Many believe the symbol is a protection against evil.”
“So the doors each represent an element?” I ask, trying to make sense of it.
He presses each of his fingertips together as if for demonstration. “Each door is a piece of the star. A circled pentagram contains and protects. When all five points are intact, those points seal the access and make it open to us. Our door is not actually one of the points—it is merely the access. You saw the first, back in Piper’s library.”
Each door is a point of a star, I mentally repeat, trying to keep it straight. “And the others?”
“One resides in a theater in Boston. Another in an old, abandoned college campus in Albion, Idaho, of all places.”
“That’s three.”
“Ah, yes. You see, Augustus Garrett commissioned two doors for himself. And they were destroyed by Piper Crenshaw herself.”
I make mental tabs of each location. “And now that two of the points have been destroyed?”
“Just as there are five points in a star or it ceases to be a star, so the spells holding our places together are no longer what they used to be with two of the doors missing.
“The balance is disrupted. You saw how shifty it was. I suspect the ostium nexu—the pathway that allows us to travel through time—will be more and more unpredictable. We’re lucky the damage isn’t worse or we may not have made it out of there.”
I shudder, remembering how trapped I felt. How time kept shifting, showing us the servant stoking the fire, and then how Nikolay had to call on my help to think his bookstore back into being. He didn’t have to do that to make Piper’s house appear.
A look of dejection crosses Nikolay’s face. He sits with one leg resting on the other and stares at his hands. “If this continues, we may not be able to help anyone. It took my father three tries before he was able to free Sierra Thompson’s mind. We must be able to access the pathway.”
“Did Piper know the doors in her house led to a time travel path?”
He glances over my shoulder, toward the door. “No. That door was the first and the circumstances were different. Garrett diverted the path by use of a staircase that led to the room he kept Piper’s ancestors in. His spell was more complex because it was experimental.”
“How so?”
Nikolay’s brows furrow in thought. “His spell was written to include a potion of some kind, something he needed to take regularly to maintain his connection to the future. My father later discovered that wasn’t necessary for the remaining doors.”
“So all of the doors don’t lead to the pathway?”
“Ours is the only one that does. It is part of the deal. We provide the clients with a door to preserve themselves; they link their doors to ours so we can access the path.”
I glance back at the door, amazed that something this blunt and obvious can do so much. I swallow and stand, brushing a hand down my pant legs. Nikolay stands as well.
“I think we need to fix the doors, Nikolay. That’s the way to get this, the crows, to stop.” That must be why they were there.
He bobs his head in agreement. “If we don’t fix the connection between the doors, those souls are free. They won’t stop haunting you, Everly.” Nikolay’s eyes burn. “And if they lose out on their blessed eternity, they will be very angry with me.”
Chills sweep along my neck and into my hairline.
“Then we fix it?” I ask.
He squeezes my shoulder and lets his hand slide down to mine. “We fix it.”
“How exactly do we do that?”
Nikolay inhales and replies without meeting my gaze. “We make a new door.”
sixteen
“Just like that?” I ask. “You can make a new door? How?” I’m sure it’s not as simple as carving out the wood. This is no quick trip to Lowes.
His thumb strokes the back of my hand. “I didn’t have anything to do with the creation of the doors, but I know a little of the process. The door itself is created in 1921 because that is the year my father and I are bound to. That’s why Garrett had to travel forward.”
I exhale. “What does that mean? Why does it matter that they’re bound to 1921?”
“The spells are bound in the books themselves. That makes it so anything inked within them withstands the test of time.”
“Wow,” I say, still mind-blown over the whole thing. “So the door owner claims the book and…”
“The books are essentially the key to opening the locked knob.”
“How do we link the book to the door and its knob?” I ask.
Nikolay rolls his shoulders and glances toward the hall labeled Employees Only and the office door beside it. “I don’t know how it is done. We need my father for that. We need to tell him in any case. He needs to know about the extent of the disruption of the ostium nexu.”
“Right,” I say. “Though I’m surprised he doesn’t know about it already.”
“He may not know the extent of the damage.” He tucks my hand through hi
s elbow and guides me toward his father’s closed office door. After a soft knock, he turns the handle.
“Papa?” he says softly.
The desk, shelves beyond, and faded light are the room’s only occupants. Nikolay guides me through the store, checking storage rooms and stacks. Their living room where his father signed my nightmares away in his book is likewise empty. He knocks on a door just beyond it, but receives no reply there either.
He throws his hands in the air. “It seems he is not here.”
“Now what?” I ask.
“We wait, I suppose,” he says, guiding me to another room down the hall. His lips press together almost nervously before he turns the knob.
“Is this your room?” I ask.
More of that nervousness. “It is. Would you—would you like to go in?”
Tension gathers between us, filled with expectant delight and a warning all at once. His room. I shouldn’t. But where else are we going to wait for his father to return?
Like in their living room, everything is dated in here. The bed, the desk, the wallpaper. He hasn’t thought to update anything in the last hundred years? He gestures to the chair near the window, which is covered with an old-fashioned, pull-down shade, and sits on the bed across from me.
“What is it?” he asks.
Every thought I’ve had blurs over in my mind, a new painting doused with water and smearing more by the minute. Here alone with him, everything pushes me to stare. Just stare. And maybe move closer.
But he said it himself. I need to know more about him.
“What year were you born?” I ask. “You first said you’re from 1917, and then 1921. Which one is it?”
Nikolay rubs his palms across his legs and leans slightly back. “My birthday is March 3, 1902.”
The Forbidden Doors Box Set Page 40
