She nods. “I do. All too well.”
“And you know the Terekhovs?”
Ada rears her head. Her voice is frigid and threatening. “The door proprietors?”
I turn to Piper and Todd. “Nikolay’s father has made him put the knobs back. It’s the only thing that makes sense. They can manipulate time. They can walk right through it, to anywhere and anywhen they want.”
Piper’s shaking her head. “You said you could trust him.”
“It was his father! His father found out! Nikolay was going after all the knobs—he even had one from this house. What if Andrei walked back in time, what if he… undid something? Put the knob back?”
“Andrei Terekhov?” Ada asks.
“Yes.”
“He created that door. Mr. Garrett took me to his shop once, right before…” Ada shudders. I didn’t realize a ghost could shudder.
“Ada?” Todd asks, kindly. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you know about the Terekhov’s?” I can’t help asking.
She flickers for a brief moment. She drifts toward the front door and offers a see-through hand toward the handle. “If what you say is true, and Andrei Terekhov is behind this, then we need to investigate. He deals with dark things, Piper Crenshaw. And if he has anything to do with this, I fear it cannot be good. After you.”
Guilt builds, but I push it away. It’s only Andrei. She didn’t say anything about Nikolay. He can’t be behind this.
I hate that I’m questioning him, when all I want is to be faithful to his memory. I want him back—and not only because I now have more questions than ever.
Todd opens the door into a sophisticated entryway. A high ceiling rises above, a long, floral rug beneath, with a circular table in its center. The stairs lead up to a second level, while an open parlor lies to the left, gilded with decorative brackets along the ceiling. Beautiful, but definitely dated. And I’m instantly in love.
I pry my eyes away from the antique remnants, visible cues of a past way of life, ignoring the longing in my chest to know what it was like to live then. Even the design of the spokes of the stair railing is stunning and unique.
“This house is amazing.”
“Sure it is,” Piper grumbles. She marches straight through to a set of double doors down a hall leading straight from the front entrance. She hesitates only a moment, her hands shaking as she grips one of the handles, and flings the doors open.
I recognize the room instantly and gasp as I look at Ada once more. She was the servant, the one stoking the fire. The one I startled. It’s the exact same room Nikolay and I were in when the crows were pecking at all the windows. Beautiful books, shelves, squat leather chairs, a main desk, and the door just behind it and off to the side of the window.
“It’s different,” Piper says from beyond the squat leather chairs, main desk, and the lace-curtained window. Her face pales. “That’s not the same door.”
“Are you sure?” Todd asks.
Piper gives Todd a scathing look. He lifts his hands. “Of course you are,” he says, backing away.
“Mr. Garrett won’t come back,” Ada says. “I assured you as much before. But Andrei Terekhov can create new doors. And it seems he has done so.”
“Nikolay and I suspected as much. That’s why we were going to meet him, to destroy all of them at once.”
“Then why did you not?” Ada demands.
“Nikolay was gone,” I say, the ache renewing at the words. “They both vanished without a trace.”
“Ominous indeed,” says Ada pensively.
“If Augustus Garret is gone,” Piper says, “then why is his house here? Why is it back?”
“And won’t people wonder the same thing?” I ask. “It’s not like it’s hidden from view. People are going to wonder. Everyone saw it burn down, right? The remains have been there for months.”
“They’ll think someone rebuilt it, maybe,” Piper says.
“In an afternoon?” asks Todd. “Not likely.”
“Then what do we do?” I ask.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The voice carries from behind before anyone gets the chance to answer. Sierra and Jordan burst through the library’s double doors.
Jordan hangs back, staring open-mouthed. “It’s exactly the same,” he mutters in disbelief.
Sierra ignores him and marches straight to Piper in a determined way that replicates Piper’s exact reaction to this house.
“What have you done now?” Sierra demands. “He told me it was over. He said my freak connection with you wouldn’t happen anymore, and it hasn’t! So if you’ve done something—”
Piper’s face flushes. “I haven’t done anything!”
“It’s me,” I say, hurrying to stand between them. Ada, I notice, is nowhere in sight. “The Terekhovs. Something is going down, and I’m not sure any of us are going to like it.”
I explain about going back to 1917, about messing with time. And how my face appeared in Meiser’s book.
“Why didn’t you tell me that part?” Piper demands.
“There was so much to think about, it slipped my mind.”
She looks pensive. Chewed lip. Bowed head.
“Then you fix this,” Sierra says, turning on me and growing hysterical. Splotches of pink tint her cheeks. “I’m not going back to insanity town!”
I raise my hands. “I would love to, if I knew where they were.”
A ring of silence surrounds us when an idea dawns on Sierra. “Here.” Sierra digs in her purse and retrieves a card, slamming it in my hand.
I eye the card with its simple logo and plain design. “What’s this?”
“Andrei gave it to me a couple weeks ago. He said I could use it if I ever needed to find him again. And I’m pretty sure with all this crap going on, we’re going to need to find them.” She gestures to the library once more.
I glance down to see the simple words scrawled on the back of the card. An address. 33901 Anglissky Prospekt. St. Petersburg.
My heart pools with relief, disbelief, and gratitude. Tears sting my eyes. It’s proof. I didn’t make them up. I could almost hug her, except this is Sierra we’re talking about.
twenty
two
I can’t go to Russia. I used my meager savings to buy a new phone. I haven’t even made enough money to cover gas or help supplement the rent and groceries, and now that I’m jobless, that’s not likely to happen soon. But this is proof. This is hope right in my hands. He was real. He kissed me. Cared for me.
Left because of me.
My feet lead me back outside, into the cold whiteness. I need to be alone. To think.
Among all of this confusion, one question remains unanswered. The crows were trying to warn me about the ostium nexu. They were asking for help; that much I know.
“But why me?” I mumble to the horizon.
A crow flutters into view onto the large tree in Piper’s yard. Like before, in the bookstore, it doesn’t attack.
Instead of running, I approach the creature.
Its wings are black and sleek, its eyes intelligent. Its head cocks and it looks directly at me, squawking from a gap in its beak.
“What do you want from me?”
It flutters its wings a few times, warding off gnats or other pesky disturbances. Then it gives me a final look before lifting into the sky. But it doesn’t fly quickly. It hovers, flapping, resting, waiting.
I step toward it, and it continues on, leading me until I’m jogging to keep up. The bird glances back before turning, and then I’m running, wishing I was in better shape, wishing I knew what was going on. I follow it past the elementary school, past several more shops, down a dreary road with nothing but fields, until I see it in the distance.
Gray slats of stone speckle a field, trapped within a short,
chain-linked fence and surrounded by trees. The sparse, single-lane road crossing between patches of tombstones is muddied over from melted snow and tire tread.
The bird waits for me on the rounded pole of the fence, blinking, head clearing one way, then the other. I slow, trying to catch my breath, uncertain how I ended up here, how my life has become so skiwamped that I chase birds to cemeteries for fun now.
But this isn’t for fun. This is for answers.
“Do you have a message for me?” I ask, chest heaving.
The bird squawks in reply and lifts into the air once more, penetrating the sky over the cemetery. I follow, unease coursing in every fiber of me. I don’t remember the last time I was in a cemetery. I’m not sure I’ve ever set foot in one, aside from the times on Memorial Day when I would go with my mother to lay flowers on graves of family members I didn’t even know.
We came to this cemetery once, while visiting Layla’s family. Her mother and mine branched off in search of headstones, while I sat in the car with Layla and talked about boys and sketched the sky.
I never paid much attention to the distant relatives we were there to reverence. Now I wish I had.
The bird soars across headstones of varying heights and sizes, one shaped like a cross, some with words so faded they’re barely discernable, some with no words at all, some with pictures engraved into the surfaces. Some are statues standing tall and angelic, clearly meant for someone who was dear.
I’ve lost sight of the bird. I glance around, and finally I see it perched on one of two urns dripping with decayed flowers at the end of a brief stone set of stairs. The stairs lead into a weather-worn mausoleum. The bird glances around as if gesturing for me to follow.
“If you think I’m going in there, you have another thing coming,” I tell it. Except, I can’t help feeling struck by the gothic beauty of the structure. Two columns stand on either side of a curved entrance, and above that stone squares complete the ancient masterpiece. In between the stairs a name is carved. The words are smudged over, difficult to see.
“Is this you?” I ask the bird. It hops from the urn to the wooden double doors, arched over by a decorative keystone in the center.
The bird flaps at me, cawing right in my face as it did with Layla.
“What’s the point?” I ask it, annoyed. “Why attack Layla? Why bother me at all?”
The bird blinks again and flies back to the mausoleum. And wordlessly, the answer arrives.
“To lead me here?”
It fidgets on its scrawny legs, tapping and turning.
I glance up at the sky, the dark clouds gathering, blocking out the sunlight. It’s nearly sunset. I have no flashlight, nothing with which to find my way home. I need to be getting back. But I take the bait.
“Fine.” I walk forward. “But if I—” I stop in shock. Now standing directly beneath the opening, I get an entirely different perspective of the smudged surname.
“Crenshaw? As in Piper and Joel?”
The bird blinks. Turning back is no longer an option. I reach for the rusted handle and open the wooden door.
A musty smell throttles my nose. I cough away the dust, wondering when the last time this door was opened, and step inside. Fortunately, a pair of openings allows light in along the ceiling, and I cross the narrow space to a wall directly across from the door. Rectangles line the wall, each the same size, about twelve in all. They stack from floor to ceiling and each is labeled with a name I don’t recognize.
At least, not until I reach the lower right hand corner.
I rush forward, not caring about the cobwebs or the dust. I trace my finger along the letters, clearing debris away enough to read the name. Her name.
“Rosemary is buried here?” I whisper in surprise. She was killed in Boston, hundreds of miles away. Perhaps she was moved at the request of her family. But this is a Crenshaw tomb. What does Rosemary have to do with Piper’s family?
Movement from behind catches the corner of my eye and I startle, only to find the bird still there. Watching me.
I crouch, resting both hands on her burial plaque. “What are you trying to tell me?” I ask. “What do you want me to know?”
That increasingly familiar golden glow settles over me, its tiny, glistening particles sifting over and transforming my surroundings into a vision of Rosemary.
Events fluctuate from one to the next, lasting long enough for me to absorb each in turn. Meiser, in his pinstriped suit, coercing Rosemary from the back of the theater toward the balcony. Rosemary’s last thoughts, the desire for her daughter, the fear, the knowing she has no other choice but to do what he asks. I see her wrapped in a man’s arms—Everett’s arms, the man from the porch. I feel her sorrow, her love for him. I see her meeting with him several times on the porch I now recognize as the same one at Piper’s house, begging him to be with her, I see her pregnant and telling him it’s his child.
I didn’t realize the porch was Piper’s. He was her ancestor, one who bound himself in service to the master of the house. That was why he told Rosemary no. That was why he rejected her.
She has the child, and I feel her sorrow passing the girl off to a married couple, proper in the eyes of society. I see the frantic way she kept track of her money, hoping to make enough to keep the child with her.
Then there’s an after-party, a gathering, a Halloween card being passed around and played off as a joke. I see hope in Rosemary’s eyes, a desire to know if happiness still exists for someone so broken, hope that maybe, just maybe, this old wives’ tale might be true, that she might see in a mirror a brighter future with nothing but that hope and a half-shaved apple peel.
But terror struck that night in her dressing room. It led her to this.
My eyes burn at the realization of her story. And I know what I need to do.
There was hope for her. There was a chance for change, a chance for her to be with her daughter, even if she couldn’t have the man she loved because his family obligations kept him locked tight to Piper’s house.
That future was robbed from her.
The golden speckles undulate, shuffling to reveal a man, a college student with dark skin and hair, training to become a teacher. He stumbles upon a door in the basement of the very college he studied at. He lost his life and his career ambitions as well.
So much loss, all so one person can prolong his existence? Harold Meiser, Augustus Garrett, and the other proprietors—the college professor, the gardener in Mongolia.
Ink and paper. Blood and lies. Wood and hinges, all for a life. And I know what the crow’s message is.
“I understand,” I say to the air. “With or without Nikolay, I will stop this. It won’t happen again.”
It didn’t take a book or some form of necromancy to remove the messenger. It just had to deliver its message. Purpose fills me, relief that I know I’ll no longer be bothered by crows. Not if I can stop this.
It takes much longer for me to make my way back home, especially in the dark. Knowing Piper, she wouldn’t have wanted to stay on Hemlock Avenue. I’m betting they’re back at our complex, but if not, at least I’ll be able to drive back there instead of running all over town.
Cold settles over Cedarvale, but the motion and the purpose keep me warm, keep me moving. I rush past the elementary school, take a turn, run down past the shops, wishing I had my car.
Sweat pools along my back, turning frigid in the freezing air, and resolve strikes when I see Crestwood Apartments. I scurry up the steps, eager to tell Piper what I found out. Whether Nikolay is around or not, we’ve got to get back into Terekhov’s.
twenty
three
I pound on Piper’s door. Joel answers, his face pale and beading with sweat. “Is Layla with you?” he asks before I get the chance to speak.
“I—no. I thought she was at work today.”
He loosens his tie, stepping back and inviting me in. He closes the door, and my body relishes the warmth after being outside for so long. “I haven’t seen her, and she isn’t answering my texts. I thought maybe she was mad at me for something.”
“Does she have any reason to be mad at you?” I ask, momentarily sidetracked.
Joel thinks this over. He sits at the bar, resting his chin in his hand. “Not that I know of. Things have been going really great between us.”
Impatience pulses like blood, but I can’t ignore this either. “To be honest, I haven’t been home much lately to check up on her. We can see if she left a note or anything.”
Joel follows me out and I fumble for my key, pushing into my apartment. The pizza box from our dinner last night sits on the table. Her computer is littered with papers and candy wrappers. I pick up the purse sitting in the chair.
“Her plaid purse,” I say.
“She wore plaid on our last date,” Joel says.
“Which means she wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it a second time.” I glance around the room, wishing for a sign, for some kind of note, for anything to give a hint. I cross the stained carpet toward the flat screen and pick up the case to It.
I open the plaid bag; her wallet, hand-sanitizer and lip gloss are still there. “She hasn’t swapped her purse, and the movie layout hasn’t changed on our entertainment center—she’s always rifling through her movies. Layla always changes her purse, every time she changes her clothes! When was your last date?” I ask Joel.
“Two days ago.”
“Two days.” The words hit me like a shovel to the head. My cousin. My sweet, kooky, kickboxing, horror-obsessed cousin is missing.
“Where would she have gone?” he asks.
“Come here.” I guide him toward the hallway separating her room and mine. Clothes scatter across her space, and her closet lies open, revealing her collection of purses to coordinate with whatever clothing she’s in the mood for. Shoes lie in heaps—too many to fit in the closet. A few books gather dust on a small shelf at the foot of her bed, which is rumpled as usual.
The Forbidden Doors Box Set Page 46
