The Forbidden Doors Box Set

by Cortney Pearson

  “Augustus Garrett is gone, but there will be others who try to defy us in this. The door’s patrons won’t be happy with me. I fear some recrimination will follow, but it must be done.”

  My gaze sweeps across the strange gathering of ghosts and people. My pulse thrashes in my ears. Those patrons could appear as well. That means Harold Meiser.

  Meiser’s threatening smirk, his thrusted cane, the delight at Rosemary’s death. I wait for him to materialize, to foil this attempt to trap them, when a dull ache in my knuckles causes me to open my palm. This doorknob has petals and swirls, dark flowers belying life. They can’t open their doors without the knobs, I tell myself. They can’t leave their spells.

  One, two, three, four ghosts. Five doorknobs.

  “Who commissioned the fifth door, Nikolay?” I ask, conscientious of the fact that no ghosts hover near him.

  “I did.”

  Andrei Terekhov steps out from the darkness near the stairs. His footsteps resonate on the concrete. I stiffen, waiting for him to lash out at Nikolay, to use his power again to stop us.

  “You?” I ask. “Who did you kill to create your door?”

  I remember the strange things that happened, the books that had fallen, the eerie voices. I assumed it was the crows that caused it, but someone else was haunting the store above.

  Nikolay’s gaze doesn’t break from his father’s face, except to slide to the ghost who appears behind him. A woman with striking cheekbones and a mouth I’ve seen up close on someone else.

  “My mother,” Nikolay says in disbelief.

  twenty

  seven

  “Papa.” Nikolay’s voice breaks like silent thunder. “What have you done?”

  My fingers fan against my throat. She couldn’t have already been dead; not if murder was the final step in activating the door. “You killed your own wife?”

  Todd mutters something about these guys being seriously twisted, but no one in the circle moves.

  Andrei disregards my question, as well as Todd’s cynicism. His only attention is for his son, his eyes wounded, pleading.

  I again see the stark resemblance between them. Father and son, defying time. But before, where Nikolay’s glance showed pride in his father beside him, disgust now rides there. Open and unbridled disgust.

  “Did you?” Nikolay demands softly. “You killed my mother for this?”

  A greedy desperation slips into Andrei’s voice. “She was so sick. I did all I could to save her, son. Just before she died I discovered the key to opening the path! I was able to create the first door for Augustus Garrett. But it wasn’t perfect. I needed to experiment. I needed to get it right, and even though I knew I couldn’t save her, I knew we could also use the nexu to help others. To travel through time!”

  “At the cost of her life,” Nikolay contradicts.

  “No.” Andrei’s face brightens. He cups his hands, stepping toward his son. “She would have wanted it.”

  “To die at your hand?”

  Tears spill from Andrei’s eyes. “She was mostly gone as it was. I didn’t need her consent.”

  “And what of mine, Papa?”

  “I did it gently. I bound her to her book, and to our door—”

  “Stop.” Nikolay’s says, eyes closed. His shoulders tremble. “You told me she was in paradise, that she was happy, that she slipped peacefully into her sleep and awoke in her book.”

  “She would have been happy to give her life for me,” Andrei argues, his light, pleading tone darkening. “For our cause.”

  “Your cause, Papa. Not mine.”

  Nikolay maintains his place in the star, his shoulders sagging. He clasps my book to his chest. “Could you have spared her, Papa? Spared her, and in turn spared me from this deathtrap existence, interrupting our own lives in order to help someone else commit murder in order to prolong theirs?”

  “Niko—”

  “You never told me killing was that last step.” Nikolay says in anger. I force myself not to glance at Piper. What must she be feeling, hearing how it all started?

  “A life must be given to make room in space and time for such power as ours, to walk through time itself.”

  “Except that it was my mother’s life! And what of Ada Havens’s, or Rosemary Cauthran’s? Or John Talbott, or Bohai Chang?” He gestures to each ghost in turn, and each rises a little higher from the ground in response. “These people did not deserve to die, Papa.” Angst rides in his voice, a pleading desire to understand.

  Nikolay told me I was his light. And I always thought he represented darkness—but how could someone so good represent such evil? I kept waiting for my place in all this to become clear, for some action I need to take to be revealed, like I was called or meant to be with him somehow, to be his opposite.

  But I’m just a girl who needed a job. I’m just a girl who was haunted and needed help. Like Sierra. She very well could have been the one to capture Nikolay’s heart and get tangled up in all of this. But she didn’t. I did. And he needs someone to stand by him.

  I gesture for Todd to take my place in the star. Brows knit together, he obeys, jogging to where I stand.

  “Take my place?” I ask him as softly as I can. Todd glances over his shoulder at Piper, but agrees. I hand him the knob and then make my way forward.

  I slip my fingers through Nikolay’s. He and I are not the light and the dark as I thought before.

  His fingers tighten against mine. “It is time we destroy the ostium nexu, Papa.”

  Andrei blanches, and he openly stares down at our clasped hands. His shoulders fall, and then in moments the pleading, desperate man dissolves. He sneers, all blackness and anger and hard angles, and the answer has never been clearer than it is now.

  Nikolay is the light to his father’s darkness.

  “You would think to destroy my life’s work? A lifetime of lifetimes has been devoted to this, Nikolay, including yours.”

  “Oh, what a waste, Papa. What a waste it has been.” His voice treads heavily on the words, making each of them matter.

  Andrei’s eyes narrow. “Education, advancement, you would call these a waste?”

  “If it comes at the expense of others’ lives, then yes.”

  “You are a fool. This isn’t done, boy. I’m repairing the rift she created—” He points at Piper. “And you will not stand in my way.”

  “We already are.” I lift my chin.

  “That’s funny, coming from you.”

  The voice isn’t Andrei’s. It’s one I never thought I’d hear again. Another man emerges from the stairs, smug and satisfied, his black hair tied at the base of his neck. He shuffles and takes a place next to Andrei.

  I don’t try to mask my shock.

  “Jerry?”

  twenty

  eight

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  Jerry smirks, sharing a look with Andrei as though he’s just won. “Thought you could ditch me for good? Your man Terekhov contacted me after I got kicked out of his store. Apologized for the ill-treatment I received and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  Nikolay glares daggers at his father, his chest heaving in anger.

  “And what’s that?” I demand, folding my arms.

  Jerry cocks his head and purses his lips. “I’ll live on. No more cops breathing down my neck, no more probation.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “What’s wrong with just not breaking the law, Jer? If you do this, you’ll be even more of a prisoner, to that house.”

  He crosses his arms over his chest. “But I’ll have you with me, Everly. That’s part of the deal.”

  My vision blanks. “What?”

  “I get what I want,” he says, smirking.

  “You’re sick. Both of you.”

  “It was the bes
t way to get you out of my way,” says Andrei, “and to square things with Meiser. He’s been hounding me ever since you returned from his time.”

  I silently plead with Nikolay, begging for some sense in all of this. Did he know his father contacted Jerry after that night? From the hardness in his eyes, the answer is no.

  “Papa, you have crossed a line.”

  “I knew she would be trouble for us, my son.”

  “Papa, you must stop this. We all must stop.”

  “We cannot break the ostium nexu, Nikolay,” says Andrei. “The only thing to do is to restore it.”

  “In my old house,” Piper says with derision from her position behind us.

  “What better place?” Andrei says, looking directly at her for the first time. She seems so small across the star. I expect her to run, but she stands her ground. “I brought it forward through time. All we need is to restore its door.”

  “Using Layla. Where is she?” I demand. “You have to let her go.”

  “She got in the way,” says Jerry. “We just need her knob, and it will be finished. You can’t stop us.”

  Hope withers from Nikolay’s face. His fingers loosen, attempting to free themselves from mine. He can’t lose it now. We need him.

  My gaze sweeps across the circle at our friends, those willing to stand up to Andrei, to stand by Nikolay. I have no words to say. A few of the ghosts exchange looks before Ada hovers a little higher than she did before.

  “I stand with you, Nikolay,” Ada says, strengthening him. “I always liked your company in life. I trust that you will do this.”

  “As do I,” says Rosemary’s ghost. The other ghosts affirm as well.

  Piper lifts her chin, meeting Nikolay stare for stare. “Me too,” she says. And across the circle, Joel, Sierra, Jordan, and Todd add their encouragement as well. We can’t give up.

  “We can do this,” I tell Nikolay, clasping his hand.

  “It is what’s right,” adds his mother in a familiar accent.

  With a look of disgust toward his father, Nikolay backs away, toward her. The line he stands on is clear, and he’s choosing his side.

  Andrei clenches his jaw. “Nikolay,” he says, his voice cracking. “I created that door and their books. By destroying them, you destroy me. Is that what you want?”

  Nikolay edges closer to his mother. “It’s not about what I want, Papa. You once talked to me of duty and loyalty to a cause I deemed worthy. Putting an end to this is worthy.”

  “What of her?” Andrei lifts his chin and points to Sierra.

  Sierra’s eyes bulge, petrified. “Don’t bring me into this,” she says.

  “I will never be able to help anyone again if you do this.”

  “If I do this,” Nikolay says, baring his teeth and releasing my hand, “they will not need your help in the first place. Vosplamenyat’sya!” he cries, flaring out his hands. A force emits from him, but other than a swift breeze that strikes my body and sifts the hair from Piper, Sierra’s, and my shoulders, nothing more happens.

  We wade in the stillness. Nikolay shoots a fierce, insistent glare across the room.

  “What’s going on?” Sierra asks. “Why didn’t it work?”

  He repeats the phrase, splaying his hands above the floor. Again, nothing happens. Nikolay rubs the back of his neck, his brow pained. Likewise, worry filters through me, twisting my stomach.

  “It’s no use, son,” says Andrei. “You don’t have all the elements. The forces of nature are making it clear—you are not meant to do this.”

  “Why would those forces allow it in the first place, Papa?” Nikolay argues. “They would never allow such evil.”

  Argument breaks out between the Terekhovs. Todd joins in, contending on Nikolay’s side. Sierra and Piper begin shouting across the star, and Joel clenches his fist, making for Jerry with a threat to release Layla or he’ll smash his face in.

  Nikolay thrusts a desperate hand in Joel’s direction before Joel can pass the book in front of him on the ground. “You must not break the star!” he orders.

  The books make some of the star, but with only four of them, it’s not complete. Frantically, my thoughts attempt to regroup. They each hold a knob, which Nikolay’s father is desperately trying to wrench from Nikolay’s grasp.

  Five knobs.

  Four books.

  “We need that last book,” I mutter, though no one hears.

  Jerry bends in front of Joel, arms grasping for the thick tome at Joel’s feet. Joel sneers and kicks Jerry hard in the face, knocking him to the cement. Taking advantage of the commotion, I dash toward the stairs.

  “Stop her!” Andrei shouts. Blood drips from Jerry’s nose. He dives for me, but I dodge his grasp.

  “Everly!” Nikolay cries.

  “I’ll be back! Don’t break the star!”

  If the book was in the basement, Nikolay would have found it already. I dash up the stairs and into the display room. The glass is locked, the books secure behind their panes. I could break the glass, but I’m not sure Andrei would store his wife’s book with those others.

  “He would set her apart,” I mumble, breathlessly scanning. “He would revere her.”

  It may be in his office, or even in his bedroom, but another thought strikes. I rush to the room’s other end, where the three books sleep beneath glass on separate podiums. I knock over the glass bowls covering them and frantically search the opening pages of each book.

  The first has only writing and a few names I don’t recognize, combined with different symbols and cyphers.

  But there, inside the second, a circular stamp blares, a doorknob embossed in blood. A Russian text I can’t read details places along the cyphers and graphics, but right where it should be is what appears to be a name, written in Cyrillic, on its opposite page.

  “Got you,” I whisper to the book.

  “That doesn’t belong to you.”

  I hug it to my chest with a gasp. Andrei and Jerry block the door, and they both look so different from the men I thought I knew. Once, they both were saviors in their own way. Jerry was an outlet for my rebellion. He made me feel fierce and desired. And Andrei helped me in my desperation for answers. He genuinely listened to me, cared about and believed what I had to say.

  The spot between my shoulder blades itches, the same spot the crows struck me from my nightmares. A reminder that Andrei is the reason those nightmares have stopped.

  But at what point do good acts balance out the bad?

  “My cousin doesn’t belong to you either,” I say, backing toward the window, searching for an alternate door. But the room is circular, and unless there’s a hidden door among the books, I’m trapped, just as I was when I encountered him here before

  I peer above their heads, waiting for the crows, or maybe Sherlock, to help me again. But they’re not coming. I clutch Nikolay’s mother’s book tighter.

  Andrei’s glower deepens and at once, the books on their shelves begin to thunder as surely as if shaken by invisible hands. Their shaking vibrates, rumbling along the floorboards, making the marble rumble beneath my feet.

  Grim, orange light encases Andrei’s hands, glowing around each one like a universe in his palms. Light gathers to him, absorbing into his hands and consequently darkening the room.

  “What the—?” Jerry stumbles against one of the walls.

  How can he be surprised by any of this? “What’s wrong, Jer?” I ask blindly. “Didn’t know your new bestie worked in darkness?”

  “Give me that book, Miss James,” Andrei purrs in a threatening tone. He is completely encompassed now, so much so that all I see are the two glowing orbs around his hands.

  A blind force tugs at the book in my grasp. It pulls harder and harder still.

  “We’re stopping it!” I cry, hugging the book and pleading inside for s
ome kind of solution.

  The spot between my shoulder blades smarts like a recent stab wound. I dig my fingers into the book’s leather, fighting against his supernatural pull, and I squint, searching the darkness.

  Andrei snarls and thrusts his hands toward me. A gust of energy smashes into me, knocking me against the window. The book crashes to the floor as I brace myself against my own fall. It then flies into Andrei’s waiting hands.

  “Don’t hurt her!” Jerry shouts in a high-pitched wail. “You gave your word!”

  My head spins. The mark on my back sinks deeper into my flesh, and I grit my teeth. He knew about my dreams. He knew what the crows did to me, and now he’s instigating it as a reminder of his power.

  Andrei sneers, his face eerie in the glow surrounding him. “I’ve made a deal with Jerry Erickson, Miss James. But if you get in my way again, I’ll have to go back on my word.”

  “Let Layla go.”

  Andrei fingers the book tenderly, adoringly. He rises with it in hand. My throat cottons. I can’t let him take it. Layla will die.

  The others downstairs can’t come help. They can’t break the star, not now that Nikolay started the spell. We need that book.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Andrei says. His hands begin to fade, redistributing the light into the room.

  “Then I can’t let you take that!” I dive toward him, making for his midsection. Andrei anticipates my actions and thrusts the book upward like a baseball bat, striking me hard across the cheek.

  Stars spin, and I slam to the floor. I wait for the dice in my brain to settle before pushing up. Help me, I plead inwardly to the crows I once viewed as threatening.

  They’ve only ever helped me. Even Layla, when I thought they were attacking her, they were warning me. Even in my nightmares…

  In my nightmares.

  The spot on my back burns, a pang, a brand in my skin.

  But Andrei’s not the one who put it there.