Haunted

by Joy Preble

I consider the proper response. “There are ways. You know that, Anne.”

  “Well, maybe for you. My college board scores aren’t exactly where they need to be, especially since I’ve been a little, um, distracted lately. I’ll be lucky to get into junior college next year, at the rate I’m going.”

  “This is taking us away from the point.”

  “Hey. You’re the one who brought it up. I was just clarifying. So that’s it? You came back to go to school. And what? You just decided to pop by the pool and see if I was around?” She rubs her hand over the bracelet again, and I notice the letters on the disc. B&A. Ben and Anne.

  What I tell her is the truth, but not all of it. All of it would be telling her how I feel about her. Can I? What about that bracelet on her wrist? “I’m back because you need me. Because whatever it is that shifted power through me to you is still like an open line. I don’t see what’s going on with you, exactly. It’s not that strong. But I feel it. I know you’ve been in pain. And I know you’ve been scared. I needed to leave. I wasn’t lying last fall. You don’t know what it’s been like—how could you know, really? I needed to—hey!”

  She slaps my face with an open hand. The B&A charm raps sharply against my cheek. “Don’t you dare tell me that I don’t know, Ethan.” Anne’s up from the couch before I can even fully react. “After all I’ve—after what we’ve been through, what I’ve seen, after what keeps happening? You can sit there all smug and tell me that I don’t understand? That I don’t get it? You’re back here because we’re just unlucky enough to have some supernatural umbilical cord connecting us now? But really, what? You’d rather be wandering around Prague or Moscow? Sitting in cafes smoking those cigarettes you think I don’t notice are in your pocket, even though it’s hard to miss since you keep putting your hand there like you want one? Ben almost died today, Ethan. And I should feel lucky that you chose this moment to grace me with an appearance? Well, I don’t. I don’t feel lucky at all. I just feel scared and angry and confused.”

  I rub my cheek, just happy that she hasn’t bolted out the door. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Well, you did. For someone who says he’s all linked in to how I’m feeling, you are seriously dense, Ethan.”

  Truer words have rarely been spoken. My eye catches my reflection in the mirror over the desk. The slight, reddened imprint of her palm on my cheek glares at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and I hope she knows I mean it. “I was out of line. I never should have said—”

  “Whatever. I don’t want to argue about it.” She sighs. “And I’m sorry I slapped you.” She doesn’t look entirely sorry, but when I go to her, she stays put and reaches up slowly to press her hand to my cheek.

  Maybe it’s the silence that reminds me. Maybe it’s just the touch of her hand. “Show me what you can do,” I ask her again. “Please, Anne.”

  She pulls her hand away. “I don’t know, Ethan. I mean, look at us. We’re a mess. Plus, I can’t always make it do what I want. What if I can’t—?”

  Gently, I place her hand back on my face. “Show me. Just show me.”

  She hesitates, then closes her eyes. Her face is very close to mine—so close that I can feel her breath against my lips.

  “Hope you’re ready.”

  I press my hand against hers. When the warmth seeps into my palm, I know it’s begun.

  FRIDAY, 12:20 am

  ANNE

  His hand stays on top of mine as I press my palm to his cheek. It’s not much to heal—just the red outline of my hand. I’m embarrassed that I slapped him, that I let myself get out of control. I hate that it’s Ben’s bracelet that’s caused the wound. But as I close my eyes, I see the tiniest of cuts just barely bleeding, right at his chin. My bracelet must have nicked him. So I slide my thumb down to cover that too, feel the slightest slickness against my skin.

  “Don’t move.” I haven’t done this to another person before, just to myself and my cell phone, although this is probably not the time to mention that. In my head, I visualize the slap mark on Ethan’s face, the tiny sliver of a cut. Like a movie on rewind, I imagine the scene in reverse, the slap going back into my hand, the cut moving out and back into the bracelet. I visualize my will acting on what I’ve done: taking back the hurt, reversing the damage. My body hums as it happens, a pulsing buzz that’s exciting and scary at the same time.

  It doesn’t take very long. I open my eyes. Ethan’s hand is still pressed against mine. He’s closed his eyes too, and when he opens them, I look into those two pools of blue. I’m not sure whether it’s good or bad that this makes my stomach flutter. A lot.

  “I think that’s enough. Let’s see.” We remove our hands. I study his face. The red blotch of the slap is gone, the cut healed as though it had never opened. “Look for yourself.” I point to the mirror.

  “Why haven’t you told me about this before now?” He touches his face again like he’s making sure it’s not a trick or something.

  “I haven’t really—well, it’s new. I mean, I don’t think I could do this last fall. I don’t know. Should I have told you? Would it have made a difference?”

  I see him ponder this. “It means something. We need to know what. Anne—we need to know exactly what you can really do.”

  His tone sounds serious, and this makes my stomach flutter some more. “I just showed you.”

  “You showed me a little. I think you can do more than a little.” He steps back from me and then walks to the kitchen counter. He opens a drawer and pulls out a small paring knife.

  “Whoa. What the heck, Ethan?” My heart knocks against my ribs. How well do I really know him? And what exactly does he plan on doing with the knife?

  “I need to know more. I need to see exactly what you’re capable of.” He holds the knife in his right hand, turns his left hand palm side up, and before I can even protest, slices the fleshy part of his thumb. Blood oozes slowly as the wound opens. It’s a deep cut, and the backs of my knees prickle as I look at it.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Show me what you can really do. I don’t heal instantly like I used to. I’m mortal. If I leave this, it will continue to bleed. If I don’t attend to it, it’ll get infected. I don’t have that magic in me anymore. My body won’t take care of this. So show me what you can do.”

  My impulse—part fear, part annoyance—is to resist. “No. What are you going to do, keep cutting yourself over and over to make me do a cool little party trick? And then what? I can do what I can do. I don’t have to keep giving you demos. I called you because things were out of control. I don’t know how this is going to solve anything.”

  Ethan sets the knife on the counter, walks back to me, and holds out his hand. Blood trickles down to his wrist. A couple of drops fall to the floor.

  “Oh, come on, Ethan. Just get a Band-Aid, or a towel, or a—oh, whatever. Here.” It’s just easier to give in and do it before he bleeds to death. “You know this is really gross, right? I mean, I should put on a rubber glove or something. Oh, never mind.”

  I suck in a breath, then wrap my fingers around his thumb, pressing the wound to my palm. Once again, I close my eyes. At first, it’s hard to concentrate. I’m feeling self-conscious and thinking this is ridiculous, and I’m definitely feeling like I’m betraying Ben. It’s not like healing Ethan is some prime act of cheating, but somehow, that’s how it feels. Baba Yaga’s voice is still in the back of my brain, and the image of the rusalka turning into my mother hasn’t quite faded either. Long story short—it’s pretty damn crowded in my head. The fact that Ethan smells really good—sort of clean and musky all at once—isn’t helping.

  This time, I have to concentrate harder. My memory flashes on an image of Ethan standing behind me on Tess’s front lawn in the shadow of a spruce tree—that night, I had asked him to teach me a protection spell. We stretched out our arms together, and it was the first time in all that craziness that I remember thinking that possibly there was some
thing more to how I felt about him. You need to feel the power inside you, he’d told me. You need to imagine what you want it to do.

  I think of this now as I attempt to heal the wound on Ethan’s hand. In my head, I visualize the cut on his thumb, the molecules of blood flowing away, the skin cut open so that it no longer protects the precious parts inside. I’m not a poetic person—I’ve never written Ben a love note or made him a mix CD or baked him homemade fortune cookies with little love messages like Tess did once for Neal. But when I think about this process, this thing I’ve acknowledged and I’m attempting to embrace, that’s sort of what it feels like. Poetry. When I think about what I’m trying to do, the words I hear in my head flow like a poem or a song.

  That’s when I understand part of what I’ve been resisting: when I use this power, I’m not just me. I’m part of something bigger, something that flows back to places I can’t even imagine, people I’ve never met. I don’t know this for sure. Like I’ve said, it’s not like I’ve got an instruction manual or something. Baba Yaga—if my dream visits to her have been real, and I think they probably are—has only hinted at it. But somewhere in my bones, I think it’s true. It’s like when I dreamed as Anastasia—I was more than just me. What she felt and dreamed, I did too. The power that I’m using right now—it feels like that.

  Everything in my head clears out. I feel my body pulsing, power flowing out of me and into Ethan’s hand over and over. It is, I think, almost like sharing the same skin. The rush of it kicks my pulse into high gear. A wave of dizziness and nausea washes over me. I open my eyes to steady myself, and what I see causes me to gasp and Ethan’s eyes to snap open.

  “Ethan?” I tighten my grip on his hand so much that he winces.

  Like they’ve done before, my hands are glowing—blue, then pure white, the color radiating out of them in little bursts. Only this time, the color transfers itself to Ethan. Or maybe it’s coming from him too, and mingling back in me. It’s hard to tell. Blue ribbons of energy swirl around us, and because it looks like the magic Viktor used to hurt Ethan as we barreled along on that speeding El train last fall, my stomach tightens with the memory.

  And then something else happens. I don’t believe it at first. But as my feet lift from the floor and I look up to see the ceiling a lot closer than I’d like it to be, I know it’s real.

  “Um,” I manage, “are we, um, flying?”

  “I’d say hovering.” Ethan reaches out his free hand and pulls me against him. I don’t know what he thinks this will do, but I manage to stop panicking long enough to appreciate the gesture.

  It’s hard to say exactly why my concentration chooses the next moment to fizzle. Most likely, it’s a combination of blue sparks, exhaustion from the whole healing thing, the distraction of being mashed against Ethan’s chest, and possibly also the fact that we’re flying—correction, hovering—four feet or so off the floor. We shudder a little, then slam back down in a rush. Ethan lands first, and I flop on top of him. His head hits the floor with a loud crack. I’m still clutching his thumb.

  “Ow! Shit!” It’s a fairly mild response, and I have to give him props for his restraint.

  “Sorry. That was—well, I don’t know what that was.” I catch my breath and let go of his thumb. We peer at it. The cut is totally healed, the skin completely smooth. “Well, at least that worked.” My head hurts, and not just from the fall. I roll off him and lie back on the floor. I feel drained—like the magic has used me as much as I’ve used it.

  “Sit up. You need to sit up. Your nose is bleeding. Let me get you something.” Ethan hoists himself from the floor, rubbing his head. By the time I sit up, he’s returned with a damp towel. “Here. You need to apply pressure.” He hands me the towel while I collect my thoughts. Towel against my face, I push myself to stand. The dizziness hits again. I make it as far as the couch, then sink into the soft leather.

  “What was that?” I put more pressure on my nose, then remove the towel. It’s red with blood.

  Ethan lowers himself next to me on the couch. He takes the towel from my hand, studies my nose for a second, then presses the towel back in place. “It’s slowing,” he says. “It should stop soon. And I don’t know. We connected somehow. I—I didn’t think I had much power left, but whatever I have, yours drew it from me. Like you were using it for fuel.”

  My response is a little muffled because the bottom of the towel is half over my mouth. “Fuel for what? Lifting us off the floor? That’s just crazy, Ethan. I mean, so is the rest of this. But that’s even crazier.”

  Ethan holds up his thumb, and we peer at it again. “But it worked. I’ll admit it got out of control for a second, but now you know to expect that. And now we know what you can do. I made that cut deep. And it’s totally healed.”

  I push his hand and the towel away and stand up, then flop down again. The dizziness hasn’t gone away. I think about putting my head between my knees, except I’m fairly certain this won’t help the nosebleed. This strikes me as rather ironic—I can heal cuts and make my cell phone work but can’t seem to get my own nose to stop dripping. This makes me simultaneously tired and cranky. For months, I’ve worked very hard to pretend that none of this was still happening. Now, I’m sitting here on Ethan’s couch just attempting not to hyperventilate.

  “Don’t. You need to keep pressure on it.” He presses the towel against my face again, and again I swipe it away.

  “So what now?” I ask him petulantly as I try to ignore another wave of nausea. Whatever this magic is that I can do, my body obviously isn’t a real fan of it. “What am I supposed to do? Hang around hospitals? Apply to medical school? Become an EMT? Seriously, Ethan, what? Go on some talk show and demonstrate my freak-of-the-week abilities? Because you know what? I don’t think this is all of it. The healing thing, I mean.”

  That I blurt this out surprises me—until this second, I hadn’t even realized that’s what I thought. “Do you? Do you really think this is just about healing magic? You know better than that, Ethan. If it was that simple, then why are you back? Why is a crazy Russian mermaid trying to get my attention? Why can’t I stop dreaming about the witch? I thought whatever powers I had were supposed to just allow me to save Anastasia. So now I’m—what? A healer? You know what I think? I think you don’t even know. And I hate that you did this to me. You came and found me, and nothing’s ever been the same. My life was screwed up enough before you got here. But now it’s worse.”

  “Anne,” Ethan begins. But I don’t let him finish.

  “The rusalka told me that Anastasia might not be dead.” My dizziness has eased, but when I say this my stomach flips.

  Any number of emotions cross Ethan’s face. Shock, I think. Sadness mostly. Worry. “You can’t trust what she says. Like Baba Yaga. Not everything is the truth. Not everything is the way it looks.”

  “But what if she’s right? What if it’s still not over? We don’t really know, do we? You just said it yourself. Not everything is the way it looks. So how do we ever know for sure? Maybe it’s all connected. Anastasia. Baba Yaga. The rusalka. If we can’t trust stuff to be true, then how can we ever know if we’re doing the right thing? How can I”—here, I hesitate and then blurt out the rest of it—“trust you? I know you say I can. But how do I really know?”

  The silence between us lasts a long time. Somewhere out on the lake, a few blocks away, a foghorn sounds. A tanker, maybe. Or some fishing boat heading out really early. Is the rusalka out there in the water? Watching some sailor she doesn’t know? Or is she only watching me? I think about that moment at the pond, when she turned and I saw my mother’s face. She’d melded so easily, as if her features were already similar on their own. It has to mean something, but I don’t know what. Can I trust Ethan? I want to. I need to. I just don’t know if I can.

  “I came back because I couldn’t stay away any longer.” Of the things I’m expecting Ethan to say, this is not one of them. He sits very still as he speaks, his gaze still locked on
mine. “Because everywhere I went—Prague, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Paris—I just kept thinking of you. I’m sorry about that. I’m not who you should be with. I thought if I left, it would make things better. But I—”

  In the seconds that follow, I know two things. The first is that he’s going to kiss me. The second is that I’m going to let him. And when his mouth doesn’t find mine quite fast enough, I lift my chin, hoping my nose really has stopped bleeding, and close the distance between us.

  “Anne,” Ethan says against my lips. “We’ll figure this all out. I promise you. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

  I allow him that last part, even though I know it’s just not true. No one—not Ethan, not me, not Baba Yaga herself—can stop someone else from getting hurt. I’m hurting Ben right now by kissing Ethan. Even if he never knows. Even if Ethan and I never kiss again. I’m cheating on Ben, and I’ve been cheating on him in my heart for a while. Ethan is right. Not everything is the way it looks. Especially not me.

  We kiss for a long time. I lean against him and link my arms around his neck and everything in me feels like it’s centering on this one thing—kissing Ethan and letting him kiss me back. His tongue is warm as it explores my mouth. I’m thinking that I could kiss him forever. He pulls me even closer and strokes my hair, and I run my hands under his shirt, all the way up his back to where I know that lion tattoo is etched near his shoulder. His skin is smooth and warm, his hands still tangled in my hair. He kisses my forehead. He kisses my eyelids. I rub my fingers against that spot near his shoulder, imagine the tattoo as my fingers touch it.

  He’s ridiculously good at kissing, which probably shouldn’t surprise me, since he’s had a few years to perfect his moves. Only then I feel Ben’s bracelet slide down my arm, and it occurs to me that I’m actually not able to kiss two guys in one day—correction, two days, since it’s well past midnight—without feeling guilty and sort of scummy. This is not what certain parts of my body are expecting. But my brain chooses this moment to get bossy with the rest of me.