Haunted

by Joy Preble

  “Do you recognize this?” she calls to Viktor. “It’s what you used to kill my Misha. You destroyed everything. You took all I had—even what was yet to be mine.”

  She shoots. The bullet plows into the left side of Viktor’s chest. He staggers. If he screams, I don’t hear it. Clutching his heart, he falls to the ground, then lies very still. Blood oozes out from under his hand. For a long few seconds, everything goes white. No sight. No sound. Just the pounding thought that Lily has taken her vengeance, and I have helped her do so.

  “Is he dead?” Tess screams while Ethan pulls me out of the water.

  Ben’s voice edges on total panic. “She shot him. She shot him. And she still has the gun.”

  Baba Yaga howls in what sounds like true pain. She stands between Lily and Viktor, her head turning toward one and then the other like she’s really not sure which direction she needs to go.

  Lily rocks back and forth, the gun still in her hand. Her eyes close, and she begins to weep. “Can I see her now?” she says to no one in particular. “Have I earned her back? He’s gone. He’s gone.” She continues blindly rocking. Her finger’s still on the trigger. “She wouldn’t help me. Look at me. Look at what I’ve become. I was a mother. And now I am only this.” Eyes still squeezed shut as if in pain, she waves the gun.

  Which is when I realize it’s pointed at me.

  “No,” Ethan says. He’s running before I can even move. Tess screams.

  And Ben—well, Ben’s a lifeguard. Even with everything that’s been happening, Ben is quick. It’s what he’s trained to do: save people. Keep them from dying. He moves with Ethan, both of them blocking me as they run.

  Lily shoots. Does she mean to? I don’t know. She’s not looking at me, so I will always think she didn’t know what she was doing. That it is only what happens, and not what she means, this creature who used to be human—her grief and pain still are.

  I hear a crack as the bullet leaves the gun.

  “Anne!” Is it Ethan’s voice or Ben’s? I’m not sure of that either. I only know that they’re both flying through the air to block me, and that in that last second, as everything shifts into slow motion, Ethan shoves Ben sideways. Ben tumbles into me, and we both hit the ground at the same time as Lily’s bullet drives its way into Ethan’s chest. Blood sprays everywhere—on him, on me, on Ben.

  Ethan crumbles to the ground. “Anne,” he says. He looks at me with those crazy blue eyes, and then his gaze goes blank.

  The gun drops from Lily’s hand. Tess grabs it and throws it into the stream. It floats there for a moment, then sinks quickly to the bottom.

  “Are you hurt? Anne? Anne, are you hurt?” Ben wipes his hand across my face, and when he pulls it back, it’s red with blood. “Let me look. Stay still. I need to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine. I’m okay. Ethan—Ben, I’m not hurt. It’s Ethan. Ben, you have to help him. Ben! Please!” On the ground next to us, Ethan makes a horrible gurgling sound and tries to sit up.

  “Get the horseman to help you,” he says so softly that I can barely hear him. Blood trickles out of his mouth. “He promised me. He…” Ethan’s eyes flutter closed. His chest heaves, and then it’s barely moving.

  “Shit.” Ben presses his hand to Ethan’s chest. “We need a doctor, Anne. I think the bullet went right into his heart.”

  I hear Baba Yaga chuckle, a deep ugly sound. But she isn’t looking at us. She’s looking at Viktor. I watch in horror and amazement as the first bullet rises out of his chest, the blood trickles back inside him, the wound heals over, and he sits up—very much alive.

  He stares at Ethan’s body, then shifts his gaze to me. “Well, well. An interesting turn of events, eh? I see your zalupa has taken a bullet for you. But I do thank you for setting me free, whatever your motivations. Obviously, I’ve had time to learn a trick or two during my captivity. Perhaps I have you to thank for that as well. If you hadn’t rescued my darling stepsister, I wouldn’t have had the chance to play the hero, and I wouldn’t have been able to—well, as you can see, there is more than one way to cheat death, is there not? Fascinating, no? And your darling Ethan? I see he still likes to throw himself to the lions. Couldn’t let your lifeguard take the bullet, now could he?”

  He makes a low clicking sound with his tongue. The horseman in white gallops to us, reaches down his hand, and pulls Viktor up behind him.

  “You can’t!” Baba Yaga stretches out her arms. Lightning sizzles through the air. My brain is thinking, Ethan, Ethan, Ethan. Everything is moving too slow and too fast, and I can’t take it all in.

  “Ah, Yaga.” Viktor smiles. “You forget. You’ve given the girl part of you. Your power is diminished. And she has no idea how to stop me, does she? Secrets within secrets, eh, Yaga? Isn’t that what you’ve whispered to me? Well, I have a few secrets of my own. Did you think I would sit there with you until I was just another rotting piece of flesh?”

  He gives a sharp nod, and the horseman flicks his finger at the stream. The sky tears in two, rips and opens. The horse gallops to the edge, bucks, and Viktor is simply gone.

  My head clears. I push Ben aside, press my hand on Ethan’s chest. I will the bullet to come out like Viktor’s did. For a second, I think I feel it happening. Then, nothing. I try again. And again. But it’s as useless as what happened on the beach. My hands are red with Ethan’s blood. And then I know that I don’t have a choice anymore.

  Somehow, Lily sees into my head.

  “Don’t do it, granddaughter.” She’s in front of me then, her thin fingers gripping my arms.

  “Shut up! Just shut the hell up! Don’t call me that! How dare you even talk to me right now! Look at him! You killed him! He loves me, and you killed him! Isn’t there some part of you that understands that? There has to be, Lily. Some tiny part of you realizes what you just did. You wanted vengeance, so I let you have it. But you took it out on me instead!”

  I turn my back on her and face Baba Yaga. “Is this what you wanted too? Ethan dead? Does this make me worthier now?”

  She shrugs, her expression unreadable. Those black skull eyes dig into mine. “Time will tell, daughter. Time will tell. But let us get to the matter at hand. You want your man alive. And Viktor is not dead. Lily did not get her vengeance. She cannot have what she wants. And I am still not certain what you will do—what you are truly capable of. So it seems that none of us has what we want. Not yet.”

  Stretching out her arm—all parts attached this time—she dips one ancient hand in the stream, cups a small handful of water, and holds it out to me.

  “First, you must drink. Not as much as you will later. But enough to bind you to me. To indebt you. Hurry, now. There is no time. His life force ebbs, and there is no healing in my forest without a price. It is the way it is. Even I cannot break that rule.”

  “Don’t, Anne! You’re crazy. Don’t!” Ben grabs my hands. “He’s dead. He’s got a bullet in him, for God’s sake. What good do you think this is going to do? I don’t care what’s happened, whatever’s gone on between the two of you. I love you, Anne. I’ve told you that. How can you not know how I feel about you? Look around you, Anne. Look where we are. Is this how you want things to end up? Don’t do this.”

  “Stop, Ben,” Tess says. “You’re making it worse.” Tears tumble from her eyes as she kneels down next to Ethan, clasps her hands, and presses them to her lips. Then she turns her head to look at me. “Do what you have to. But be absolutely sure.”

  I’m shaking all over. In the end, it’s always the same for me. I’m never sure, not really. Is that just a character flaw? Or is that the way life is at its truest? We never really know until it’s done. Anastasia believed she was doing the right thing when she listened to Viktor. But her heart told her a lie. Lily believed she had no choice but the river. Now she’s a monster, even to herself. Maybe that’s the secret. We never know. We just leap in and hope for the best. Maybe that’s all we can do.

  Gently, even though there
’s really no time to be gentle, I pull away from Ben, stand in front of Baba Yaga, and open my mouth. She tips her hand. The icy stream water trickles down my throat. Everything inside me trembles. My hands flicker blue, then white. It’s more than I’ve felt by myself before. But still not what I felt when Baba Yaga’s hands pressed against mine on the beach. Perhaps there is hope in that. Maybe I’ve gone only far enough.

  “Okay,” I tell her. “I drank. Now let Ben and Tess go. And save Ethan, if you can.”

  “Perhaps. But first, listen. Viktor is not dead. And yet he came to me as mortal as Ethan. How has this come to be? This is what you must find out. If I give you back your Ethan, this will be part of your price. But there is more.”

  “More? Isn’t that enough?” I glance down at Ethan, pale as death, the blood from his wound pooling around him on the forest floor.

  Baba Yaga laughs. The sound of it—bitter and metallic—hurts my ears. “You gave him his life back once, and he has given you yours. That should be enough for many lifetimes. But still you ask for favors. So let me ask you what I have asked your two friends here. What is it really that you desire? I know what I want—to be what I was, to have no holds over me or my power. It is worth much to me to have this back—worth enough to give a greedy girl like you what she thinks she wants. So tell me what it is.”

  And there it is—the basic problem. What do I want? Ethan? Ben? Or something else entirely?

  The answer comes as I catch a glimpse of my mother, still alone on the beach. Maybe Ben’s response wasn’t so wrong, after all. Maybe it’s just because I’m still only seventeen, and I want a summer before senior year, and I want to go to homecoming and prom, and I want to take my SAT again so maybe this time I’ll get a decent score. I want to lay out at the beach and buy a new lip gloss at Sephora. I want to dance at Miss Amy’s a few more times, and yes, I’d like to play Clara in the Nutcracker rather than my usual role as one of the sugarplum fairies. I want to lace up my pointe shoes and work my toes ragged performing. I haven’t danced—not really—in months. I want to eat my weight in pizza and kiss someone I love on a blanket listening to music at Ravinia.

  More than all that, I just want to go home. I want to hug my mother. We can’t go on any longer, she and I, with all these secrets between us. I want her to know who she is—even if it means convincing her that, yes, her birth mother really is a very crazy Russian mermaid. If I’m becoming something else because of this bargain I’ve just made with Baba Yaga, I want to remind myself of what I’m giving up. So much gets taken from us in the blink of an eye. If I have time to know what I might lose, then at least I can say I know the worth of what I’ve lost. And in the deepest corner of my heart, I think something that I don’t even dare say aloud. If taking what Baba Yaga offers means that somehow I can heal my family’s hearts over my brother’s death, then maybe that’s what I should do.

  Thinking it surprises me, because until this moment, I’ve thought this was all about a different kind of love. Not that it isn’t. I’m not ready to give up what I’ve felt with Ethan. I want that kind of love so much that it hurts. I’m filled with wanting, actually. But there’s more to this story, and I guess what I desire most of all is to be able to understand what it is. All the freaky weirdness and magic and witches and mermaids and immortal Russian hotties aside, I want time to figure out how we choose who we are. How we become what we’re destined to be. Moments like these that change everything—can they be undone? And I think if I understand that, I’ll know how to solve the riddle that is Viktor. I’ll have what it takes to help Lily—help her without hurting the rest of us. I’ll find my heart’s true north, and I’ll face the witch on equal terms. If I’m destined to return to this forest, then I need to leave it first.

  These are the thoughts that race through my mind.

  “Ah, girl,” Baba Yaga says “Oh, how you surprise me. And here I thought that we were done for today. It seems we are not.” She places her palm on my forehead. The heat of it spreads through my body like fire.

  “Kiss him,” she directs me. “We could do it another way, but I do like a classic tale. So kiss him before I change my mind.”

  So I do. I kneel next to Ethan. Tess is still there, but Ben stands apart, looking scared and miserable, and I hate that this next journey has begun by hurting him. But I do what I have to do.

  I press my lips to Ethan’s, relieved that his are still warm. Then I place my hand over his heart. This time, the bullet comes out in my hand. The hole in his chest closes. His skin warms against my palm. Color floods back into his cheeks and lips.

  He sits up. Smiles.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Time works differently here,” Baba Yaga comments oddly. “And so it will for you. An extension of my forest, if you will. You have chosen your journey well. The past, the present, the future—all mingle to solve what needs solving. Your path will wind through them all. But that is yet to come. You have promised me, girl. You are bound. Stories within stories. Secrets within secrets. You will open them all—bring all to light. This is the price you have set. This is the price you will pay. So I will it. So let it be.”

  ***

  We stand in front of the destroyed Jewel Box—my mother, Tess, Ben, Ethan, and me. There’s no trace of Mrs. Benson. Or of Lily. Nothing is certain except for one thing: we’re all alive.

  “You know it’s not over,” Ethan says. “She won’t let you go until you do what you’ve offered.”

  I nod. I know.

  But I also know the people I care about most have gotten another chance. We’ve made it out of the forest yet another time.

  Forward and backward and all in between. Baba Yaga’s voice echoes in the now clear blue sky above us. I’m not sure exactly what she means, but I know I’ll find out soon enough.

  For now, it’s enough to be home.

  A FEW WEEKS LATER

  ANNE

  Show me again,” my mother says. “Go on.”

  I frown at her. “This is seriously so weird, Mom.”

  “Please? Pretty please?” She grins at me, and I give in because it��s good to see her smile.

  I raise one hand in the air, point a finger at the first leaf on the lowest branch on the elm tree in our backyard. I feel the now familiar buzz in my fingertip as the leaf pulls silently from the branch and flutters gracefully to the ground.

  “You did that? Really?”

  “Well, yeah,” I tell her. “You just asked me to, remember?”

  “It was more of a rhetorical question, Anne. It’s just that it’s so—”

  “I told you. It’s weird. Both that I can do this stuff and that you seem okay with it.”

  My mother shrugs. She tips her head back so the sun is shining on her face. “Better to know than how it was,” she says quietly. “Not easier. But better.”

  We’re sitting in the grass in our yard, playing with my magic. We both know it’s not a game, not something to take lightly. But we haven’t shared much in a long, long time, so this is a place to start.

  There’s a scraggly looking tomato plant drooping in the tiny garden plot Dad’s attempted this year. The ones around it are lush with little cherry tomatoes, but this one just hasn’t taken hold. I took a leaf from a tree in full bloom. Now the tomato plant will compensate, I decide.

  “Watch,” I tell Mom. This time I don’t even hold out my hands. I just tilt my head and focus on the sad tomato plant. The magic bubbles and pulses inside me. “Poor little guy,” I say. “Let’s show your buddies what you really look like.”

  The plant bends to my will. Its stem grows thicker, sturdier. The leaves turn green and full. Tiny tomatoes sprout with abandon. Beautiful.

  I stand up, walk to the plant, pluck two tomatoes. I feel the weight of them in my hand. I pop one in my mouth and hand the other to Mom, who does the same. It’s juicy and sweet as candy. We sit in silence, chewing meditatively, letting the sun shine some more on our faces.

  I’ve told my mother
a lot of things since I came back from Baba Yaga’s forest. The truth hasn’t been easy, but like she’s just said, it’s better than the lies. At least, mostly. That neither of us has yet to tell any of these truths to my father sits heavily on us. But my mother and I are talking again. Really talking.

  She knows about Viktor now, and about our line of descent that leads back to the Romanovs. About Baba Yaga and her forest, and Ethan and the Brotherhood. About her birth mother, Lily, who became something horrible to save her child. That part has been the hardest for Mom—knowing that Lily is still out there, still a rusalka, still grieving. My mother had wished for so long to know the truth, but the truth about Lily isn’t easy on any level. We’ve talked about it some, just as we’ve talked about Anastasia now, and about the magic that’s taken hold inside me. Baba Yaga’s magic. My magic. Ethan’s magic. I’m a pretty powerful girl these days. This too isn’t easy. I guess I didn’t expect it to be.

  I don’t know what’s coming next, or when it will start. Soon, I think. The magic pulsing in my veins seems stronger lately, like it’s readying itself for something big. This doesn’t surprise me. I made my bargain with Baba Yaga. Viktor is roaming free somewhere. Lily’s still a mermaid. The journey is far from over.

  Behind us, the back gate creaks open. I turn. Ethan steps into the yard, looking ridiculously handsome in dark-wash jeans and a plain navy T-shirt. He smiles at us. I smile back, pushing away the darker thought that I wouldn’t be sitting here bonding with Mom and he wouldn’t be standing there smiling if we both hadn’t saved each other’s lives in the forest. Today, I don’t feel like thinking about that. Today, I’d like to be just Anne.

  “Hey, Ethan,” my mother greets him. “Come join us. We’re doing a little gardening.”

  She shrugs her shoulders when I laugh. “I’m allowed a sense of humor, aren’t I?”

  “Well, yeah. But it freaks me out a little, okay?”