“My curse was laid on a girl named Maeve at the turn of the century,” Jeremy said. “She was a first-generation Irish immigrant, and her family was hungry and sick. One of the Kovrov sons had made it here, too, following the wave of immigrants and building up another little kingdom in the empire. So Maeve made a contract with Ivan Kovrov’s great-grandfather and offered her firstborn son in exchange for her family’s health and safety.
“The contract says son, specifically. I don’t know why, probably the old Kovrov thought boys were more important than girls. But it was lucky for her. She lived, and her parents and brothers, and she had three daughters, Moira, Siobhan, and Edna. We lose the family’s trail there, but we assume they had daughters, and they had daughters. And so, it wasn’t until about seventeen years ago that Maeve’s descendants had their firstborn son.”
“You,” Luke said.
“Me. And I obviously do not remember, but apparently, Ivan was pissed. Because he didn’t want that! What did he need with some stranger’s baby? His wife had already left him, so it was just him and Alexei and Sergei. He tried to cancel it or get out of it but—the curse has consequences. We’ll get to that part.
“Ivan died when I was four and passed the contract to Sergei in his will. I’m bound to him now.” Jeremy lifted his bracelet-laden wrist. “This one?” He grabbed the fine metal chain and wiggled it up to show how it was smaller than his hand, stuck on his arm. “Sergei has the same one.”
Luke took Jeremy’s wrist, hand gripping firm, and pulled his arm over, frowning down at the bracelet. He brought it so close his breath heated the inside of Jeremy’s arm.
Jeremy’s own breath stopped. “What?”
Luke looked at his face again, eyes connecting, and let go. “Sometimes, with magicians, I can feel their vibes. There are two different ones that come off you. I couldn’t figure it out, but it’s that bracelet. It has its own vibe.”
Jeremy scrambled to sit up straighter and move a little bit away from Luke, taking enough space to think more clearly. “Oh.”
“What does it mean?”
Jeremy twisted it around his wrist. “It means I’m a Kovrov. Or belong with them, I guess. And every day at noon and midnight I have to be here, in Sergei’s house.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “‘Have to?’ Or what?”
“Or I come back. Like—pop!—right back here. Once I’m inside I can’t get out. The doors are like walls.” Talking about it made him feel it, the house sealing closed around him. He pushed it away with a big sigh, and it caught all the junk he’d made and floated around the room with a metallic tinkling. Jeremy’s face seared. Alexei said his tricks were a gift, balancing out his curse, but all they ever did was lay his feelings bare.
“So, that’s my story.” He clasped his hands in his lap. “I know it sounds bad. But Sergei is great. The best. I have a great life with him and Marta. He didn’t ask for this, and he has tried everything you can think of to get us out of it, and he doesn’t hurt me. Honestly, I want to live a normal life.”
Luke had his chin in his hand, studying Jeremy’s face like he could see through Jeremy’s skin. “That’s it?”
Jeremy’s heart kicked up, slamming so hard it articulated each up and downbeat: LI-ar, LI-ar. He swallowed and wrapped an arm over his stomach. “Is that not enough?”
“No, I meant—you know, maybe Sergei hasn’t tried everything I can think of.” Luke smiled that loose, charming grin that was not any less effective because Jeremy could tell he did it on purpose. “You are talking to the hoodoo prince of the South Bronx right now. My mama says I’m touched by the hand of heaven.”
Jeremy believed her. “I think everyone’s mom tells them that.”
Luke made his smile wider.
“Let me think about it,” Jeremy said. “Don’t go poking around.”
“What would I poke around in?” Luke’s voice was innocent, but his forehead knitted up and Jeremy could see him plotting.
“Luke! You promised.”
Slowly, Luke nodded. “All right, I promised. Can I ask you a couple questions?”
Jeremy felt floaty around the shoulders, like he might drift up to the ceiling, from talking so much already. But there was still more to share, if Luke was interested. What he thought and how he coped and how he filled his lonely days. “Okay.”
“Why didn’t Ivan leave you to yourself? In his will?”
Oh. Practical questions. “They tried that when I was a toddler. Ivan signed my contract over to me, and I went catatonic. Sergei said it was really scary.” Jeremy fidgeted at his bracelets, picking a loose thread. “It took them a couple of days to undo it, and they thought they weren’t going to get me back.”
Luke gawked, then whistled out slow. “Anything else like that ever happen?”
Jeremy nodded. “They tried all kinds of stuff when I was little. Different ways to burn the contract or break me and Sergei apart, and it—it never worked, and it always hurt.”
Luke didn’t whistle again, but he shook his head. His lips were full and smooth, and Jeremy wanted to touch them even when Luke wasn’t lying in his bed pursing them. Jeremy shut his eyes. “It’s fine. Honestly, it doesn’t do that unless we mess with it. All I have to do is follow the rules.”
“Noon and midnight?”
“Noon and midnight. During those hours I get sad sometimes, but that’s just me.” Jeremy blinked his eyes open—who said that?—and Luke was looking horrified again. “I don’t know why I said that. Ask me something else.”
Luke opened and closed his mouth before he found one: “How old is Sergei? Do the math for me.”
“Sergei is almost thirty-one. He was fourteen when I was born, eighteen when Ivan died. Nineteen when he started dating Marta. They got serious fast.”
“I bet. He found a girl who would look at his face, and he held on, right?”
“Marta picked him! She says it was love at first sight.”
Luke made a wry face, like maybe that was less an endorsement of Sergei than a question about Marta. “Wait. Why Sergei and not Alexei? Sergei was so young.”
Jeremy didn’t say, I don’t think Alexei wanted me. He didn’t remember what Alexei had gotten up to in his wild youth, and it was too much to explain now that he was more settled. Jeremy scratched his arm and thought of something else. “Ivan had a heart attack young. Honestly, I don’t remember him, but I don’t think he spent that much time thinking about anyone’s well-being. It all worked out fine. I love Alexei, but can you imagine living with him?”
Luke didn’t answer. His eyes lost focus, and he flipped over onto his back, bouncing the mattress again. It put more space between his body and Jeremy’s, but he flopped his arms open, and one landed close to Jeremy’s foot. Jeremy stared at the inches between them.
“That’s so much energy,” Luke said. “Where does it all come from?”
“What do you mean?”
“Energy. Magic is about channeling energy, the way we move electricity around through wires and water around through pipes. That’s how my mom explains it. What does Alexei say?”
“Um.” Alexei wasn’t much for how or why, and it had never occurred to Jeremy to ask.
Luke barreled right on. “That would take so much energy. All this stuff you’ve made is practically nuclear. And—you said it moves you? Your whole body, through walls and everything?”
“I guess. It doesn’t feel like moving through walls, more like disappearing and reappearing again.”
“That is messed up,” Luke said. “I don’t know what to say. Is it all right if I say I’m sorry?”
A cold fist closed in Jeremy’s stomach. Sergei always said apologies were meaningless, for weaklings and liars. “No.”
“All right.” Luke stopped talking and took his arm farther away from Jeremy’s leg, tapping his fingers thoughtfully against his other palm.
“It’s a curse,” Jeremy said. “You should know better than anybody. People have to live with stuff. I hav
e to live with this.”
Luke wiped a hand over his face. “Man, no. That’s not what I do at all. And I’ve got to say this for my mom. You should say you’re crossed, not cursed. Curse makes it sound hopeless.”
Jeremy did feel crossed, like someone had taken him apart and put all his pieces back together at wrong angles. He liked Luke’s different words and ways for magic, but it was all too much, too close. “Maybe in hoodoo you get crossed.” He put on his heaviest, fakest Russian accent. “In Mother Russia, curse gets you.”
Luke laughed more graciously than genuinely, but he hadn’t called Jeremy a freak or a princess or drummed up a quick excuse to leave. And even if Jeremy was a liar, he’d also never told anyone so much truth at once. He couldn’t figure out what came next, something secret or vulnerable or even more dangerous.
“I could show you,” Jeremy said. “If you’re interested.”
“Show—?”
Jeremy wanted to curl up like a bug, but he was in now. “The disappearing. It’s almost noon, we could go outside.”
Luke rolled over to make eye contact, so close he dipped the mattress and tilted Jeremy’s body. “You don’t mind?”
Jeremy did mind. Or he should. He would have, under normal circumstances, but what had normal circumstances ever done for him? He rolled away from Luke and onto his feet. “Sure. Let’s go.”
Chapter Fourteen
Luke’s brain skidded all frantic between questions and memories. Jeremy had been so shy as a kid—even now—hanging close to his brothers and too afraid to talk. But he’d been great with the Eyals’ crossed little girl. Days later, Luke finally latched onto what had been so remarkable about that: he hadn’t been afraid to touch her, had gotten right down on her level and hugged her mold-slicked shoulders. Jeremy lived in a horror Luke could barely get his brain around and had every right to be bitter or hateful. But it had made him good.
Something shadowy simmered in Luke’s chest, and he checked himself after every breath to make sure that thing didn’t become anger and point itself at Jeremy. Or at Sergei, who Jeremy checked for, stopping on the stairs, before he slipped them out the door like fugitives.
Jeremy peeked over his shoulder at the house’s windows and pointed down the street. “Let’s go… over here.”
“Is Sergei going to get mad?”
“Oh, well. He’ll be much happier if he doesn’t have to think about whether he’s mad.” Jeremy shot a little smile up at Luke. He had big eyes, a warm, reddish brown, more interesting on the second glance than the first. Luke looked away.
They stopped on the corner where the quiet side street met the busier avenue. Luke waved a hand at the bustle. “Won’t people see?”
“Not really. They won’t notice. You might get a little disoriented, but when you figure it out, come back to the house.”
The not-quite-anger bubbled higher. “All right.”
Luke checked the time on his phone: 11:56. He had time for another question, and an insistent conviction that all he needed was the right one, but he was getting too deep in his feelings to think. Before he could consider the wisdom of it, he asked, “Are you in touch with your birth family?”
Jeremy’s body jumped like he’d been smacked. Lips tight, he shook his head. The no was bigger than the answer—he was rejecting the whole idea of the question. Quickly, Luke said, “So, homeschool, huh?”
Jeremy took a deep breath and nodded. “I went to kindergarten, and I’ve taken classes here and there. I can go to college, too, if I stay in the city, but, uh—” He slid his gaze up to the sky. “Honestly, I’m trying not to think about it yet. I have some time.”
He kept saying honestly, the little liar. So he was talking around some secrets—fine, only it was hard to imagine what was worse than this. Luke nudged his arm. Relax. “My mom would trade us in a minute. They’re all mad because I don’t want to go to college, and they worked hard to save up.”
Jeremy had the piercing look of a little bird, head tilting and elbows jutting out like wings as he put his hands on his hips. “Why don’t you want to go to college?”
“I want to get EMT training, and do that or maybe be a firefighter.” Everyone was always fighting with Luke about this, and it brought out an old defensiveness. “It’s a good job. I think I’d be good at it. If I got a job in the city, I could still do uncrossings for the store.”
“That’s perfect. You would be good at that.” Jeremy’s face went soft with a smile, and all the tension went out of Luke’s body in response. His mind stopped whirring around in the background and stilled in the warmth of having this dream understood.
“The thing is, I wonder, when the paramedics get called, how often is it mojo? Something, like…”
Jeremy’s smile didn’t waver. “Something only you could help with?”
That was just it. Luke’s whole body filled with light, but before he could say anything else, Jeremy’s watch beeped.
“Here we go.” Jeremy reached forward, hesitated for half a second, and took Luke’s hand. Luke started, clenching tighter around his fingers and scanning for some threat. Instinctively, he turned his body to shield Jeremy’s from the street.
Jeremy gave his fingers an encouraging squeeze, though his cheeks went pink. “Just so you get all the evidence.”
“Ah. All right.” Luke took a breath, pushed it out slow. They stood on the sidewalk holding hands, and he kept his eyes on Jeremy, solid and dressed like Play-Doh and apparently about to disappear. Jeremy looked up at the hazy sky, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Nervous?” Luke asked.
Jeremy giggled. “A little. It stings.”
“What?” Luke’s stomach dropped. “Wait, what? It hurts you?”
“Not really. This close to home, it’ll hardly be a pinch.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” Luke took a firmer grip on Jeremy’s hand and started pulling him back to the house. “You don’t have to do this, then.”
“It’s okay—”
“It’s not. You’re not supposed to—to just hurt.” He should know that. Someone should have told him. The anger boiled over, and Luke was yanking hard on Jeremy’s arm before he understood the resistance was Jeremy pulling back.
He was strong for a little guy. “Wait! Hold on, wait.”
Luke stopped and turned.
“I know what I’m doing,” Jeremy said. “I want someone else to—”
Luke stumbled forward. The empty sidewalk pitched like the deck of a ship, and he grabbed the low garden wall to steady himself.
Garden wall?
Where was he?
Luke studied his palms as his memories reassembled. He waved through the air where Jeremy’s torso had been, and his anger erupted, molten and consuming. Maybe it was the magic, disorienting him, or maybe something about watching the laws of physics crack had messed with his head. Whatever it was, Luke marched back to the house in a hot rage at the Kovrovs, at the world, at anything that could trap a child like that and force him to claim that he was fine.
What if the house caught fire? What if he got hurt or sick and had to go to the hospital overnight? What if he wanted to go home with someone? Why wasn’t Jeremy furious? Why weren’t they trying to uncross him right now?
Luke threw open the front door. Jeremy stood in the entryway, his back and a slice of his profile framed in the living room’s light, and physics bent again. This wasn’t just mojo. This was—a small thought, and Luke pushed it away even as it came to him—way out of Luke’s league.
“I had to tell him!” Jeremy was yelling. “He figured it out, but he thought it was something bad—”
Sergei, out of sight in the living room, bellowed so loudly he made Jeremy’s shouts sound like a mouse. “What, it’s not bad enough for you? You think this is a game, kid?”
“It’s my life, and I get to decide—”
“Is that him?” Sergei shoved Jeremy aside as he pushed into the close hall. He was enormous, red-faced,
louder than a train, and the veins in his neck stood out so far, they warped his ink into twisting shadows. “Go away. You hear me? I said get the hell out!”
Luke woke up from Sergei shouting in his dreams, and his phone told him it was midnight.
I get sad sometimes but that’s just me.
He rolled over on his back, memories of the afternoon painting his dark ceiling like a movie scene. His skin itched. He’d wanted to check on Jeremy all afternoon—take a train right back and just look at his face one more time. To make sure Sergei hadn’t hurt him. To make sure they understood that Luke hadn’t meant to hurt him, either.
He thought about Jeremy’s crossing, facts shifting around in his mind, and the look on Jeremy’s face when he said, You would be good at that. Luke’s insides were stretching out of his skin, reaching to explore Jeremy’s story and his lies and—how did he deal? Something metallic crashed on the street.
I get sad sometimes but that’s just me.
Luke picked up his phone.
He put it down again.
He picked up his phone. He wrote a text message:
There were two muffins baking in an oven. One said wow it’s hot in here. The second one said oh my god! A talking muffin!
He sent the message to Jeremy Kovrov.
He put his head under his pillow and held it there in the heat. He didn’t breathe again until the phone buzzed.
Jeremy: Haha
Chapter Fifteen
Six days a week, Jeremy took his anxious heart to Prospect Park and let it be wild. He ran until his lungs squeezed and pushed past that, until they opened up again. He ran through the burning in his legs and brought them all the way to jelly, ran until the sweat fell off his body in clean sheets, ran until his mind spun out as flat and endless as the road.
Or, he ran until 11:30 a.m., when his phone alarm beeped because he needed to head home to make it by noon.
On Wednesday morning, his mind outlasted his heart and lungs and legs, and he staggered into the house on weak quads at 11:54. Sergei stood in the kitchen—he would never have said he was waiting, and Jeremy would never have said he expected that, so he only returned Sergei’s nod and got a glass of water.
The Uncrossing Page 8
