The Uncrossing

by Melissa Eastlake

  Jeremy hauled himself up the three flights of stairs with his arms and the railings. He opened his bedroom door into a blind wall of panic—there was someone in his room—until Natalya locked eyes with him. The fear bled off like water as he clapped a hand over his chest. Natalya worked with Sergei nearly every day, making rounds of Kovrov associates, and it wasn’t unusual for her to hang around the house. It was, though, weird to find her in his room. “Natalya! You scared me.”

  “Sorry, J. I wanted to say hi.” Natalya flipped her hair over one shoulder and plopped onto Jeremy’s bed. “See how Operation: Seduction is going.”

  Wouldn’t he like to know? Maybe she should ask Luke, and tell Jeremy what he said. It had felt so close to real, reaching for Luke’s hand. But Luke was always polite and conscientious, unless he was mad. Jeremy had little experience with the line where good manners crossed over into friendship, and couldn’t tell if they were there.

  He only rolled his eyes. “Katya said you all need to get a life.”

  “I know, we’re so nosy.” Natalya pouted. “But we care about you! We want to see you happy. You’re so sweet to indulge us.”

  A complicated feeling, affectionate and guilty, tugged behind Jeremy’s navel and pulled him across the room to her. She cared about him. He should indulge her. He pushed his sweaty hair back, sat on one of the windowsills, and confessed, heart thrilling. “Luke’s been texting me.”

  Natalya leaned forward, elbow on her knee and chin on her fist. “What does he say?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “Jokes and stuff.”

  “That is promising. So now it’s your move.”

  “Alexei said I should play it cool.”

  “I have to tell you a secret.” Natalya leaned closer, and Jeremy found himself tilting in, too. “You are cooler than Alexei thinks you are. You’re like your brothers—you think you’re these tormented romantics, and everyone can tell, but all anyone can see is that you’re glaring at them.”

  It didn’t make sense that he was like his brothers when they were so different, but—well, it wasn’t often that anyone called Jeremy cool. “He has a boyfriend.”

  Natalya snorted. “He has a problem that someone needs to solve.”

  Jeremy didn’t answer that. He wanted to believe Luke was available way, way too much to think about it objectively, and he didn’t know the rules well enough to break them.

  “Help him understand there are possibilities.” Natalya said possibilities like it meant something dirty. “I’m not saying pin him to the wall. I’m saying, flirt a little. You know.”

  Jeremy shook his head.

  “You know.” She put her hand on Jeremy’s forearm. Her fingers were cold on his hot, sweaty skin—why was he sitting here? “Touch him a little bit when you talk.” She looked down and back up. “Give him the eyes.”

  Jeremy pulled his arm away and gave her his most skeptical frown.

  “No, you can do it,” Natalya said. “Look at the floor.”

  Jeremy looked at the floor.

  “Now look at me.”

  He looked up.

  “Don’t smirk like that. And put your chin down more so your eyes get big. Here.”

  It was easier to give her what she wanted than protest. He let her push his chin back and practiced looking down and up again, which seemed more like a great plan for running into something than for getting a boy to fall in love with him.

  Natalya left when Sergei hollered for her. Once Jeremy was alone and the attic room settled around him, he had only a second to think that was so weird before his phone beeped against his arm.

  Jeremy glanced at one of his clocks (12:14) and wiggled his phone free of his armband. Luke had written: Camille got mad at Dad for buying the wrong kind of bacon and he’s yelling in Ukrainian

  A second text came while Jeremy watched: No one else speaks Ukrainian

  Jeremy dropped face-down on his bed and screamed into the mattress. It took him a few minutes to think of what to write back. He went with: Yikes be careful! and waited, chilly with sweat.

  Nice she’s in trouble not me for once, Luke said.

  It was hard to imagine Luke in trouble. For what? There was a joke there, something about bad boys, but Jeremy couldn’t put it together. Another text came through: Update she jinxed him and his shirt caught on fire, if I’m not here when you come over tomorrow it’s because I’m still hiding in my room

  Heart in the palms of his hands, Jeremy wrote back, OK if that happens, I’ll come save you.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The job: cleanse Alexei’s apartment. No questions, no blood. Yuri hadn’t said anything about no fool texts, though, had he?

  The Flying Spur pulled up in front of Helene’s Thrift and Sundry promptly at three the next afternoon, its stubborn snout gleaming above the dirty sidewalk. The horn honked, but Luke was already waiting.

  Katya was a tiny woman in a neat uniform who still looked like a video game assassin, watchful and wiry, ready to fly off the ground in a bolley kick. When she opened the door for him, Luke stammered his thanks and hesitated on the sidewalk.

  “Get in.” She was so abrupt he could only obey.

  Luke expected Alexei or maybe no one to be waiting in the back seat, but it was Jeremy again. He smiled an open, luminous smile Luke had never seen from him or imagined from anyone named Kovrov, and said, “Hi, Luke.”

  It was a tough call whether the smile was because of Luke’s texting fixation, or if his attention was consumed as entirely as Luke’s was by his cap.

  Jeremy wore a New York Mets snapback the exact shade of a green highlighter backward on his head, hair sticking out underneath. As the car pulled into the street, Luke shook his head showily. “Kovrov, bad news. I think you’re growing a brain tumor.”

  Katya snorted extravagantly. Jeremy laughed, pulling his hands together at his chest. “I love this hat. I’m never taking it off.” It must have been new—a silver sticker shone on the bill.

  “And the Mets? Not the Yankees?” Luke clucked his tongue.

  Jeremy reached back to touch the decal, fingers playing over the stitching. “Oh. I don’t care about sports, to be honest. This was the only one in the color I wanted.”

  “God. I bet it was.”

  Jeremy laughed again.

  “For real, I don’t care about the Yankees, either,” Luke admitted. “But I have to say it, for the Bronx.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Jeremy looked out the window and touched the Mets decal again with tripping fingers. “What are sports in Brooklyn?”

  “What. Are. Sports,” Katya repeated. “Honestly, J.”

  Jeremy laughed, whining, “You know what I mean,” and since he seemed happy to laugh at himself, Luke joined, too.

  “Oh! The Nets.” Jeremy flipped the hat around so the offending snaps pointed directly at Luke. “I bet I could get a Nets hat.”

  Luke sucked his teeth. “Now that, I can’t look at. It’s got to be the Knicks.”

  “You should tell Alexei that,” Katya said. “He’s always trying to get rid of Knicks tickets.”

  “Knicks is cool. I could do that.” Jeremy smiled again, right at Luke. He was flushed with laughter, very pink under his green hat, and kept biting at his lips but couldn’t take his smile down.

  Luke looked away, heart thudding hot. What a bad idea. A Kovrov. You might as well decide one of the half-mortal sons of Olympus was kind of cute.

  The thought tugged at Luke. Because, actually—it was like one of those demigods was interested in you. Luke counted trusses on the bridge and tried to clamp a no down over all the yes rising in his chest.

  “Listen,” Jeremy said. “Have you ever worn a lime-green hat? I bet you haven’t.”

  “I sure have not,” Luke said to Manhattan, rising outside his window. He sounded short, meaner than he meant to be, as he tried to get ahold of himself.

  “I can’t tell you how happy it will make you in your heart. You want to try it on?”

  “No. No
way.”

  “Here, you have to try it,” Jeremy said, and the hat started flapping around Luke’s head. Luke squawked obligingly and wrestled him off—Jeremy’s wrist in his hand, Jeremy’s breathless laugh close to his face.

  Katya waved a hand behind her seat. “Stop roughhousing in Alexei’s car.”

  Jeremy flopped back, sighing, and settled the hat on his head so the brim cocked off at an angle. “Your loss.”

  Katya dropped them on the curb in front of Alexei’s building. Alexei lived hard, or at least everything Luke had ever read about him suggested he did, and he was still young and so rich. Luke expected him to live somewhere that felt like his Bentley, luxurious and sleek. The red brick and glass building and the quiet block looked more like a horse-drawn carriage scene.

  Eyes landed on the car with admiration and on him, as he climbed out, with expressions of surprise and confusion and something like horror. He felt hulking and shabby. An older woman’s face turned ghastly as Jeremy popped out of his seat, twisting his cap sideways again, and maybe Luke didn’t hate it so much, after all.

  Jeremy ran up and threw his arms around the doorman’s neck. “Luke, this is Eddie. Eddie, how are you?”

  “I’m excellent, Jeremy, how are you?”

  “Terrible. No one likes my hat.”

  Eddie chuckled and didn’t say a word about Jeremy’s hat, opening the door for them and hitting all the buttons in the elevator, too. Alexei’s apartment was one huge room, a spiral staircase at the far end. A wall of windows showed neighboring high-rises and a peek of the East River. It wasn’t carefully decorated the way Sergei’s house was—the art on the walls didn’t follow a pattern, and the gray L-shaped couch looked lavishly comfortable but not luxe. There was a sweatshirt draped over its back and a stack of dishes next to the sink. Alexei’s bed, set into a nook but unhidden by any doors, was unmade, a nest of dark sheets.

  “Has the witch doctor arrived?” Alexei trotted down the stairs. “And the young prince! Saints preserve us.”

  He had seen the hat.

  Alexei wore sweatpants and a T-shirt. He stepped barefoot on a skateboard at the base of the stairs and rolled, wobbling, toward them. Luke tried to remember if he’d ever seen Alexei out of one of his suits before. He looked ten years younger, at least, and his face was less pretty, more chiseled and square.

  Luke was coping with the idea that Jeremy was a real, regular person under all the money and power, but he would not—could not—entertain the same possibility about Alexei Kovrov.

  Alexei hopped off the skateboard and pushed it noisily away, clasping Luke’s neck and kissing his cheeks. “Cleansing! How thrilling. Someone has been doing wicked magic in my apartment.”

  “Someone?”

  “Well, me,” Alexei said. “How does this work? Should we be quiet? Do you need anything?”

  “No, sir. You can do whatever you want, I don’t mind.” Luke walked to the center of the western wall and started a slow perimeter of the room, dusting lavender salt.

  “Now,” Alexei said to Jeremy. “What are we going to do with you?”

  Jeremy yelped, and Luke checked over his shoulder. Alexei brushed his long hair back and pulled the green cap onto his head, snaps front. “Do I look like the Fresh Prince now?”

  “No one knows what that means,” Jeremy said.

  Luke, who couldn’t imagine anyone who didn’t know what that meant, gaped, and Alexei winked.

  Jeremy leaped up for his cap, but Alexei had several inches of height on him and held him back with a hand at his chest. “Gimme that back!” Jeremy shouted.

  “Ah, our young prince. Who taught you manners?” With a quick flip, he got Jeremy into a firm headlock, standing placidly as Jeremy squirmed and battered him with useless fists. He grinned at Luke, as if they were in this together—haha, stolen children. He could have been any other big brother, though, and Jeremy was laughing as he howled.

  Luke felt a weird, staticky vibe. It wasn’t the place, but he scattered some salt anyway. The next time he looked over, Alexei licked a finger with a flourish and stuck it in Jeremy’s ear.

  “Mercy!” Jeremy cried. “You win!”

  “Mercy denied.” Alexei licked a clean finger and stuck it in Jeremy’s other ear.

  “No!” Jeremy wailed. “Stop stop stop!”

  Alexei let go, folding his hands neatly behind his back. “Deal. If you make coffee, you can have your hat back.”

  “You’re holding it hostage?” Jeremy asked, already walking toward the kitchen, carved out of the room by an island counter.

  “Hostage-taking is a valuable tool and a fine tradition.” Alexei sat on the couch and turned on the TV. “I personally have been taken hostage three times. The night I spent as Linh Zhang’s prisoner remains one of my fondest memories.”

  “Oh, whatever,” Jeremy said.

  Luke took a break from sorting the stale, twisting vibes in the room from the now-familiar Kovrov static coming off Alexei, and watched Jeremy make the coffee.

  It didn’t have to mean anything if he just looked.

  Jeremy’s fingers skimmed over the buttons of Alexei’s coffee machine, and a little sneer curled his upper lip as he parsed their meanings. He tilted his head, and his hair fell against his cheek, which made Luke’s palms itch.

  Luke moved on, salting evenly along the windows. He needed to bring some focus to this ritual if it was going to work, and perving on Jeremy and thinking about Alexei’s creepiness were not helping. Instead of responsibly starting over, he finished his lap through the large room, fast between Alexei and the TV and even faster past the bed.

  Jeremy stood at the counter while the coffee dripped, drumming his fingers on the countertop and wiggling unself-consciously to a song in his head. It wasn’t the rhythm of Alexei’s cable news, at least. Luke claimed a stool at the kitchen island and started setting up: His mother’s porcelain dish. Incense, herbs. Candle. Lighter. Flame.

  Jeremy’s phone beeped, and he reached into the back pocket of his cargo shorts for it. Luke wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring exactly there.

  What was he conjuring into Alexei’s apartment? Well. More shocking things had happened in this apartment than Luke’s stares.

  “Alexei, Sergei wants to know if you want to get dinner,” Jeremy said.

  “Fine,” Alexei replied. “When and where?”

  Jeremy texted, chatting with Alexei and pouring coffee. The incense filtered into Luke’s head, and he was suffering for his shoddy focus now, thoughts spinning. Focus. Cleansing.

  His head hurt, a spear like a brain freeze. There was too much smoke. The light burned.

  He shut his eyes. Blood. He saw blood, gold hair, a blue eye. A blue room. A kiss.

  Jeremy was in pain, hot in Luke’s arms. His breath rattled in his chest. That was Jeremy, true as a memory.

  Luke

  Jeremy. A kiss. Falling.

  “Luke!” A short, sharp blow popped on Luke’s cheek, and he opened his eyes to Jeremy’s face. He was upside down—or Luke was upside down—the room spun around him, stealing gravity.

  “Are you real?” Luke asked. Jeremy’s eyes bugged out. But of course he was—he had the cap back and was wearing it sideways, and only real life was ever that gruesome. The room stopped spinning, and Luke was on his back on the floor, a sharp ache in his left shoulder. He was ferociously thirsty.

  “I’m real,” Jeremy said. “You’re back. What do you need?”

  Luke swallowed. “Water?”

  Jeremy went to get it while Alexei lifted Luke by the elbows and helped him to the couch.

  “Alexei! What have you been doing?” Jeremy demanded.

  “A little light scrying, maybe.” Alexei eyed Luke suspiciously.

  “Being a creep.” Jeremy put the water in Luke’s hand and guided it to his mouth. “Anything else? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Luke closed his eyes and had to drag them open again, wrung out like a rag. “Coffee?”

&nb
sp; Jeremy squeezed his shoulder before popping away.

  “I saw something,” Luke said. “Like—eyes?” Jeremy. And someone else.

  He wasn’t making sense, but Alexei lifted his head, alert. “Like a vision?”

  Luke nodded. “Is that normal?”

  “Normal?” Alexei repeated, sounding out the word. “It’s not totally unprecedented. That is how I take others through the bindings. Although usually I can control—” He stopped, brow furrowing. “I’ll be right back. Get me if he looks worse.”

  He left up the stairs, and Jeremy returned with Luke’s coffee. There was a lot of sugar in it, more than Luke liked, but it helped to buoy him.

  Jeremy’s face was open and ragged, earnest under his neon cap. “That was scary. What was that?”

  Luke shook his head. “I have no idea. Will you…” The room rocked again, swimming with Luke’s vertigo. He’d only lost a moment, but it had left him sore and sick. He grabbed Jeremy’s hand. Jeremy’s mouth fell open but he didn’t pull away. “Anchoring,” Luke said, which may have been true. A fancy, magic-sounding word to ask for the comfort of a touch.

  “Okay,” Jeremy said.

  Luke had seen a kiss, felt it. Jeremy. He was sure. The rest he couldn’t place—a stranger’s eyes and hair. It slipped away as he grasped for it, like a dream.

  Jeremy frowned at their clasped hands. “I’m all right now,” Luke said, but neither of them let go.

  Jeremy turned Luke’s hand over and touched the back, fingertips light. “I didn’t know the cleansing would do that to you. I wouldn’t have said you should do it.”

  “It doesn’t. Not a simple cleansing. I think that was something else.” I think it was you. He’d seen Jeremy hurting, and the right thing to do was probably to warn him. But then what? I was holding you. I saw a kiss. That wire was too fine to walk.

  With his free hand, Jeremy reached forward and touched the iron pendant at Luke’s neck. “Is this supposed to protect you?”

  Luke shrugged. “I don’t think it’s real mojo. It’s a family thing. It was my grandfather’s and then my mom’s.”