The Uncrossing

by Melissa Eastlake

  He didn’t sound surprised. He wasn’t making eye contact, sliding his gaze around the room. His hands stretched open, fingers wide, palms tapping his own hips, and he turned shoulders-first to Luke. “You want to come upstairs and hang out for a while?”

  “Sure,” Luke said, mild as melting butter. “What would we find to do?”

  Jeremy blushed heroically, but he drummed up a brave, “Keep making fun of me and you’ll see.”

  With Luke following, Jeremy nearly jogged around the landing and up past the first floor. “Melnyk!” Sergei barked.

  Luke stopped, turning slowly.

  “All done?” Sergei asked.

  “Everything but the black jars.”

  Sergei nodded once and raised his voice. “Kid, you got it?”

  “Later!” Jeremy called, already gone.

  Sergei drummed his fingers against his chest, and Luke could have sworn it was to show off the KOV tattooed on his knuckles. The silver bracelet gleamed on his other wrist.

  “Go ahead, then.” Sergei kept watching as Luke walked away.

  Jeremy was right out of sight in the upstairs hallway. He clenched his fists and shadowboxed the air—Kovrov, he mouthed, right and left fist on each syllable. “Sergei is…” He shrugged and continued up the stairs.

  The glittering chaos of Jeremy’s room was a different world. It seemed like he’d cleaned up, in that most of the clothes on the floor were in one pile and there were no dishes.

  “Did you really get yelled at because of me?” Jeremy asked.

  “A little. Well, and then Camille yelled at me.” Luke kept stepping, and Jeremy kept moving, like they were playing basketball and Jeremy was trying to box him out. He stopped and relaxed. Giving Jeremy some space, he wandered toward the shelves.

  “Camille? You are in trouble.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t say it was because of you. More about me, or our families. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  Jeremy had stopped moving, too, a pale smear in Luke’s peripheral vision, but Luke looked at the wall instead of turning his head. An iridescent crystal cricket perched on a stack of hardback books: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, David Copperfield.

  “What happens next?” Jeremy said.

  Luke turned. Jeremy leaned into the window seat, but he wasn’t quite still—he kept lifting with his chest, like each breath filled him with fizzing soda bubbles. He looked like a person who was about to get his first kiss.

  “Are you sure you want this?” Luke asked. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then all you have to do is keep looking so cute,” Luke said, which was a dumb line and would have made Max or anybody scoff at him, but made Jeremy smile and look at him, finally. He was two steps away, so Luke closed the distance easily and took his jaw to tilt his face up. Jeremy shut his eyes like he was bracing for a crash. Luke waited, giving Jeremy the time to relax or say stop and himself that second to linger, to look. This was his favorite part, the moment right before the kiss.

  He fit his lips over Jeremy’s as lightly as he could, and pressed forward once, twice, Jeremy’s lips going softer each time. He nudged Jeremy’s lower lip down with his own, easing his mouth open. Jeremy followed, but his fists clenched tight against Luke’s chest, so tense he nearly vibrated. Luke pulled back, running his fingers between Jeremy’s shoulder blades. “You’re all right,” he said quietly. “I’ve got you.”

  One second stretched to two—Jeremy’s breath shuddered warm over Luke’s neck—and his body let go all at once. He put his hands on Luke’s face and jumped forward, lips already parting for another kiss.

  That was the sign Luke needed. He shaped Jeremy’s back with his hands, and Jeremy’s body tilted in like he was sure. When Luke slid a hand up Jeremy’s spine to cup and move his head, Jeremy made a surprised sound and a soft one.

  When Luke closed his eyes, it was all sharper, more real. He could have gone anywhere, but he only wanted to be here. It was all right if this was Jeremy’s first kiss, because Luke was pretty sure he was making it phenomenal for him.

  He kissed himself dizzy, and it still wasn’t enough. He let his nose slide along Jeremy’s cheekbone and slipped a peck against his hair before he made himself lift away. When he opened his eyes, Jeremy was looking at his own hands on Luke’s chest, face dazed, with a faint concentration line between his eyebrows. Jeremy closed his lower lip into his teeth, and Luke used his thumb to pull it free.

  Jeremy blinked up, like coming awake.

  “You good?” Luke asked.

  “Yeah. I’m okay.” He slid one hand behind Luke’s neck, sending an incandescent tremor down his arms, and pulled him back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It ruined the drama to have to wait until one a.m. to storm out of the house, but Jeremy was committed. He waited at the front door for the clock and the car, staring at the blue paint instead of making eye contact with anyone. Sergei stomped off to bed. Marta spent a few minutes running between them, wheedling and pleading, but when Vanya crept to the top of the stairs to ask what was wrong, she left with him.

  The house breathed. Without Sergei there to piss him off, Jeremy slipped from anger to ache. He traced the seams in the door, the smoothness of unbroken wood under his fingers. He touched the doorknob and, dreamlike, it melted in his hand. He laid his forehead against the door, but even that was too close—it burned, hurting until he stepped back. A stone formed in his throat, but this was the only thing he could control, and he refused to cry.

  The clock in the hall ticked over to one. The driver texted his arrival. There was no one awake to see Jeremy’s exit, but he flounced anyway.

  He sat in the back seat of a stranger’s car with his head vibrating against the window. The traffic was clear, and Manhattan flew past, flashing lights reaching toward the sky. Out of the house, out in the big bright-dark night, the hurt lifted. He was tired but not sleepy, fizzing with a hundred different feelings that didn’t know how to sit together. His insides were too big for his body.

  Jeremy didn’t know the night doorman as well as Eddie, but he’d called Alexei and Alexei must have called down. The man said, “Good evening, Mr. Kovrov,” before Jeremy could speak. All he had to do was smile and nod.

  Alexei wasn’t asleep, either. All the lights were on, and the TV, and he was still wearing gray suit trousers and a black dress shirt. A squat glass of something amber sat on the kitchen island. “Are you okay?” Jeremy asked.

  “Am I okay? I’m not the one running across town in the middle of the night.” Alexei grabbed his drink, and Jeremy followed him to the couch.

  “Sergei yelled at me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Jeremy tapped his hand on his leg. “Luke kissed me.”

  Alexei took a sip, eyes evaluating Jeremy over his glass: the pile of bracelets on his arm, the silver one that waited there. By the time he lowered the glass, his face was polished like a new shoe. “How was it? Good?”

  Jeremy nodded. His lips felt bare and tingly—he tamped down an urge to touch them. “He checked if I was okay a bunch of times. He would have stopped if I didn’t like it.”

  “As he should.”

  “I know. I just meant…it was really nice.”

  Alexei smiled. “Good. Good. Am I forgiven my meddling, your highness?”

  “Maybe.” Now that he had a sympathetic ear, Jeremy wanted to protect the details for himself. How easy it had been, how his body melted and his thoughts blurred, how Luke always smelled like church and magic. How Luke had pulled himself away like it was work, gotten halfway to the door, and turned around to come back, laughing as he took Jeremy’s face in his hands again. Jeremy had thought, This is it, this is what the stories are about.

  It hadn’t made magic, but it had been as perfect as any movie scene. Jeremy said none of that, and instead asked, “Is it different, kissing boys and girls?”

  Alexei squinted into his glass. “It’s different
with everyone, if you pay attention. But I’m an old man now. They all blend together.” He knocked back his drink and stood. “Pip-pip. Off to bed.”

  Hours later, Jeremy woke in a too-big quiet, newly emptied of sound. A shadow twisted in the hall outside the guest room. “Alexei?”

  The shadows and silence resolved into Alexei, peering around the door. “Go back to sleep.”

  “What’s the matter?” A reedy note of anxiety sliced Jeremy’s bleariness.

  “Nothing, nothing.” Alexei stepped into the room. “I was just checking on you. Everything’s fine.”

  Alexei tugged at the corners of Jeremy’s bed, hovering, as if that was supposed to help him drift off. “Sit down,” Jeremy said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Alexei was good at this move, turning over card after card until suddenly you were demanding that he do whatever he already wanted to do. He sat down on the side of the bed. “If I asked you to be careful, would you listen?”

  Jeremy yawned. “I’m always careful.”

  “More careful. Run-on-a-treadmill careful?”

  Jeremy searched for Alexei’s eyes in the blue shadows. “I have to leave the house sometimes. What’s happening?”

  Alexei rubbed his face, like Jeremy was making him sleepy. “I had a little nightmare about you.”

  Jeremy waited. “That’s all?”

  “Nightmare?” Alexei repeated, like he was asking. “Maybe just a nightmare?”

  Jeremy shut his eyes and sleep snatched at him. “What was it about?”

  Alexei didn’t answer.

  Jeremy tried again. “What does Corey Malcolm have against me?”

  Alexei sighed heavily. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, what does he have against Sergei? Or you?”

  “It’s me,” Alexei said. “You remember our fathers fought, his and mine?”

  “Jersey.”

  “Yes, for Jersey. I was too young to be involved then, but it was Corey’s first big foray into leadership. And a successful one. We’d give them a good fight today, if we had to, but we were no match for them then. Papa was too angry to be smart, Sergei and I were still kids, guys were quitting or defecting every day. Corey was ready to take over New York, or the world. Malcolm guys were after us all the time. Sergei got roughed up after school one day when he was, what, twelve?”

  Jeremy’s heart twisted. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Mmm. A bunch of monsters. And Corey and I fought over a girl. It was very personal, another big mess. He won that, too. But that was the last big battle. Malcolm went after the Zhangs, and they allied with the Damianis to push him back, if you can believe that. The whole thing was over before you were even born. I can’t understand why he’s after you.”

  Jeremy’s eyes popped wide. “Oh! Binding!”

  “Pardon?”

  “Luke broke one of your bindings on me.” Jeremy had forgotten to tell him in all the chaos, but it might have been part of the chaos. Jeremy’s face burned in the dark. He’d been preoccupied with Luke and forgotten to follow through on his responsibility.

  Alexei wasn’t angry—he only scoffed. “He most certainly did not.”

  “He did. He asked how I was related to you and Sergei, and it snapped. We both felt it.”

  “No,” Alexei said. “I assure you, I would have noticed. And I wouldn’t have bound that in the first place—it’s not a secret you’re my brother.”

  Jeremy chewed his lip. “Something happened. Could someone else have a binding on me?”

  Alexei was still for a long silence. “I didn’t think so, but who knows? I’ll look into it.” He dropped his face into his hands. “What are we going to do with you?”

  He sounded so genuinely forlorn, and it was four o’clock in the morning. Jeremy had handed over his one card and only made it worse. “I’m fine. The only thing that’s hurting me is weirdo brothers who won’t let me sleep.”

  Alexei’s weight shifted. “Go back to sleep.”

  “You want me to pray for you?”

  Alexei made a derisive noise, but he turned his wrist over next to Jeremy’s shoulder.

  Jeremy put his hand over Alexei’s and said, “Dear God, bless this weirdo.”

  Alexei laughed out loud. Jeremy shut his eyes, and the next thing he knew was white morning light and a fading, half-remembered conversation. Careful—be careful. He tried to imagine how being more careful would look, but all he could think about was Luke and whether he could get more kisses. It was a fresh new day, and he was no better off than he’d been the morning before, but no worse, either. He smiled into the pillow, and he felt huge and wild and not careful at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Luke’s mother and sister were in a screaming fight. He couldn’t make out words—they were downstairs, and he was not going to leave his room for anything—but every bang of Camille stomping up the stairs and slamming the door to her room was clear.

  He gave it three minutes, listening for aftershocks, and when they stayed quiet, he crept down the hall and knocked on Camille’s door.

  “What?” Her voice snapped like a whip.

  “It’s me.” He opened the door slowly, careful of projectiles. “What happened?”

  She sighed and made room for him to sit on the bed. “Dad went Malcolm-hunting.”

  Luke’s jaw dropped. Someone should have woken him up.

  Camille nodded sympathetically at his surprise. “Sergei came and got him this morning. I wanted to go, too, but Mom’s mad he went at all.”

  “Did Sergei want you?”

  “He said it was up to Mom and Dad.” Camille wrinkled her nose. “He’d be safer if I was there.”

  “You’d be in more danger, though.”

  She shrugged. “I can take care of myself. Anyway, you don’t get to talk.”

  Luke snorted agreeably and didn’t argue, letting her rest her cranky head on his shoulder. From downstairs, Helene’s frustrated scream rattled the silence. Luke jumped toward the door, but Camille nudged his arm and pointed out the window, where Alexei’s car poured like heavy cream onto the curb.

  Katya let Luke into the back, and this time, expecting to see Jeremy, he found Alexei, smiling mildly. “Good afternoon. I have a couple of clients who could use one of your remarkable cleansings. I thought perhaps we could pick up our prince first.”

  “Yes, sir,” Luke said. Alexei’s smile twitched, and he turned his face away to hide it. So Jeremy had told him? Jeremy had definitely told him. Luke had never met anyone who shared so much with authority figures—but maybe it was different when the adults in your life were brothers, not parents. Luke hadn’t even gotten around to telling his friends.

  As Katya pulled the car into the street, Alexei reached into the front of his jacket, taking out a deck of cards. “Pick a card, any cahd,” he said, like a street magician.

  Luke shuffled. They were soft with use but not tattered, except for brown stains along the short sides. Luke started—that would be dried blood. He stopped abruptly and flipped over the Jack of Clubs, noting it as fast as he could before tucking it back and returning the deck.

  Alexei sat the deck in his open palm. Luke followed his gaze down and watched as—though Alexei didn’t move—the deck disappeared.

  Luke strangled down a horrified noise. It was like a fake magician’s trick, without any room for sleight of hand. And it was not delightful the way sleight of hand could be—it reminded Luke of Jeremy ripping away on the sidewalk, the untenable physics of his crossing. It was fairy-tale logic, unbendable rules warping around the whims of a witch or king, and nothing like the legible, chemical kitchen magic Luke had grown up with. That kind of story magic was supposed to be impossible. It would be better if it were impossible.

  Alexei rolled his wrist again, the Jack of Clubs face-up on his palm.

  “Cool,” Luke said, though even to his own ears he didn’t sound like he meant it. “Where do they go?”

  “Hmm?
” Alexei returned the card to his jacket pocket, a heft to the movement suggesting he’d retrieved the deck.

  “The cards. When they disappear. Where do they go?”

  “No idea.” Alexei shrugged.

  “You don’t have a theory?”

  “I don’t believe in theories,” Alexei said. Katya made a thick, mean noise, and Luke glanced up front. Her shoulders were set like cement.

  Luke was missing something—the point of that demonstration, the reason for Katya’s disgust. “Have you ever lost anything doing that?”

  Alexei made a humph with a wry, grimacing smile. “No.”

  With all the irony, there was no telling what he meant: no, he hadn’t, and the question was absurd, or no, sarcastically, because of course he had.

  “Stop encouraging him,” Katya said flatly.

  Luke sat back. This was too weird, the kind of game you only won by refusing to play. It didn’t escape him that Katya, who had more common sense than the rest of the Kovrov team put together, was annoyed with something about him.

  “Just trying to lighten the mood,” Alexei said. “Would you rather I bluster about the young prince’s virtue? Surely no one would respect that nonsense from me.”

  In spite of himself, Luke laughed—one quick snap, which he hid behind his hand. Katya groaned, but the fire had gone out of it. And shortly, they were double-parked outside Sergei’s house as Jeremy hopped down the front steps, a shaft of light in a yellow shirt and orange plaid shorts. He looked so ridiculous all the ice melted in Luke’s chest.

  The work was fake. Alexei took them to an apartment building on Ocean Avenue, where Luke shook hands with a nice young couple and burned some incense. Alexei didn’t even offer to take him home—he left Luke and Jeremy on the sidewalk. “You will call me,” he said, “at the first sign of any Malcolm.”