The Uncrossing

by Melissa Eastlake

  “Can you really undo it?” Malcolm asked. “Could you bring her back?”

  Luke traced the teal ink, bright and fresh as yesterday’s notes, with one finger. The worse this story got, the surer he was that he had to fix it. “I can try.”

  It was a long drive back to the city, too hot in the toboggan Natalya called a car. “So, we need to figure out what J’s ancestor did to his contract,” Natalya said, for the third time in fifteen minutes. “And what exactly Alexei did to Annabel that brought back the contract, and whether we can undo that to free J or Annabel.”

  She’d gone too far off track. The secret to uncrossing—to any magic—was focus. “The question is what Alexei did to Annabel. It doesn’t matter how the tripwire was placed if we know how it was sprung, and if we undo that, we uncross the whole thing.”

  She nodded. “Maybe I can talk to my sister.”

  “You haven’t told her yet?”

  “I’m keeping her out of trouble.” Natalya paused. “And Katya…she has a hard time with gray areas.”

  Luke shut his eyes, pressing the heels of his hands over their tired ache. He hadn’t eaten enough breakfast, and he was hungry, exhausted, and over these people and all their inside-out principles. “I need to talk to Jeremy.” He sat up and glared. “Let me call him.”

  She shook her head. “If it’s all the same, I’ll keep the phone ’til I’m on my way out.”

  “It’s not all the same, and I need to talk to him.”

  “J has been living with his brothers for seventeen years. He can take it a little longer.” She shot him a side-eye. “You don’t want to go in there half-ready, making guesses. That’s why I’ve been waiting. You get one shot to convince them. The Kovrovs are loyal to each other.”

  “Jeremy isn’t a Kovrov.”

  “Does he see it that way?”

  “He will when he understands.”

  Natalya made a skeptical face at the road. “Phone’s yours when I drop you at the subway.”

  Luke stopped arguing and shut his eyes, waiting out the ride. It didn’t matter either way if Jeremy wasn’t answering his calls.

  Natalya dropped him in an alley in lower Manhattan. “Go up and take a left; you can catch a train.”

  “What great service.”

  She handed over his phone. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Luke checked it as he walked up the alley. No missed calls, no texts. He sorted through his notifications, making sure he hadn’t missed anything else from Jeremy. He needed Jeremy talking to him, period, before he could talk about Alexei’s past. He was closer to Brooklyn than home—he could go there instead. Turn on the charm. Bring flowers. No, not flowers, shit. Something chill, but fun, nothing that might insult Jeremy. Ice cream.

  Luke wasn’t paying attention—he was, as his mother always said, going to get lost in that damn phone.

  Pain was a bomb on the back of his neck, sending red waves through his vision. He fought for his next inhale and by the time he had it, his hands were bound behind him. A gun pressed sharp in the middle of his back and his vision flashed brighter red.

  “He trusted you!” The voice behind him belonged to someone short—it was under his shoulder, tight and furious. “I can’t believe you’d betray him, you—”

  “I wasn’t.” Luke’s voice was hoarse. “Katya, is that—”

  “Shut up, just shut up.” Another blow hit Luke’s lower back and stole his wind, and a third knocked him down. He tried to shout, but a solid kick in his stomach stole his breath.

  Katya dragged him up and shoved him, stumbling, into the back seat of a car. It was something beige and nondescript, the upholstery cracked under Luke’s cheek. “Katya, it’s not what you think. Katya, please—”

  “Shut up or I will shut you up.” She slammed the door closed behind Luke’s feet, walked around, and let herself in the driver’s seat. “Save it for Alexei.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Today was the perfect day for Jeremy to learn all about Henry VIII’s wives and how they’d died. The stories were morbid and romantic and learning them didn’t not involve lying in bed watching trashy historical adaptations on his laptop.

  He didn’t play with his phone or stare at Luke’s message, but it buzzed in the back of his mind. He was still thinking about how to reply, if thinking was the best way to describe fretting in a static cloud embarrassment.

  He was watching YouTube clips of different actresses performing Anne Boleyn’s execution and deciding whether it would have been better or worse for Henry to have been there to witness it, when Sergei came into his room.

  Jeremy sat up straighter. Sergei crouched by the side of his bed, the way he had when Jeremy was little and got sick or had a nightmare. It was cute then, and weird now.

  “What’s wrong?” Jeremy asked.

  Sergei put his hand on Jeremy’s bed—the KOV on his knuckles, a dragon’s head on the back of his hand, his sons’ names woven into the body that snaked up his forearm. “I have to talk to you about something, and I need you not to freak out.”

  A whole morning’s anxiety wound itself into a single sharp spear and pointed at Sergei’s clouded face. Thinly, Jeremy said, “Okay.”

  “I know I’m asking a lot,” Sergei said. “Alexei and Katya are too angry to think. But we have a lot to figure out, so if you can keep using your head for me—”

  “Please just tell me what it is.” Jeremy pressed a hand to the pit of his stomach.

  “We found Natalya. She came into the city to meet a contact and took that person out to the Malcolm house for a meeting with Corey. They were there for more than two hours.” Sergei rolled his fingers into a loose fist, knocking it against Jeremy’s bed. “Her contact was Luke Melnyk.”

  No. Jeremy’s whole body pulsed in horror—he jerked away. But Sergei stayed still, and Jeremy took a deep breath. What would using his head look like? “I don’t understand.”

  “Like I said, there’s a lot to figure out.” Sergei was so tense that a vein throbbed blue on his temple. “But there’s some things about the timing that make sense. Nobody but me, Alexei, and Marta knew about the meeting Natalya missed, unless—you two figured it out?”

  Jeremy nodded. They had. Luke had. Jeremy filled in the timeline—Luke had come over, snuggling in his bed; Natalya had missed her meeting, while Jeremy had been at his apartment, ready to—

  Jeremy’s brain shorted out and came back in on this morning, hovering over his phone while Luke was meeting with Corey Malcolm. “Oh my god.” He put his hand over his mouth. “No. There has to be an explanation, there has to.”

  “That’s possible,” Sergei said, so gently that there was absolutely no way he believed it was true. Nothing was scarier than Sergei trying not to be scary. “Katya says if there was a good reason for this, Natalya wouldn’t have kept it a secret from her. But Katya’s angry. It’ll be good to keep an open mind either way. We’re going to talk to him now. I’d like you to come help us fill in the details, but Alexei and I can take care of it if you can’t.”

  “I can,” Jeremy said, by habit, and immediately thought, Oh no, no I can’t.

  Sergei was already standing, brushing his hands over his hips like he could dispose of the conversation. “Get changed and come on downstairs. He’s in my office.”

  “He’s here?” The floor—the ceiling over Luke’s head in the room below—seemed to tilt under Jeremy’s bed. Sergei only nodded and left the room.

  Jeremy was still wearing pajamas. He switched his cotton pants for jeans from the floor and pulled his tank off. The whish of fabric over his hair reminded him of Luke peeling him out of his clothes, and he froze in the middle of his room, goosebumps crawling over his skin. No no no—he couldn’t gather his scattered thoughts. Sergei’s story had implanted an organ his body was rejecting.

  He yanked open a drawer and got a clean T-shirt—red for power, though all the actually powerful people he knew were downstairs worrying about things much more important t
han their clothes.

  His brothers stood together in the hall. As Jeremy walked up, Alexei smiled in an odd, plastic way. “Wonderful. Let’s begin.”

  Luke was in a chair in Sergei’s office, head in his hands. The back of his neck and the collar of his white shirt were dark with dried blood, and it was matted in his hair. Jeremy gasped.

  Luke’s head shot up, and when he saw Jeremy, he started to stand. There was another, cleaner cut on his upper arm, where someone had taken blood. His necklace hung out of the collar of his shirt, the iron of his amulet dark under the brighter silver of the little key Jeremy had made for him.

  “Stay in that chair,” Alexei growled, “or I will nail you to it.”

  Luke sat down hard, swaying.

  Jeremy whirled on Alexei. “What is wrong with him?”

  “Katya was enthusiastic in her duties.” Alexei leaned against Sergei’s desk, crossing his arms. “She was understandably upset by these particular traitors.”

  Luke glared balefully up at him. “I’m not—”

  “You may speak when you are spoken to,” Alexei said.

  Jeremy put his hands out to balance—he was having trouble even standing still. “Stop. Everyone stop. What is going on?”

  Alexei opened his mouth, but Sergei silenced him with a wave. Much more calmly, he said, “You’ve been working with Corey Malcolm and Natalya. It’s time to come clean.”

  Luke shook his head. The motion was strange, a little like he was shaking water out of his ears, and when he spoke, his words slurred together. “Natalya found me today and dragged me to Malcolm’s.” He spat, pink with blood, on the floor. “Pretty much how this day’s going.”

  Guilt churned in Jeremy’s stomach, but Sergei said, “You were there for hours, and they let you walk. Did you cooperate?”

  Luke paused before answering. “Mostly they talked to me. There was a girl—”

  “What do you mean ‘mostly’?” Jeremy’s heart started to race. Sergei grabbed for him, but he shoved away and stepped forward. “Did you talk about me?”

  Luke hesitated again. “I think we figured out something, about your crossing—”

  “You talked to Corey Malcolm about my curse?” Jeremy pressed his exploding heart in, hand at his chest. On one level, he was afraid of the same things his brothers were afraid of, an enemy gathering information. Deeper, he imagined Luke presenting the details of their wonderful, useless kisses to a skeptical audience, and he felt sick. Maybe Luke hadn’t set out to be a traitor, but that was betrayal.

  “I was getting information,” Luke said. “I was—”

  “Giving them information?” Jeremy couldn’t control his voice—he almost screeched.

  “That’s enough.” Sergei clamped a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder and mumbled, “Walk it off.”

  As Jeremy paced to the door and back, Sergei said, “So you’re saying it started today. You’re sure about that?”

  Luke started to speak but snapped his mouth shut. Alexei scoffed, and Sergei cut a hand at him again without looking away from Luke. “Well?”

  “I told her you’d found her out,” Luke said, “but—” He stopped like he expected someone to interrupt him again, but no one did.

  “But?” Sergei prompted again, voice dipping dangerously.

  “I didn’t know what you were going to do to her,” he said. “I didn’t tell her anything. I just said she should get out of town.”

  Jeremy could feel his pulse in his cheeks and clapped his hands over them.

  Alexei made a show of checking a cuticle. “And while she ran our plans back to Malcolm, you figured, why not have Jeremy over? You’re playing both sides, so you can fuck him anyway—”

  “I said that’s enough,” Sergei shouted. Jeremy’s vision swam, and he missed Alexei’s reply—he didn’t care anymore, he just had to leave.

  “Listen.” Luke’s voice cut over the noise, hoarse but calm. Jeremy looked at him—really looked at him, his bright eyes in his bloody face. “Can I talk to just you?”

  “No,” Sergei and Alexei said at once.

  Jeremy blinked at them. The room stayed quiet. He turned and found Luke still looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to answer. Like he had just as much say as his brothers did. A stream of light cut through all the grime building up inside him. “Yes.”

  “Absolutely not,” Alexei said.

  “Oh, you just stop.” Jeremy looked at Sergei. “You can stay right outside.”

  The vein in Sergei’s temple twitched.

  “You said you wanted me to do this—”

  “Okay.” Sergei grabbed Jeremy’s head and pulled it close, speaking into his ear. “Be smart. Get the facts.” He dragged Alexei out.

  Jeremy watched them until the door closed and dragged his eyes back to Luke. “Yeah?”

  “I figured out something. What set off the tripwire on your contract.” Luke slurred, shometing, but he was obviously trying hard to speak clearly. “I think it might be something we can change. The reason you were born when you were? It’s because Alexei hurt a girl. Destroyed her memory.”

  “What? Like amnesia?”

  Luke shook his head like he was scattering flies. “Destroyed the memory of her. Erased her from everyone’s mind.” Luke swallowed. “He killed her, Jeremy.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Luke couldn’t think or speak for more than a few seconds together before everything disappeared behind a blinding white wall. His head throbbed, and his back and chest ached. It all bled together, and he couldn’t think past it hurts it hurts it hurts.

  He’d finally gotten it all together and out, his hard-earned information, and Jeremy looked at him like he was speaking gibberish. “What?”

  Deep breath. “Annabel Malcolm, Corey’s sister.” Deep breath. “They were together, but she dumped him when—”

  Deep breath. “Their families found out. He did a binding, and she disappeared.”

  “Did Malcolm tell you this?” Jeremy’s arms were crossed so tight his knuckles were white around his arms.

  “Showed me pictures.”

  “Pictures? Of what? Alexei doesn’t just disappear whole people.”

  Luke needed to explain why the pictures had been so horrifying, and convincing, but he couldn’t think. “Pictures, but she was disappearing and moving.” He pressed his hands to his forehead. “He took her out of reality. Like the cards. Her room was just like it was eighteen years ago.”

  “How do you know what Corey Malcolm’s sister’s room looked like eighteen years ago?”

  Luke slumped over deeper in the chair, and Jeremy sighed.

  “You’re so hurt.” He took one step closer, no more. “If you had talked to me, I could have told you not to do this.”

  Luke winced. It had been so real and added up so neatly, when he was talking to Malcolm and Natalya. He couldn’t get the pieces in order again.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  Jeremy paused. “I believe that’s what Malcolm told you. I believe you believe it.”

  “It’s real,” Luke said. “There’s something going on with that girl. And the timing is right, from your birthday—”

  Timing was the wrong word. The wall slammed down behind Jeremy’s eyes. “Corey Malcolm tried to hurt us. Natalya was helping him. That’s what’s real, Luke.” He moved to the door but stopped halfway and turned back. “I can’t believe you would tell him about me. About—us.”

  Luke hoisted his throbbing head up and sat all the way back in the chair, taking the pressure off his chest, though it made his head swim. “I’m trying to help. You don’t have to believe it to look into it.” He stopped to catch his breath, and Jeremy waited for him to continue. “We could figure out how Alexei might disappear someone. Or if you don’t want to talk to him, we could look into your ancestor, see if we could find your birth records—”

  “Oh my god!” Jeremy shouted, throwing his arms open and snapping his hands to his hips. “How many times are you go
ing to tell me you understand I don’t want to talk about my birth family, and then bring it back up again? What is wrong with you?”

  The door opened before Luke could answer, and Sergei and Alexei tumbled over each other to get in. Jeremy turned to them. “What do you know about Annabel Malcolm?”

  Sergei Kovrov’s brutal, unreadable hammer face was shocked. His jaw fell, but he didn’t say anything. He clamped it all back down and deferred to Alexei.

  “I saw Annabel for a while in high school. Is that what Corey told you?” He glanced derisively at Luke. “When her father and brother found out, they lost it, and Annabel ran away. They never found her. Horrible business.”

  Luke kept watching Sergei—his face was so tense that muscles jumped in his jaw and temple.

  “Luke says you did magic on her,” Jeremy said. “That you did something awful, and that made me get born. Because of the trip wire on my contract.”

  “Well, the first half of that sounds like something Corey Malcolm would say.” Alexei sat back against the desk again. “And the rest is some bullshit Luke and Camille made up. You were there, you saw.”

  Sergei stayed quiet, glowering at Alexei. Luke willed him to speak up, say whatever he was thinking. It had been a mistake to tell the truth—they were just going to hurt him until he said what they wanted to hear. He needed support from someone to get out of this room.

  Finally, Luke broke the quiet. “That’s not the whole story.”

  Alexei rolled his eyes. Jeremy hesitated, shifting tiny movements back and forth as he decided who to turn to. Luke pressed his gaze into Jeremy’s face, clenching his fists together. But Jeremy took a step toward Sergei.

  That was it. Jeremy had chosen, and he hadn’t chosen Luke. The Kovrovs switched to whispers, Alexei long and urgent, Sergei snapping back. Luke dropped his head and shut his eyes. A churning darkness swam toward him, and he tried to fall out of his soaring adrenaline and let it take him.

  His father’s voice: You’ll find out real quick who their family is.

  Luke made a quavering sound in spite of himself and slumped lower over his stomach. His head throbbed less but his chest hurt more. The door to the room swung slowly open, and Luke was hallucinating or dreaming or dead—he’d imagined Yuri’s voice and conjured Yuri’s image.