The Uncrossing

by Melissa Eastlake

  Alexei lay back on his bed. “So tell him you won’t see me again.”

  “Alexei.”

  “We’ll tell everyone we broke up. We’ll make it big, start some rumors. In a year, we’re free.”

  “And until then?”

  “I can hide it, Annie.” Alexei rolled sideways on his bed and pulled out the drawer of candles. There were only a few left. “You know I can.”

  “What are you doing with my stuff, shrimp?” Alexei shouted.

  Sergei stood in the center of his room, thinking, Wait.

  Alexei had the box of candles in the doorway, and Ivan was a thundercloud in the hall behind his shoulder.

  Sergei’s mouth opened and closed. Alexei said, “Are you stealing? You think you could do something like this?”

  Wait wait—

  One red, one black, and one white. A clock on the nightstand read 11:58.

  Alexei scratched Annabel into the side of the red candle, Alexei into the white, and Kovrov and Malcolm into the black. Because he was alone in the room, he said, “I love you,” out loud. He kissed the wax shape of Annabel’s name, and he placed the candles in a triangle on the floor. He used the pin to prick his thumb and rolled a drop of blood over the white candle’s wick, and rubbed the red candle’s wick into a tiny Ziploc bag smeared with Annabel’s russet blood.

  He was afraid.

  The lighter came to life, a punch in Jeremy’s stomach. It took his breath. He was falling. Alexei’s pulse stopped in his hand.

  Alexei’s voice: Help.

  It was gray. Jeremy knew this gray: it was midnight, and he was being pulled inside, and he was falling and falling—

  Gravity dragged him in two directions at once, stretching, spinning—he would be torn apart—

  The grip around his wrist locked vice-tight, and Jeremy opened his eyes, gasping, in the rich red dimness of the dining room. Marta held Alexei’s bowl over one of her plants, blood sloshing into the dirt, as she tore the ritual apart. “What is happening? What’s wrong with you?”

  If she was yanking them free, Alexei must have lost control. Jeremy’s head hurt like a wound, and he dropped his forehead on the wood. One of his brothers was groaning.

  “I said what’s happening?” Marta’s voice rose, shrill. “Where did you go?”

  Alexei sounded like a ghost. “I think we went wherever I sent Annabel.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “No. Luke, enough.” Helene flipped on the living room light.

  “I’m sorry!” Max said again. It was all he would say, over and over, though Luke kept promising him that he was fine. He twisted away from the light, face in Luke’s chest. Something misfired in Luke’s brain—first he wrapped his hands over Max’s shoulders, then he pulled away to show his mother this wasn’t his fault, then he felt awful and reached for Max again. Helene’s face dropped.

  Camille stuck her head out of her bedroom door. “What is—”

  “Go back to bed,” Helene said. “Shut the door.”

  Camille leaned back into her room like a rewind, and Helene touched Max’s back. “Honey? Are you all right?” She looked to Luke. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. He said he didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Her eyebrows popped up. “You can’t go home?”

  Max talked into Luke’s shoulder. “My dad and—” He hiccupped. “Had a fight. I was staying with my friend but he—but I—I had to leave.”

  Helene pursed her lips and nodded once. She took Max’s shoulders and pulled him back, saying to Luke, “Put some water on and go get some sweats. Give us a minute.”

  Luke didn’t know if she’d guessed Max right, but she could play Luke like a tambourine. He felt a million times better with a task. When the water boiled, he poured it over Saint-John’s-wort and chamomile. Helene crouched in front of Max on the sofa, speaking in a soothing melody. When Luke came back with clean sweats, she waved him off again. Max huddled over his mug, avoiding eye contact, so Luke left them alone. He snuck into his parents’ room, where Yuri was snoring like an old bear, and sat on the bed to wait.

  Yuri made a sleepy noise. “What did he do this time?”

  “It’s me, Dad.”

  “Huh. That bad?”

  Helene came back to bed with her hand on her forehead. “He’s more scared and embarrassed than hurt, I think. Lord, you gave me a fright.”

  “You,” Luke said. “I almost had a heart attack.”

  “I’m going to bed. Go on and talk to him. Keep your hands to yourself.”

  Luke spread his arms. “How bad do you think I was raised, woman?”

  “Shut up,” Yuri groaned, half-asleep. “Go away.”

  Max was a face in a cave of blankets and hoodie on a corner of the couch. Luke sat on the floor next to him. “What’s good?”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Just wanted to say hi.”

  Max raised his eyebrows. “Your mom said she’s going to call my dad and give him a piece of her mind. Do you think that’s real?”

  Luke nodded. “You might get out of it if you call him first.”

  “Grim.” Max flopped back.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Max shook his head.

  “Do you want me to go?”

  Max hesitated, and Luke almost stood up and left. “No,” Max said. “Hang out for a minute.”

  “I can do that.” Luke wanted to ask what had happened, demand that Max take better care of himself. Instead, with a sense of vague disbelief, he asked himself what a Wesley would say. “I can talk to my mom. We won’t do anything you don’t want. I’m here to support you.” He opened his palm in an awkward lifting-type motion.

  Max pressed a smile down. “Okay, thank you. A for sentiment, C for delivery. D minus overall.”

  “That doesn’t sound fair.”

  “I’m factoring in all your previous Fs,” Max said.

  Luke nodded and reached forward to pat his knee.

  Max pushed his hand away. “I said hang out. Don’t you touch me while you’re thinking about some other boy.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I can practically hear you.”

  “No, I mean, I wasn’t touching you. Not like that. I was being comforting.” He patted Max’s knee again.

  “You would be shocked how uncomforting that is.” Max scowled, but it was pretty much a joke, and Luke gave him the full smile.

  “Stop that,” Max said. “You don’t have to beg. Tell me what’s the matter.”

  Luke kept his confusion off his face. “You don’t want to hear all that.”

  “Sure I do. We’re friends now, right?” Max kept his voice light, but something wobbled around his eyes and his hands clenched the mug.

  Gently, Luke said, “Sure we are.”

  Max waved his hand like the queen. Luke was so tired he’d come back around to the fragile, shivery wakefulness of too much caffeine. “You remember Jeremy? You met him over here.”

  “Oh my god, and he was totally in love with you.”

  “What?” Luke woke right up. “How did everyone know that except me?”

  “People on the moon could see. He was like—” Max put a fist under his chin, pointing it out and making wide eyes. He did look a little like Jeremy. “How did you manage to mess that up?”

  Luke was stunned into a few seconds of silence—but once he started talking, he couldn’t stop. He told Max everything. Max gasped at all the right bits and rolled his eyes at the gooey parts. Luke hadn’t realized how much he’d needed someone to talk to who didn’t have a bunch of opinions about the Kovrovs or Luke’s business or the whole idea of kissing boys.

  When Luke finished, Max said, “I knew there was a reason I came over here.”

  “Needed a story?”

  “No. It’s just, there’s only one place in New York you can show up crying in the middle of the night and not be the most pathetic person in the room.”

  Luke covered
his face. “Don’t you try to hide!” Max said. “Luke, you are the worst. You’re like a nightmare all the rest of us are trying to wake up from and we can’t. Where did you even come from?”

  Luke laughed into his hands. “Why are you like this?”

  “Life is like this. You have to catch up, or people are going to keep trying to shoot you. How do you even sleep at night?”

  “I don’t.” Luke put his chin on the couch and gazed pitifully up.

  “Literally stop.”

  Luke sat back. Half-aware, he reached into his collar and rubbed the little key between his fingers. He kept thinking about taking it off, but he hadn’t yet. He had half an idea he might need to try it in a lock—and even if Jeremy was over, it was proof that he had happened. “The stupid thing is, I’m still waiting for him to call. If he’d say sorry—”

  “What? Why should he have to say sorry?”

  Luke cast his arm open, as if the story had spooled out on the floor. He’d been in so much pain for that last awful confrontation that he remembered it as a nauseous blur, but there were images of Jeremy—staring flatly down at him, turning to Sergei instead of trusting him—as true as photographs.

  Max shook his head. “Maybe you both lose points for the big fight, but you can’t blame him for what his brother did.”

  Luke added that up and didn’t like his number much at all. He hadn’t let Jeremy apologize for his brothers when he’d been trying to make out; now he was holding Alexei against him as an excuse to stay mad.

  “Is this why you’re practicing being supportive?” Max asked. “He’d probably buy it if you could sound a little less like a robot.”

  Luke made a laugh-shaped sound. “I don’t think I’m trying to sell him on anything anymore.”

  “That makes sense. You’re probably better off without that drama.” Max nodded. “Speaking from experience.”

  “Experience? With Jeremy?”

  Max shrank away from Luke’s eye contact. “No. You know. Speaking as some drama that people are better off without.”

  Luke blinked, letting that one sink in and making sure he hadn’t heard it wrong. “Shut up. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Max fake-laughed, and Luke nudged his knee again. “I’m serious. Don’t talk like that. There’s nothing wrong with you. I won’t have it.”

  “You won’t have it.”

  “I won’t!” Luke didn’t imagine he looked very intimidating on the floor, but he puffed his chest up anyway. “You’ll figure yourself out.” He looked down at his palm, tracing its lines. “And Jeremy will figure himself out. And I guess I’ll figure out how to let people suffer on their own.”

  “What?” Max’s upper lip curled.

  “That’s what the Wesleys said I had to do. To be supportive. No trying to help. Just let ’em suffer.”

  “That’s not—” Max paused, shrugging. “Well, that might be what the Wesleys said. But that’s not what supportive means. Nobody’s saying you should stop telling right from wrong. Just, you know. Believe other people can tell it, too.”

  Luke sat back on his hands, observing Max’s face in his mountain of blankets. His eyes were still red, but the blotches in his skin had cleared, and he’d found a smile somewhere. “Max Cooper,” Luke said, “how can you be wise about my problems and such a mess about yours?”

  Max grinned, sticking his tongue between his teeth. “Luke Melnyk. Same question.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Alexei showed up the next morning with bagels. Jeremy had a sweet blueberry with a thick layer of cream cheese; Sergei ate his dry with a stack of lox; Alexei opened a lox sandwich with tomatoes, capers, and onion that could have been the cover of a tourist magazine; and Marta ate whatever was left over after she got the little boys fed.

  The plant Marta had poured the blood into had shriveled overnight, dry and charred black. Jeremy felt the same way—it was a hangover without the lumpishness, or a cold without the fuzziness. He couldn’t drink enough water. Sergei dealt with his damage by stomping around with a scowl on his face, speaking in grunts. Alexei acted like he was on camera, sailing in with a story about buying the bagels and a kiss for Marta’s cheek that definitely gave away he was faking it.

  She waved at the dead plant. “What did you do to my goddamn fern?”

  They rebuilt the story, using Marta’s questions to make sure it all followed. They went back through what Luke had said, too, what Corey Malcolm and Natalya thought they remembered. Jeremy said, “Luke said she dumped you, and you killed her.”

  “Yes.” Alexei faltered, tapping his fingers quickly across the table in a gesture Jeremy recognized as one he’d stolen. “Rather, she didn’t, and I still killed her.”

  Marta made a little moue of horror. “Is she dead, then? It sounded…vague.”

  “After so many years?” Sergei spoke so low his words were one deep rumble. “She’s not coming back.”

  “I don’t know what those candles would have been,” Alexei said, “but it wasn’t anything subtle.”

  The candles had been driving Jeremy to distraction—Helene, younger, looked so much like Luke and Camille. It was all impossible: that the whole turning clockwork of the world could make one Luke; that Yuri’s family, studying magic in Europe, and Helene’s family, studying magic in America, could make exactly the two of them; that New York City could rise, glittering, out of the swamp to make a place for them to be together; that their son could be born so broad-shouldered and devoted and good at breaking curses; that Jeremy’s curse could be built into the core of him; that Luke could have those perfect lips, even; and, most of all, that all those things could be true and Luke could still be just some guy.

  “So can you fix it?” Marta asked.

  Alexei looked doubtful, and Sergei scoffed.

  “If you did it, you can undo it,” she said.

  Alexei shook his head. “It wasn’t only me. And it was so long ago.”

  “Maybe that’s why this one made me.” Jeremy nodded at Sergei. “Like you said, there were people who were just killed before. But this one, this is something we could change.”

  Sergei’s heavy brow sunk lower. “That’s an awful big leap.”

  “If it is why you’re here,” Alexei added, “trying to change it is as likely to hurt you as set you free.”

  They went back and forth a few more times, convincing each other it was too dangerous and wouldn’t change anything—which sounded like a contradiction to Jeremy. He wished Luke were there, so someone would say they should try because it was the right thing to do. Because problems were for solving and evil was for fighting, whatever the risk or reward.

  Luke had fought this. He’d taken all those foolish risks for Jeremy’s sake, and he’d been right every time. Jeremy didn’t even know how badly they’d hurt him, or whether he hated Jeremy now or missed him a little, because they’d sent him away and forbidden him from even talking to Jeremy again. They’d cut him right out like a tumor, but he’d been the only one who wasn’t sick.

  And without him, Jeremy would have to do it himself. Help me be brave. He sat up straight. “I think we should do it. I think it’s the right thing to do, and we should at least try.”

  His brothers blinked at him in unison, a shared surprise, and Sergei said to Alexei, “This is your fault.”

  “No.” Jeremy pushed the whine out of his voice. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here. I’m serious. It’s my curse, and I want to try.”

  “It’s—” Alexei stopped abruptly.

  Jeremy whirled on him. “It’s what? You were going to say, it’s my mistake, and I want to leave it forever. That’s stupid. You think you can live like that, but you can’t.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can live with.” Something sinister simmered under Alexei’s words, but mostly he sounded tired.

  “You asked for help,” Jeremy said. “At the end, I heard you.”

  Alexei leveled him an unreadable gaze. “And you t
hink fate sent me you?”

  “I think you think that,” Jeremy said. “That was the memory you found.”

  Alexei shook his head, but he was resigned, not arguing. “Even if that’s true, I don’t see what you could change.”

  Jeremy put his palms on the table and made his shoulders square. Luke had done all he could do; Sergei and Alexei had told him what they wanted to do. So it was time for Jeremy to decide what he was going to do.

  “It’s my curse, and it’s my call. If you really believe I’m a part of this family, then you will not stop me from running my own mission here.”

  They froze like Jeremy had set a bomb on the table, tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. He leaned closer to Alexei. “We could fix it.”

  Alexei shut his eyes.

  “Well, gosh,” Marta said brightly. “If only you knew someone who was particularly good at undoing Alexei’s bindings.”

  Jeremy froze.

  Alexei raked his hair back, face relaxing. “You can go straight to hell, Marta.”

  “She’s not wrong,” Sergei said. “At least, we’d need to find out what Helene Melnyk did to those candles.”

  Marta clapped her hands and leaned toward Alexei. “Do you think Yuri’s going to make you beg? If he does, can I watch?”

  “Straight to hell,” he said again.

  “I’ll get one of those big tins of popcorn, you know with the different flavors?” Marta drew a circle in the air and mimed tossing popcorn into her mouth.

  Sergei caught Jeremy’s eye and jerked his head toward the door. Jeremy followed him into the living room and grabbed him around the chest in a tight hug before he could say anything.

  “Thank you,” Jeremy whispered.

  Sergei was quiet, but his heart kicked Jeremy’s cheek. “Thank you, kid.”

  Jeremy shook his head. A little brother might have been Sergei’s reason for growing past his father, but he’d done it on his own. “The thing is,” Jeremy said, “I’m not a baby anymore.”

  “The thing is, I know you think that, but you are.”

  Jeremy stepped back and put his hands on his hips. “Do you know how tough I have to be to dress like this every day? Even just to deal with you?”