Read Haunted Online

Authors: Joy Preble

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Historical, #Europe, #Love & Romance, #Fantasy & Magic

Haunted (6 page)

BOOK: Haunted
6.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“But I’m not,” I say to her as the vision clears out of my head. Like always, it’s been quick. Just
zip-zap
, and it’s over. No wonder I’m such a master at pretending it hasn’t happened.

“Not what, dear?” Mrs. Benson asks. Her expression is as bland as always. Clearly she hasn’t just been treated to my ride down the rabbit hole.

“Um,” I manage. My voice sounds as tight and knotted as my stomach feels. “I’m not done.”

“Oh, dear, I know you’re not done. Why, you’ve barely started. But don’t worry. You’ll get there. I have the utmost faith in you. You are your mother’s daughter, after all.”

Huh. That clears things up.

In the front of the store, the bell tinkles, indicating that someone has walked in the door.

“Oh, my. Look at me.” Mrs. Benson straightens her already perfectly affixed cameo locket pin on her perfectly knotted floral pattern scarf. “Standing here chatting with you when I should be out there greeting our customers, silly woman that I am.” She bustles out to the front of the store.

Baba Yaga is wrong. I’m not strong. I don’t want to be strong. I don’t want to worry about saving anyone. That’s the thing I’ve realized lately too. Sometimes, you have to be more than what you want to be. Especially when right now, I can still see myself in the water pulling at Ben’s arm, still remember how the rusalka and I locked eyes, and for just a second or two, I felt what she felt.

It was like it used to be when I dreamed I was Anastasia. For those few seconds underwater, I was me, but I was also her: this woman who didn’t want to be what she was. Who was so overcome by loss that when I felt it, my grip loosened from Ben’s arm, and my brain filled with the thought that she might pull him even deeper—which was impossible, since she was already on the bottom of the pool. She needed him. She wanted him. She had no choice. These were thoughts that came to me right before I heard her speak. Right before—

“Hey.” Ethan, dressed in a different pair of jeans and a navy T-shirt, his hair dry and bangs brushed neatly to the side, stands in the back doorway, looking at me with those ridiculously blue eyes.

Everything inside me gives a little quiver. This does not make me happy.
Stupid blue eyes.

He walks to the far side of the little room, picks up a folding chair, sets it down next to me, and lowers himself into it. Even sitting, he’s taller than I am.

“You should really lock that better,” he says.

“And you should tell me why you’re really here. What is it that you plan on doing now that you’re back? Besides saving Ben from drowning and stuff like that?”

He rests his hands on his thighs and seems to consider the question. “I was telling the truth to Ben about the Prague fellowship. I’ll be finishing my studies in Slavic Folklore at Northwestern.”

That knot tightens in my throat again. He’s following in Professor Olensky’s footsteps. This shouldn’t surprise me. “You didn’t tell me.”

Ethan shrugs. It’s hard to read the expression on his face.

“How’s Ben?” His attempt at changing the subject needs a little work.

“Fine. He’s home. He’s supposed to be resting. I doubt that he is. Speaking of which, you were supposed to just call me, remember? Not come to my work.”

Ethan looks at me. I look at him. I should tell him to go. I really should. He’s nothing but trouble. My trouble. Like a stalker mermaid who tried to kill my boyfriend.

I should call Tess. Or Ben. Or check on my mother’s whereabouts, since, according to Mrs. Benson, this should be a priority for me.

But none of that is what I feel like doing right now.

“Oh, the hell with it.” Feeling more than a little disloyal to Ben, I reach under the table and grab my purse. Whatever’s going on, Ethan’s part of it, and in any case, I’m in no mood to tag more jewelry. “C’mon. By the time she misses me, maybe we’ll be back.”

“Do you want me to say that this isn’t like you?”

“No.”

“I’m going to say it anyway. This isn’t like you.”

That said, he follows me through the back door of the Jewel Box.

Thursday, 4:10
pm

Anne

So, now where?” I buckle myself into the leather seat of Ethan’s black Mercedes sedan. It’s the same car he had last year, and I wonder who’s been taking care of it for him, although I don’t ask.

“Back to the pool.” He shifts the car into gear and starts to pull out of his parking space. “It’s where the rusalka appeared. You’ve seen her before this. I gathered that much. But she hasn’t done anything like this before, right? So we need to go back there. See if she—”

“Wait.” Like everything that Ethan has brought into my world since last fall, this is going too fast. “You can’t just drop into my life and start giving me orders. It isn’t going to work like that this time, Ethan. It can’t. I won’t let it.”

He steps on the brake, and we sit there, half in, half out of the street. A Lexus SUV maneuvers around us, and the driver honks his horn—a sharp blast. Ethan’s gaze is on me, though, not the traffic.

“Oh, my God, Ethan. Let’s not get mushed while we’re deciding what to do! Besides, I just snuck out on my job, which is definitely not going to win me any bonus points with Mrs. Benson. Or Ben, for that matter. So if we’re going somewhere, we need to go. But we’ll decide all that together. Okay?” I don’t have a plan if he disagrees. I only know that just because he’s back doesn’t mean that I’m going to let him call the shots. About anything.

We stare at each other for another few seconds before he shifts his attention to driving and heads out into traffic. We hang a right on Lake Street, drive another block in silence. He really does look older now—not a lot, but it’s noticeable. The mortality thing is sticking. This is what I’m thinking when, in my skirt pocket, my phone begins to vibrate.

“Did you seriously just cut out of work?” is what Tess whispers to me when I answer.

“You know this how? And why are you whispering?”

“Because I’m in the back of the stupid jewelry store, having just walked in to see you on my way to Miss Amy’s to teach spoiled five-year-olds how to tap dance. Your boss told me you were cataloging crap in the work room. Only I’m standing here alone. So unless you’re freakin’ invisible, I’m assuming that Mr. Stealthy is up to his old tricks and that’s who you’re with. Am I warm?”

“Shit.”

“You can say that again—only not too loud. Your boss is up front selling some god-awful bracelet to a woman with shellacked helmet hair. Any second now, I’m going to have to explain to her why I’m back here and you’re not.”

“Oh, my God, Tess! You’re going to have to tell her something!”

“So it was fine for you to sneak out with Ethan, but now
I
have to tell her something?”

“Well, yes. I mean, you’re there and all—and now it’s just too complicated. You’re good at this. You’ll come up with something.”

There is an ominous silence on Tess’s end.

Then she says, “And if I do, where exactly are you? Because don’t think I’m going to let you go off with him alone. I did that before, and you’re wicked crazy if you think I’m going to do it again.”

Tess has not used her old favorite,
wicked
, in a long time. This is my clue that she has shifted into pit bull mode and will track me down by any means possible if I don’t tell her where I’m going.

“We’re headed back to the Aqua Creek pool.”

“I thought we weren’t going there,” Ethan comments sort of testily from the driver’s seat.

“Hush. Let me finish telling Tess.”

“Tess? Anne, you have got to be—”

“My way, remember?” I narrow my eyes at him, and I guess he gets the message because he sighs and keeps on driving in the general direction of the pool.

“I’ll figure something out,” Tess mutters in my ear. “And then you need to pick me up in front of the Wrap Hut. I am
so
not letting you drive around with the Russian hunk of trouble without me.”

I contemplate telling her no—but only for a second. “Sounds like a plan,” I say instead. “We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

“You owe me, Michaelson. And you better be careful. You know I don’t trust the guy. Now all this stuff with Ben and crazy Russian mermaids and—”

She stops mid-sentence, but it’s too late. She’s been talking with Ethan behind my back, and I’ve caught them. I glance over at Ethan, but his eyes are on the road.

“Hey,” I say to Tess. “I didn’t tell you about that last part. I mean, I was going to, but—”

“Like I said, Anne, I don’t trust him. But he knows stuff. So yes, while you were holed up, macking on Ben or whatever, I talked to Ethan.”

“I would have told you, Tess.”

“But you didn’t. You
haven’t
been telling me. And you know it.”

We both digest that.

“I’m going to make up some story for your boss,” Tess says eventually. “If you’ve got all that power now, you could at least have put some spell on her so she wouldn’t ask any questions. But no, you just leave. You’d think you’d at least embrace this a little bit, use it for something more than poking asshats in the leg with number-two pencils.”

She clicks off before I can respond. I glance over at Ethan. He glances back at me.

I’m thinking fast about what should really happen here. We could just double back, and I could get out of the car and tell Ethan to leave. He would, I think. Does he want all this anymore? He doesn’t have to be part of it. He’s mortal because of me, and he left so he could figure out what he wants. Does he know that I’ve got magic flipping around inside me like dozens of out-of-control ping-pong balls? Maybe that’s the reason he’s back. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe only I feel this crazy dangerous pull—like we’re part of each other on some weird cellular level. But maybe for him, it’s different.

Last fall, I figured it was just the adrenalin from all the danger we were in. Maybe it still is. I only know that when I see him, I want to be with him—even when some other, more sane part of me tells me this is ridiculous and dangerous. And that I already have Ben, who—as boyfriends go—is absolutely perfect in every single way.

But the stupid truth is that nothing with Ben ever feels as intimate as just standing next to Ethan—which is crazy, since I still barely know him. Not like Ben, who’s even memorized my work schedule. Not like Ben, who just almost died.

This is getting me nowhere, especially because the truth is that I need Ethan’s help.

“Tess is going to meet us. We need to circle back and pick her up at the Wrap Hut.”

“So I gathered.”

“And you two just need to get along. End of story.”

“Any other orders I need to follow?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“I imagine you will,” Ethan says. “I imagine you will.”

Thursday, 4:45
pm

Ethan

What’s Carter doing?” Tess peers through the fence at the lifeguard who’d dived in after Ben.

“Looks like he’s still closing everything down.” Anne moves closer to Tess. The three of us are standing half hidden in the bushes that flank the back part of the fence. Behind us, the ground dips slightly. There’s a small stream at the bottom, and on its other side, over a wooden footbridge, is a subdivision of ranch-style houses. We’ve parked on a side street there and walked the quarter-mile or so to the pool.

We watch as Carter stacks some remaining lounge chair cushions in the storage tent and lowers and fastens the flaps. No one else is in sight. The police and firemen have gone. The other lifeguards too, it seems. We wait in silence until he finishes and approaches the gate. He pauses and looks back at the pool.

“Move.” I edge the girls back behind the bushes.

“Bossy.” Tess scowls at me.

“Shh.” Anne elbows her.

Tess elbows her back. “I am shushing. There’s no way that Carter can hear us from over there anyway.”

Well, he can if she keeps talking at that decibel
. I have a fleeting thought about my favorite café in Prague—the one I was sitting at only last week, drinking black coffee and eating chocolate torte. Alone. And not necessarily unhappy about it.

Eventually, Carter locks the gate and disappears out of view into the parking lot. The pool stays quiet. No sign of the rusalka.

“What now?” Tess asks. “Climb over the fence? Just stand out here like three idiots? Do you guys even have a plan?”

I reach into my pocket for my pack of Marlboros and remember that I’ve quit smoking. Or rather, that I’m attempting to and mostly failing miserably. I leave the pack in my pocket.

“Has it ever spoken to you before?” I direct my question to Anne. “The rusalka?” We haven’t established much, but at least on that point, we’re in agreement. We know what Anne’s been seeing and what tried to hurt Ben.

“No.” Anne edges closer to the fence. “I’ve seen her three or four times, not counting today. The first time, she was sitting by the duck pond near my house. You know, Tess—that little one with the willow trees all around it. I was jogging with my dad. He stopped to tie his shoe, and I saw her. Her hair was wet—that’s the first thing I noticed. All that long, dark snaky hair.”

“Gotta take your word for it,” Tess says. “’Cause let me remind you—I’m not seeing what you’re seeing.”

Anne ignores the interruption. “I don’t think I even had time to process it, really, because then my dad stood up and looked straight at her. And I realized that he didn’t see her, only I did. Which was about to freak me out when she disappeared. Just like she did today over by the slide. She just wasn’t there anymore. I think that first time, I wondered if I’d just been seeing things. That’s how sudden it was.”

“You didn’t tell me.” I try to hold Anne’s gaze, but she looks away from me and back to the pool.

She shrugs. “You didn’t ask.”

“Well, that’s just ridic—”

“We should go in,” Anne interrupts me. “Carter’s gone. The place is deserted. If we want to look around again, let’s go. Otherwise, I’m just going back to work. Or to Ben’s.”

“Wow,” Tess begins. “You two—”

“Save it,” Anne tells her. “It’ll give both of you something to talk about the next time you’re talking behind my back.”

She doesn’t wait for either Tess or me to respond. She just turns and walks away, heading up the side fence toward the front gate.

“Boy,” Tess says as we follow behind Anne. “You really piss her off, don’t you?”

It seems pointless to disagree.

We reach the gate just as Anne places her hand over the padlock. “Let me try something.” Her voice is hesitant, but her eyes flash with excitement. “I—”

“Is it locked?” Tess asks. “Maybe there’s a—”

I hold up my hand. “Shh.”

“What is it with you two always telling me to—?”

I put my hand on Tess’s shoulder. “Quiet. Wait.”

Anne closes her eyes. I feel a slight buzzing, a stirring of the atmosphere. Without thinking, I close my own eyes and concentrate with her. It takes more for me these days. The shift to mortality has dulled the edges of my magic. The power has been slowly slipping from me, each day surprising me not by how much less I have, but at how much I miss what I once believed I didn’t want.

Still, the feel of it pulls me. There’s an excitement as the power draws inward, readies to push out and do my will. “
Ya dolzhen
,” I say without thinking. The old words slip from mouth.
Ya dolzhen
. I must.
Foolish,
I think. Foolish to waste what magic I have left on such a simple task. But foolish things sometimes feel good. Too good.

“Hey!” Anne’s voice registers her surprise. My eyes snap open. She’s felt it too—my power slipping into her, mingling with her own. Like those times last fall: when we used magic to open the door in my loft while Viktor’s whirlwind threatened to destroy us; when I stood with her on Tess’s front lawn, guiding her through a basic protection spell. My magic and hers, dancing inside both of us, intertwined and potent. Only this time, her power is stronger. And so—I realize as I stand there—is what I feel for her.

“Don’t do that,” she says. “That was seriously weird, Ethan. It was like you were…well, don’t do that,” she repeats.

“Look,” Tess says. If she’s aware of the odd intimacy of the moment, she doesn’t acknowledge it. She points to the padlock. It’s hanging open. The metal looks darkened—singed. “You’re a hoss, Anne. That was wicked awesome. So just exactly how long have you been able to lay your hands on a padlock and get it to open?”

“I know we probably could have just picked it or something, but I just wanted to—whatever. It’s open. I opened it. So now we look around, right?” Anne directs the question to me.

Like before, she doesn’t wait for an answer. She just pushes open the gate and walks in toward the pool.

BOOK: Haunted
6.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Beelzebub Girl by Jayde Scott
Monster Mission by Eva Ibbotson
Perfecting Patience by Tabatha Vargo
Popcorn Love by KL Hughes
1,000-Year Voyage by John Russell Fearn
Sea of Suspicion by Toni Anderson
AlphaMountie by Lena loneson
It's Always Been You by Victoria Dahl