17. Gustav
This is ridiculous.
They want me to sacrifice my entire life, all my hopes and dreams, for a bag of parlor tricks, because of a threat that may never materialize.
“I’ll give you the horse thing,” I say. “You can shift into horses.”
“And harness the power of air.” When Grigoriy folds his arms, his already beefy arms get thicker, and I can’t help but notice that his face is not entirely light and bright. There are definite flashes of darkness in him.
He did drag me across the room right before we met. I suppose that’s not exactly a parlor trick, and his life hasn’t really been a party. Hearing about how someone he knew killed his parents. . .that sounded rough.
“But this is my entire life,” I say. “I left my home for this, gave up my name, my family, and my country?—”
“So you could kiss up to Grandfather in the hopes that he’d give you all his money?” Kristiana’s lip curls. Her face is, blessedly, entirely shiny. No more than flecks of occasional grey here and there.
“You can be disdainful all you want,” I say. “But would you have liked Aleksandr if he was broke?” I shake my head. “Money is security, and money is power, and I have spent the last eleven and a half years convincing Grandfather that I’m just like he is—that I can safeguard his legacy. I’m not about to. . .I’m not even sure what you want me to do. In movies, this is when there’s like, some kind of cheesy training montage. Swords flash and smash, and like, the hero struggles, and you can see sweat on his brow.”
“What’s he talking about?” Alexei’s mostly strands of shining light, but there are a few ropy dark lines as well.
“You need to show him more movies.” Kristiana looks smug. “I told you all that election crap took too much time.”
“We don’t want to drag you to Russia,” Grigoriy says.
“What, then? Because whatever you want to do, I’ll do it right here, around the meetings I have to attend to convince people to buy my shares. Cool?” I look around the room.
Other than Katerina, everyone’s glaring.
“I’ll just buy all the shares when they go live,” Aleksandr says.
“No.” I shake my head vehemently. “I’m not sure you know how much that would cost, but even if you were, like, a billionaire or something?—”
“He is,” Grigoriy says.
I blink.
“Actually, I am too.” Alexei waves, and the disgustingly good-looking man whom I’m discovering I don’t like very well lights up like a lantern.
I hate it.
“They’re kidding about being loaded, right?” I glance at Kristiana.
She shakes her head. “Not really, no.”
“But I can’t have you guys do that,” I say. “Because Grandfather needs to see this IPO as a huge success, and that means all the main banks and funds need to buy their portion of the shares at full price.”
Alexei’s sigh is very beleaguered, like I’m worse than a class full of kindergarteners who want to fingerpaint his beloved family palace.
“Just tell me,” I say. “What do you even want me to do, exactly?”
“Leonid has mastered electrical powers, and the power of fire,” Grigoriy says. “Those are very scary, very strong assault powers.”
“And now he has water, too,” Katerina says. “He’s been working on combining them to blow things up.”
“Of course that’s the first thing he’d do,” Aleksandr says. “Why does that not even surprise me? Everything’s a weapon to him.”
“We need to get you some powers too,” Grigoriy says, “and we need to train you to use them together, in ways we can’t.”
“If you can’t use them together, how can you train me?” I arch one eyebrow.
“We can teach you to do everything we can do,” Aleksandr says. “And then help come up with ideas of what else you might be able to do.”
I sigh. “Alright, let’s say we actually do the training montage?—”
“It’s not a montage,” Kristiana says. “Stop pretending this is a movie.”
“If we do the training montage,” I insist, because ignoring my little sister’s objections is ingrained, “around my meetings, then I’ll do it. But you guys have to help me, not just buy all my shares. My life’s important too.”
Grigoriy’s face and body is strained like he just ran across hot coals or jogged through a crosswalk full of broken glass, but he doesn’t argue.
“How do we do that?” Aleksandr asks.
“Do what?” I ask.
“How do we give you our powers?” My sister’s apparently billionaire husband is eyeing me like I’m a skin suit he needs to step into. It’s giving me the heebie jeebies.
“What did Leonid do?” Kristiana asks. “How did he take Alexei’s power?”
“He just had me say that he could use my powers,” Alexei says. “Pretty simple.”
“I hereby grant the use of my powers to Gustav Liepa,” Grigoriy says.
“Wait!” Katerina’s grass-green eyes are wide. Her breathing’s staccato.
I was already looking at her whenever I could sneak a glance—the flame-red hair, and her startling eyes call to me. I find myself looking at her too often already. But after that outcry, everyone else turns to look at her, too.
“What?” Grigoriy frowns.
She sighs and closes her eyes. “After he got a new power, Leonid was incapacitated, sometimes for as long as three days.”
“Three days?” That cannot be true. I can’t miss the next three days of meetings. “What does that mean, wiped out?”
“It didn’t happen at the palace after that initial attack,” Katerina says. “But when he got the electrical powers, it was like he had the flu.”
“And the second time?” I ask. “When he took the fire powers?”
“It was worse,” she says. “That’s why he was in such a hurry to rush you guys out after Alexei surrendered.”
Aleksandr’s shaking his head.
Adriana looks sick—and I’m not shocked to notice that of the fireflies of light dancing around her, a good twenty percent of them are dark. She’s always been a bit of a moral grey.
Alexei’s scowling. “Whose side are you on?” He steps closer to her. “You could have told us that before.”
Katerina shrugs. “No one’s ever been on my side.”
But she confessed that little secret when they started trying to give me their powers. I realize that, since she arrived, other than the whole incident with homeland security, which she started before meeting me, she’s been the only one who is always seemingly on my side.
She was worried if they gave me their powers now, it would mess up my meetings.
Unlike the others, Katerina’s trying to help in the way I want help.
“At least see whether it worked,” Grigoriy says. “Can you do this?” The wind screams through my family room, ruffling everyone’s hair and knocking over a bag of takeout. The smell of garlic fills the air.
And a splotch of red spreads across my white wool rug.
“Oh, man, G, why do you always do that?” Kristiana’s bending over, using a handful of napkins to try and salvage my rug.
“I can’t do a thing,” I say. “Should I be able to feel something?”
“The second I told Leonid I’d be happy for him to have the same power as me, if only that was possible, he zapped me.” Katerina shrugs. “It was an accident, but?—”
“Yeah, right,” Aleksandr says. “That guy’s villainous.”
“It was an accident,” Katerina insists. “At the time, he was very apologetic.”
“So why can’t I use wind?” I frown. “I thought you said all you had to do was?—”
“If it didn’t work, maybe that means you won’t get sick.” Katerina’s forced smile is cute.
“I, Aleksandr Volkonsky, hereby give all my powers, strength, and abilities to Gustav Liepa, or Daniel Belmont, or whoever you are. You will have and control them irrevocably.”
“Geez,” Kristiana says. “He just said he doesn’t want to be wiped out for?—”
“We can’t wait two weeks,” Aleks says. “We need to start training him now.”
“But, still,” Kris says. “He has some rights.”
“And?” Katerina’s staring at my face. “Can you feel anything?”
“What should I feel?”
“You should be able to sense that there’s dust underneath your sofa,” Aleks says. “In that potted plant, there’s real soil.” Aleks points. “And there’s an accumulation of junk under your dishwasher, and in the bottom of that pipe.” Aleks steps closer. “I can feel it, all of it, and the earth down below this building almost quivers. It would be hard, but I could force it upward if I tried, shearing through the layers of the building, or I could bring it up and around and through the windows.” He’s still watching me like a researcher in a lab, looking through a microscope. “Do you feel any of that?”
I shake my head.
“What about her ring?” Aleks points at Kristiana without turning his head. “Or the other women’s jewels? Can you sense them?”
“Sense them?”
Aleks gestures with two fingers and the ring flies off Kristiana’s finger and into his hand. “You can call the elements, the earth, and any of its parts, and you can bend them to your bidding.”
I snort. “Nope. Nada.”
“Why isn’t it working?” Grigoriy’s roar’s a little unsettling, and then he starts pacing, seemingly not noticing that he’s walking right through the center of the big red stain on my carpet. His boots are smearing it and tracking the sauce across the entire rug.
“Maybe it’s different since he’s not Rurikid?” Katerina asks.
Aleksandr’s head tilts. “Or is he? Maybe he is Rurikid like Leonid, and because Leonid’s older, he gets it all.”
“I thought so at first,” Katerina says. “But now I’m not sure.” Her brow furrows. “I mean, Leonid just has to be given a power, and bam. He can use it.” She shrugs. “That obviously doesn’t work with him.”
“But he has the same powers that Leonid had at first, right?” Kristiana asks. “You said he saw the good and bad in people.”
“Speaking of that,” Adriana asks. “What do you see when you look at me?”
“You don’t want to know,” Katerina mutters. “Trust me.”
“What?” Adriana scowls. “But I do want to know.”
“I asked Leonid once,” Katerina says, “and trust me. Just don’t.”
“Your face is surrounded with susurrating light,” I say. “Like little soft fireflies, darting and spinning.”
“Oh,” Adriana says. “That’s nice.”
I don’t mention that a good twenty percent of them are dark, like horseflies. “But Katerina, why would Leonid say anything about yours?” My voice is flatter than I intended, and I would like to punch the Leonid guy.
“I asked him to tell me.” Katerina has frozen in place, and her eyes are intent on mine.
I nod. “And? What did he say?”
“Nothing good,” she says.
“Well, maybe you got better,” Kristiana says.
“I doubt it.” Katerina sighs. “But that still doesn’t help us. Gustav’s description for Adriana sounds just like Leonid’s did.”
I drop it, unwilling to keep being compared to him.
“He called Kris a null,” Adriana says. “Right?”
Kristiana nods. “Yeah, but there isn’t anything to tell us what that means, or how he knows. . .”
“It’s in the journals,” Katerina says. “We found some journals in the Romanov palace, and we were reading through them.”
“It said something about a null?” I ask.
Katerina bangs on the side of her head. “They were in a really old dialect, and I had a lot of trouble reading them. They made my head hurt, so I was looking at newer ones while Leonid read those, but I remember him saying something about it.”
“We need to see those,” I say. “They could explain what’s going on.”
“We’ll never get to them,” Grigoriy says. “Leonid surely has them for himself, if they weren’t destroyed long ago.”
“But wait,” Kristiana says. “My dad says we had journals—our family. Remember? He said they came to America with his great-uncle.”
“We need to find those,” Aleksandr says. “We were all assuming that if we could find your brother, we’d be able to prepare some kind of defense.”
“Let me get this straight,” I say. “The last time you saw Leonid, you went to try and defeat him, and you had three powers, while he had just two.”
No one disagrees with me.
“And now, he has three, and he’s the ruler of Russia?—”
“He was already the leader of Russia then,” Katerina says. “And they did manage to escape with me.”
“You waltzed in and then back out on your own though, right?” I ask. “It doesn’t sound like he was working very hard to keep you there. You said you?—”
Katerina jumps toward me so fast that she stumbles on the edge of the coffee table and falls forward.
I have to drop to my knees to keep her from hitting her head on the tile. “Whoa there, tiger.”
“I’m not a tiger.” She’s glaring at me.
That’s when I realize she probably didn’t tell anyone else that she offered to trade my safety for Alexei’s powers. It doesn’t make her look very good, but she told the person she put at risk.
And they already don’t like her.
“Returning to my initial point,” I say. “You had three powers to his two, and now you have two to his three. Yes?”
No one argues.
“But somehow you think that after finding me. . .what’s the long-term plan?”
“We don’t have one,” Kris says.
“And we really should have one.” Aleksandr’s looking at his phone. “Because. . . Can you turn on the television?”
It takes a moment, but we toggle to the news app, and. . .
“We haven’t had an envoy from Russia visit the United States in quite some time, but certainly not since the new leader took power. And lo and behold, he’s about to leave his country, and the one he just seized, and visit America.” The commentator shakes his head. “This man just has no fear.”
“None at all, Ralph. I think the US President is just as shocked as you and I. I mean, look at her face when they handed her the missive.”
The screen cuts to a clip of the President talking, not sure what about, and then she turns as someone walks toward her. He hands her a piece of paper, and as she reads it, her eyebrows draw together, and her mouth compresses hard and fast. She blinks three times in quick succession, and then she turns toward her Vice President.
“It must have been the news about the proposed visit, right? And you can’t really tell the leader of one of the biggest, strongest, and most aggressive nations in the world that they can’t come for a little chat, right? You can’t say no?”
“Even if she could have said no, she didn’t. President Kincaid is set to welcome this Ivanovich maniac to the United States with just under twenty-four hours’ notice.”
Aleksandr turns toward me. “Still worried about your IPO?”
“How rich did you say you were?” I cringe. “Maybe having you buy the shares once they go live would be better than nothing.”
“We have got to find those journals,” Kristiana says. “Unless you have any ideas for how to summon Baba Yaga?” She’s looking at Adriana.
Adriana says, “None at all, sadly. She just showed up.”
Kristiana swivels around to look at Mirdza. “What about you?”
Mirdza shrugs. “I saw her on that train, where she did nothing to help me or that poor woman, and then I saw her at the horse show. She didn’t even warn me that anyone was coming for us.” She shakes her head. “I have no idea how to get her attention, and I’m not sure she’d do anything to help us, even if I did.”
Kristiana growl-screams. “This is so annoying. How can we have these connections, these powers, and know nothing? Baba Yaga, I hate you! Can you hear me? Why are you ruining my life? Why can’t you help us defeat the monster you created?”
“Actually,” Katerina says. “I was there when Leonid summoned her, and before you ask, I have no idea how he did it. Some recipe from some old journal he kept. But she didn’t give him the powers—he already had lightning and fire at that point.”
“You were there?” Kristiana asks. “What else are we going to find out? Were you the second gunman on the grassy knoll?”
“Huh?” Katerina asks.
“Never mind. It’s one of the few things they made us learn about American history.”
“It’s one of the few things kids were fascinated enough with to remember,” I say. “The mystery of whether one or two people helped assassinate a beloved US President.”
“Regardless. . .” Katerina looks torn. “There isn’t anything to tell. When she came, she actually told him the only way he could get the other powers was to have you all voluntarily offer them. Then she left.”
“Why not?” Adriana asks. “Why can’t she control her own magic?”
“She said she gave Rurik power,” Katerina says, “but then later gave it to the Romanovs and the other families, split up that second time.” She shrugs. “At first I thought Gustav was another Rurikid, but now I think he was part of the second pass.”
“Why do you think that?” Mirdza asks.
Katerina shakes her head. “I don’t really know. I’m just guessing, but Leonid can only access the power when we let him, because we’re already using it. He has to wait for our permission. What if, when she gave the Romanovs and all our families our powers, she had someone else, another person who was in charge of us?”
“Like, checks and balances?” I raise one eyebrow. “You’re saying, she appointed a supervisor the second time?”
She shrugs. “I have no idea, but if you’re related to the second round of powers, your abilities won’t work the same way as Leonid’s, so. I think our best bet would be looking for those journals—the ones from your family. At least they might tell us whether you’re Rurikid or something else.”
“The last we heard about them,” Kristiana says, “Dad says they were in the middle of absolutely nowhere.” She taps through her phone, squinting.
“Please tell me you didn’t have Dad text you the information,” I say. “Because texts are so easy to monitor.”
Kris rolls her eyes. “Of course not. He told me, and I entered it into this little note.”
It’s not much better, but at least she’s not flinging the information around. “Alright, where was the last known location?”
Kristiana cringes a little. “Dad says he actually called the lady once—our, like, second cousin or something.”
Oh, no. Dad calling someone is never good.
“At first she insisted that she wasn’t even a Liepa. She said her name was Saddler, but I guess she finally relented and said her dad’s name was Liepa.”
“So where is she?” Kris has always known how to bury the lead.
“Some place called Manila, Utah,” she says. “It’s on the border of Utah and Wyoming in a town of like, four hundred people.”
“How fabulous,” Adriana says.
“Actually, it is good,” I say. “I doubt Leonid would ever think to look for us there.”
Aleksandr’s money comes in handy again when we pay cash for a new Escalade and load all our stuff into it. Aleksandr heads for the driver’s side, but I step in front of him.
“Whoa, you don’t even have a license here.”
“My license from Russia?—”
“Is probably pretty expired, given that it’s now two thousand and?—”
“I got a new one.” He scowls. “Move.”
“Hand me the keys,” I insist.
“Oh, just give him the keys,” Kristiana says. “If we sit in the back, I can take a nap on your lap.”
“I call the middle,” Alexei says. “Come on.” He’s hopping into the middle seats before I’ve even taken the keys.
“No way.” Mirdza huffs. “Why do we always get split up and you two always wind up sitting together?”
“We’re trading seats at the first gas station.” Grigoriy doesn’t ask. He just climbs into the back, grumbling.
Which leaves Katerina and me to load all the luggage. “Go up there,” I say. “It’s fine.”
But she doggedly stays back with me, hefting huge rolling bags into the trunk.
“Are you sure you’re fine to drive?” Her voice is soft. “It’s late, and you haven’t been sleeping much.”
“You’ll stay awake and talk to me?”
She nods. “Sure, if you want me to.”
I’m surprised, but after this long, bizarre, not encouraging day, I actually do want to talk to her. That may be the oddest thing that has happened yet.