The unspoken meaning in Viktor’s words was clear: And you’re not.
“Strangely enough,” I said, running a hand over the bedspread, my fingers playing the familiar Prelude notes. “I have been playing here.” I omitted the fact that it had been the Prelude I was playing and not the Tchaikovsky.
“This is your last year. Your last chance. Your parents are relying on you.”
My stomach turned over. I did not need Viktor to remind me that my parents were counting on me to win the competition, counting on the money that came with that honor so my mother could work shorter hours and spend more time with my little brother.
“Viktor, what would happen if…” I was not sure I wanted to start down this path, but I could not help myself.
“If?”
“I have decided how to honor Dmitry’s memory.” The phone grew hot in my hand. I could picture Viktor pacing around his hotel room, weaving circles in the plush carpet. “I am going to find it, Viktor. I am going to find the rest of the Prelude.”
With each word, my enthusiasm grew. Saying it aloud made my goal a true and tangible thing. I felt responsible for assuming Dmitry’s search now. In my head, I heard Russ saying, “home.” Maybe home did not have to be the place you were born. Maybe it was a place you tripped across by accident when your train broke down. Or maybe it was not a place at all. Maybe home was an idea that existed inside yourself or one you claimed to make it your own.
Or maybe it was a boy who took you to his mother’s favorite waterfall.
“This is madness, Anastasia. Madness.” Viktor’s voice exploded over the phone. “Do you want to end up like him? Nothing more than fodder for gossip? A could-have-been?”
The sharpness of Viktor’s words surprised me. Sure, the less Dmitry had been able to play, the more he obsessed over finding the Prelude. He found a ripped sheet in a market in Turkey. An old man humming a tune his grandfather had taught him in India. Piece by piece, Dmitry had sewn the music together like a quilt. I understood now how such a search could easily turn into an obsession. Understood how wanting to find a thing could take over your life, so the wanting became more important than the thing you were seeking. I would not let that happen to me.
“Dmitry was never a could-have-been and you know it,” I said sharply. “I am going to do it, Viktor. I am going to find the Prelude, and I am going to win the Hull with it. And I will do it in Dmitry’s name.” Those were the reasons I said to him. Another, perhaps spending all of my time practicing and traveling and never staying anywhere long enough to get to know a place or person isn’t the way I want to live, wound around my heart and made it surge not unlike how it did during my first step onto a grand stage.
“The search for that ridiculous music made him reckless, Anastasia.”
“No, not being able to play made him reckless.” I remembered too many mornings when Dmitry could not muster the strength in his hands to open the door to his bathroom, much less play warm-up scales. Those were the days when Dmitry was at his worst.
“The Hull is in eight weeks. You are out of practice. You have previous engagements. He searched for years and only had a measure here, a measure there, to show for it.”
I knew all of that. Still, not one of Viktor’s reasons felt like an obstacle. “I am going to do it, Viktor,” I said again.
“You will not win,” he said, his voice dark and serious.
Something within me fluttered. My head spun with trills and possibility. I said, “Watch me,” and hung up the phone.
Chapter 23
Dec
My father’s words of apology replayed in my head and woke me in the middle of the night. Why Tristan? What connection was there between him and my dad? What was Dad sorry for? He’d said something about a choice. What choice? What was it about all of this that was so important, that it kept him tethered here?
I needed answers.
I needed to leave.
Those needs seemed mutually exclusive.
I embraced the feeling of every second of time moving forward toward my escape. But I knew time wasn’t my friend. I had to act quickly. If I entered the Youth Corps, I wasn’t sure I could get out. If the Guild would be pissed about me leaving St. Hilaire now—and I knew they would be—that was nothing like what their reaction would be once I started training. Once I started leading.
But answers meant Tristan, and, of course, now that I actually had to talk to him, he was nowhere to be found.
I grabbed my cell and dialed Russ who always had his phone, and who always knew when I had to talk to him.
The first time, I hung up when it went to voicemail. The second time, I left a message asking Russ to call me back. The third time, I went all in and asked for a favor I knew he might regret granting.
Chapter 24
Russ
Sunlight. My brain screamed with the full force of morning. My head throbbed as if I’d led a hundred simultaneous séances. Opening my eyes was too much of a commitment, so I stretched my arms wide and tried to figure out where I was.
The wood under my hands was worn and knotted, and the blue looped rug was just where it should be. I was in my room. A good sign.
The familiar ancient herby smell of my house was another good sign. I felt around on the floor and found a pair of dark glasses. I put them on, counted to three, opened my eyes, and forced myself upright. The room exploded in a burst of pain-filled stars, but at least it was my room—even if it embarrassingly resembled a drug den with bits of rubber tubing and needles and half-empty syringes littering the floor—and I was alone and alive to see it.
I scooted across the floor until I could lean back against the side of the bed. Then I grabbed a warm, half-drunk bottle of water and gulped down the remainder.
Somewhere in this mess was the pad of paper where I’d written down my thoughts. I searched around and found it under my discarded coat, but the paper was filled with incomprehensible scrawl. I squinted, hoping to make the text coalesce, but the blue ink moved in waves like water at the creek.
I sorted through the sequence of last night’s events. I remembered slowly and painstakingly separating some of the pages at the back of the notebook. And I’d finally found what I was looking for. The explanation for how to use the serum to contact the dead.
It wasn’t guaranteed to work. Not all the time, anyhow. There was risk. Apparently, a lot of risk. It needed a serum and an antidote, which explained why there were two different liquids.
But I had the serum.
I had the antidote.
And I had the time.
I’d tried it—twice—to see how much of the serum I could inject without needing the antidote shot, pushing further than I should have, caught up in my first near miss. Once I thought I’d seen my grandmother, but repeatedly the fear of, well, dying brought me back.