“Wicked,” he said, and grinned. “You want some?” He pushed the flask across the aisle, brown liquid sloshing onto the worn carpeted aisle between us.
I glanced around to see if I could move to an open seat, but the small train was packed. I’d been lucky to get a ticket at the last minute.
“Suit yourself.” He took the container back. “So, don’t you guys have your own planes or something?”
I could feel my cheeks grow hot. It always went one way or the other. People either thought I had endless money or that I could not possibly make a living playing classical music. The truth, of course, was somewhere in the middle. I made enough to send to my parents back in Russia so that they and my little brother could live in a house that would not come crashing down around them, but not enough for my own plane.
Dmitry had been a different story. A star both in and out of the classical world, he had performed with rock bands and at the Olympics, on late-night TV shows and at world-class sporting events. He had been invited to openings and parties as much for his wit and movie-star good looks as for his musical talent.
Until he could no longer play. Then he learned who his real friends were.
“I usually fly,” I admitted. “Not in my own plane or anything…but this is…” I searched for the right word. “Quieter.”
It was only after I had stopped playing in the station that I checked my phone and listened to Viktor’s message. He was very, very sorry to be leaving this on voicemail, but he was boarding a plane. Dmitry. Dead in New York. Circumstances being investigated, although an empty bottle of pain meds had been found clutched in his hand. I was expected in Montreal and the funeral would take place in three days. Avoid the press. There was a first-class plane ticket waiting for me at Dulles.
“Yeah,” the boy said, misunderstanding. “The quiet sucks. And this train is something from the dark ages. It’s like watching paint dry. Nothing but damned trees and corn.”
Outside the window, the trees and corn formed a beautiful mosaic as they sped past. Dmitry had always loved trains, and now I saw why. This was so much better than planes where you only saw the insides of clouds, white, vast, and dizzying.
“So, where are you going?” the boy asked, shoving the flask between his knees and cracking his knuckles.
The words stuck in my mouth like those peanuts they give you on a plane. I did not want to share my grief, share Dmitry, with this stranger.
Instead of answering, I returned the question. I did not care about his answer, but Viktor had always told me that people loved to talk about themselves. It worked for trustees and benefactors, so I was betting it would work with half-drunk teenage boys. Not that I had much experience with boys, drunk or otherwise.
Proving Viktor right, the boy laughed and then hiccupped. “State pen,” he said. “Penitentiary. My mom got nabbed again for selling pills.”
I rubbed at my eyes, feeling as if I were a hundred years old.
In the train station, I had done something I had not been able to since I was a child in our small, cold house in Russia. Without consulting Viktor, or my finance people, or my publicist, or my record label’s marketing department, I made a decision.
I sent Viktor a text explaining that I would not be taking the plane. Then I had turned off my phone and bought the train ticket to Montreal, wanting nothing more than time, quiet, and most impossibly, a way to get Dmitry back.
Now, I was going to make another decision. I bent down and sorted through my bag until my fingers locked around a cord. I pulled my headphones out, gave the boy across the aisle a nod, and stuck them over my ears. Even if that meant I was being rude. And even if that meant I would never learn to speak to boys my own age and was destined to spend the rest of my life alone with only music for company.
After all, there had only been two things in my life that I could ever count on, Dmitry and music. And now Dmitry was dead.
How much more did I really have to lose?
Chapter 3
Russ
There was something both terrifying and seductive about the silver needle sticking out of my arm.
It had gone in gentle as a kiss, sharp as a scalpel. Heat crackled and stumbled its way through my veins while I waited for the knowledge promised in my grandmother’s flaking blue notebook. She’d been legendary for her ability to speak to the dead without the need for séances and all the drama that came with them. She’d never had to say “I’m sorry, ma’am, your cousin doesn’t want to talk to you right now” when the spirits decided they weren’t in the mood to communicate.
Being a medium usually resembled being a radio with no dial—you might get signals, but they weren’t always the ones you wanted. In comparison, my grandmother was like an on-demand service. She could tune in to anything she wanted at any time, and I was determined to learn her secrets.
I watched the liquid as it continued to trickle slowly, green as summer and thin as river water, into my veins and waited. Waited. Waited.
Five minutes in, my vision was still clear. The room was still empty. My hearing was normal and not picking anything up that I wouldn’t have, had there not been a needle in my arm.
This isn’t going to work.
I pulled the needle out of my arm and disposed of it in the bloodred Sharps container I’d swiped from the doctor’s office in neighboring Buchanan. The container sat next to a small, black zippered pack that held two larger needles and four vials of a clear substance thicker than anything shot into an arm should be.
Over the summer, I’d followed my grandmother’s shaky script as I brewed, reduced, strained, and aged various plants from the back garden near the woods, some unidentifiable by name, but dead ringers for the drawings in her notebook.
That it wasn’t always clear what the mixtures would do made the whole thing a little risky, but also a little exciting. The recipes at the beginning of the book had been marked by my grandmother with checks and stars, and so far they seemed pretty safe.
It was the stuff in the back, the recipes that followed a series of blank pages, that really captured my attention. That was where the thicker serums had come from. The herbs were rare and hard to find, the directions difficult to read, as if my grandmother was putting in safeguards as she wrote the notes, reminding herself of the possibly nefarious purposes for the concoctions.
My future rested on my ability to catch the attention of the Guild. Somewhere in this book was my best chance to convince them to take me on, and I had to find it. I had nothing else.
I rubbed my arm, tossed the pack on my desk, and, head spinning, lowered myself to the bed. Without planning to, I fell into a fast sleep, dreaming of today’s community-wide séance, only this time, the square was deserted. Mostly.
“Oh look, it’s Sleeping Beauty,” Ian said, breaking the silence and sitting on the bench next to me. I took in his still-muscled arms, his still-pressed tight white shirt, his still perfectly curled hair sitting still seductively on his collar, and I swallowed hard.