Skandal (25 page)

I sit up. My pulse is cantering as I lean toward him, syncopating with our psychic wavelengths. “I’m here for you.” My fingers stitch around his, custom-fit. “I’ll always be here.”

He clenches my hand in his. “I know. I’ve never doubted you, Yul—even when you doubt yourself.”

Once again, emotion bubbles up in me, threatening to boil over, but I cannot waste the space for it. I repeat my mantra, over and over, until it hums in my veins:
My mind is mine alone
. “I’m ready,” I say.

Valentin’s eyelids sink shut as he grips my hand tighter. As his music unravels, I fall deeper into it, the conservatory melting into his swirling thoughts. Melodies snake past, and fragments of ideas, half-formed and then discarded, until all of his armor falls away, and I am enveloped in his memory.

Sand, still warm from the height of the day, scratches between my toes—Valentin’s toes. In his memories, his skin—my skin, now—has that clammy just-drying feel as a breeze carries away some of the heat from my bare legs. There is a symphony in my head—no, not a symphony. This is scaled-down music, intimate, but no less powerful. A violin and a piano, the theme charging forward and retreating, like waves against the shore. Dark without being sad, stormy without being a downpour, and peppered with warm, bright rays.

“Schumann,” I say as my fingers patter the theme along my slender thighs. “Sonata No. 1.”

I turn to look at my mother, expecting to see her smiling, pleased that even as I play on the shore my heart is still back on the piano bench. Her dark curls pool like oil around her head as she leans back in her chair; her skin, tanned and hardened from decades of seaside life, is crusted with salt and sand. But she is not smiling. Something snaps tight inside me; I stand up straighter. A shadow stretches over our shoulder as a cloud crosses the sinking sun.

“You heard what those boys were saying about you, Valya.” She does not move a single feline muscle, she does not open her eyes, but I hear the transformation. She has slipped out of the wonderful, loving mother who plays violin with me and fallen into that dark and roaring abyss. This other side of my mother is the only monster I fear in the dark.

I glance down the shore, at the older boys—twelve, thirteen—shoving and kicking sand at each other. When they passed, they looked at each other; I heard what they thought of me, a wimpy little kid, a scrawny no one, not fit for the Georgian life.
A spoiled Party brat
, one thought. The others used darker words.

I dig one toe into the sand. “I don’t care what they think.”

“But you know what they think.” Her golden skin has taken on an amber tint. Radioactive. I step back, instinctively, hearing the flames crackle in her thoughts.

“It doesn’t matter.” I swallow. “I’m not gonna change their thoughts.” Schumann’s tempest of violin and piano swells in my chest like a hurricane pressure.

“It always matters. It will matter one day, when you take the wrong thought from someone’s head.” She climbs up from her chair, sinuous, slithering. “When you set your father’s bed on fire. When you feel the flames eating you alive.”

“Just because
you
can’t control it—”

I stop short, but it’s too late. The unspeakable words have been spoken.

“Control? Do you think I wish to control it, like it’s some pet I can tie up in the yard?” Juicy drops of sweat wreathe her face as she stalks toward me; her skin is now the brilliant red of too many hours in the noonday sun. The air around her shimmers, smelling spicy and sweet, like grilling meat. “I would be rid of it. In an instant. Rid of it for both of us.”

It is far too late. She has fully transmuted into her other self, the one who knows no reason. Like a wildfire, this rage must consume everything before it burns itself out.

“Every morning and every night, I pray. To those gods they tell us no longer exist—to gods that could not exist, for how could they curse us so? I pray they will strip us of this plague. Sear it out of us, bleed it out, whatever they wish. But they don’t answer me. Look at me, Valentin Borisovich! Look at me!” Her short curls stand out, wild; sand melts in the wake of her footsteps, glimmering like a path of glass. “They won’t answer me!”

“We can control it, Mama. I promise, I’ll keep it under control.” But my voice is so tiny; the air, thick now with salt and smoke, smothers it.

“No. We must answer the prayers for ourselves.”

Before I can move, her arm is around my waist, searing into my flesh until we have melted together. Flames jump from her fingertips as she charges into the surf. I am screaming; I am trying, vainly, to drill into her mind—to find purchase in that cauldron of frenzied thoughts—but I am flailing.

She runs deeper. Water surges up my nose, the salt water stinging as it pours down my throat. Mama is on fire, and even as the cool water fills me, it is a relief. It embraces me and tugs me under. The undertow of the waves are like an exhale, pushing me further down still.

I am weightless, frozen in flight. The heat from her diminishes. Finally, she has cooled her fire off without igniting the world around her.

But I am sinking.

I thrash but she is motionless, eyes open, smile easing across her face. The Schumann concerto thrums darkly under my skin. My lungs grate as I suck down nothing but sea. I struggle to pull free from her grasp, but she has hardened like steel around me—as if she was a molten rod, and the sea was the cooling trough to temper herself in. Vomit builds at the back of my throat, demands to escape. Black spots crowd around my vision.

Air. I need air.

I push into her mind.
Please, Mama, please—you want to swim back to shore
. Her eyes fly open; they stare through me, into the murky depths. But she doesn’t obey. Her choice to die is too heavy for us to budge. I can’t get a handle on it; I can’t knock it loose.

Mama, please
—

I am sinking—

Let me go.

Mama is still, so very, very still and cold and heavy, trying to weigh me down like cement. Her thoughts are sluggish and syrupy. All I can do, all I have the strength for—is to force her to release me.

One finger, then the next. Her arms slacken as I make her pry them away. This is my curse: to command others’ minds, even if I can only manage as small an act as this. My vision falters—air, our brain is screaming, I need air—but I have to catch one more glimpse of her as I break free, and she sinks into the darkness below. I shove up, sky breaking around me as I surface, as I wheeze in one watery gasp of air—

And the world goes black around me.

The images of the memory fade, but I am ringing with its emotions, crusted onto me like the ocean salt. My arms sag, leaden, with the sadness and despair; my chest tightens with fear and the convulsions that follow a brush with death. Guilt fills my gut like molten iron. My eyes well up and spill over and drip into my mouth, strong and brackish.

Valya’s stare is a thousand miles away, but a smile tugs at his lips. Though the memory remains, it’s been stripped of its toxic emotions. “Thank you,” he murmurs, and slumps back against the chaise lounge.

The panic inside me builds. I claw at my throat, desperate to get fresh air. I’m drowning. Valya’s mother is drowning me, drowning both of us in her desperation to rid herself of her curse and Valentin’s—

But it isn’t a curse.
My mind is mine alone.
This is my gift.
My mind is mine alone.
I take emotions in, I draw memories in, and I push them away just as easily. I am the vessel. The Star. The emotions need not stay with me.

My breathing slows; fresh air fills my lungs, pushing out the memory of water and fire and pain. With each passing moment, I’m able to part through the emotions, and they fall away from me and evaporate. The tears dry on my cheek, a salty trail the only evidence they existed. My chest rises and falls like the endless waves of the sea.

Valentin smiles at me through his exhaustion; his gaze meets mine through half-closed eyes. “You did it,” he mumbles.

“We did it.” I curl around him. Panic ripples through me again as I think of the unknown sickness inside of him, but I needn’t become the panic—I let it ebb away. I want to be calm. I want to enjoy this moment, this warm Valentin in my arms.

“I’d forgotten just how cruel she could be.” He strokes his thumb along the point of my shoulder. “Sweet and brilliant and intensely loving one moment, and then—like a conflagration. Papa learned to leave the house when she got that way; he had the burn marks to remind him of what could happen when he stayed. But I didn’t have a choice.”

I nestle my head deeper into his chest. “She blamed herself, didn’t she? For passing the ‘curse’ on to you.”

Valya nods. “She never did find balance with her own ability, so she was sure I couldn’t, either. She wanted to spare me that pain by—by killing us both. And I couldn’t save her. I had to force her to let me go, even though it meant…”

There’s a heavy pause; I hold my breath, waiting for him to start crying, but instead he barks with a dry laugh.

“I—I’m sorry. I’ve never been able to admit it before. I feel—I feel so light, now.” He kisses the top of my head. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry you’ve had to carry it around for so long.”

“I’d kept it hidden for a long time, same as Andrei hid your memories.” Valentin winces. “Everyone must do that to some extent, but for people with powers like mine, we can bury them even deeper. Suppress the bad memories, or even the good ones, if that’s what we need to do to carry on. Wouldn’t you forget the most painful or embarrassing moments of your life, if you could? It’s hard to resist.”

My arms tighten around him. “I can see the appeal.” But I don’t want to forget. I want to keep every last memory for myself—of Valya, of Mama, of everyone I love, to warm me during the darkest nights.

He tucks one finger under my chin and tilts my head toward his. His breath gusts, slow and warm, over my lips. His pulse thuds against mine. “I love you, Yulia.”

Calming warmth spreads over me like a blanket, replacing the empty void of emotion inside me. I am of this moment, but I want to feel this moment fully. “I love you, Valentin.”

He kisses me slowly. We kiss like we’re memorizing every contour and plane of each other’s lips, faces. The curve of him here and the swoop there, a topographical map that I can cling to, no matter what happens.

*   *   *

The front door slams shut, followed by the clatter of several pairs of shoes—Papa’s easy, casual gait and a frenetic ping of high heels. Valentin and I sit up from the chaise lounge, where we’ve fallen asleep. Suddenly, Valya jerks with a piercing yelp—a burst of static. It’s gone as quick as it came, but his eyes lock with mine. My heart leaps into my throat. This was not his nightmares; his memories don’t torment him anymore. This is something new. The serum is starting to take hold.

Papa flicks on the overhead lamp. The conservatory at night adopts an eerie aquarium quality; heavily shadowed tree leaves press against the windows, watching us in our little bubble of light.

“I thought you were going to call.” I expect Papa to scold us for touching, for doing whatever things he suspects us of doing in his absence, but he just jams his hands into his pockets and looks to Cindy for guidance.

Cindy studies both of us, shaking as if she’s about to unravel, like she’s a spool of thread and her spindle has been pulled out. “We captured Anna Montalban in Miami,” she says.

CHAPTER 22

I DON’T THINK
I can sleep through the long, interminable wait for Anna’s plane to arrive in Washington. I don’t think I can sleep, knowing what Valya’s suffered through, and not knowing what poison is pumping into him with each beat of his heart. But sometime in the deepest hours before morning, sleep comes to collect its due.

I dream, again, of Mama. We’d found the bird on our afternoon walk, one wing stretched out, rubbery, and dragging on the ground as it hopped in circles. Zhenya laughed and snatched a stick from the ground to poke at it, but I pried it out of his fingers. “It’s hurt,” I scolded him, in as stern and motherly a voice as a ten-year-old could manage. “We have to help it.”

It was September, and still warm enough that I could make it home without my hat and scarf, so I scooped the bird into the knitted cap and wrapped the scarf around it like padding, thinking, foolishly perhaps, that it might feel comforting, like a nest. The bird glared at me with black, glossy eyes, the feathers around them damp and crusted. Each jostle along our path home brought a fresh squawk of indignation, a small protest in the larger indignity of its abduction.

Mama clucked her tongue as we came in the door; she pulled on rubber gloves and eased the wing out straight, not flinching when the bird shrieked and pecked at her. “It’s broken badly,” she said. “Looks like he was attacked by a bird of prey. He has wounds on his stomach, too.”

Somehow the word
attacked
pushed tears to my eyes, as if it had ripped away a scab. Mama peeled off her gloves and pulled me into her arms with a sigh, pressing my face against the warmth of her jagged collarbone as she awkwardly patted my head. “It’s the way of things. It’s not your fault. It’s just how the world works.”

Even so, she helped me mix together a paste of cherries and water, and we fed it to the bird with an eyedropper, his beak opening and closing in a silent question when he wanted more. Mama helped me tape a tongue depressor to his wing with medical tape, and we used hydrogen peroxide to try to clean the wounds on his stomach.

He should have healed up. Zhenya kept his promise to leave him alone; we made the bird comfortable in a cardboard box on the windowsill so he could bask in sunlight and see the sky that we wanted him to return to soon. But within a few days, his will to live must have dried out, for I woke to find him stiff and cold, already smelling musty.

“Why did he have to die?” I screamed at Mama, as she dug a hole in the backyard of our dacha. “It’s all so senseless. There’s no point in it.”