Wednesday, 2:41 pm

Ethan

My hands slice through the water just as everything inside me begins to pull and twist and burn. For a second, I think I’ve hit my head because even as my body goes underwater, the world seems full of light.

Only as I surface and get my bearings do I understand. Anne has done it. Viktor’s soul really was in Anastasia’s matryoshka doll. Now it’s back inside him and he’s vulnerable. We can stop him. He can die.

Laura flounders in the river a few feet from me, Lily treading water at her side. The rusalki have made a circle around them. If we’re lucky—if this has really worked—Viktor is no longer invincible. But his magic still writhes inside me, stronger than anything I’ve ever felt. Viktor’s power has used me. Now I use it.

Magic streams from my fingers through the water. The mermaids shriek and howl as the air around them grows warmer, then warmer still. I kick toward them, flick a hand. Heat. Smoke. Flame.

I dive beneath them as they scream. As their hair burns but they find themselves unable to sink into the cooling water. Inside the circle, I grab Laura. She struggles. Lily has her mind still.

“Look below the surface,” she tells Anne’s mother. “You’ll see your boy. Your son. You can’t leave him. You can’t leave me.”

She reaches out her skeletal arms, covered in dark lines of seaweed. The light that’s everywhere, the light that means that Anne has succeeded—we’ve succeeded—illuminates everything—Lily, me, Laura, and the singed, screaming rusalka circle.

Lily lifts her gaze to the sidewalk above us. To Viktor, bent over, arms resting on his thigh, one knee on the ground. Lily gasps, stays very still in the water as Viktor stands.

I start to swim, pulling Anne’s mother with me. Toward the closest safety I can find—the yellow water taxi chugging swiftly toward us. Someone pulls her up. They reach for me next. But something drags me back and under. Begins to claw at my face. Not Lily. But another rusalka. The rusalka who used to be Nadia. Nadia—Lily’s friend. Nadia, whose cigarette I lit all those years ago.

Sharp talons of nails rake my forehead, dig into my eye. Blood spurts, blurs my vision. Pain. Hot, searing. My eye.

The magic rises again. I send her under, as deep as she can go. If I could kill her, I would. Maybe I do.

Only one eye is functioning as I swim back toward Anne. My only thought is to reach her. I keep swimming, my own blood slick on my face.