Risked (The Missing ) (10 page)

Gavin grimaced.

“I know,” he said softly. “Before I joined with my tracer and started thinking like Alexei, I . . . I didn’t really care how
you would feel about changing to a different time. I was just doing what Gary told me to do. I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Anyhow, Gary said I’d have an Elucidator and I could go back home anytime I wanted, if I didn’t like the future. I guess I thought that would work for you, too.”

And you believed that?
Jonah wanted to taunt him.
How stupid are you?

He bit his tongue, because he didn’t think he could say anything else to Gavin without sounding really mean.

Daniella was squinting hard at Gavin.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Did Gary and Hodge want us here in 1918 or in the future? Why is 1918 the only choice on the Elucidator if they promised you the future?”

She’s right,
Jonah thought. Was it maybe that Gary and Hodge had wanted them back in 1918 from the very start? Did that mean that it wasn’t Jonah’s fault that they’d landed here?

But why would Gary and Hodge want Gavin and Daniella back in the time period where they were in danger of dying? Wasn’t their whole business based on taking famous kids from the past and making a lot of money adopting them out to families in the future?

“And—,” Daniella said, as if she had lots of other questions she wanted to ask. But then she froze at the sound of footsteps coming from the next room.

“What should we do now?” she whispered.

Gavin didn’t even ask. He just threw himself back together with the tracer Alexei.

“Oh, I see,” Daniella muttered.

She leaped off the edge of the bed. She must have been aiming to land directly on the chair—squarely in her own tracer’s lap. But she landed crooked, and the chair slipped out from under her. She hit the floor with a thud.

Quickly Jonah and Chip yanked her back up by the arms. Katherine slid the chair back into place and Daniella slipped into position just as the door opened.

It was the sister Jonah had seen wink at the guard. Jonah glanced back and forth between Daniella/Anastasia and her sister—how much had the sister seen? Had she been watching as twenty-first-century Daniella disappeared and turned into twentieth-century Anastasia?

The sister’s blue eyes, so similar to Anastasia’s, were wide and alarmed. But as soon as the sister spoke, Jonah understood that she had already been upset before she opened the door.

“When the guards found you in the garden . . . ,” she began, her voice trembling. “Were you trying to escape? Without me?”

“Oh, Maria,” Anastasia murmured.

Jonah whipped his head back and forth, trying to watch both Anastasia and her sister—Maria? There had been a slight glow of tracer light around Maria’s mouth when she spoke, which meant that in original time she had walked into this room at just this moment, but those words weren’t the same as whatever she had originally said.

But Anastasia—she didn’t have any tracer lights, so I guess she would have said, “Oh, Maria,” even without time-travel changes,
Jonah thought.

But what did the changes mean? Jonah was already pretty sure that in original time no guards had caught Anastasia and Alexei out in the garden. If time was supposed to go that way, Daniella and Gavin would have found their tracers outside.

So why had everyone landed in the garden when they came back to 1918?

Jonah didn’t know. Poor Daniella/Anastasia knew even less about time travel than he did—what would she come up with to say to her sister?

For a moment, Anastasia just sat there with a dazed look on her face. Then she swallowed hard.

“Of course we weren’t trying to escape without you,” she whispered. She blinked back tears, as if the accusation hurt. “I wouldn’t do that to my favorite sister! I wouldn’t even do that to Olga!”

Jonah guessed that that was her least favorite sister. But he was too busy watching for tracer lights to think deeply about it. He had seen the glow of tracer light around Anastasia’s mouth when she was talking about escaping—just a quick moment of her saying something different from original time. But then the light was gone when she talked about her sisters.

“So what were you doing out in that garden?” Maria challenged.

Tracer lights—check,
Jonah thought.
So—not what she would have said originally.

But how was Daniella/Anastasia going to answer
this
?

She didn’t even hesitate.

“Oh, Maria, don’t you ever feel like you’re going to
explode if we have to stay cooped up in this house a minute longer? We’ve been here forever!” Anastasia complained.

“Seventy-eight days,” Maria agreed. “This is our seventy-eighth day. But we did go outside to the garden for our morning walk, and then again after lunch. And they let us have mass on Sunday, and we talked to those peasant women who came in to clean yesterday—”

“And that’s enough for you?” Anastasia asked. “We came back in from the afternoon walk today, and I was looking at the whitewashed windows, and I felt like I couldn’t stand it another minute. I thought I would scream or go crazy or, I don’t know, do something awful! And then I saw that, for once, there weren’t any guards by the stairs, and so . . . I just had to have fresh air again!”

Strangely, the tracer light didn’t show up until Anastasia’s last sentence.

“But taking Alexei with you . . . ,” Maria whispered. “How did you even get him down the stairs? How did you expect to bring him back up?”

This was all tracer light—all a departure from what she would have said originally.

“You carry Alexei up and down the stairs all the time,” Anastasia said accusingly.

“I’m six inches taller than you,” Maria said, and Jonah realized this was true. The two girls looked a lot alike,
but they were built very differently: Anastasia was short and stubby, while Maria towered over her. And Maria looked much more muscular. Jonah thought that if she were a twenty-first-century kid, she’d probably be some big athlete—a shot-putter, maybe.

“You know I’m as strong as an ox,” Maria continued. “But you—you could have dropped Alexei and hurt him.”

“I wouldn’t do that!” Anastasia insisted.

“Anyway, what were you thinking, refusing to speak Russian to the guards?” Maria asked. “Why did you want to make them mad?”

“It was just a joke,” Anastasia said, sounding like a sulky little girl. Jonah was impressed with her acting skills. Because of course that hadn’t been the reason she’d refused to speak Russian. Until Daniella had joined with the Anastasia tracer for the first time, she hadn’t
known
Russian.

Maria came over and crouched down on the floor, right beside Anastasia’s chair. Chip had to move out of the way so she didn’t run into him. But all three of the invisible kids—Jonah, Chip, and Katherine—were leaning in close so they could be sure to hear everything Maria said.

“You know we’ve got to make sure the guards like us,” Maria whispered.

The tracer lights disappeared completely with that
sentence. Maria would have said those words no matter what.

“I know,” Anastasia whispered back. “I understand.”

“
Do
you?” Maria asked. “Do you know how important this is?”

Anastasia nodded, her expression entirely serious.

“That’s why I’ve been flirting with the guards so much,” Maria went on. “Some of them . . . well, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t kill us if the commander gave that order. Igor is our friend, and Filipp, and probably Dmitri, too. And a few others. About the rest, though, I bet a lot of them wouldn’t ever fall for my flirting. But you—everybody loves you. You’re like the kid sister all of them want to protect. It’s just not, well, you know, romantic.”

“Thanks a lot,” Anastasia muttered.

Maria reached out and ruffled her sister’s hair in a way that kept her comment from being an insult.

“I’m not joking,” Maria said. “You may be the only one who can save our family. You tell funny stories, and you stick out your tongue behind the commander’s back, and
all
the guards love that. And . . . it changes things.”

“Sticking out my tongue is supposed to keep us alive?” Anastasia asked. “That’s all we’ve got to fall back on?”

“What else is there?” Maria asked bleakly.

Anastasia was silent for a moment. She glanced over at
Alexei, as if checking to make sure that he was still asleep.

“I think Mama wants to die,” she said. “Wants to be a martyr, wants to fulfill God’s will . . .”

Maria grabbed Anastasia’s hand.

“Shush,” she hissed, almost angrily. “How can she be so sure God wants us to die?”

“If that’s what happens—isn’t it meant to be?” Anastasia asked.

“And if we stop it, doesn’t that mean that
that’s
what God wants?” Maria asked. “How can we know ahead of time?”

Jonah’s head spun. These were exactly the kind of questions he’d agonized over concerning fate and destiny, especially after his last trip through time. And Maria didn’t even know about time travel.

He realized that he’d gotten so engrossed in the conversation that he’d stopped watching for tracer light. But had he missed seeing any? It seemed that ever since Maria had come to sit with Anastasia, the conversation had been just like it would have been in original time.

Suddenly Daniella separated from her tracer ever so slightly, just enough to peer up at Jonah and Chip and Katherine clustered around her.

“Maria, maybe there are others who could help us,” she said, her lips just barely separating from the tracer
Anastasia’s. “Not like before, when we got our hopes up and nothing happened. I’m talking about people the guards won’t see. Like . . . like angels.”

Jonah frowned and shook his head at Anastasia. It wasn’t as if Maria was going to suddenly realize,
Oh, yeah, there are invisible time travelers from the twenty-first century in this very room with us, and they’re going to intervene and help us all.
But it seemed dangerous to let her know anything before they had a firm plan.

“You mean, guardian angels?” Maria asked. “Believe me, I’ve prayed—”

She broke off, because just then the sound of a loud argument came from outside the room.

“I can’t, I won’t—you can’t make us do that!” a man’s voice screamed.

“Is that . . . Igor?” Maria asked.

She and Anastasia exchanged glances. Then, as if by silent agreement, both of them jumped up and fled the room.

Of course Jonah, Chip, and Katherine followed the two girls.

All five of them—Anastasia and Maria in the lead, with the other three invisibly trailing a few steps behind—dashed through the bedroom with the camp beds and the dresses hanging on the wall, and then through the dining room with its solid wooden table and fancy chandelier. Then they got to the room where Olga and Tatiana and their parents were sitting. Anastasia and Maria slowed to a faked leisurely stroll.

The tsarina fixed them both with a severe look.

“Girls,” she scolded, “proper young ladies should never involve themselves with the squabbles of servants.”

“The guards are not our servants,” Maria muttered under her breath, undoubtedly too softly for her mother to hear. “They’re our jailers.”

“And our lives could depend on knowing what they’re saying,” Anastasia muttered, just as softly.

The tsar said nothing. He just sat there gazing sadly at his daughters. He had lit a cigarette since the last time Jonah had passed through this room, and the smoke wafted around him. It was like a screen between the two youngest Romanov girls and the older members of their family.

Jonah leaned forward and whispered in Anastasia/Daniella’s ear: “I’ll go see what the screaming is all about. Don’t get in trouble over this if Anastasia wouldn’t have done that originally.”

Daniella separated from the Anastasia tracer just enough to move her head up and down once, quickly.

“Yes, Mama,” Anastasia said, the picture of obedience. “I understand, Mama.”

Jonah brushed past her into the only section of the second floor he hadn’t seen before. It was like crossing a barrier from the family’s quarters to an area that belonged completely to the guards. Within five steps he was peering into a filthy office where half a dozen guards lounged about. For the first time Jonah noticed that some of the guards actually had grenades attached to their belts; an array of guns lay across the top of a piano.

What if I grabbed one of those guns?
Jonah wondered.
Could I do it without anyone noticing? Could I use it to protect the Romanovs?

Would he have any clue how to use a gun from 1918?

Jonah left the guns alone. He looked around for the source of the screaming he’d heard before. This didn’t take any great powers of deduction: Two guards had a third guard in a headlock, and the third guard was still sputtering, “I won’t! You can’t make me!”

“Igor, you’re drunk,” a man in a more impressive-looking uniform said disgustedly, as he stood regarding the guard. “What did you do, drink up all your wages this afternoon?”

“Not drunk!” Igor protested. “Didn’t drink up my pay! Just—not evil like the rest of you! I swear I could never—”

One of the men who had him in the headlock clapped his hand over Igor’s mouth. Now all Igor could do was squirm and moan.

“Get him out of here,” the official-looking man commanded. “Tell his friend Filipp he’s suspended from his evening shift too.”

Igor, Filipp—those are two of the guards Maria said the Romanovs could trust not to kill them,
Jonah thought with a chill.

As the other guards dragged Igor toward the stairs, Jonah raced back into the living room. Now Anastasia and Maria were sitting with their sisters, hunched over sewing projects of their own.

“Igor and Filipp aren’t going to be working tonight,” Jonah whispered in Anastasia’s ear. He tried to make this
news sound like it was no big deal, but Anastasia gasped out loud.

Everyone else in the room looked up at her, the movements creating a glow of tracer light around each person’s head. It was startling in the dim room, in the haze of smoke.