“But—,” Jonah began.
“Isn’t that what you and Katherine saw online?” Gavin asked. “Isn’t that what I guaranteed would happen when I trusted Gary and Hodge and set things in motion to come back here?”
Jonah wanted to ask a little more about Gary and Hodge and how all of that had worked. But even more than that, he wanted to tell Gavin he was wrong.
“It doesn’t matter what Katherine and I saw online,” Jonah argued. “Because right now, that’s still the future, and nothing’s guaranteed about the future! Anything could happen in the next twenty-four hours! Anything!”
He wanted so badly to believe that himself.
“But only one possible future will happen,” Gavin said. “And that’s the one where I die.”
Jonah was so furious at Gavin now that he couldn’t sit still. He got up and paced, accidentally kicking aside some of the toy soldiers lined up on the floor. He squinted down at them. Tracer toy soldiers stood in the place of the metal figures he’d knocked aside, and in the place of the entire opposing army—an army’s worth of soldiers that Alexei had given to his friend Leonid.
“Look!” Jonah said, pointing down at the soldiers. “Right there I changed something! And you changed something too, giving Leonid all those toy soldiers! Alexei didn’t do that in original time!”
“He would have if he’d known he was going to die tonight,” Gavin said. “If he’d known he was never going to see Leonid again. It’s not like I changed things, exactly. It’s more like I fixed things to the way they should have gone. It’s like . . . improving on original time. Like time itself wants something different. Don’t you feel it? I think those are the only things you can do anything about.”
Gavin’s words chilled Jonah.
“Yeah, well, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Jonah said. “Chip and Katherine and I figured out how to fix everything tonight. Even though we only have a limited Elucidator, we can still use it to make your whole family invisible. And then we’ll rescue you all from the guards. So none of you are going to die.”
Gavin started to shake his head at Jonah, but then he looked toward the door and dived back into the tracer Alexei sprawled across the bed.
A split second later the door creaked open, and Tatiana stood there looking anxiously toward Alexei.
“Were you arguing with someone in here, baby?” she asked in a baffled tone.
“Just using different voices for the soldiers in my battle,” Alexei said, weakly lifting his hand to gesture toward the toy army on the floor.
Both Alexei’s words and his movement produced bursts of tracer lights, so none of it was what he would have said or done in original time. Jonah peeked past Tatiana—yes, she’d left a tracer behind too. Her glowing ghostly outline still sat sewing on the floor with Anastasia and Olga. So Jonah and Gavin’s argument had disturbed time.
“You’re lying on the bed and playing with the soldiers halfway across the room?” Tatiana asked teasingly.
“I’m imagining the way the battle would go,” Alexei said. “Because . . . it hurts my knee to lie on the floor for very long.”
“That’s some imagination you’ve got,” Tatiana said, still in a light voice. “Looks like it took out these brave men.” She pointed at the soldiers Jonah had kicked. “Want me to set them back up so they can fight another day?”
“Sure,” Alexei said. “Sounds like a good idea.”
Tatiana walked over and picked up the toppled soldiers. This was her native time, so of course she couldn’t see any of the toys’ tracers, any more than she could see invisible time travelers.
And yet she put every single toy soldier back in the exact same place as its tracer.
TWENTY-ONE
That’s not fate, Jonah told himself. It’s not destiny. It doesn’t have anything to do with our chances for saving the Romanovs tonight.
Why did he feel like he was just trying to fool himself?
He reminded himself that he’d seen the same phenomenon—where tracers seemed to be pulling time back to its original path—in 1600 and in 1611, and yet his enemy Second Chance had been able to dramatically reshape time in those years and split it into a totally new direction.
Yeah, and he almost ruined time completely, Jonah reminded himself.
Second was not exactly the best role model.
Jonah got disgusted with himself for thinking in circles so much. He backed out of Alexei’s room and turned around to see if it was a good time to talk to Anastasia/Daniella.
She was still sitting on the floor with Tatiana’s tracer and the flesh-and-blood Olga, but she seemed to have abandoned her sewing. A camisole still lay in her lap, but she was using it to play a game with one of the small dogs Jonah had seen in the living room area before.
“Peekaboo, Jimmy!” Anastasia cried, pulling the camisole over and then away from the dog’s face. “Get it, Olga? Peekaboo, and he’s a Pekingese?”
She laughed like this was the most hilarious joke ever. And the thing was, even though it was a really stupid play on words, he still had to hold back a chuckle. Anastasia was just one of those people you wanted to laugh with, no matter what.
Then something else hit him.
Peekaboo, Pekingese—that was English! Wasn’t it? Did Daniella just totally mess up and forget that Anastasia should be speaking Russian? Jonah wondered.
He quickly bent down beside Daniella/Anastasia and whispered in her ear, “What are you doing? Anastasia wouldn’t speak English to her sisters!”
Holding the camisole up to block her own face, Daniella separated from her tracer to whisper back, “Yes, she would! We’ve always spoken English a lot, because Mama prefers that to Russian . . . even the servants understand it!”
Okay, then, Jonah thought. But what kind of royalty prefers a different language than their own country’s?
He decided that wasn’t something he could worry about right now. He watched Daniella rejoin her tracer completely again. Now Anastasia was draping the camisole over the dog’s back like a cape.
“Anastasia, that camisole is going to smell like dog,” Olga said disapprovingly.
“Oh, good,” Anastasia said, dipping down to rub her face against the dog’s fur. “I love the way Jimmy smells.”
Even grim-faced Olga laughed at that, probably proving that Anastasia had an amazing future ahead of her as a comedian.
If we can make sure she lives through the night, Jonah thought.
He leaned in closer to Anastasia once again. The camisole had slipped over her face, as well as the dog’s, so Jonah thought he could talk to her without Olga noticing.
“We have a plan,” Jonah whispered in Anastasia/Daniella’s ear. “When . . . when the danger comes tonight, we’re going to use the Elucidator to make your whole family invisible. And then we’ll all escape. Chip is figuring out the best escape route now.”
At first Jonah wasn’t sure that she’d heard him, because she didn’t move. The camisole stayed draped over her head. But then she leaned her head back a little and motioned for him to put his ear near her mouth.
“You can’t just save my family,” she whispered. “If the guards threaten any of our servants and friends, you have to make them invisible and save them, too.”
Jonah felt dizzy.
“How many people are we talking about here?” he whispered back.
Anastasia started listing them off on her fingers.
“One, Dr. Botkin, who’s been so good at taking care of Mama and Alexei,” she began. “Two—”
“Anastasia, what are you muttering about over there?” Olga asked.
Anastasia raised her head.
“I’m telling Jimmy all the people who have been loyal to us,” she said. “He’s just a dog. Sometimes he forgets who he should avoid biting.”
“Jimmy wouldn’t bite anybody,” Olga said, all but rolling her eyes. “He’s too lazy.”
Still, Anastasia’s excuse made it possible for her to fini
sh the list out loud. She cupped the dog’s face in her hands and acted like she was talking only to him.
“Two, Anna Demidova, Mama’s maid, who’s built like an ocean liner—”
“Anastasia! You shouldn’t say things like that!” Olga cried, acting scandalized.
“It’s true, though, isn’t it?” Anastasia asked mischievously. “Three, Papa’s footman, Alexei Trupp. Four, our cook, Ivan Kharitonov.”
So many people! Jonah thought. It’s going to be hard enough just rescuing the five Romanovs, and now Anastasia wants us to add four more people to the list?
But Anastasia wasn’t done yet.
“And five,” she added, “the kitchen boy, Leonid Sednev, who’s willing to play toy soldiers with Alexei for hours and hours and hours when all the rest of us are sick of it.”
Jonah squinted at Anastasia/Daniella.
“Leonid?” he asked her in a whisper. “But Alexei acted like he was never going to see that kid again. He said—”
“What?” she whispered back.
“Never mind,” Jonah said. It all seemed too complicated to try to explain in a series of whispers.
“Do you promise to save all of those people too?” Daniella hissed.
Jonah sighed.
“We’ll do our best,” he said. “But when the time comes, you and Gavin will have to keep everyone calm, and tell them where to go . . .”
When Chip figures it out, he thought. If saving the Romanovs is even possible.
He realized that he’d forgotten to watch for tracer lights while Anastasia/Daniella was listing the names. Maybe in original time Anastasia really had been instructing Jimmy on who was loyal and who he should bite.
So without Chip and Katherine and me, the Romanovs’ only defenses would have been Maria’s flirting, Anastasia’s jokes, and the teeth of a little Pekingese dog? Jonah thought. No wonder they were doomed.
And then he wanted to take that word back, censor his own thoughts.
Jonah wished he could just talk to Anastasia alone—or rather Daniella, pulled completely away from her tracer—but that wasn’t possible as long as Olga was sitting there. He drifted back out into the dining room and on into the living room again. A tall, bearded man with gold-rimmed glasses was now sitting beside the tsar, and they were playing some sort of card game.
The doctor, maybe? Jonah guessed. The man looked almost as sickly as the tsarina.
“And that’s trump,” he said, laying down a card. “I win.”
“Ah, well, it’s time for supper anyhow,” the tsar said, gathering up the whole pile of cards and arranging them in a precise stack, all the corners lined up perfectly.
Does he know what’s coming? Jonah wondered.
He couldn’t understand how the tsar could sit there so calmly straightening cards if he had even a suspicion that the guards were right now plotting to kill his entire family. Maria had said the family had been held prisoner in this house for seventy-eight days. Maybe they just automatically assumed that there would be a seventy-ninth day, and an eightieth . . . and on and on and on.
The doctor and the tsar moved toward the dining room table, and the rest of the Romanovs joined them: the tsarina grimacing as she rolled her wheelchair forward, Alexei limping out of his room, the girls silently helping their mother and brother into place.
“Eggs!” Alexei exclaimed, peering down at the platter before him as if this was a huge treat.
“Just for you,” his mother said fondly. “The nuns who brought the supplies today know what you need to grow up big and strong.”
Jonah winced at that. Alexei was so sickly and pale and weak that it seemed cruel even to use the words “big and strong” around him.
But the entire family beamed at him as if they all believed it would happen.
Delusional, Jonah thought. Every single one of them. Or . . . just good actors trying to keep a sick boy happy?
He couldn’t decide.
The Romanovs sang a blessing for their food. This wasn’t a quick mumbling before digging in, like most of the blessings Jonah had said in his life back home. The family seemed truly grateful to have any food at all, and they truly seemed to believe that God would take care of them.
Oh, God, he thought, almost a prayer of his own. Is that true? Or are we fighting against you, trying to keep this family alive tonight? Why would you want them dead?
Jonah had talked with his favorite time agent, JB, about the connection between God and fate and destiny and original time, and he still didn’t understand it. Jonah’s argument, the last time he’d seen JB, had been that you should just help other people, no matter what.
And that’s what Chip and Katherine and I are going to try to do tonight, he told himself.
The family sat eating crude black bread and a thin soup and—in Alexei’s case—eggs. Anastasia told jokes and did an imitation of the cook chopping onions that made everyone laugh.
And she can do that, even knowing what the guards are planning for tonight, Jonah thought. She knows. Alexei knows. Maria may not know that it’s tonight, but she knows that it’s a distinct possibility, anytime. Probably everyone at the table knows as much as Maria does. And they can still laugh?
He couldn’t decide: Were they incredibly noble and brave, sitting there eating and laughing like a normal family on a normal night, pretending for everyone else’s sake that everything was fine? Or were they idiots for not jumping up and plotting and scheming and doing everything they could to escape?
Halfway through the supper, Jonah saw the door to the guards’ section of the house come open. Commander Yurovsky stepped through it.
“Citizens,” Yurovsky said, standing at the threshold of the dining room, “I apologize for disturbing your meal, but I have news to share.”
Jonah saw everyone at the table tense and dart glances at one another. And then, just as quickly, they all seemed to try to act normal.
“What is it?” the tsarina asked imperiously.
“Your kitchen boy will be leaving this evening. His uncle Ivan has come back into town and asked to spend some time with young Leonid,” Yurovsky said.
“What? No,” the tsarina exploded. “This is the fifth servant that you’ve taken from us, and not a single one has come back. And Leonid is such a fine playmate for Alexei. What will Alexei do without him?”
Jonah looked at Alexei, who looked much less surprised than the rest of the family.
Because he knew this would happen too, Jonah thought. When he was back in the twenty-first century, he must have read up on how everything happens with Leonid, too. And that’s how he knew to give Leonid those toy soldiers this afternoon.
“Oh, I assure you, this time the boy will come back,” Yurovsky said smoothly. Jonah didn’t know how anybody sitting at the table could believe him. “Why would you want to deny the boy a chance to spend time with his own family?”
Yurovsky turned to go back toward his own office. Dr. Botkin and Tatiana both bolted from the table and followed him, arguing the whole way.
“Why does Ivan not come to see the boy here?” Dr. Botkin asked as they stepped past Jonah.
“Couldn’t this visit be arranged another time?” Tatiana asked, right behind him.
Jonah considered following along—until he noticed that Chip and Katherine had stepped back into the living room. He went over to stand by them.
“I heard the guards say that Leonid’s uncle isn’t even alive anymore,” Katherine muttered angrily. “This is just an excuse to get the kitchen boy away from here. So he doesn’t have to die with everyone else.”
“Why do they care about that one boy, and not the other servants?” Jonah asked.
“Oh, it’s not because they actually care,” Chip said.
“They just don’t want to have to deal with as many bodies after they kill everyone,” Katherine added, her face twisted in disgust. “Ugh! I hate those people! They talk about bodies like they’re . . . they’re garbage. Not even human beings. And
then Yurovsky can stand there talking to the Romanovs, looking them right in the eye—”
“Shh,” Jonah whispered, because Katherine, in her fury, was getting too loud. “They’ll hear you in the dining room.”
“What if they did?” Katherine asked, still whispering, but only barely. “What if I went over there and asked the Elucidator to make me visible and then told the Romanovs everything the guards have planned?”
“If you did that,” Chip whispered back calmly, “they’d panic and scream and then the guards would come and shoot them right away, instead of waiting until it’s dark and they think no one will hear. And that would ruin the plans we’ve put together. Okay?”
Katherine pursed her lips. When she spoke again, it was a whisper once more.
“I hate this too,” she said. “I hate not being able to tell them what’s going on, and I hate having to stay invisible, and I hate not having a better plan or a better Elucidator . . .”
Chip put his arm around Katherine’s shoulder.
“I hate all that too,” he said. “But now that you’ve gotten that off your chest, can’t we focus on what we need to do right now?”
“Okay,” Katherine said sulkily.
Just then Dr. Botkin and Tatiana came out of the guards’ section and went back to the table.
“Yurovsky gave us his word that this won’t be like the other times servants left,” Dr. Botkin announced in a soothing voice. “Leonid will be back. Everything will be fine.”
Even the tsarina looked at him placidly and smiled and went back to chewing.
But did anybody sitting at the table actually believe him? Did he even believe himself?
TWENTY-TWO
Jonah and Katherine and Chip told one another everything they’d witnessed and figured out since they’d gone in different directions. By then the Romanovs were finished with their supper.
“What?” Katherine asked Jonah in surprise. “You’re not scurrying over there to eat their leftovers?”
Jonah had been starving in practically every single time period he’d ever visited. In 1903 he’d eaten scraps from Albert Einstein’s table and from abandoned plates in railroad-station restaurants. In 1600 he’d eaten what seemed like an ocean’s worth of fish. In 1483 he’d eaten hard crusts of bread and wished for pizza or lasagna.