Page 9 of My Wild Horse King

I blink. “Your uncle?”

“Technically, he’s my great-uncle—your great-grandfather’s younger brother. He moved to America before I was born,” Dad says. “Father told me that he was always going on and on about how our family had the power to change into a horse.” Dad laughs. “We all thought he was insane.”

“Wait,” I say.

“Tell me all about it,” Aleks says.

Could my dad have been sitting on the answers we needed all along? My clueless father? It can’t be true. Right? Surely if he knew anything helpful, he’d have noticed something about Aleks and Grigoriy and Alexei long ago. Surely.

But who would assume that any stories they heard about magical powers and shapeshifting horses were true?

“I don’t really know anything,” Dad says.

My heart sinks.

“Your grandfather thought it was all the worst kind of nonsense, and his father did as well. They never listened to him, and when he emigrated to America, he took all the old journals that mentioned it with him.”

Journals?

“What journals?”Aleksandr sounds even more desperate than me.

“All I know is that when Grandfather’s brother insisted on taking them, Grandfather put up a token fight and then caved immediately. He said he always thought they were strange, so if his brother was willing to sign away his inheritance as long as he could keep them. . .” Dad shrugs.

I close my eyes. “But we need those.”

“I think I have a cousin or something living in the United States, somewhere out west. I can rummage around and see whether I can find her address.”

“Is this cousin’s last name Liepa?” I cringe. With Gustav changing his name, Leonid could find and kill this cousin before Dad even gets back to Latvia, just to prove that he can.

Dad shakes his head. “I think my great-uncle changed his name—he fled because he deserted from the army. The Russians were—” Dad freezes.

Aleks laughs. “Go ahead. I won’t get offended.”

Dad winces, but he continues. “They were attacking, and we were stuck, drafting anyone we could to fight them. But then when they won. . .”

“I get it,” Aleks says.

I’m sure he doesn’t, but it’s nice of him to say.

“My great-uncle wasn’t someone who was overly brave,” Dad says, “or at least, not according to my Grandfather. And he certainly felt no loyalty to Russia. He was done with war, so I heard he changed his name, but I can’t recall what he changed it to.” Dad taps his lip like that might help.

I’d like to badger him and press him and push until he comes up with an answer, but it won’t help. If he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. “Please, Dad, please find out as much as you can as fast as you can.” It occurs to me that he’s inRussia,for some reason. He didn’t announce his visit, and it’s a turbulent time, which makes it odd that he came now. Frankly, all of that is already not promising. Historically, he would only come to see me in a strange place. . .if we were about to lose the farm. I can barely force the words out. “What are you doing here, Dad? Is everything okay?”

“I’ve been watching the news,” he says. “Things aren’t safe. I worried that maybe you’d gotten trapped, and you weren’t returning my calls.”

I’m as bad as Gustav. Assuming the worst about him when, for once, he was actually being a dad. Or at least, maybe he is. I decide to press one more time. “Everything’s fine back home?”

Dad winces.

I knew it. “What?”

“John had a heart attack,” he says. “He’s alright, though. He’s recuperating at the hospital, but the barn’s a bit of a mess.”

I should fly straight home.

Gustav’s the brother who ran away—like Dad’s uncle, apparently, but John’s been like a second father to me. Plus, he’s never almost cost me the farm.

The thought of him in a hospital. . .

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