Backing the car out, I hoped both wolves had squeezed into the tiny two-door I saw parked near the lot’s back.
And I hoped they needed no more room than that.
Marlaena
Gareth found me in the old farmhouse’s kitchen, opening cabinet doors and rummaging through drawers. “Even mice are in short supply here,” I muttered.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Gareth warned, his eyes soft with worry.
“Searching an abandoned home for odds and ends?” I teased him, knowing he was dragging up the bits of Gabriel’s recent suggestion to make a connection with a very questionable character.
He pressed closer to me, his face grave. “The Russian.”
I pushed past him and through the doorway to the tiny living room. I looked at the pups in their faded hoodies and jackets, all huddled together in the best corner of the building. There was no denying they were cold and hungry. No denying they were my responsibility. I was their alpha. “He offered money?”
Standing in the other entrance, watching me, Gabriel nodded slowly.
“How much?”
He shrugged.
“How much is your safety worth?” Gareth asked over my shoulder.
I shrugged and remembered how it felt as a pup on the run with a stomach grumbling all the time. “And he’s not some wolf hunter?”
“He’s like nothing we’ve ever dealt with before,” Gabriel answered.
“And he’s not some perv with some bizarre kink, right?”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow at me, the smirk sharp on his already crisp features. “Are there such people?”
“You have no idea,” I muttered. “So. Freaky Russian dude with money wants to meet a werewolf and talk business.”
“You sound intrigued,” Gabriel said, approval clear in his voice.
“Intrigued?” I shrugged again, noncommittal. “Curious? Yes.”
Margie—not my mother but the woman who signed papers and claimed motherhood in the name of a wicked tax deduction and the ability to then call herself a philanthropist—was fond of warning, “Curiosity killed the cat.”
If she thought curiosity was rough on felines, she had no clue how hard it was to deny in canines.
Besides. Freaky Russian dude? What harm could possibly come of it?
Of course, cats got nine lives. And werewolves? Just one.
And a short one at that.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jessie
Pausing outside the boiler room door, I thought about it. I’d searched for Harnek’s group of special students during my homeroom and study hall for a few days now. What were the odds that the something weird I was searching for was going on down there? Just because boiler rooms were some of the creepiest places in movies—besides the spiderweb-filled attic or basement of somebody’s cat-obsessed aunt …
I twisted the door knob and—to my surprise—it opened easily. From somewhere under the staircase, lit by a soft glow of light from below, came the sound of steam and liquid passing through old pipes and beyond that—the sound of voices.
I paused on the first step. I could go into the heart of it alone or—I touched the cell phone I kept in my hip pocket—I could call Pietr and ask for backup.
Of the decidedly sensitive sort.
Dammit.
He’d overthink things and slow down whatever progress I might be able to make by just going in and exploring. I could jump in feet first and figure things out as I went.
But … I could get hurt.
Killed was even an option.
Pietr would want to take the time to lay out a cautious and concise plan. There’d probably be at least one carefully created chart.… Maybe a Venn diagram.
That did it.
I hurried down the rest of the stairs, stooping to see as much as I could as fast as I could.
Desks were arranged haphazardly and at a decent distance apart, one student at each one, all focused intently on something in front of them.
I descended another two steps.
With her back to me a petite blonde was verbally railing against one student who seemed to be struggling to complete whatever weird assignment would bring you to a makeshift classroom in the boiler room of Junction High.
“I said, Do it again!” she bellowed, nearly doubled over, fist and clipboard at her sides.
“Sophia?” I squeaked, finally recognizing the blond hair and slender form.
She whipped around to look at me, confirming my suspicion as to her identity, her eyes wide. The kids scrambled to—they pulled out books and homework—appear normal? In the boiler room. Well, we all tried our best to seem less than strange.…
Sophie smiled, her voice changing from the drill-sergeant shout and sinking back into the soft near-whisper I’d become so used to. “Oh. Hey,” she said. “Come on down.”
She turned back to them as I came down the last few steps and said, “It’s okay everybody. Go back to what you were doing—it’s only Jessie. Hi, Jessie.”
“Hi, Jessie?” I repeated, stunned. “Just: ‘Hi, Jessie’?” I waved at the room of students focusing so hard on their separate tasks—oddly reminding me of the aspiring Hogwarts wizards, minus the feather-stuffed wands, robes, and strange hats. I looked at one particular kid and corrected myself. Okay, so at least one of them had a strange hat.
Sophie shrugged and turned back to watch them, jotting down quick notes on her clipboard as she began to wander through the awkwardly arranged desks. She had to know I’d follow.
I peeked over her shoulder at a girl who focused on an orange. “What’s she doing?” I whispered, but Sophie waved me to silence.
The orange wobbled, rolled down the slanted desk …
“Gravity works,” I muttered.
The girl cursed in frustration and stuck a hand out to grab the orange as it tumbled off the desk’s edge—but suddenly it was hovering just above her hand. She cursed again and it quivered in midair, rising a few more inches.
Soph made a tsk-tsk noise with her tongue. “If you use that same passion, the emotion behind that cuss that just singed my ears—twice—you’ll have it floating in no time. And not get stuck with detention,” she said with a sigh, tugging off a pink slip she’d just filled out.
I looped an arm in hers and towed her to the side of the classroom. “Whoa. Soph. So, you’re, like, what? Coaching these kids? We stood in that hallway listening in on you-know-who—”
“Voldemort?” she teased.
“Might as well be, considering the level of crazy we’re all mired in,” I returned. “And you—what are you?”
She stood nearly nose-to-nose with me, keeping a wary watch over my shoulder to make sure nothing went wrong. “I sort of coach … I’m more like an enforcer? An overseer?”
“I guess I’m—”
She shouted over my shoulder, “Sam—don’t close your eyes—”
BOOM.
—just a little too late.
Sophie leaped past me, clipboard clattering to the concrete floor as she grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused the desk that had suddenly burst into flames.
“Stunned,” I concluded.
“Next time, keep your eyes open when you try to set something on fire—it’s called aiming,” Sophie said, shaking the stunned boy’s shoulder.
“Next time,” the girl with the orange said, waving her pink slip in the air at him, “aim that blast right here.”
Sophie shook her head and whispered to me, “I’d hate to be around when Samuel starts staring at some pretty girl and thinking, Man, she’s hot.… She might suddenly be hot in a far more literal fashion.” She rolled her eyes. “Okay, everyone. I think it’s time for a break. Pull out your silent reading books and take a seat.”
“Really? Silent reading?”
“Reading opens your mind to possibilities,” she justified. “Until a couple weeks ago—maybe a couple months, in your case—none of us had any clue that any of this was even a possibility. But now
?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, thinking back. “I guess that makes sense. So, are all these kids affected because of the school lunch program?”
She shrugged. “At this point that’s our best guess. It’s not impossible that a few students with latent abilities would’ve triggered with the onset of puberty, but we think even those have been greatly enhanced by whatever’s being fed to the students.”
“So it connects back to the food.”
“Yes.”
“Anything else we know about the food and its impact on the students?”
“That on days they serve burritos, Sam’s fireballs become a touch more … explosive?”
“Everyone gets a bit more explosive on burrito day,” I quipped, “regardless of the suspicious nature of the additives.”
She pursed her lips.
“And the other part of the we? This is Harnek’s pet project, right?”
Down the stairs I heard the click of high heels coming and a moment before I saw the woman, I identified her by the signature color of shoes she favored.
“Ms. Harnek. Hunch confirmed.”
She froze a second, assessed the situation, and then allowed a smile to cross her lips. “It shouldn’t surprise me that someone like you has stumbled into our midst, should it, Jessie?”
“By someone like me, do you mean nosy?”
“I prefer to think of you as tremendously inquisitive.” She winked. She surveyed the room again and held her hand out for Sophie’s clipboard, trailing her gaze along the list of names and notes. “Interesting. Dear sweet Samuel.” She shook her head as she headed toward him. “I know what the cafeteria was serving today and it wasn’t any product with a significant bean count. Explain your lack of control.”
He looked up from his copy of Firestarter and started to open his mouth, and my attention returned to Sophie.
“So. Harnek?”
“… has an intriguing history,” Soph admitted.
“I hear you,” Harnek warned over her shoulder.
“I thought teachers and staff were only supposed to have eyes in the back of their heads,” Sophie retorted.
“You mentioned my intriguing history,” Harnek quipped. “Let’s not bring my ex-husbands into this.”
“Ha!” Soph grinned. “I like working with you, you know?”
“You’d better, because there sure as heck isn’t a paycheck coming with this gig,” Harnek returned. She turned her focus back to Sam, her hands clutching the scorched desk as she leaned over to have a private conversation.
“Harnek was one of the last staff members in part of a special—and very hush-hush—Duke University program that ran in conjunction with the Rhine Research Center. It was designed to identify and train teens and preteens with special abilities. Harnek got placed here as a counselor—”
“Which I’m more than qualified to be,” Harnek added, clicking her way back across the concrete to us, “but the idea was I’d hang out here a while and scout the locals. Even then, Junction had a higher than average number of reports of the paranormal kind.… Ever hear of Susie Fenstermacher?”
Oddly enough, I had. “The kid who could produce socks out of thin air?” I snorted.
“The same. Some kids cry glass, some dream-walk,” Harnek pointed out. “But Susie manifested socks. And not just any socks—matching pairs—talk about a useful, but weird, ability.” She shrugged.
“I could’ve used her on laundry days,” I muttered.
“I’ve seen you shoeless on days other than laundry days. You could’ve used Susie a lot,” Soph muttered.
Harnek continued. “Anyhow, researching Susie was one of the main reasons I got this gig.”
“Seriously?”
“Susie was a viable point of study. Hey, it was the eighties—there was so much aerosol in the air from maintaining big hair, it’s a wonder anyone could think straight.”
“I’ve seen pictures.”
“I’ve been in those pictures—and I liked it,” she reported with a smile that snapped into place.
“So you came to Junction to track down the weirdness and study the people?”
“It was that, and a bit more. The government—well, the military specifically—has always wanted to know about every single asset we could possibly employ: the more bizarre, the more covert, the better. So psychic studies and paranormal research were hot. Sure, people imagined some of the stuff we encountered, but mostly its existence was only rumored. And the idea small-town America, full of the salt of the earth—the common people—could be so rich with paranormal diversity … well, we hoped but we never guessed there’d be this much. That’s the amazing thing: Fact truly is stranger than fiction.”
I pointed to the students who’d gradually put down their books and returned to testing their newfound abilities. “Is this what you expected—what you hoped for?”
“No,” she admitted. “This was never part of any plan I was aware of. But it’s happened. Kids have been affected. So now they need to be trained.”
“Trained for what? Military usage?”
She shook her head. “I hope not, though I think that may be in the works. It’s not on my agenda, though. Here I’m just trying to get them to use their powers enough so they can control them. So they can be safe.” Looking down at the toes of her brightly colored shoes, she added, “Beyond that, they can train for whatever. To fight oppression, to defend democracy—”
“An assault against terrorism using floating citrus hardly sounds do-able,” I said. “I mean, have you seen the price of oranges recently?”
Harnek blinked, but the smile never strayed from her lips. “They don’t need to be our heroes. We shouldn’t expect that sort of dedication or sacrifice from anyone but ourselves.” She shrugged. “You of all people know that there’s far more we don’t know than what we do know. And these kids”—she looked at Sophie—“all need the best chance they can get. At survival. We’ve tampered too much with things. I’m just trying to make our mistakes survivable.”
“Are they?” I asked. She had to know I was referring to the girl who was wheeled into Pecan Place on a stretcher and exploded. “Are these mistakes survivable?”
Her eyes darkened. “I hope so. All I can do is my best.”
“Tell them not to eat the school food,” I suggested.
Harnek looked at Sophie.
“I don’t eat it,” she confessed. “I’m still doing what I was doing.”
“But you were pushed by Derek. He was your catalyst. That’s gotta be different. What if once you’ve been triggered, that’s it?” I asked. “What if you don’t need to keep being exposed to the catalyst again and again? What if overexposure is…”
“Deadly,” Harnek said, her voice soft. “You aspiring authors and your what-ifs.”
“You need to put an end to this. You told Perlson no about the additional supplement—face him down about the additive, too,” I urged.
Harnek pressed her lips into a thin line.
Sophie whispered, “What if coming out so openly about all this gets her removed from the picture?”
“Killed?” I asked Sophie.
Harnek paled. “Killed?”
I snorted. “You’re running with quite an organization, you know? I’ve been shot at a bunch. Grazed, even.”
“I meant they’d fire her,” Soph said with a roll of her eyes. “Make it look like a budget cut.”
“Like they’d ever remove a guidance counselor from a middle school or high school,” I muttered. “Parents are the first ones to say their tweens and teens need help.”
“Schools cut teachers all the time, and what are schools supposed to be doing? Teaching,” Sophie responded.
“Good point.”
“So let’s not wrongly equate the needs of the students with the designs of the administration—or any school board.”
I shrugged, agreeing. “So she might lose her job. Wouldn’t it be worth it to warn the student body about something so potenti
ally dangerous?”
“Still standing right here, girls. Besides, losing my job would make it harder to keep up with the students and make sure they’re taken care of. Now, at least, I’m in the heart of the operation.”
The boiler grumbled.
“Or its unruly gut,” Harnek muttered. “You have to excuse me, girls. This whole thing can make you a bit crazy. I’m definitely at the ‘If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry’ stage.” She sighed. “Besides”—she signaled us to lean in—“there haven’t been any more deaths since that one at Pecan Place. I truly think this can be handled.”
“As long as Perlson doesn’t sneak in the supplement,” I said.
Harnek’s eyes narrowed. “You were right before.”
“About what?”
“About being nosy.” But she reached out to us and threw her arms around us, drawing us away from the other students. “But that nosiness? It might be an advantage.…”
Alexi
I pulled into the broad parking lot and took a deep breath before looking at the building that sprawled ahead of me, marked by one large sign that read GOLDEN OAKS ADULT DAY CARE AND RETIREMENT CENTER.
Over the weeks I had grown bolder, driving the car a row or two closer to the entrance before parking and sitting in a contemplative silence.
It was just a building housing many older people. Why should I even care?
I glared at its stoic brick face.
Although I did not know why I cared, I knew at least that I did care. That although Hazel Feldman was far from being the mother I knew and loved, she was my mother. Should that not count for something?
But I was not ready to meet her or speak to her. I was not able to yet face the truth enough that she might see it and know it. That I did care. It showed up in my anger and frustration. In the way I warred with Max over petty things, some part of me always remembering that he was the eldest Rusakova.
Some part of me remembering I was merely a fraud.
But how could I meet her and not accidentally let her know that even in abandoning me she had still affected me? Deep down I knew that eventually meeting her was inevitable.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN