Destiny and Deception

  “It’s so awful,” the other agreed.

  I sighed. Presumed missing was the team captain of the Junction Jackrabbits football team: hotshot jock, social manipulator, remote viewer, and energy transferer, Derek Jamieson. A psychic puppet master of sorts. And the guy I had moronically crushed on for years.

  But “presumed missing” equated in this case to “dead and not entirely gone” since part of him still ghosted through me, skirting my brain and sharing memories. And although my mother had raised me to forgive people, I was finding some of her expectations for me were set a bit too high, considering current circumstances. Derek topped my list of the probably unforgivable.

  He had been psychically feeding on both friends and competitors, a vampire of sorts without the need for blood—and most recently feeding on me—his hunger growing along with his other powers. He had also been one of the Rusakovas’ greatest obstacles in freeing their mother from a group believed to be CIA. And he had nearly … I stood, glancing at Amy, who waited patiently by my locker. He had nearly done to me what Amy’s ex had so willingly done to her.

  The one thing that made the difference in my case?

  The guy who was sure to have wanted to have made the same difference for Amy: Maximilian Rusakova—Pietr’s biological brother, Russian-American werewolf, and the guy with the reputation of previously being Junction’s stud and number-one player.

  Max sidled over, careful to stay in Amy’s view and not spook her. Max did that now, taking extra precautions, being calmer and cooler, on her behalf. “Hey,” he whispered. Leaning over, he kissed her forehead.

  She smiled at him, a hint of what used to be her old self showing in the tilt of her lips before it faded away.

  “Yeah, it is awful,” the other anonymous friend agreed. I turned to take a look. They had stopped in the middle of the hall, the crowd of students passing on their way to homeroom thin at best because of the odd illnesses striking down student after student. “I mean, what are we going to do for a football team next year?”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes at Max and Amy. Small-town priorities still overrode reason. It was oddly reassuring. We may have werewolves, Mafia, and all sorts of weird phenomena showing up in Junction, but we still obsessed over the success of our football team.

  I shouldered my backpack and looked up and down the hallway. “Pietr?” I asked.

  “He’ll be here,” Max responded mysteriously. “He’s just…”

  Amy glanced at the clock in the hall. “Running late?”

  What could I say? Not long since his final change and Pietr had definitely changed. Pietr had lost the ability to hear the invisible internal clock he had become so attuned to because it was so rapidly ticking down the time until his inevitably early death.

  That countdown had ceased with the taking of the cure. Pietr’s life span had increased once more to normal parameters—whatever normal parameters really were. I wasn’t the best to ask about normal life spans since my mother’s life had been cut short, because of the actions of one of Derek’s more amazing puppets.

  “Oh, great,” Amy hissed, pressing into Max’s side. “Here she comes.”

  Flouncing her way down the hall in a short skirt and heels came my ex–best friend and recent nemesis, Junction’s self-appointed Queen Bee and head of the mean girls: Sarah Luxom.

  Other than the tiny scar marring her forehead as proof of her involvement in the car crash that stole my mother’s life and had threatened to wreck my own along with it, Sarah looked perfect. As always.

  She walked straight up to me. “Hello, Jessie.”

  My lips puckered at the usage of my name. She had called me Jessica for so long now it seemed odd we could get to the point of Jessie. Amy called me Jessie; Max and Cat and their adopted oldest brother, Alexi, called me Jessie; as did my father; his girlfriend, Wanda; and my pesky little sister, Annabelle Lee. To Pietr, I was (and always had been) Jess.

  The same name my mother used for me.

  But to the troublemakers in my life, I was Jessica. As Shakespeare wrote: what’s in a name? So accepting Jessie from Sarah’s carefully colored lips would take some getting used to. But somehow … I looked at her and thought about the night we destroyed the company and watched Derek die. Somehow I thought I could adjust to it, knowing what I did now about who had been pulling Sarah’s strings all along.

  Like a shadow cast across my brain, he was there, ghosting through me like he still watched my every move. Derek. Even dead, he was still around, stuck in the heads of those of us who had been close enough to catch the psychic backlash of his death throe. That bound us together more tightly than anything now, Sarah, myself, and Sophie: the fact that something of him lingered within us even though his hands could no longer touch us and initiate his powerful manipulations.

  “Hey, Sarah,” I replied.

  “So where’s Pietr?” she asked a heartbeat before covering her mouth with her hands. “Not that I’m looking for him—I mean, I am looking for him—but just because he should be here, shouldn’t he.…” Her voice trailed off to a whisper as she looked away, chewing her lower lip. “I’m not looking for him for any wrong reason…,” she tried, blowing out a puff of breath in frustration.

  Amy clicked her tongue, grabbed Max by the hand, and began towing him down the hallway. She looked over her shoulder at me, giving a distinct signal to follow.

  “I know,” I assured Sarah, seeing how she brightened again. It was just a little white lie—what could it possibly hurt? I had lied much worse recently. Besides, just because I was having trouble believing the big bad bitch of Junction High had finally been cowed enough to follow instead of lead … It wasn’t a lack of faith in people’s ability to turn their lives around and become better—just prudent behavior, right?

  Max and Pietr had definitely agreed to the idea of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. What did you do with someone you could no longer accurately judge? Keeping Sarah under my watchful eye seemed far smarter than letting her be too long out of my sight. Though keeping her around pissed Amy off.

  Massively.

  Sophia joined us, muttering about some issue with the school newspaper that had somehow escaped my attention as a fellow editor. Again. I nodded, made the appropriate guilty noises, and tried to act like I cared. But after everything I’d survived since meeting Pietr and his family, my opinion about what was truly important in life had changed. Whose photo wound up above which caption about proper study habits on page three really wasn’t anywhere on my personal radar anymore. Although caring about the school paper was a wonderfully normal pursuit, I had to wonder if normal was somehow beyond my grasp.

  I was briefly jealous of Soph’s ability to regain a normal existence.

  Maybe it wasn’t my destiny to have normal—no matter how much I craved it.

  A shout of “Holy crap!” from down the hallway made us all jump.

  “Ohhh, god—not again…”

  We turned in unison toward the noise. By the math wing someone wobbled and—

  “I got her!”

  —was barely caught by a friend.

  “What is going on?” I hissed at Sophie. Didn’t reporters always have the story?

  Sophie twitched, one eye wider than the other. “Just more weirdness,” she assured. “We seriously need to rethink the school motto.”

  The lockers lining both sides of the hall trembled, rattling on their hinges.

  “Daaamn—” Amy whispered, transfixed, her hand seeking Max’s.

  Metal creaked. Every locker door quivered.

  Teachers flocked around the student who now convulsed in her friend’s arms.

  The quivering became shaking.

  A radio crackled and the nurse was called.

  The lockers flew open all at once with a clang so loud we grabbed our heads to cover our ears and watched, stunned, as a barrage of books, papers, magazines, and shrapnel of the school supply variety was vomited free.

  Vice Princ
ipal Perlson was on the scene, following a crew with a stretcher. Teachers stepped back and began ordering students to “help clean up this stuff” or “get to your classes.”

  We stood dumbly in the midst of the mess.

  Some heroes.

  I cleared my throat. “Is this more about the school food?”

  A blond head bobbed through the crowd, and I recognized Counselor Harnek snapping orders at Counselor Maloy. If anyone could handle a problem this big, it was Harnek. She’d handled the mess I’d made of two cheerleaders easily enough. She looked in our direction, and Sophie straightened.

  The janitor appeared, dragging a huge trash can on wheels and delegating volunteer responsibilities. Yes. Our janitor liked to think the people she chose had volunteered. Only the cheerleaders ever cared to argue.

  Sophie, kicking a textbook that had stopped a few inches from her feet, smiled at me. She glanced toward the gradually clearing chaos. “I need to be going,” she said softly in apology. “I’m working on this thing…”

  “What thing—?” But I was nearly knocked off my feet by Pietr racing around the corner.

  “Jess,” he exclaimed, grabbing hold of my arms so I didn’t fall backward and take Sarah with me.

  Sophie drifted away without answering.

  “Hey!” I blinked up at Pietr, smiling as I noticed both of his eyes at the same time: his normally rebellious hair had again been tamed and instead of his right eye being shadowed by a few riotous strands, his hair now framed his face.

  My eyebrows rose.

  It wasn’t necessarily a bad look for him—I doubted Pietr had a bad look.…

  “Uh—what did I miss?”

  I shrugged. “An important new equation: convulsing student equals exploding lockers. There was already a test of sorts.”

  “We failed,” Amy muttered, shaking off her backpack so someone’s stray paper fluttered free.

  Max cleared his throat. “Later,” he said with a nod. He led Amy to her classroom’s door before pressing one chaste kiss quickly to her lips. She frowned and left me in the hall with the boys.

  And Sarah.

  “Sorry. I’m running late. Again,” Pietr apologized, the words blurring together in his haste. His normally faint Russian accent was more pronounced with stress and he glanced from Max to Sarah to me and back to Max.

  Not like the Rusakova alpha at all. I shifted from one foot to the other. “You look different,” I commented, heading to the door of my class.

  His eyes were wild, but not in the way that spoke to me of his wolfish background. More like … He dodged in front of me, almost nailing my shoulder in his haste to open the door for me.

  “Uhhh … thanks.” I studied his face. I cast a questioning glance toward Max and only got a shrug in answer before he turned away.

  Sarah grinned vapidly at Pietr and also thanked him for opening the door.

  He nodded and followed us into the classroom. Sitting at the desk next to mine, he pulled up one sleeve to check a watch against the clock on the wall.

  I reached across the aisle to touch his arm. “Seriously?” I whispered, looking at his wrist. “Another watch?”

  “We are not supposed to have our cell phones on in class, so, da. A watch.”

  “Another watch,” I prompted.

  “Da.”

  I widened my eyes at him.

  “The other one did not keep good time.”

  I stayed perfectly still, waiting.

  “I think.” He sighed. “I need to know the time,” he said sadly. “I no longer sense it, so I need to see it. And it must be accurate.”

  My lips pressed together, I nodded and turned back to the front of the room just in time for class to start. Class passed me by as I stole glances at Pietr. Pietr sitting still as stone in rapt attention, only occasionally looking away from the teacher or up from his notes to glance at his wrist and check the accuracy of his watch. Pietr, studious and involved in the same classes that months earlier had paled when compared to his adventures in Europe or his powerfully animal-like abilities and aptitudes and his desire to live life fully—to live life fiercely and love courageously—and to do so every exciting and dangerous minute.

  Pietr twitched and glared at his newest watch when the bell rang, releasing us from class.

  I gathered my things, dumping them into my book bag, and asked, “Is it a little off?”

  He frowned, and I knew the answer was yes—well, da—before he even opened his mouth to say it.

  In silence we left the classroom and were bombarded by the anxious chattering of Hascal, Jaikin, and Smith just outside the door.

  Pietr was immediately involved in their conversation.

  And I was quite simply stunned.

  * * *

  Words that would’ve made Sarah’s head spin—even when she was Little Miss Vocabulary—were being tossed around by the group of them like they were nothing.

  Finally the talk of time-space continuums, parsecs, and the anomaly of a sudden surge of graffiti in Junction died down and Smith glanced in my direction. In a very pointed way.

  “We’re all bright people. We should get together on a weekly basis to play some variety of game. Something that strengthens our strategy and mental acuity. What do you think, Pietr?”

  “I think that sounds like a reasonable idea.”

  Smith rubbed his hands together, a smile on his face.

  I wondered if Pietr realized he was being put to a challenge. That a game night to Smith might very well equate to a potential opportunity to show he was mentally superior to Pietr. I stepped closer into the group of them, my curiosity piqued.

  “Chess?” Smith suggested.

  Pietr shrugged, seemingly unimpressed by the prospect of squaring off against Smith using a chessboard.

  “Dude,” Hascal warned, “he’s Russian.…”

  I turned away for a moment to keep from choking on a laugh. Even I had heard of the legendary chess rivalry between the USSR and the United States. But if your heritage determined your capabilities or your destiny …

  I paused, considering. My family was a mix of many backgrounds. German? Check. Italian? Check. French? Check. A little Native American mixed in for good measure? Supposedly it got a check, too, along with some mysterious Asian influence from the 1800s. Whenever someone asked about our ethnicity, we jokingly claimed “mutt.” If my heritage determined my destiny—if I had no free choice—I would still do okay because my very mixed heritage allowed for all sorts of opportunities. I was as American as Americans got.

  And that was definitely okay with me.

  Smith’s eyes narrowed, and he studied me until I took Pietr’s arm and looked away, made self-conscious by his staring.

  “A game that encourages intellect and creativity as well as a bit of freedom of expression is D&D.”

  Pietr tipped his head. “Dungeons & Dragons?”

  Smith’s smile widened. “Indeed. Have you played?”

  “Nyet, but I have heard of it.”

  “Then we must teach you. And the rest of your family. And of course Jessie would be invited as well.…”

  “Da, of course,” Pietr agreed.

  “Then we shall have a grand and glorious game of Dungeons & Dragons,” Smith proclaimed, his small eyes, greatly enlarged by his thick glasses, wide with anticipation. “Friday at seven?”

  Pietr nodded. “At our house. I’ll e-mail you details.”

  “Excellent. If we don’t see you before then, Jessie, I hope to see you then.”

  I just snuggled more tightly against Pietr’s side and nodded politely as they turned and walked away.

  It was then I realized what was bothering me.

  Pietr had surpassed settling in as a student and had tumbled right into being content as a … My mind balked at the term that kept presenting itself. I swallowed and thought of my frequent flirters club—the smartest and most well-intentioned guys at school. Hascal, Jaikin, and Smith held doors open for me all the time. N
ot a bad thing. And they took excellent notes (this I knew from having borrowed from the best). And just because they all had their little—quirks …

  That was it.

  My Pietr, the ex-werewolf with special tattoos marking him as a captain in the Russian Mafia, was now studious, polite, and concerned—to the extreme? My hot, dangerous Russian-American boyfriend who’d finally taken the cure I provided had flown right by normal on his way to embracing nerd.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Marlaena

  I’d picked my way down the slopes surrounding the small town to better investigate what Gabe had led us into. And create a little havoc.

  Everyone needed a hobby.

  Running through town was more invigorating to me than loping through the wooded parks. Racing across streets and dodging down alleys in daylight meant I might be seen—I might get caught.

  It kept my feet swift and my senses sharp.

  I zipped down side streets and jumped over fences. I prowled yards and dodged down alleys. If the area around Junction seemed relatively quiet at night, it was nearly as dull in the daylight. The most exciting moment came when I was greeted by the shout of a child proclaiming, “Doggie!”

  At least, I thought that was all the excitement the town had to offer.

  Until I smelled him.

  Along the edge of town, where one railroad ran, I stopped short. There was a scent I recognized. Not intimately, so this wasn’t my family, but the scent of pine was clearly out of place in the nearly naked deciduous forest. One of these things is not like the other, my mind sang as I pressed my nose to the snowy ground and I began tracking.

  Yes. It was a wolf. Big. Male.

  And not running with a pack.

  We didn’t always run as a pack—I sometimes preferred being alone.

  Maybe he was wired the same way.

  So … I snuffled around, following the trail until it muddied outside of a pool hall on the outskirts of town.

  Interesting.

  I eyed the place, reading a bit difficult in my wolfskin. JOHNNY BEY’S.