Bargains and Betrayals

  She grinned. “Wow, Jessie. There’s finally something about you that’s really, frikkin’ normal.” She leaned forward to whisper, “You kinda distanced yourself from normal with the competition shooting stuff, you know.…” She winked, having no idea just how far from the norm I’d gone.

  But I’d adjusted my standards and broadened my definition of normal. You had to, living in small-town America.

  “You’re thinking about having sex,” Amy teased.

  “Thinking about it,” I stressed.

  “A lot?”

  “Enough,” I admitted. “Not as much as he does!” I cleared my throat. My cheeks still stung from answering Amy’s questions. “And Max isn’t trying anything with you?”

  “Nope. And it’s not because he isn’t interested. In sex. And not because he hasn’t ever done it before.”

  “Yeah. Definitely not that.”

  She arched an eyebrow at me.

  “Just ask him about Europe. Why do you think he’s not trying anything? Wait. Do you want him to try something?” God. Sex was confusing and I wasn’t even having it!

  A slight smile lifted the edges of her mouth. “I guess I worry maybe he just doesn’t like me as much as I like him. Maybe I’m with him as a favor to Pietr and you. Like, to make me comfortable.”

  “Yee-aahh. No way. You may have been blinded by his boyish good looks, or his rugged good looks—whichever, because he is certainly good-looking.…” I snorted. “But I know enough about Max to know he’s not doing anything with you as a favor to us.”

  “I guess if he wants me around but doesn’t want to go at it like rabbits … maybe he’s playing the good boy for once.”

  “You deserve a good guy,” I pointed out.

  She leaned in, guarding her mouth with a cupped hand. “Don’t tell anyone, but I think we may both have good guys.”

  Sighing, deep down I knew what I said next was true. “You’re right.” I just needed to remind Pietr of the fact.

  Jessie

  I closed the door behind me and Pietr spun around, coming away from the single round window that held a place between his packed bookshelves. “Jess.”

  He looked down at the bed between us, looked at me, and then away. He licked his lips and swallowed.

  “Who is he, Pietr?” I asked.

  “He’s the one man who can help us get Mother out.” The reluctance in his tone was tempered with challenge.

  “That’s not enough information and you know it.” I avoided the elephant in the room, hoping “Uncle Dmitri” was not the thing that filled my stomach with fear. “He hates me.”

  “It’s not like that,” Pietr muttered. “He’s looking out for me. He saved our asses at Pecan Place and knows I would have never done that if it weren’t for you. You’re the chink in my armor. My Achilles’ heel.” He looked at me, his voice tight. “If you would have let me carry you…”

  I shook my head. “No, Pietr, I couldn’t. I—” I swallowed.

  He sat down heavily in a chair by the window, his face obscured in shadow blanketing the corner of the room. “I’ve done it, haven’t I?” he whispered. “Ruined everything. Alexi always said if you chase two rabbits you lose them both.” His voice broke and he stumbled to finish his thought. “I’ve been trying so hard to get you both … you and Mother…”

  I don’t know why I hesitated as his heart was breaking, when everything in me said to run to him.… But my feet were suddenly stuck in place by the image of him squeezing the life out of Christian. Not as a wolf. Not as something between man and beast, but as Pietr.

  My so often gentle Pietr.

  “Oh, shit.” His chest rose and fell in a sudden flutter. He coughed. His hands twitched on the arm rests, fingers exploring the way they curved. He sighed. “You better just say it then, Jess. Say it and go.”

  “Say what, Pietr?”

  He exploded out of the chair with a volley of pops, to stand before me, his shadow thrown across me, as huge and menacing as he could be, the wolf’s head on his quaking shoulders, breath steaming across my face.

  I stood my ground.

  “Ssay you cannot love a monsterrr,” he growled. “Ssay it! You can’t love me!”

  I glared up at him. He was so hungry for forgiveness. I smacked him. Ow.

  He looked at me, dazed. “Ssay it…”

  I grabbed his arms and turned with him, the power of my momentum magnified by how unstable his emotions made him. I knocked him onto the bed, climbed up, and straddled his chest. Leaning forward, I wrapped my fingers around his wolfish snout. “You listen to me, Pietr…”

  “You shouldn’t love meee…” His words fell into a whine. “You don’t knooow…”

  I gave his snout a shake and the whining stopped.

  “You don’t get to tell me who I love or why. You are my choice, Pietr Andreiovich Rusakova. I love you for my reasons!” I released his snout and sat back. Pondering a moment, I said, “I think sometimes you don’t want anyone to love you. That you don’t think you deserve it.”

  I arched over him, stroking the wolf’s furry cheek until I heard the pop of the beast releasing its hold, and Pietr’s human face reemerged. And still I petted him, running my fingers gently from his temple to his chin and back again. “I don’t know why you’d want that, Pietr.… Loving you is so easy to do.… But you’re different,” I conceded. “Somehow harder and colder one moment, then soft and warm the next. Everyone here is different. You’ve all moved forward without me.”

  He closed his eyes and his body shuddered beneath me. “Jess,” he said, like a prayer.

  “Yes, Pietr?”

  “Pocelujte menyah.”

  So I took his face in my hands and I kissed him until his eyes sparkled and my lips tingled and he was Pietr—my Pietr—again.

  Jessie

  In front of the bus stop by the Rusakovas’ house, I hopped up and down to stay warm. Pietr finally grabbed me, tucking me beneath his jacket with him.

  “So tell me again why we’re going to school three days before…”

  Pietr grinned at me, snuggling tighter against me, his breath hot on my face. “Because I know your ex likes keeping an eye on you even more than he wants to watch anything here,” he said, motioning back to the house with a toss of his head. “You’re our decoy. How do you feel about that?”

  “Glad to contribute,” I said. “Besides, I have a little sister. I’ve been called way worse than decoy.” I smiled and burrowed into his side.

  Max huddled with Amy, using his body as a wind block. He carried a duffel bag and backpack. A sad look overrode his normally devil-may-care expression.

  “He’s going to really miss her,” I commented softly, but of course Pietr heard.

  “Da. He was going to keep her here if she wanted to know the truth, but she doesn’t,” Pietr explained. “It’s not like we can just live a lie forever, you know? At some point she’ll choose to know the truth and he’ll have to let her go.”

  “You didn’t really give me much of a choice about knowing,” I pointed out. “You tied me to a tree and, poof”—I flicked my fingers—“my secret boyfriend’s a wolf.”

  “That’s not how I remember it. I told you that you could go. You had a choice.”

  “Oh, be real, Pietr. I’m an editor for the school newspaper, a research junkie. You seriously thought if you gave me a choice to learn some crazy secret about how you tracked down Annabelle Lee or just head back to the house that I would have trotted off?”

  “I hoped not.”

  The bus squealed to a stop and we climbed in, Cat following slowly behind.

  I curled up against Pietr, content at the sound of his rapid heartbeat and the warmth of his body. For once the bus ride was too short. And for once I didn’t care who saw us together.

  All that changed when Sarah, Macie, and Jenny met us inside Junction High.

  “Back so soon?” Sarah called out, glaring at me. Her gaze dropped from my face, trying instead to burn a hole in m
y hand as it held Pietr’s.

  Sophie slipped into the midst of our bristling group, addressing me. “Nice to have you back. The place has totally gone into the crapper since you took your little leave of absence. And the school newspaper? It’s a hell of a job to do your part and mine at the same time.”

  “Good to be back, Soph,” I said hesitantly. As a group we headed to my locker.

  Sarah, Jenny, and Macie followed us, sniping just out of earshot. I sensed a crowd gathering. This wouldn’t be good. From the pit of my stomach dread uncurled and I remembered the crowd that had gathered to watch the smackdown between Pietr and Derek.

  I looked up at Pietr. He remembered, too. “He’s not here. They’re nothing.”

  I pulled my books out and Amy helped shove them into my backpack. I glanced at what I’d expected to be a large group, but really it was just some curious stragglers.

  Hospital overflow. Junction High had become a ghost town.

  And there was still math class. Paranormal ground zero plus math class seemed like the equation from hell.

  Across the hall, Sarah watched me, looking me up and down, her eyes taking in my worn sneakers, last year’s off-the-rack jeans, and the T-shirt Annabelle Lee had printed for me that read:

  IMPRESS ME WITH YOUR CLEVERNESS.

  (NOT GOOD ENOUGH. TRY AGAIN.)

  Behind the others I saw Marvin, Amy’s ex-boyfriend, and one more of my previous attackers. His eyes dark and circled by shadows, he looked bad. But he wasn’t watching me. Or Pietr.

  He was watching Amy. From time to time his gaze would flick to Max, his jaw would tighten—the vein near his temple raised to throb in anger. Then he’d stare at Amy again with anger, disgust, and hunger—a frightening mix.

  I got stacks of make-up work. So. Much. Math. Did no one realize I had an integral role to play in the freeing of my werewolf boyfriend’s dying mother from an organization parading around as a legitimate branch of the CIA?

  Jessie

  I hugged Amy, giving her a reassuring squeeze before I watched her board the bus, heading back to the trailer where her father still lived. “It’ll be okay. Soon this craziness’ll be all over, we’ll be writing our novels”—I said with a wink—“and life’ll be normal.”

  She nodded, wanting to believe, and boarded the bus. It was as I walked away I noticed Marvin standing there, watching me board the bus with Pietr and Max, Amy alone.

  “What is it?” Pietr asked, watching as I stared at the figure on the sidewalk following the buses with his eyes.

  “Marvin. He’s been watching Amy and Max all day.”

  Max leaned across Stella Martin. “He does that constantly. I told the little creep to back off. I’m tired of him gaping at us. She should have never dated him.”

  “Hindsight, Max. She thought he was somebody much different from who he really was. She saw man, he was monster,” I said in Amy’s defense. “You see a pretty package and you expect what’s inside it is good. It’s human nature.”

  Max looked at me, doubtful.

  “But now she gets a pretty package and a good deal on the inside, too,” I assured him, reaching across to chuck his chin.

  He snorted and sat back in his seat, focusing out the window.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Jessie

  That night I headed to the basement early with my make-up work. I’d fallen asleep on Amy’s abandoned bed when I heard the distant call of wolves. I rolled out from under the blanket I’d hunched beneath to do my lit, wiggled into my shoes, and climbed the basement stairs.

  Slipping into my jacket, I stepped out the back door of the house and into the night. Snuggled into the porch’s corner to dodge the worst of the clawing wind, I listened eagerly for Pietr’s call.

  “You’ll be the death of him, you know.”

  I jumped at the words, wrapping my arms more tightly around myself when I realized Dmitri stood in the shadows on the porch not more than three feet away.

  He lit a cigarette; the orange glow illuminated his nose and mouth and glinted in the dark reaches of his eyes.

  “No,” I stated firmly, hearing the wavering cry of Pietr joined by the basso profundo of Max. “I’m what’ll keep him alive. After you and all of those like you try to use him and make him into whatever you need, I’ll be there to pick him up, remind him who he truly is and why he is the most wonderful person I know. What you break, I’ll fix.”

  “Some things you cannot fix.” He took a long drag on the cigarette. “There are some things you cannot come back from.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “You’re young. Idealistic. But you’ve been gone quite a while by oboroten standards.” He shrugged, the cigarette’s glow barely highlighting the movement of his broad shoulders. “They feel time differently. Weeks feel like months—maybe years. They’ve done things. Become more than you expected they could.” He turned toward the woodlot and the slender finger of forest that reached its way to the old park.

  Where Max and Pietr howled again.

  “He has changed since you left. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “He says he killed a boy. In front of you.”

  “Yes.” I fought to keep him from getting a glimpse of my fear. “What did you do to him?”

  “We made a deal,” he concluded simply. “A bargain he offered. Answer me this: When you finally see that he has changed so much—become so much different from what you thought—will you be smart enough to let him go?”

  “I’ll never let him go.”

  He dropped the cigarette, crushing it out with his boot tip and heading for the door. “That is what I feared,” he said. “Sometimes, girl, you must save what can be saved and leave the rest to men like me.”

  The door closed, blocking out the light from inside, and I shivered against the sharp breeze and the lingering scent of smoke, waiting for the wolves to return.

  Hidden there, I heard them rush the hill. They paused by the garage, human again, movements tripping the motion sensor light. In their jeans once more, Pietr stood on the blacktop with his back to me; Max faced him.

  I stood silent as a ghost. They goofed around, their cares forgotten for a moment. Max gave Pietr a playful shove and they squared off like sumo wrestlers.

  “Yeah,” Max said, fingers wiggling for distraction as he lunged and slapped at his younger brother. Pietr evaded him easily. “You learned a bunch. Hell of a trade.”

  A skeletal leaf stirred on the porch, skittering in a slow circle as the breeze again kicked up.

  “But what’ll Jessie say when she sees—”

  The wind whisked around me teasingly, snatching at my hair and carrying my scent into the yard.

  Pietr and Max froze.

  “Oh. Crap.” Max looked up at the moon and then at Pietr’s chest. His jaw clenched. He stepped around Pietr, blocking him from my view with his broader body.

  “Go,” Pietr said, still not looking in my direction.

  “I guess you’ll find out what she thinks now,” Max muttered as he walked toward me. Silent, he took the porch stairs in a single bound, glanced once more over his shoulder at Pietr, and disappeared into the house.

  “What haven’t I seen, Pietr?” I called from the porch.

  He hung his head; the tension in his shoulders made the muscles in his back ripple.

  I went down the stairs slowly, dread growing with my every step. “Pietr,” I called. “I thought I’d seen everything,” I added, joking, “several times.”

  He shifted slightly, moving out of the motion sensor’s range. I quickened my pace as he was absorbed in shadow.

  “Pietr!”

  My vision dulled by darkness, he caught me around the waist.

  “Pietr, what—”

  And I saw. The motion sensor’s absence meant nothing because the moonlight illuminated the terrible truth carved into the higher reaches of Pietr’s chest.

  Two stars shimmered there, tattoos glowin
g like medals the size of my palms were pinned to his collarbones.

  I swayed on my feet, realizing in a sudden flash what it all meant. The tattoos glittered. Mocking me.

  Fearfully researching the day the Russian Mafia had appeared at the Golden Jumper horse competition I knew how tattoos differentiated ranks and station. How a man’s life could be read in the ink coloring his body.

  “Dmitri,” I whispered. “He’s Mafia.”

  “Da.”

  “But you…” I twisted in his grip, my back to the house. I looked up at him. My throat burned. “The deal you made … was…” Shaking my head, I tentatively reached out to touch one of the stars, praying it was a dreadful figment of my imagination—a mirage rippling across the living desert of Pietr’s burning skin. But it didn’t disappear. It remained. As permanent as death. And just as stark.

  “These…” I took a deep breath and steadied myself. “These are the marks of a captain.”

  “Da,” he breathed.

  No attachments, I remembered reading what was supposedly part of the Vory v zakone—the Thieves in Law—code online. No family. No friends. No wonder Dmitri saw me as a threat. “Pietr, what did you do to earn those—”

  He glanced toward the house, raising his eyes a moment as if to see who watched. He reached out for me.

  “No. No!” I struggled against his grip. “Let go of me!” But as he released me I changed my mind. “Damn it!” I howled, pounding my fists against the stars on his shoulders. I choked. “You saved me, so many times.… You were my sanity!” I grabbed his arms to shake him, but he was a rock. “But you haven’t let me save you! And now…”

  I dissolved into tears, pressing my forehead against him, my eyes leaking salt across his bare chest. “Why would you let them do this to you?” Crumpling at his feet, my shoulders shook.

  “I thought you, of all people, would understand.” The words dropped onto my head and he crouched before me, reaching to gather me back into his arms.

  “No,” I insisted, swatting at him. “Please don’t…” I choked. “I don’t know if I can…”

  “If you can what, Jess? Forgive me?”