“Kill you?” He gave me a leveling look. “Da.”
“Okay. Yeah. It really seemed he was going to shoot me.”
“Exactly.” He rubbed his nose again.
“Allergies?”
Shaking his head, he blinked red at me.
“But I’m starting to wonder if it’s normal for a government agency to act so…” I shrugged.
Looking back, I caught him with his nose buried in Victoria’s fur. I raised an eyebrow. “Does she smell good enough to eat?”
He chuckled. Uncomfortably. All traces of red bled from his eyes. Watching me, they went clear and blue as Arctic ice. His mouth pulled into a taut line. “What if there’s a new player?”
“Who else? Holy crap, Pietr—we’re already dealing with the Russian Mafia and the CIA. Who else might want a piece of you?”
“Who doesn’t? It’s a dog’s life, right?” He opened the door for me. “Or perhaps people aren’t who they say they are. Things are seldom what they seem.”
Says a werewolf.
Hazel Feldman watched Pietr with far greater interest than she’d shown the first time she’d met him—when she’d agreed that Romeo and Juliet wasn’t much of a romance. “I’m glad you’re doing your duty again,” she said.
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “I didn’t stop. I’ve been doing my service learning assignment steadily.”
“There’s a difference between doing an assignment and doing your duty, boy.”
He shrugged one shoulder and passed Victoria her way.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Feldman marveled. “But such sharp little fangs. That’s the way the world is, isn’t it? The prettiest things often have the worst bite.”
“You speak in riddles, Mrs. Feldman,” I said with a smile. “I always leave here with lots to think about.”
“Good, good,” she said, petting Victoria with such a heavy hand the kitten’s head bobbed down and her eyes widened with each long stroke from her head to her tail. “Are you ready to give in, Jessie?”
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Pietr tilt his head, observing our exchange. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I’m not sure I want to know my future.”
She glanced at me, wizened eyes narrowing further so her wrinkles deepened into crevices. “ ‘Que sera, sera,’ ” she muttered. “ ‘Whatever will be, will be.’ ”
“Da,” Pietr agreed. “But doesn’t that song continue with the idea we don’t get to know our future?”
“I hate that song,” she sniped. “Perhaps if I start with your cards, Pietr.” She pushed Victoria back into his grasp and dug into the folds of her voluminous skirt, withdrawing her beautiful deck of cards. “Shuffle.”
Reluctantly Pietr crossed to her door, shut it, and set Victoria down. After checking the window was closed, of course. He had learned that much from his first trip to service learning. He took the cards and paused.
“Don’t be scared. Shuffle. The future is an amazing gift.”
“Some of us don’t get time to unwrap it,” he muttered.
“What?” She cupped a hand to her ear.
“He said he’s sorry he’s being so taciturn.”
He looked my way, but only briefly. He shuffled the cards like a pro, his hands quick and sure. “I draw.”
She grinned. “You’ve done this before.”
“Da, I have a sister with a fascination for such extraneous activities.”
“If you think what she does is extraneous, she’s not very good at it yet.” She took the cards and fanned them in her hand, holding them facedown. “Perhaps I’ll make you a believer. Pull one for your recent past.”
He did.
“The Tower. You have recently faced great change.”
“I’m a teenager. Things are always changing.”
“Shall I be more specific?”
Undaunted, he replied, “You may try.”
Holding the card, she closed her eyes a moment. “Your most recent birthday was filled with surprises.”
My teeth pinned my lower lip.
Pietr didn’t show any sign she’d struck a nerve. “Go on.”
She ran a thumb across the card, contemplating. “You expected to be hurt that day, not betrayed. But someone close to you surprised you. No. Two surprised you. One with near betrayal, one with acceptance,” she corrected.
Pietr’s eyebrows lowered.
“Another card? For the near future.”
“Da.” He yanked another free of the fan.
She turned it over. “Oh.” Her lips slid across her face as she considered the meaning, or perhaps the words, to explain it. “There is death ahead.”
His eyes closed for one sharp second, and he swallowed.
“It is a repeating cycle, a loop meant to close. You can fight it, but it is coming. Quickly.”
I reached for him, but he stepped smoothly away. “Pietr…”
“This is nothing I don’t already know. If you want to make me a believer in magic, you’ll need to do far better.”
“Fine,” she said, lips twisting in a devilish grin. “One more card. For a secret you’re keeping.”
He reached forward, and she jerked the cards back.
“No. Think about it. Hold it in your mind. What do you want to keep hidden most? What secret do you dare not share?”
He licked his lips. His jaw set like stone. Slowly he slid a card out and showed it to her.
Her eyes flicked from it, to him, to me. “Leave the room, Jessie,” she ordered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“But…”
The faint line of a vein appeared by Pietr’s hairline.
“Okay, I’m leaving,” I mumbled, slipping out of the room with Tag still in my grasp. Only when the door clicked shut behind me did I hear the faint noise of people talking resume. Sighing, I took a tour of the hallway. Could Mrs. Feldman have learned Pietr’s greatest secret? Was she—right now—revealing to him she knew he was a werewolf?
Pietr swung the door open and I jogged back, searching his stony face for some sign. I wanted so badly to touch him, to assure him, but my hand didn’t dare twitch from where it held Tag, Pietr looked so fierce.
So utterly unforgiving.
Mrs. Feldman looked at me. A smile crackled her face into a thousand wrinkles. “Come now, Jessie. Shuffle the deck and learn your future.”
“I don’t believe in magic,” I confessed, my eyes never leaving Pietr’s face.
He sat, no—perched—on a chair in her room, seeking the corner’s solitary shadow.
“What is it with you children now? Either you believe in magic, spelling it with a terminal k, as if accepting anything else might indeed be terminal, or you cling to science, dismissing all other possibilities. Has no one taught you they blend? They interweave. Can we explain the magic of birth as science—yes. Sperm meets egg,” she confirmed, clapping her hands on the deck. “Until”—she bent forward on her bed as if sharing some secret—“until that first moment a mother or father looks into their child’s eyes and realizes there is indeed magic dwelling within.”
She shuffled the cards, hands amazingly quick considering they were knotted and gnarled and freckled with spots. The gaudy rings on her fingers sparkled. “Creation. Amino acids encountering the right atmospheric pressure, temperature, and conditions to start life. Science!” she proclaimed. “And yet, where has it happened in our universe? Only here.” She pointed with a vehement finger. “On Earth. That is a kind of magic.”
My eyes followed her hands and she raised them, baiting me as she shuffled and danced the cards back and forth. “They work together, magic and science. And any scientist worth his salt will confess to feeling something magical anytime he or she learns or discovers something new. Have you never thought it is most suitable that science and magic should blur together here in a town called Junction?”
“I never thought about it at all,” I confessed.
She fanned the cards and snapped them shut. “Shuf
fle.”
I did, my hands fumbling with the hefty deck.
She took them back, carefully spreading them. “Now pull.”
I drew, holding the card out to her, aware how intently Pietr watched my hand.
“Hmm. You worry too much.”
Pietr snorted and looked at me, his jaw loosening enough for him to speak. “And you say I always state the obvious.”
I thought the ghost of a smile twitched there on his lips, but it was gone too fast to be certain.
“You are surrounded by people who want to protect you.”
I shrugged, wanting to stand as firm as Pietr.
“Draw again.”
I did.
“These people who want to protect you are keeping information—keeping secrets—from you.”
“Why?”
Her gray-and-white curls bobbed as she shook her head. “Only to protect you. If they thought it would help…” She glanced at Pietr, but he silenced her with a look. “It is important to remember they have the very best intentions.”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I gazed out at Pietr from beneath my eyelashes.
He was unmoved.
“One more,” she urged.
I sucked in a breath and rolled my lips together, pulling one last card.
“Ahhh. But the secret far bigger than any they’re keeping from you is a secret flowing within you. There is hope in you.”
“That’s no secret,” I murmured. “But it’s wearing thin.”
“No. It is too great a part of you to ever wear,” she assured me. “The dog.” She motioned.
I held out Tag, and she gave him a cursory pat. “Excellent. Now go.”
“Thank you,” I said, letting her words dance in my head.
“Pietr.”
He paused behind me, and I waited for him by the door.
“Hold on to hope,” she said. “It is the only way to live.”
He shook his head and closed her door behind us.
“Wait!” Feldman shouted, and I heard a faint tap on the door as I sprang toward it and threw it open.
Mrs. Feldman was pale, staring at the door as it swung wide. “Careful,” she breathed, pointing at my feet. A card lay between the toes of my sneakers.
“In all my years … Bring it to me, child.”
“Why’s it…” I stooped to retrieve it.
“It flew out of the deck.” She looked it over. “This is troubling.”
We’d had death and dramatic change and now we had the truly troubling card?
“What does it mean?”
“Beware.”
I stumbled backward. Into Pietr.
“Ohhh.” In her wrinkled hand the deck vibrated, the stack shimmying.
A single card slithered forward from between the others. Mrs. Feldman’s eyes found mine and she freed it the rest of the way. “The boy. Beware the boy.”
“Thank you,” Pietr scowled. “Now if she’ll just listen.”
We rode back to the school in silence.
* * *
The newspaper sat on our kitchen counter, headline blaring “Gas Drilling to Begin.” Fabulous. I moved it to the far side of the counter and started pulling stuff out to make dinner. Nobody wanted the gas drilling—it was dangerous to the environment probably well beyond the span of the studies they’d done. But nobody could blame the farmers around Junction for leasing their land, either. The economy was in the crapper, and people were desperate for assurances and cash. Generally not in that order.
I was digging around in the fridge’s vegetable drawer when I heard the newspaper flop open.
“Dad?” I asked, glancing around.
No one was there. A chill ran across my arms, and I rubbed it away. Maybe I’d left the door open. Ignoring the newspaper, I stepped to the mudroom. No. The door remained shut. Locked, even.
The newspaper rustled again, and slow as a victim in a horror flick, I turned to watch as the sections and pages rearranged themselves as if a person pawed through them.
Or a ghost.
The sections slapped apart, one falling at my feet. The local. “Teen Train Track Suicides Stump Cops.”
“Mom?” I squeaked.
Nothing.
“I’m totally losing it. Thank you, Sophie.” I picked up the paper gingerly, setting it by the sink. I read snatches of it as I made dinner. It mentioned the werewolf connection Hascal and Jaikin had suggested, but only in passing. Instead, they focused on the idea the victims had seemed depressed and might have used drugs causing hallucinations (although they admitted finding no trace of illegal substances in their systems).
Weird. Werewolves showed up in Junction, then the CIA, and the Russian Mafia, and now there were even more suicides. Maybe normal wasn’t achievable anymore.
I made it through dinner by pushing my food around the plate more than eating it. Dad called to say he’d be working late at the factory, so he wasn’t there to examine my every move. But Annabelle Lee was. Over the cover of her newest book she watched me.
When I finally rose to scrape my plate, she spoke up. “I saw them kissing.”
My back straightened.
“Pietr and Sarah.”
I sighed. It was one thing to put on a show around me, but to be kissing elsewhere … My stomach clenched, and I was glad I hadn’t eaten much.
“I’m sorry he’s so stupid.”
I set my plate in the sink with a clank. “That’s the problem, Annabelle Lee. He’s not stupid. If he was, I wouldn’t be so, so messed up over him.”
“I’m sorry he’s—” She paused, and I looked at her, waiting. “I’m sorry he’s with her,” she concluded.
“Me too.”
* * *
That night as I finished changing for bed I heard a long and wavering cry outside, a howl that twisted the air the same way it twisted my insides into bows.
“Oh my God, what’s that?” Annabelle Lee raced into my room, dropping her book on my bed as she zipped past me to yank open the window. “A coyote?”
The call reverberated off the walls, filling my bedroom with its rich song—distinct, distressed, and powerful. My blood rushed in recognition.
Pietr.
“No,” I whispered. “Definitely a wolf.”
She looked at me as I joined her at the open window. “You don’t seem worried about the horses.”
“They’re safe.”
“What do you think it eats?”
“Everything,” I said with a grin. “But not horses.”
“Why’s it out there? Is it hunting?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what does it want?”
“I honestly don’t know.” I grabbed the window frame. “Come on. It’s cold.” I realized, closing the window, I didn’t necessarily mean the weather outside.
* * *
“Why is he watching you like that?” Derek asked, grinding each word out as we stood in the hall between classes.
I looked around his shoulder. Sure enough, Pietr’s eyes were fixed on me. Sarah was nowhere in sight. “I have no idea. Maybe he needs to tell me something.…”
“Go.” Derek didn’t bother to mask his disgust but dismissed me in a very kingly fashion. Which irked me. A lot.
Although no hallway in Junction was particularly expansive, something about crossing from one side to the other—to Pietr’s—made me feel like I was embarking on my longest journey ever.
“What’s going on?” I asked, keeping my tone light. “Other than you watching me makes Derek grouchy.”
“I didn’t mean to stare.”
So much for my little ego trip. Stupid heart. Stupid girl.
“We have a lead,” he said, eyes glowing. “A place we think they’re keeping her. Cat and I are going to snoop around more today to pinpoint things. Then we’ll free her.”
“That’s great!” But the thrill drained away, replaced with a sudden and daunting dread as I realized what it meant. “You’ll
break the agreement. The CIA will—what’ll they do if you…?”
“Try to free our mother?” His eyes narrowed.
“You can’t.”
He drew back, as far from me as the hallway allowed, his back to the wall, eyes hooded.
My mind scrambled. “Don’t you want to get a look inside first? See the lay of the land?”
He stared at me.
“Pietr. Think.” I glanced up and down the hall. Derek’s eyes burned into my back, and I changed my posture. Stiffened—going for an indifferent-seeming stance. Just another lie as my heart threatened to spill out of my mouth. “I know you want her out. And she’ll get out. We’ll get her out. But why risk angering the CIA? What about our progress?”
“Their progress has slowed to nothing.”
Struggling with a reply, I pressed. “What if we wait a little longer? Play this out? Do it their way so we can see how the place is set up inside?”
“Cooperate so they take us into its heart?” He rubbed a hand across his chin and I shivered, remembering the feel of his jaw, the touch of his fingers.
“Yes. Cooperate first. Maybe they’ll still give us what we want,” I insisted.
He closed the small distance between us before I could catch my breath. He reached out, but dropped his hand, casting a look over my shoulder. At Derek.
“Please,” I begged. “Puhzhalsta.”
His eyes snapped closed and he shook his head, fighting some silent inner battle. When they reopened they were the brilliant blue of a clear summer sky. “Fine,” he breathed. “They can take us into the heart of their operation. But understand,” he said, eyes locking with mine, his voice clipped and cold, “if they do not give us what we want, we will tear that heart out.”
My head jerked down in agreement. And fear.
I wondered if it was possible the CIA’s poor handling of the situation could turn normally sensible Pietr into the monster he feared was so much part of his nature. What did it take, after all, to make a man a monster?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
For once, the CIA’s timing worked in our favor and Wanda drove me to the Rusakovas’ that afternoon, pausing briefly to pick up Officer Kent. I called ahead to let them know our numbers had changed and the agents brought good news.