They wheeled Jessie out to join us. “No broken bones. No concussion,” she reported.
“The vomit?” I asked, looking down at my shoes and glad I had been quick to step back at just the right moment.
She looked at me, stricken. “I’m sick with worry. He won’t heal up from this, will he?”
I took her hand. “Of course he will. He will be fine. He will heal. Just like any normal Russian-American.”
“It happened too fast,” Cat whispered from beside me.
“It did happen very fast,” I assured her.
“Have you heard? They did not find the truck’s driver.” She glanced at me. “They have been talking,” she added. “No simple human should have walked away from that crash.” She hung her head a moment and then looked at Jessie. “Too fast,” she emphasized.
“What do you mean, Ekaterina?” I asked, grabbing her hand in mine so she could not pull away.
Cat balked, pulling away in her seat only to find her shoulder pressed against the wall and nudging a crucifix forward on the nail that held it.
I looked from Jessie to Cat and back again.
“The cure is not … not permanent.”
“What?” I dropped her hand, burned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean precisely what I said, Sasha,” she whispered, her eyes wide and staring. My brief past stint as Rusakova alpha served me well, and Cat submitted to my awkward interrogation. “The cure is only a temporary measure. It is not a guarantee. It is not permanent. If he’d had more warning, he might not be…”
“Be what? Simply human? As badly hurt?”
“Da.”
“How do you know this? Jessie…” But Jessie looked away. “You knew as well and did not tell me?”
Still, Jessie did not meet my eyes. We had all become liars, and though I was not surprised by Jessie’s involvement, Cat’s willingness to keep such a secret shook me. “How do you know it is not permanent—that he might have…”
“I broke through the cure.”
“But I have watched you. You do not run, you do not hunt, your animal instincts are low at best,” I whispered, my eyes darting as I studied her face and posture. “Your calorie intake is nearly that of a normal human girl.”
“And she can stomach chocolate,” Jessie added as an odd aside, noting one of the dietary things that had previously been an issue with the Rusakovas in their oborot state. Christmas had been much improved because of Cat’s ability to devour the treats stuffed in her stocking (though she complained bitterly of the resulting acne).
“I took the cure a second time—when Mother…” Her lower lip quivered a moment before she regained her self-control. “When Mother took hers, and Pietr drank and forced Max to drink.…” She looked away. “I took it and I hid the pelt. I could not bear to be the only one in the family so different.…”
I turned away, focusing on the EXIT sign hanging overhead. “It is not easy—that,” I agreed. “Being different. Especially when you are the only one to know that you are.” I rubbed at my face with a shaking hand. “When did the cure fail?”
“When Derek was beating me,” she whispered. “He had me down on the ground.… I was certain he would kill me. And Jessie. And then…” Her eyes met mine again. “I felt something inside of me snap and it was as if a switch had been thrown. I felt the wolf surging through my veins again—uncaged and angry. And I changed.”
“The need and the adrenaline,” I murmured, watching her eyes. “You have a larger spleen to help with the dump of red blood cells and adrenaline that the change and your fast healing required, so it makes a certain amount of sense that it would be able to overpower something that cannot actually fix your genetic code.” I rested my head in my hands and stared at the tile floor. “The cure only masks it then.”
“So what do we do now?” Jessie asked.
“We do what every other human family does when someone is hospitalized. We wait and we hope for the best.” I grabbed each of their hands and held them with mine. “And, Max, do you also have something to admit?”
Cat, Amy, and Jessie turned to look at him.
“Da…” He looked up at the ceiling and reached for Amy’s hand. “I did not take the cure. I spit it out. I got sick but never went through the final change.”
“But the bathroom…” Jessie and Amy gawked at him.
“I was angry.”
“You broke my favorite soap dish,” Cat accused. “And the mirror!”
“An apology is most likely in order…,” he admitted.
“Most likely?”
And we came back together even more tightly as a family while we waited to hear the results of Pietr’s injuries.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jessie
Most of us went home from the hospital that morning. Not Pietr. With a broken arm and ribs and huge bruises along his right side he was being kept for observation. And to get the good pain meds.
Outed about still being a wolf, Max more openly engaged in his wolfish nature, running on nights he didn’t work late at the theater and showing off his strength, speed, and agility more often for Amy.
But they fought. She’d already lost people in her life—the idea that Max came with an early expiration date didn’t sit well with her.
And Alexi took the remaining car, the convertible, out for a drive every afternoon and always returned looking a little sadder than when he’d left.
* * *
Pietr was determined to go back to school immediately, although I suggested he stay home, and the doctors had given him notes to allow him to stay out and rest up for more than an additional week.
But he was afraid he’d miss some nuance of what was being taught.
In math class.
The idea of there being any nuance or subtlety to math astounded me. But he returned to and slipped right into bonding with Hascal, Jaikin, and Smith.
And nearly ignoring me.
I gave up my study halls and part of my homeroom and lunch period each day to work with Sophie and the special kids. And I loved watching their progress—as long as citrus didn’t catch fire and desks didn’t explode in a burst of rainbow-colored sparkles. But I preferred those to the kid who was so freaky he could read minds and the other who could predict the five-day forecast—accurately—without employing Doppler radar.
It was as I entered the boiler room during study hall one day that I noticed Sophie eating something.
“What is that?”
“Supposedly shepherd’s pie,” she said, fighting to swallow one more forkful of the stuff.
“From the cafeteria?” Alarm colored my tone.
“No, dork, I brought it from home in a sandwich bag.” She rolled her eyes at me. “Of course it’s from the cafeteria.”
“Why—?”
“We need to know what would happen to kids if they’ve been triggered by some other catalyst—other than the food—and then eat it.”
“Does Harnek know you’re doing this?”
“No.”
“How long have you been—”
“About a week.”
“Stop,” I demanded, grabbing the fork.
She blinked at me.
Then she fainted.
Alexi
“Allo, beautiful,” I said, my feet up on the dining room table as I made myself comfortable for a long-belated call with Nadezhda. Things had been so crazy—for both of us—that we had not spoken in days. But we understood that about our schedules—our duties.
The voice that greeted me was not Nadezhda’s. Or even feminine in any way. “Hello, yourself, you stud, you,” came a distinctly Cockney accent.
“Wha—Who is this?”
“Kellan,” he responded flatly. “Dezzie’s partner.”
“Dezzie’s?”
“Nadezhda’s,” he said slowly, separating each syllable.
My feet dropped off the table and slammed onto the floor. “I want to speak to Nadezhda. Now.”
�
�She’s a bit indisposed at the moment.…”
“Now,” I said.
“It’s your funeral, mate.…”
I heard a door creak open. “Dezzie—”
“What are you doing in here?” she laughed. “Can’t you see I’m showering?”
My heart stopped.
“I see that quite clearly,” Kellan responded.
“Stop it,” she said. With another laugh.
“But you have a phone call.”
“Unless it’s a prime minister or a king, I have no interest in talking,” she proclaimed haughtily.
I heard the door close again. “You heard the lady. Shall I tell her you called?”
“Nyet,” I croaked. I turned the phone off and threw it across the room.
Jessie
I got off the bus at the Rusakovas’ having gotten Sophie home sick and alerting Harnek to what was happening. I’d done the best I could, hadn’t I?
I collapsed at the foot of the stairs. Max was working, Amy and Cat were AWOL, and Pietr was staying late at school to discuss something that was surely important to someone with Smith, Hascal, and Jaikin.
I needed … I looked down the hall to Alexi’s room.
I needed to fight.
I tugged my hair back in a ponytail and stalked down the hall.
Alexi
With the cure’s failure—my failure—fresh in my mind, she showed up at my bedroom door, eyes narrow and hair pulled back into a tight ponytail.
“Da?” I asked, but I saw from the way her shoulders and her feet were set that she needed something specific. Something only I could provide.
She grabbed me by the wrist, tossed my jacket at me, and towed me outside. My feet had barely found my fighting stance before she came at me. She was faster, harder, and fiercer this time than she had ever been before.
“Shit, Jessie,” I exclaimed when she nailed me in the gut with an elbow. Doubled over, I held a hand up to make her pause.
She shifted her weight back and forth on her feet, nearly dancing, she was so anxious to come at me again.
“Would you like to talk?” I straightened, caught my breath, and wiggled my fingers at her, the signal we were good to go again.
She shook her head, grunted, and charged.
“I will take that as a no,” I whispered, stepping aside at the last minute so that she raced past awkwardly. Faster, harder, and fiercer, maybe, but whatever was gnawing at her was making her dumb.
She attacked again and I took her to the ground. Straddling her and crouched over her stomach, I pressed the heel of my hand into her shoulder and kept her pinned.
“Jessie. Breathe,” I commanded as she snarled at me. “This is no good. There is something bothering you.”
“God, you’re so perceptive, Sasha,” she snapped.
“So talk. To someone. Pietr?”
“No. It’s about him. And Sophie. She’s sick.” She shivered. “The school’s tainted food … it’s screwing up so many lives.…”
“Do you want to talk to Amy?”
She flinched. “She’s hurting right now. I can’t take trouble to her.”
“Max?”
“He’s hurting for her.”
I rocked back on my heels. “Da. I have noticed that. The way they hurt for each other. It is good, in a way, is it not?”
“I guess it is.… God, Alexi … I don’t know what’s good for anyone anymore.”
“You need to talk this out—it is what girls do, da? Talk it out, right?”
“I don’t think talking’s going to do it this time.”
I nodded and adjusted my stance. “I understand. I do not care to talk, either.”
After pounding out our rage on each other for about forty minutes, I headed to the kitchen for an ice pack. The sound of someone crying made me freeze, though, and I quietly skulked in the direction of the noise.
Jessie was flopped on the love seat, her body shaking with sobs. Her face was buried in the crook of her arm and the hair had come loose from her ponytail to cover her face. I had never seen her cry.
The situation with Pietr and now this new thing with Sophie and the school food had finally brought her down. I would not stand for it.
So, knowing what I needed to do, I returned to the kitchen’s freezer, placed an ice pack on my shoulder, and decided to wait for official visiting hours to start in the morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Alexi
I picked at the steering wheel’s cover. I had sworn to myself that I would never come here again. I had sworn that oath more than a dozen times. But more importantly I had sworn I would never give her the satisfaction of meeting me. How dare she ever hope to meet me—the man I had become—so far removed from the child she had left? Never meet her. That was what I had promised myself. And why should I want to? She gave me over to the people I still thought of as my parents, though we shared no bloodline.
She gave me up.
My parents had been good people. Da—they encouraged me to lie. They taught me falsehood until it became my second nature. They raised me to run and hide and fight if it came to it—but not to stay. I had wings, but never roots beyond the scope of my family itself.
They introduced me to the Russian Mafia.
But they did what they did because we needed to survive. I needed to ensure the survival of my siblings.
It was as noble a set of lies as ever there could be.
But she—Hazel Feldman—could have kept me. From what I had learned she was no young woman when she had me. She was lacking in no resources. She had some money, she had a home, and a job—if one could call being a psychic any sort of employment—and when she had me, she handed me over to be raised by wolves.
Quite literally.
I looked at my phone. Nadezhda’s name stood out starkly against the glow of the screen. I could press one button. Hear her voice.
Or her partner’s.
I swallowed hard. If I heard her, it might grant me the strength I needed to face down the biggest demon from my youth—the demon I had not even realized existed until recently.
But would she respect the man I was if I asked for her to share her strength with me every time I doubted my own?
I could do this.
I had to do this.
On my own.
The best chance at getting the answers I needed lay with the woman I wanted most to avoid. She knew my grandfather’s research better than anyone else. And she knew the connections I needed. I had lived for twenty-two years without needing anything from her and for a number of those years not even knowing she existed.
But I needed her now.
No. Not her.
Her knowledge.
That was different.
It had to be different.
Sliding out of the car, my eyes never left the building that seemed to grow and cast shadows before me, darkening the distance between myself and it. With a last glance at Nadezhda’s name, I turned off the phone and slid it into my pocket.
I counted the rows of parking spaces between the convertible and the door.
Thirteen.
That number showed up too frequently in my life as a Rusakova.
Inside I was directed upstairs to a nurses’ station. One particularly patient girl helped me on my way.
The nurse knocked twice on the door, announcing, “Mrs. Feldman, you have a visitor.”
There was a rustle and the occupant of the room, a woman dressed in a colorful long skirt and seated on the room’s bed, shuffled a deck of cards, drawing a single one before nodding, returning it to the deck, and setting the whole stack aside. “Death,” she muttered.
“This is Mr. Alexi Rusakova,” the nurse explained.
Mrs. Feldman cocked her head, examining me carefully; the intensity of her gaze made me feel small.
And angry.
I was being judged.
She nodded solemnly. “Thank you, Karen,” she said, dismissing the young woman. Feldman
peered at me. “Mr. Rusakova,” she finally said with a sigh, “please have a seat.”
I pulled a chair away from the wall and sat, my back straight and chin up. This was business, not pleasure. I would not relax my guard and let her under my skin. I cleared my throat.
And she waved a hand to silence me before I had even begun. “You realized the cure is temporary. A stopgap method to maintain some semblance of a normal life.”
She appeared amused.
I hated her even more. I had not realized until then that it was possible to hate someone more than completely.
I closed my mouth, trying to hide my surprise at her very accurate assessment. But it was too late.
The skin at the corners of her eyes crinkled in a smile. “You have grown to be quite handsome,” she remarked offhandedly, her gaze skimming my face.
I twitched. No one thought of me as handsome. Especially not when set beside Max or Pietr, who seemed to glow. I swallowed. I would not let her get past my guard. I merely nodded at the compliment.
“Da, the cure is temporary. Which gives me a bargaining chip with an important corporation.”
“A bargaining chip?”
“Da, but my time to use it is…”
“Short? Or perhaps running out. It is always that way with the oboroten … Alexi.” She tried out my name as if the word were a completely foreign construction.
“I did not name you Alexi,” she murmured, caught in her own thoughts as her eyes lost focus for a moment.
“You would not have named me anything as fast as you traded me away,” I returned, leaning forward so that my elbows rested on my thighs.
“Ah.” She sat back and set her gnarled hands in her lap, chunky jeweled rings twinkling on her fingers. “It was not like that. Not at all.”
“I do not care what it was like,” I proclaimed, wishing my words were true. But my heart beat a little faster as my mind raced, wondering just what she meant.
She nodded. “Of course not. Forgiveness is hard to come by in situations like these.”
“I doubt there are many situations like these to compare things to,” I retorted, pushing back in the chair to show her clearly that I was unfazed by her words—by her utter abandonment. “There are few enough oboroten and fewer with family members secretly transplanted from otherwise normal situations to become their keepers.” I folded my hands behind my head and rested my ankle on my other leg. “Of course you may correct me if I am wrong,” I teased.
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