Bargains and Betrayals

by Delany, Shannon

  Something strange was definitely going on.

  The nurse rolled a cart in, the platter on its top lined with tiny crimped paper cups, black numbers on their sides. The daily meds. I stretched up as tall as I could as she stopped the cart beside my table. Most of the cups appeared to have the same selection of pills inside. The nurse glanced at the cup numbers briefly before selecting one for me.

  Mine wasn’t like the others. “Umm? What’s so different about me?”

  “Just consider it proof that what your parents always said was true.” Handing me the cup, she reached over and, folding my sleeve, swabbed my arm with alcohol. “You’re special.” She lined up a syringe and jabbed me, slowly pulling back the plunger so the shaft filled with red.

  “Ow.” I twitched. “And drawing my blood? That’s new.”

  “Get used to it,” she suggested. “Consider it our little way of seeing just how special you are.”

  My stomach did a little flip. The Rusakovas knew my blood was part of the cure for the werewolves and we were pretty certain the CIA knew, too, since Officer Kent tried to kill me at the shooting range. Was it possible Dr. Jones was somehow tied in with them?

  The nurse withdrew the needle, put a cotton ball and Band-aid over the spot, saying, “Press down a minute,” and went on her way.

  Could they all be in cahoots? I squeezed my eyes shut. No. That’d be crazy. Opening my eyes, I sighed. Maybe crazy was to be expected in an asylum.

  My guard returned, sliding a tray of food across to me, his long sleeve slipping up to briefly expose the underside of one wrist.

  “Wait,” I commanded, seeing something strange. But he didn’t obey. “Fine.” I poked at the stuff daring to be defined as food and even ate some. It was like eating the love child of cardboard and Styrofoam.

  While faking interest in eating I tried to get a look at the guard’s wrist. There was a mark—a tattoo?—that seemed familiar. I glanced at his other wrist. The edge of a matching something peeked out from beneath that sleeve, too.

  “I’m full.” It was one of the easiest lies I’d told in the past few months. “I want to go back to my room.”

  In unison they rose, one taking my tray while the other watched me with dull eyes.

  “If you don’t tell me your names, I’ll just make something up.”

  They didn’t react, just kept walking.

  “Fine,” I announced. “Thing One”—I turned to the one on my left—“and Thing Two,” I dubbed the one on my right.

  Still no reaction.

  Heading back, I noticed a young woman in a straitjacket and leg irons latched to a bench, her escort standing by, warily watching the length of the hall, his arms folded, eyes only briefly pausing on her.

  Or me and my guards as we approached.

  The most interesting thing in the vicinity, she didn’t look much older than me. Her complexion made me think she’d been tanning recently; she definitely wasn’t the happily stuck indoors type. Her shoulder-length hair was brown, with narrow highlights of blond and red, and as we passed her I thought I saw her nostrils flare. I craned my neck, dragging down my already slow pace to watch another moment. Her gaze flicked toward me and I stumbled, catching a reflection of red in her eyes. She blinked, looking away, just another normal girl.

  In an asylum.

  I regained my balance and, untangling my feet, turned back toward my room, ignoring the creeping prickle as the fine hairs on my arms rose in warning.

  Dr. Jones’s voice behind me made me spin around once more. “Excellent. Here are your papers.” She leaned toward the girl, who leaned away, baring her teeth in response. “We’ve been greatly anticipating your arrival, Harmony. You’ve had quite the journey.”

  The creeping prickle turned into a full-body shudder before I could turn away again. Exhaling, I wondered if Harmony was the thing they’d been looking forward to receiving.

  Three-quarters of the way down the hall we stopped outside room 39. A white metal door with a narrow window of reinforced glass near eye level marked the entrance to my private room.

  Homey.

  Thing Two took a card from his shirt pocket and slipped it into the electronic lock, waiting until the light blinked green to twist the handle. Considering his size and strength I bet the door would open whether locked or not.

  Stepping inside, the door shut, bolting behind me and separating me from my Goliath guards.

  Spectacular in its solitude, room 39 was so silent my ears wanted to bleed just to hear the rhythmic drip of blood.

  I spent the rest of the day there, seated on the edge of my bed, flopped across the middle of my bed, staring at the walls surrounding my bed. I closed my eyes briefly and imagined my mother sitting on the bed’s edge, brushing the hair off my forehead like she used to do when I was home sick from school.

  A breeze tickled my face and my hair was swept back from my eyes with a soft caress. I sat up. The room looked empty, but considering the weird things happening around Junction, I knew seeing and believing didn’t equate. “Mom?” My bedsheets fluttered and I caught the scent of sunlit summer fields. Although the air stilled as quickly as it had stirred, flopping back down on the bed, I didn’t feel quite as alone.

  When my guards gave up on me going out again and eventually brought my lunch, I ignored them.

  When they returned a few hours later with my dinner and a small notebook, a pen tucked in its spiraling spine, I still ignored them.

  But ignoring the notebook was impossible.

  Inside there were no instructions, just page after page of beautifully blank, lined paper.

  I poked at the cube of gelatin glimmering cheerily beside a carton of milk. The journal was far more enticing to a would-be writer than food would ever be.

  Tapping the pen on its cover, I enjoyed the echoing sound.

  But I got the feeling I was missing something. Like the thing I’d forgotten was so important it should have been impossible to forget.

  A question that begged—begged … I paused. A question that begged asking.

  It felt as if somehow I’d woken up to find an arm or a leg missing. Only it went deeper, like someone had carved into my chest and left a hollow spot where my heart should have been.

  What question had frustrated me so much I needed sedation?

  Rolling over on my mattress, my hand landed on my elbow and I looked at the pink-and-tan puncture marks there. Counted them. If I’d been dosed once a day …

  I’d been sedated—blind to experience and blunted to emotion—for … one, two … three days. I rubbed at my eyes. What happened four days ago? What should I remember that I couldn’t?

  And as the world outside my room’s thickly glassed window grew dark I heard it: the undulating call of an animal in the woods beyond the rolling, manicured lawns of Pecan Place.

  Something inside me unfurled and fluttered, remembering and filling the empty space behind my ribs.

  My heart pounded, restarting in recognition.

  Pietr.

  And everything came crashing back to me: the question I should have still wanted an answer to, the reason I’d let myself be locked away …

  Pietr.

  I rushed to the window to catch a glimpse of him and heard the camera, high on the wall and safe in its cage, turn to follow me.

  Yes, everything came back to me then—but the last four days of my life. But I’d gladly bargain them away knowing Pietr was alive—and free.

  An alarm sounded and the noise of dogs—hunting hounds—rose to me. A flash of movement blurred across the gathering gray of nightfall and I knew Pietr was on the run.

  More importantly, I knew there was still hope.

  Jessie

  When the next day dawned I was aware enough to notice. I tugged the journal out and paused before jotting down my thoughts. I wanted to use it—I was desperate to write—but I didn’t want my writing used against me later.

  I wouldn’t write about werewolves. Or the Mafia. Or the
CIA.

  I’d write about the farm. About my horse Rio and my dogs, Maggie and Hunter. I’d try some fiction: poems and short stories like I used to write before Pietr showed up and made all fiction pale against a few amazing facts.

  Gone was my desire to write about vampires; now my head was full of Pietr, of wolves and darkness, danger, blue-eyed Russian boys and—

  If I only wrote about Pietr in his human skin …

  My door swung open and my guards stepped in.

  I closed the journal and got ready to drag myself to breakfast. It was on the horrendously normal trek to the common room that I heard the request.

  “I’m here to see Jess Gillmansen.”

  My head snapped up at the sound of his voice, every nerve in my body jangling in response to the richness of his faintly Russian purr. I froze. My pulse jumped, heart stuttering.

  In unison, my guards turned, identifying Pietr.

  A threat.

  I grabbed at their arms, but they didn’t notice.

  The nurse flipped through some papers, unaware of the tension rising in the hall behind her. “I’m sorry. You aren’t an approved visitor.”

  My throat tight, a sigh still slipped loose and Pietr’s eyes, blue and stormy as a distant sea, rose and caught mine. My knees softened under his powerful gaze.

  “Jess.” He vaulted over the nurse’s desk and had me in his arms before the giants could block his path. His lips on mine, arms tight around me, I realized what Pietr Rusakova was doing even as the guards bent to pull us apart.

  Pietr was counting.

  How long did we have before they grabbed him? I clutched his T-shirt’s collar, slipping my hands around his neck to hold on as long as I could.… How soon before they threw him out?

  Pietr would know soon enough.

  I kissed him back. Hard.

  His eyes snapped open for a moment, but I knew the clock was quickly running down on our little rendezvous.

  But by counting the time between his arrival and the guards’ reactions he’d be better prepared next time. Prepared for whatever that beautiful brain of his was already plotting.

  I had never appreciated simple numbers so much as when we counted the moments together with our kisses.…

  The taste of Pietr’s lips lingering on mine, he was heaved up by one giant’s massive hand to dangle before me. His spiky hair obscuring his right eye, he winked for only me to see and it was then I noticed the still-healing cut on his face.

  To not be healed more than a week after a fight … My heart clenched and I reached out to him, fingertips brushing his jaw.

  For a moment everything was quiet, everyone still, the few wandering patients of Pecan Place frozen in speculation. The world faded away and there was only Pietr.

  And me.

  The guards moved as if thawing out after independent thought had stunned them. Pietr glanced at the tattoo exposed on the guard’s wrist and then at his face.

  Pietr’s jaw tightened.

  He knew something.

  The nurse, hands on her hips, glared at Pietr as he did the finest display of passive resistance I’d seen short of school DVDs about the civil rights movement.

  The guard lumbered toward the door with his more-than-human burden. He pushed one door open, inside the first set of reinforced glass doors, bracing it with a huge booted foot. He pulled back his arm and tossed Pietr unceremoniously out.

  Anyone but a Rusakova would have landed badly. But the grace and strength of the wolf within—that wildest part of Pietr—was ever-present.

  Especially when he stared down into my eyes and crushed his lips to mine.

  The few patients in the hall near me went wild with whooping and cheering—for which side, I couldn’t tell. And babbling. Both the patient who obsessed over ceiling fans and light switches and the nurse who was taken totally by surprise.

  “Gonna have to up everyone’s meds this afternoon,” she snapped, shuffling her papers back together.

  “It’s love! It’s love! Crazy, crazy love!” a woman shouted as she danced in circles.

  I tried not to agree with the already medicated population of Pecan Place, Junction’s one and only mental institution. But, watching the woman dancing her loose-legged jig, I thought she just might be right.

  Crazy, crazy love.

  My guards took a single step toward the thin but rebellious crowd and everyone fell silent, eyes wide. Patients hugged the wall, slinking back to their rooms.

  Terrified.

  And the list of questions slowly developing in my mind doubled.

  Jessie

  When my door opened and the nurse appeared, standing beside a laundry cart, emotions battled just below my skin. Having seen Pietr made me itch for activity. The journal rested under my bed, page after page filled by my thoughts after having seen—and kissed—him. But there were strange things going on here. Maybe staying in the solitude of my room was the best bet.

  “Laundry detail’s really simple,” the nurse encouraged me. She patted the stack of folded clothing. All the same lifeless shade of blue—the one color Pietr’s eyes never became. “You’ll deliver the laundry to our clients with your guards nearby, of course.”

  I touched a shirt on the top of the stack. “Color theory. It’s supposed to keep us subdued, right?”

  “Same reason the walls are painted eggshell or ecru,” she said with a shrug.

  Oddly like Junction High’s decor. I rubbed at the goose bumps dotting my arms.

  She pulled the cart to the first stop. “Sheets have all been changed, so don’t worry about that. Clients on this wing are currently either in the common room or in private sessions. All you do is—” She pulled out a card that dangled from a lanyard around her neck and slid it through the lock.

  A twist of the handle and a push and we stepped inside, the cart’s wheels squeaking. The room looked exactly like mine. Sterile. Indistinct. Dull, dull, dull.

  “Here.” She withdrew another lanyard and electronic key from her pocket and hung it around my neck. “Don’t get any ideas,” she warned. “It only works on interior client doors.”

  “Ideas? Me? Not at all. Absolutely no ideas.”

  She sighed. “Just look at the list and take two sets of pants, two shirts, and a single pair of socks and lay them on the bed. The doors lock automatically, so you’ll have to slide your key to open it.”

  “What if I wedge the cart in the door?”

  “An alarm triggers. Extra paperwork for all.”

  “So let the door close. Got it.”

  “Your guards have a master key in case there’s a problem.”

  “Are there usually problems doing laundry? I mean, other than mixing reds and whites, which”—I tapped the stack again—“obviously isn’t an issue here.”

  “No problems to date,” she remarked, “but it seems you have a knack for getting into trouble.”

  I couldn’t disagree. At least not honestly.

  “Don’t take too long. Some clients get aggravated if they realize someone was in their room. So in and out.”

  I nodded, put a checkmark on the list, and took the cart. It wasn’t a difficult job and it reminded me of my service learning assignment at Golden Oaks Adult Day Care and Retirement Home, a place I’d met many great older people dealing with issues my mother never had the chance to face and fight. My fingers tightened on the cart and I pushed out a breath, refocusing.

  Except for the checkmarks that differentiated patients by number—not name—everything mercifully began to blur.

  It was as I was setting clothes on yet another nondescript bed that I heard movement behind me—

  —too late.

  The bathroom door opened the rest of the way and the occupant of room 26, the odd import named Harmony, stared at me, narrowing her eyes. “You will not take me back.”

  I dropped my gaze—totally nonconfrontational. “I’m not—”

  “Liar!” Enraged, she lunged at me, snarling. With a savage kic
k she knocked my feet out from under me, taking me to the ground. My left knee burned so hot I cried out and my breath snared in the back of my throat, rattling.

  Bent over to straddle me, her mouth frothed, and she drew an arm back, rolling her fingers into a fist.

  I raised my hands in front of me. “Sorry, sorry,” I said, trying to avoid direct eye contact, hoping submitting might work. But as my gaze flicked back to her raised and quaking hand I saw something in her change.

  “Guards!” I shrieked. Reaching up, I grabbed her upper arms and rocked back onto my shoulders hard, throwing her off balance and over my head.

  She hit the floor, but even as I screamed again for the guards and jumped to my feet, she scrambled to hers. She was fast and she was strong.

  Crazy strong.

  Spittle foamed at the corner of her mouth as she worked her jaw, an eerie red light rising in her eyes, and I stumbled backward, slamming against the door as she came at me. “Sorry,” I whispered, narrowly avoiding her charge. “I thought you were out. Guards!”

  There were plenty of times I wanted to be right. But recognizing the instinct that had stuck with me since first seeing Harmony in the hall—that identified her as a werewolf—recognizing it and realizing it was right was not what I wanted.

  “You will not take meee…,” she roared, rushing me.

  I swung my key through the lock but didn’t quite connect with the magnetic strip—someone might have anticipated the problems that could arise by giving a girl who struggled with hotel swipe keys a similar system to get in and out of rooms housing the insane.…

  She swung around at me and we circled each other until I was again with my back to the door. I thumped my knuckles against it, kicked it with my heel … slid the card again just as the door opened and she charged, grabbing the lanyard, bowling me over and into the hall, where she tried to strangle me.

  “Help!” I shouted at the mountainous men who were supposed to be protecting me. I broke her grip on the lanyard and shrugged out of it to give her one less way to kill me.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw my guards turn to each other.

  “Not time for a conference!” Our hands locked, we rolled, and I gained the advantage.