Dmitri rose from the table and stormed away.
Alexi
The call from Wanda was something none of us expected, but Jessie, Pietr, and I got into the car and headed to Jessie’s horse farm, where Wanda waited with files. Jessie’s dogs, Maggie and Hunter, rushed the car and Jessie briefly tumbled to the ground with them, letting them lick her face and nuzzle her neck. Pietr and I were far less interesting to them.
Pietr scanned the area, scenting and looking for trouble, his back rigid. This place was Jessie’s home—perhaps knowing trouble had come here, too, was more unsettling to him.
The last time they had been here together things had gone very badly. I tried not to think about it.
“Stop, stop.” Jessie laughed, one minute batting at the dogs playfully, the next tugging them close.
Pietr paused in his scan, his focus snapping once more to her and his features both hardened and softened at the same time. “Come now,” he whispered, reaching down to help Jessie out of the dust.
“Leon’s in the barn and will be for a while,” Wanda greeted us from the small porch, opening the door and waving us inside. “He’s seen this already.”
Jessie didn’t bother hiding her surprise.
“I—reconnoitered—these files from the bunker, thought they might be useful. It was easier than I expected since I’d been an employee at the warehouse before and it seems everyone in the—let’s call it the company—prefers data files to file folders.”
I nodded. “So you grabbed a paper trail.” I was beginning to almost like her.
Almost.
“Yes. Always grab anything labeled with your own name and at least one coworker.” She flipped open a file. “The problem is I have nothing that proves the actual CIA—our government—is directly involved. In any way. Because it winds up I’m no longer working for our government. I haven’t been since I was transferred here.”
“You lied.…”
“No,” she assured Jessie. “I was absolutely under the impression my employer hadn’t changed. I was given no reason to assume otherwise. I continued receiving my pay in the same fashion from what appeared to be the same institution.” She pulled out two paystubs.
They looked identical except for the dates.
“One before my transfer. One after.”
I nodded.
“But here’s the deal. The company I’m a current employee of is the same company that hired these people.” She flipped open another file, scattering pictures across the tabletop. Some names were different from who I thought the people were, but each face I recognized.
“Our vice principal,” Jessie announced, tapping a photo of a friendly looking African-American man, “Perlson. My favorite counselor, Ms. Harnek,” she said of a smart-looking blonde. She slid the next one aside.
“Officer Kent,” I said, looking at Wanda soberly, “wherever he’s gotten to.”
“I doubt it’s much farther than where I left him,” Wanda responded crisply.
So she had killed him to protect Jessie. That, I could respect. Liking Wanda became more of a possibility.
“The boy, Derek,” I said, seeing the next photo.
Jessie glanced at me.
“We had the dubious pleasure of meeting the last time we were at the bunker.”
Wanda broke in. “I wanted to…” She stumbled to a stop and tried again. “I’m so sorry I had to close down visitation to Mother. I had to keep up appearances.”
“Water under the bridge.” I looked at the remaining pictures. “Ah. And this lady was with Derek,” I said, seeing the fine-featured brunette.
“Dr. Sarissa Jones,” Jessie said.
“Is she not helping the students come to grips with the Teen Train Track Suicides?” I asked.
“Probably lining them up for Derek to feed from. What a screwed-up jerk.…” She touched Derek’s picture again and Pietr stiffened, watching her.
“That screwed-up jerk warned us about—” But Pietr cut me off with a pained look.
“Warned you about what?” Jessie asked, turning on me.
I put my hands up and deferred to Pietr. He was alpha, let him admit it.
She swung to face him. “Warned you about what?”
“He warned Alexi that you were in danger in the asylum. That they were going to kill you. And he told Alexi to tell me.”
Jessie sat down hard. “He warned you to make sure I was safe?”
I leaned into her view. “For his own twisted reasons. Maybe for this—to make you doubt how sick he is.”
Pietr stepped back from the table and crossed his arms, watching us with cool eyes.
“It’s not enough, is it?” Jessie mumbled.
“What? What isn’t enough?”
“Saving me isn’t enough to wipe away everything else he’s done, is it?”
I stayed still, letting her work it out.
Pietr turned away to look out the window.
“There’s a point, isn’t there,” she asked, “a point we can’t come back from? A moment we’re no longer redeemable?”
I held my breath.
“Da,” Pietr replied from the window. “There comes a moment,” he agreed, his voice flat.
“Geez, my teenage years weren’t this damn dramatic,” Wanda muttered, collecting the photos. “Sooo … I made some phone calls to an old friend and asked some questions. Being too much trouble at my old job—shut up, Jessie—” she warned, seeing Jessie briefly brighten, a smart comment at the ready. “So my old boss auctioned me off to this company. They run quite an organization. I haven’t begun to find all the tendrils. They act just like the CIA, except with different funding. And expectations.”
Jessie and I stared at her.
“And they really want your werewolves. Because the guy who helped design them, the one who was second in command to Alexi’s grand—whatever—he’s alive. They’re his pride and joy. He never got full credit on the project and tried a redo years later but was made a laughingstock. So he did other things, chemical engineering and ingestibles, all while still looking into the freaky stuff. He’s got his fingers in everything. Guess what one of his sidelines is?”
“No idea,” Jessie and I admitted simultaneously.
“Institutional food production and delivery.”
“The school food?” Jessie’s eyes lost their focus.
Wanda tapped her nose twice. “So what’s in the food that most every kid in Junction’s eating? Whatever it is, you can bet it’s not something good.” She flipped the files shut and restacked them.
“‘A stronger, better youth for tomorrow,’” Jessie whispered. “Harnek said something like that to Derek.”
“Nyet. Not good. You have more files,” I said, seeing the stack and the empty file box.
“Yes.” She spread them before us.
Jessie seemed to recognize one and opened it immediately. “Sophie. They know what she can do.…” She ran her finger down the text of the file. “Senses energy fields and impressions, kirilian photography … They don’t know she sees ghosts.”
Pietr and I looked at her.
She shrugged. “My mom’s hanging around. She follows me pretty often, watching.”
“Watching?” Pietr asked. He swallowed hard.
I snickered at Jessie’s expression.
“Yeah,” she said. “We’re totally grounded when we die for—ample—public displays of affection.”
Pietr groaned and Wanda cleared her throat. “Well. That certainly falls into the realm of too much information.” She closed the file, putting the folders back into the box and kicking it under the nearest chair.
Jessie tapped the table. “So what now? If they’re as big as you say, won’t they just keep coming and coming?”
“Unless the werewolves are cured, or dead, or they can catch at least one to use for DNA. Or breeding.”
“They’re not animals,” Jessie said, recoiling.
“Yes, they are, Jessie. Just like the rest of us,”
Wanda assured her. “Beasts below the skin. It only matters why we let our inner beast out.”
Jessie
Back at the Rusakovas’ house Dmitri took the place of honor at the head of the table for dinner and Pietr sat at the opposite end of the table. The food Cat had prepared was remarkably good and although I tried not to, I sounded surprised when I complimented her.
It was as Dmitri tore open a roll that he began to speak. “There is an amazing Russian legend you should hear—about a man who cheated death many times because he knew how to control his heart.” He glanced at Pietr.
I leaned forward, intent.
“He was called Koschei the Deathless.”
Alexi’s glass rattled as he set it down, but he swallowed the drink in his mouth and listened to Dmitri’s retelling.
“He had amazing abilities—so great that some claimed they were magical,” he said, waving the roll and butter knife dramatically. “And no matter what anyone did to him, no matter what trouble came, no one could hurt him. Why?” He leaned forward, looking at Pietr. “He was invincible.”
Rocking back in his chair, Dmitri continued, knowing Pietr was enthralled. “But—ah, Dmitri, you say, how is such a thing possible? How can a man become invincible? When Koschei the Deathless was young he removed his heart from his body and set it aside, hidden in a chest on an island far away. Da, swords might rip into him, spears might pierce his body, but he had no heart for them to break—”
Pietr’s eyes fell on me. So did Dmitri’s.
“And so he took his wounds in stride—they were not so much, only bites into his body. His heart—his soul—was untouchable. He won many fights over…”
I saw him pause.
“The years—”
And I realized he’d avoided saying “many.”
“And he became a famous character in Russian legends. Because, like a true warrior”—his eyes fixed on Pietr—“he knew his heart and soul had their place.”
Pietr’s jaw tightened.
Ohhh. So there was a moral to his little tale. A jab aimed right at me.
“So how did he finally die?” I asked boldly.
Dmitri paused and then bit into his roll.
“How did he die?” I repeated.
Pietr cocked his head, watching Dmitri.
Dmitri swallowed. Hard. “Eventually someone learned where he had kept his heart and destroyed it. Tragic.”
“So he was never in love?” I prodded.
“What?” Dmitri sputtered.
“He never knew love,” I proposed.
Alexi snorted.
“Because if he had,” I reasoned, “he would have entrusted his heart to the woman he loved instead of burying it in some chest, alone. And a good woman would have protected it. With. Her. Life.” I ripped into my own roll. “Your precious Koschei the Deathless might have gone on forever if he’d been wise enough to trust in hope and work for love.”
Dmitri was speechless.
Alexi said, “If you study your Slavic mythology, Uncle Dmitri, you’ll find Koschei was not one to emulate. He was—at best—a jerk. Having a long life may have been good for him, but it made many people miserable. Because of the same thing that kept him alive—the fact he was heartless.”
“And being heartless would make even the shortest life meaningless,” I concluded.
Amy clapped and Max bit his lips to keep from laughing.
At my side Pietr turned and looked at me with astonished eyes. The hope I saw reflected there, so different from the glow of murder when he’d killed Christian, made me turn away.
I needed time. No matter how I approached it in my head there wasn’t enough of that most precious commodity to go around. So I pulled out my chair, excused myself from the table, and dragged Amy away to the basement to talk.
Jessie
Awkward. Amy didn’t want to know half of what I did about the Rusakova weirdness, but I needed her generally sharp common sense to help me sort out my heart. I snagged the old office chair from the corner and spun in it, kicking my legs out.
She grabbed the armrests, yanking me to a stop so sudden my head snapped to the side. “You don’t drag me away from dinner just so I can watch you get dizzy.”
“Sorry.”
“Something’s eating at you.”
“I thought I’d come down here and just spill, but…”
“Okay,” Amy said. “You ask me a question first. Maybe that’ll help.” She gave the chair a hard yank and I spun in a slowing circle.
“How’s Max?” I asked when the room realigned and there was only one Amy. One was plenty to deal with.
“Oh. My beautiful disaster?”
“Um. Yes?”
“I don’t know. I can’t read him.” She shrugged, shoulders nearly at her ears.
Instead of asking when there’d been subtext about Max to read, I tried, “What’s he doing?”
“It’s … oh, God. Can we just not talk about this? Let’s try your problem again.”
“Not if you’re—like this.” I mimicked the way she shifted uncomfortably on her bed. “You’re not the only one who’s changed since I went away. I want to pay better attention. Be a better friend.”
“That’s a sucky revelation to have when I wanna be ignored.”
“Timing. So what’s Max gone and done?”
“It’s what he’s—what we’re—not doing.” She peeked up at me and blushed.
“Pretend I’m stupid, Amy.” At the moment it didn’t seem far from the truth. My brain had stumbled to a stop. “Tell me what you two aren’t doing.”
“It.”
“Oh. Kay.” I froze, suddenly very aware of why so many parents avoided talking to teens. “What’s it?”
She hesitated.
“Oh. Ohhh. That it.” There were few things I was uncomfortable hearing about. It topped the list. “You two aren’t doing it.” I ended the sentence with air quotes. Be a better friend. Okay. “Talk to me.”
“Look,” she said, “it’s just this—relationship stuff—is different with Max than with Marvin.”
“It darned well better be,” I replied. “If I ever find out Max’s treated you anything like Marvin did, I’d have Pietr and Alexi beat the crap out of him.”
She sniffed. “Whatever happened to that theory of forgiveness you were so keen on?”
“I believe in forgiveness,” I stated. “And redemption. But people who do bad stuff—like beat on their girlfriends—need to want forgiveness and redemption, need to want to change.”
BINGO. I straightened in my seat, recognizing my epiphany. Pietr wanted redemption. Pietr wanted to do the right thing. But Pietr kept getting thrown into situations where black and white weren’t any clear part of the visual spectrum and everything was a murky and dangerous sludge of gray. And some choices—horrible choices—were the only means to a better end.
Desperate times. Desperate measures.
“It doesn’t matter how badly I want those things for them.” She nearly sidetracked me alluding to my mistakes with Sarah. “But this isn’t about me. Has Max done anything?”
“No,” she insisted. “That’s what has me so confused.”
“What do you mean?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to look as tough as when she’d first started dating Marvin. Amy against the world. Amy, whose best friend’s head was so filled with her own issues she’d forgotten everyone else had issues, too.
Her tough-girl act no longer came as naturally.
“Sleeping over here is different from sleeping over at Marvin’s,” she began. “With Marvin, certain things were expected. He made everything very clear. I never had to second-guess.”
“Because if you did something he didn’t like he hit you.”
Focusing on a spot over my shoulder, she avoided my eyes. “Yes.”
Realizing she felt shame because he hit her, I felt awful. She believed she’d let him hit her. My throat constricted. I wanted to find Marvin and
knock his teeth in. “What are Max’s intentions?”
“Max hugs me, kisses me, strokes my hair so gently … He nearly purrs my name—even though it doesn’t have a single r in it,” she said, puzzled.
“Mmm. Russian boys,” I said with a smile.
“Daaa. Russian boys.” She allowed herself a giggle. “It’s great, but when Marvin did something like that it was a signal.”
“For what?”
“Sex.”
“Seriously?” Blinking, I recalled how many signals I’d seen pass between them at school. “Wow. So if he hugged you—”
“Sex.”
“Kissed you—?”
“Definitely sex.”
“Petted your hair—?”
“Do I seriously need to repeat myself?”
“Every nice thing he did…”
“Got him sex. Yeah. Stupid me.”
I shrugged. “There was nothing stupid about the choices you made. You didn’t think you had any other ones.”
She looked at me, smiling slowly like she was beginning to find an epiphany, too. “Max is…” She tried to explain. “Well, he does nice things and you know…”
I shook my head. “Not exactly.”
“Oh. You and Pietr haven’t…”
“Nooo.” My face felt like it had caught fire, the blush was so hard.
“Smart girl,” she congratulated. “If I could have I think I would have stayed a virgin longer. You know. Hindsight?”
“Yeah. It’s always twenty-twenty. But don’t give me too much credit,” I said. “I’m seriously thinking about it. A lot.”
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?”
Bargains and Betrayals Page 17