And now they were here.
I wanted to see pictures—were there some I’d recognize? But my search produced a whole other world of images. A world filled with nearly as much ink as blood. Tattoos branded mafiosos as participants in Russia’s underworld.
Even the saber marking the full-blood Rusakovas was a military insignia and an increasingly common tattoo for Mafia men in America. They called themselves “werewolves”—human and slyly unnoticed by day; they reveled in people presuming them monsters by night.
Seated before my computer I was astonished by the life stories that could be read in a mobster’s tattoos. Each spire on a church represented a murder committed. A spiderweb illustrated being tangled up in addiction. A pair of stars on their chest or knees meant they were captains in the Mafia’s own military.
My stomach queasy, I shut down my computer. To go from being protectors of a people to their biggest internal threat … And to realize they’d been forced in that direction … I wasn’t sure what was more disturbing. But I was beginning to realize choices weren’t merely black and white. We all muddled through various shades of gray.
And too often the most difficult decisions were based on survival.
* * *
Unfortunately the end of the weekend didn’t guarantee the next week would be an improvement at all.
The Rusakovas scouted and Cat told me how they continually came up empty. Pietr told me nothing. I pored over map after map of Junction, but nowhere seemed suitable for hiding a werewolf.
Monday we sat on the bleachers in the gymnasium for class pictures. Tuesday the school mourned the loss of another student to suicide and Derek was down another friend. Noticing he wasn’t in school, I decided to make it the first time I called him.
“Hey,” he said. Cheerfully.
I paused. “Hey. You weren’t in school today.”
“Did you miss me?” His smile was audible.
“I thought—I’m sorry. I’m sorry about Mike.”
The other end of the line went silent. “Oh. Yeah,” he said finally. “He was a good football player.”
“It must be hard … losing a friend.”
Again I was faced with silence. I waited.
“Umm, yeah. I guess it all got to be too much,” Derek said, somber.
Got to be too much? What? The Mike I knew was always joking, laughing. House near the Hill, two parents and a younger sibling. Decent grades, too, if I recalled correctly. Of course, Mike wasn’t in my circle of friends. So I didn’t know him much at all, really. I paused, straining for some answer I wasn’t getting on the phone.
“Yeah. It sucks,” Derek concluded, his voice grave. “So how was your day?” he asked, his tone brightening.
Uneasy, I made small talk until I could find an excuse to get off the phone.
* * *
Wednesday we got our class photos. Sophia held hers, puzzling over something, her face fierce.
“You look beautiful in it,” I assured. “Picture perfect.”
Startled, she hissed, “Mine’s so blurry.” She squinted.
“Really? Lemme see.” I took the photo and peered at her again. My lips tugged together and I licked them. “Blurry?”
“Maybe it’s allergies,” she said, taking the picture back. She rubbed her eyes.
“It still looks blurry?”
“In lots of places.” Her mouth pressed into a pale, thin line. “It’s not blurry at all, is it, Jessie?”
“No.”
“Crap.” She jammed the photo back into its manila envelope.
“Soph—what’s going on? You won’t do the newspaper photos, you clear out your locker, and—” I balked, remembering the brainstormed list with its barely hidden message.
The crowd of kids passing from class to class had thinned, but Sophia looked frantic about being asked so openly.
Too soon the tardy bell would ring. Why did I always have to ask hard questions between classes?
“Into the girls’ bathroom with you.” I guided her down the hallway, shouldering the door open. “You’re freaking me out. The photo’s fine. So what’s wrong? Are your eyes giving you trouble? Do you need to see a doctor?”
She laughed, and bumps rose on my arms. “A doctor won’t help—maybe a witch doctor.” She giggled. “If it was my vision … My eyes are definitely giving me trouble.” She stepped away from me long enough to check each stall until she was satisfied we were alone.
Feeling she didn’t mean exactly what she said, I asked the next strange question. “Remember when we brainstormed that article and Derek and Jack came into the teachers’ lounge?”
“I remember I did most of the brainstorming.”
“True,” I admitted. “Did you know there was a message in what you wrote?”
“A what?”
I set my backpack on the sink and pulled out my school newspaper notebook. “Here.” I passed the paper to her, running my finger down the first letters in each of her hastily written sentences.
BEWARE.
Stunned, her volume rose. “Now you’re trying to freak me out.”
“No,” I insisted. “I didn’t know what it meant at first. But then—well, something weird happened later that night. And BEWARE seemed like a fitting sentiment.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“What’s going on, Soph? Does this happen to you often?”
“This?” She waved my notepaper and shoved it back against my chest. “No. This doesn’t happen to me often.”
I swallowed. Just like a normal person living a more than normal life. “Do you see strange things?”
“We’re in high school. We all see strange things.” Soft-spoken Sophia was gone, replaced by the same anxious and angry Sophie I’d witnessed confront Derek that day.
“There’s more to that photo than you’re saying. What sort of strange things do you see?”
“Maybe I don’t want to say. Maybe I’m perfectly comfortable letting you and Sarah be the crazy girls at Junction High.”
“Niiice. Maybe if you tell me, I can help you.”
“You can’t undo what was done to me,” she scoffed. “This thing I have, it’s permanent. I’d rather not get into it. Let’s leave it with the fact that I’ve tried to get rid of it.”
“What is it?”
“God, Jessie. You’re so frustrating sometimes.” She blew out a breath. “Fine. I’ll let you into my crazy little world.” She pulled the photo back out of the envelope and pressed it flat across the bathroom mirror. “What do you see there?”
“Our graduating class. Well, plus a few people who probably won’t graduate with our class.”
She rolled her eyes. “Awesome. Pen, please.”
Puzzled, I looked at her.
She snapped her fingers. “Come on. Chop-chop.”
I obeyed, watching as she scribbled all over the huge photo, the mirror reflecting back her look of extreme concentration. She pulled back, frowning, but seemingly satisfied. “All that?”—she ran her fingers along the scribbled-out areas—“blurs.”
“Really?” I pulled my picture out and compared it. There were a handful of places she hadn’t scribbled out. “What about those?” I asked, touching them one by one. VP Perlson, Derek Jamieson, Pietr, Cat, Sarah, Sophia.
Me.
“All those members of the junior class look clear?”
“Crystal.”
“Why?”
“I’ve thought about it a bunch. I think it’s about intentions. Motivation. I feel like … like these people have clear goals. Beyond making a living, getting good grades or scoring. In football or with girls.” She smirked. “It’s almost like they—we—have a calling. And we’re already on the path.” She handed back the pen. “Crazy, huh?”
Whatever inside me had reconciled with the existence of werewolves only briefly freaked at the idea. “Can you, like—read their motivation? See what their calling is? What drives them?”
She shrugged. “Maybe somed
ay. I just know we’re different.”
“Can you do that with any photo?”
“Not so much. It needs to be new. Maybe it’s an energy thing. I’m trying to research it, but what do you put in a Google search for this? It’s all so frikkin’ weird.”
“Welcome to my world.” There was a spot just away from the bleachers that Sophia had carefully left un-scribbled, too. A vaguely human-looking shape. I tapped it with a finger. “And this?”
Sophia grinned. “Ready for the real ride into crazy town?”
“Most days I’m driving the bus.”
“Fine. Sometimes I see a woman. She’s hazy. Like she’s not quite here and not quite”—she waved a hand—“there. Wherever there is.”
“Like a ghost?”
Her lips smooshed together and shoved from one side of her face to the other. It was the first time I’d seen Sophie look ugly. “Yeah.”
“Who is she?”
“Your mother.”
My world froze for a minute, and I staggered. The photo fell from my fingers, and Sophia snatched it back as it drifted.
“It gets better. She has a message for you.”
I swallowed, the noise crackling in my ears. The lump in my throat refused to budge.
“I’ve only gotten part of it so far,” she admitted. “Actually”—she tugged my notepaper out again—“it seems you got the same part I did.”
BEWARE.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was my strangest trip to service learning yet. All day Pietr kept his distance, but every time Derek came close, Pietr’s gaze found me. He never said more than a cool word, never even brushed against me when we passed in the hall.
On the ride to Golden Oaks, Pietr sat up front. Hascal, Smith, and Jaikin were quick to resume our standard flirting game, but my heart wasn’t in it.
“Jessie,” Hascal wheezed, “you’re not really here, are you?” He waved a hand so pale it was nearly translucent.
“Sorry, boys. I—”
“Is it Derek? It’s got to be Derek. He’s been giving her a lot—a lot—of attention recently,” Jaikin rattled.
“Or Maximilian Rusakova. He’s been hanging on her.”
My three favorite nerds looked at one another, nodded sagely, and turned back to me.
“Nope.” I popped the “p” on the end for emphasis. “I’m just exhausted. Stressed. My head’s pounding.”
Smith petted my arm, his clammy touch raising gooseflesh.
“Have you tried a nice herbal tea?”
“Mmm. Chamomile ith my favorite.”
I glanced at Hascal. He was starting to lose his s’s again—an unfortunate side effect of his severe allergic reaction to anything in the canid family. Allergic to dogs, wolves, jackals and evidently werewolves.
“I highly recommend it,” he concluded with a sniff.
I nodded and cracked a window. Pietr’s was open. “Thanks, guys, but I don’t think tea is going to help. Hey, while I’ve got the three brightest guys from Junction High at my disposal”—they blushed—“what do you guys think about this recent teen suicide trend?”
“Tragic,” Smith concluded.
The others nodded.
“Okay, I’m rephrasing. Why do you think we’re seeing a sudden rise in teen suicides?”
Smith cracked his knuckles, the sound reminding me of the noise Pietr’s joints made sliding from their sockets during his change. “I tend to believe we aren’t seeing a rise in teen suicides but rather with the growth of media coverage we are more able to bring such stories to the public.”
“You think there’ve always been the same number of suicides in the area?”
“There are, of course, differences in the numbers related to the growth of population. The easiest way to confirm my belief would be to do a quick comparison chart between the populations over the past few decades and the numbers of teenage suicides, breaking it into a ratio or percentage—your choice.”
“A chart? Yee-aahh. Anyone else have an opinion?”
“It’s not so much an opinion as a bit of information I read online.” Jaikin signaled me to lean in. “I’m not allowed to name my sources.” He grinned.
“Oh. Them,” Smith muttered with a roll of his eyes.
“What? Who’s them?” I asked.
“Jaikin indulges in fantasies of a conspiratorial nature,” Smith said, picking at his fingernails and clearly disapproving.
“Are you a conspiracy theorist?” I teased Jaikin.
He blushed. “I give room to all possibilities.”
“He flat out denies Occam’s razor,” Smith remonstrated.
I wondered what Smith would think if he discovered he was sitting two rows behind a werewolf. “Have you considered that sometimes life is so complicated, slicing things down to the simplest answer like Occam suggested isn’t good enough?”
Smith got quiet. He was crushing on me—he wouldn’t argue.
“You’re fascinating,” I assured Jaikin. “Tell me about this theory related to the suicides.”
“It seems the most recent suicide victims left behind interesting notes, journals—”
“Actually a blog,” Hascal interjected, wheezing.
“Right. The blogger journaled every night, leaving detailed notes of what he did and what he saw.”
“Did they have something in common?”
Hascal pointed to me and touched his nose. “Yeth!”
Jaikin continued, “They all either wrote something, drew something, or claimed to see something related to werewolves.”
I stiffened in my seat. “Werewolves?” Without looking, I knew Pietr’s body language mimicked my own.
“Now she sees my point,” Smith declared. “Not so much fascinating as gullible, aren’t they?”
Jaikin said smugly, “You’re just jealous. You want to be fascinating to Jessie, too.”
Smith glared back.
“Werewolves,” I whispered.
“It’s one of myriad possibilities.” Jaikin shrugged.
I rubbed at my arms, chasing a chill away at the thought the Rusakovas were linked to the suicides. “Tell me what else you’ve heard.”
“Since you asked … these werewolves—some call them loup-garous or hamrammr—”
“Or oborot,” I added.
“What language is that?”
“Russian.”
All three sets of eyes turned to Pietr. Smith twitched, and Hascal’s eyes widened behind his thick glasses, giving him a distinctly owl-like appearance.
“What? I can’t know something from time to time?”
Hascal patted my arm. “You’re fathinating, too, Jethie.”
Jaikin concluded, “So, one group believes the werewolves have set up people to be killed on the train tracks.”
The memory of standing blindfolded on the tracks moments before Pietr shoved me out of the way was so fresh in my mind a shiver rattled me. “Why?”
“Do they need a reason? Would a werewolf—a creature at least as much beast as man, a monster—hold to the same principles we do? Maybe it’s just fun.”
I couldn’t fathom what raced through Pietr’s mind.
“Murder as a pastime? Sounds like pure human evil to me,” I proposed. “Any other opinions?”
“Some have suggested it’s not the werewolves doing it, but people who want to keep the werewolves secret,” Jaikin added.
“What? The werewolves are spotted and some clandestine organization takes out the witnesses?” My heart sped at the possibility, but I shook my head. “Any other options?”
Smith cleared his throat. “The only other option is the option. Teens have a reputation for being dissatisfied. Our hormones are horribly out of balance, choking off our brain’s higher functions whenever we notice someone has a nice rack.”
“That must be why you can’t do calculus whenever you’re in the same room with Jessie,” Jaikin chuckled.
Pietr’s shoulders shook with laughter.
Smith
looked like he’d sucked on a lemon.
“So,” I said. “Smith, you were saying…”
“Most of the time we’re simply unhappy with what life hands us. We struggle to find our place. In the world and in our families. Life is tumultuous. As the stressors become greater, it’s only natural the will to survive becomes less in certain members of our species.”
“So to you, suicide is an example of survival of the fittest?” I hoped my dismay could be read on my face, but uncertain, I added, “That’s cold, Smith. I may agree with you on lots of other things, but…”
The van pulled up to Golden Oaks and I hopped out first. I shot a look at Pietr and he sighed, resigning himself to meet the greater good. We quickly clarified who was partners with who and taking which of the local animal shelter’s animals on our rounds.
Smith was miffed that Pietr and I had reunited. “Is this because you’re angry with my answer?”
I gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’d think with a brain as large as yours there’d be room for more compassion.”
Climbing the stairs with Pietr due to his aversion to elevators, a mix of emotions stirred my stomach. “We need to talk.”
“We had nothing to do with the suicides,” Pietr assured me. In the crook of his arm the calico kitten, Victoria (now a regular with Tag, the pug), mewed. “Did you have to ask?” He rubbed his nose and blinked at me, his eyes going red for an instant as we paused on the steps.
“Sometimes hearing stuff helps. Are you angry?”
He blinked until the red was gone. “Nyet,” he muttered, motioning up the stairs with a jerk of his chin.
I changed the way I held Tag and, on the move again, I asked my next question. “So why do they all appear to be related to werewolves? Like they’ve seen something?” I paused, my teeth grinding together. “Is Max being careful?”
“Max? Careful? Those words should never be put in the same sentence. You should know that,” he said, a note of warning in his voice.
“Okay. Let’s say someone spotted him. Who would want them dead because of what they saw?”
We looked at each other and said in unison, “The CIA?”
“I mean, Wanda and Kent have been trouble,” I admitted, “and in the church it seemed like that guy really might…”
Secrets and Shadows Page 14
