I finally wedged myself between Pietr and Max, stubbornly pushing forward until I could see. And I joined their ranks, quiet with heartbreak. Slipping my hand into Pietr’s, I squeezed it for reassurance. He pulled away. But slowly.
Before us was a large glass cube. Twenty feet long and the same wide, it was a clear box designed to allow the inhabitant no privacy. Had the creature inside been on display at some zoo I might have thought little of it, but what lived inside this cage was Pietr’s mother. In one corner of the glass house was a small cot; in another, a few books were scattered. And in the third corner, back and to the left, was a stainless-steel toilet and sink. There was no privacy for the woman dressed in a tank top and khaki pants, her long hair an unkempt tangle of browns and reds. Sitting by the final corner, her back was to us.
“She often pretends to ignore us,” the taller of our two escorts pointed out. “Maybe a self-defense mechanism?” He rubbed his chin, looking at the remaining Rusakovas in speculation. His eyes settled on me. “Do they ignore unpleasant things?”
“They’re ignoring you now,” I pointed out.
The escort blinked at me. He cleared his throat so he could project his voice more powerfully. “You have visitors.”
There was no reaction from Mother except to raise a single, specific finger in our direction.
Our escort laughed, and I dug in my heels and clasped Pietr’s arm against me to keep him from leaping at the man. His back unnaturally straight, he was so stiff his muscles twitched beneath my fingers. He didn’t look at me; he was far too comfortable with the anger pumping through him faster than even his blood.
“Stay calm. They’d love an excuse to lock you up, too.”
Our escort’s eyes flickered in my direction, confirming my fear. I watched the lump in Pietr’s throat slide as he swallowed. He shut his eyes for a moment. “Mother?”
She spun so quickly I didn’t see the movement, only the result. Nose pressed to the glass, head cocked to one side, and fingers splayed across the thick invisible barrier as if she would claw her way to us, she asked, “Pietr?” Her voice was scratchy, raw from disuse. Her eyes focused on Pietr just before she screamed his name like a battle cry.
He closed the distance to her in two ground-swallowing strides. His hands mirrored her own, pressed flat against the glass like the force of his will alone could get him inside. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her words. Pietr rested his forehead on the glass, his shoulders slumped, all the rage draining from his body.
Max and Catherine flanked him, Alexi close behind.
I hesitated, suddenly aware of how different I was, how much more like the scientists and guards holding her captive than her wild and graceful children. It may have been my battle, but it was not my family.
My mother was gone; theirs was alive. And a prisoner.
I bowed my head and folded my hands, determined to wait while they tried to catch up with the parent they had long thought dead.
“Jess.”
Pietr looked in my direction, signaling me over with a move of his head. My heart stopped, seeing the look on his face. I tried to keep calm. Not to run to him. To breathe.
Eyes down, I crossed the distance between us, nerves jangling, unsure of how to act around a mother who was also a werewolf. As soon as the thought formed, I realized the flaw in my logic. Pietr was a werewolf. Max was a werewolf. Catherine was, too. And most times I was quick to forget the fact. Often our shared humanity overrode our distinct differences.
Cat reached out and threw an arm around me, tugging me before the glass wall. “This is Jessie,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Their mother studied me, her lips thin, eyebrows lowered. Crow’s feet branched around her glinting turquoise eyes—what were once laugh lines ran into furrows of worry and anger. God, she was so young and yet so old.…
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Rusakova.…”
Behind me, Max said to the guards, “We were told we’d be allowed inside.”
One guard pushed a button on the wall. An intercom buzzed, blaring a reply. “Yes. Allow them all inside the cubicle.”
I spun out of Cat’s grasp. “No. Two in, three out,” I said, heart pounding. How hard would it be to just not unlock the door once you had all the werewolves you could want in one cell?
Cat echoed my suggestion. “Max and I will go in first. Then Pietr, Jessie, and Alexi.”
Their mother gave me a smile, and my heart jumped. “Cleverrr girrrl,” she said, her words equally strong with a Russian purr and a werewolf growl.
A set of four more armed guards entered the room as a precaution. Alexi and I looked at each other. We were doing the same thing: taking careful mental notes. Numbers, weapons, speed of response.
A code was tapped into a number pad by her door, and a guard pressed his palm onto the surface of the pad. Lights flashed and a siren purred “Red-red-red” as a seal broke and a door slid open, nearly seamless in the transparent cubicle.
Cat and Max stepped inside, the door sealing behind them. I shifted from foot to foot beside Alexi.
Pietr had already left me to stand by the door.
There were hugs and tears, and Tatiana—Mother—pulled the single chair over and sat. Max, the family bad-ass, sniffled and fell at his mother’s feet, resting his mop of hair against her knee. Tatiana sighed and played with his dark curls, doting on him as if they had all the time in the world. Cat sat by her other knee, posture rigid, absolutely alert.
She was seeing what I had noticed: stress, strain, and age marring the natural beauty of a woman without her family. A woman whose love was lost.
“Who is she?” Their mother pointed at me again.
“Mother,” Cat’s voice rose. “I said her name is Jessie.”
I looked at Alexi.
“Senile dementia begins early in the species,” he whispered.
“I am not senile, Alexi,” their mother barked. “And I hear quite well. I want to know who Jessie rrreally is. Who is she to my family?”
I got the impression it was not my place to define my connection to them. And what would I say, anyhow? I almost dated your youngest son, but my sometimes-psycho friend got to him first, so we just sort of messed around behind her back until he changed and now I’m dating the one guy at Junction High he seems to really hate?
Not a way to endear myself to Pietr’s mom.
Cat said simply, “She opened the matryoshka.”
Their mother’s head nearly ripped off, it moved so fast. “She opened it?”
Alexi nodded.
“Then…?”
“Nothing,” Alexi reported. “I have no answers yet. I am at a loss.”
I got the feeling they were talking over my head. About me. Cat, Max, and Pietr looked like they were out of the loop, too. All eyes were on Alexi.
“Therrre arrre no acceptable losses,” Mother said, her eyes glittering red.
“Heart-rate-is-elevated,” the siren announced.
“Of course it is,” she snarled.
“Mother,” Alexi said. “I am doing the best I can with limited resources.”
Now I was certain the CIA was taking careful mental notes, too, trying to decipher their conversation.
She shook her head, long hair tumbling. “I do not doubt you, Alexi. No matter what steps you had to take to get to this moment.”
Max looked up at her, his expression clearly reading stunned. “You knew? You know?”
“Alexi knew there would be a time he must make hard decisions—his life has been full of harsh truths.” Her face filled with pain, and Alexi dropped his gaze. “My poor boy,” she whispered. “He has done his best to protect you, has he not?” she asked Max pointedly.
Max blinked. “But the Mafia…”
“Did he call them to take you?” she prodded. “Or did he stand beside you? Help you?”
“You know about that?”
“They talk,” she muttered, motioning toward our escorts a
nd guards. “Gossiping like ill-bred girls to get a rise out of me.” Her eyes flashed, then calmed. “You should not doubt Alexi, either,” she admonished her eldest full-blood son. “Just because we do not share a direct heritage does not mean we do not share a legacy. Life is a puzzle, is it not, Alexi?”
“Da.”
“And you are missing one piece?”
“Da. A very important one.”
“Then there is still hope.”
“Da,” he said, reluctant to commit.
“There is always hope,” I confirmed, though I didn’t know exactly what we were hoping for.
Alexi rested his hand on my shoulder. His fingers shook. He hadn’t had a cigarette since sometime before we’d left the house, and his nerves were starting to show. “You need to quit smoking.”
“You arrre smoking?” Mother growled.
Nuts. Werewolf ears.
Alexi stepped back, hanging his head in shame.
“You are my son, Alexi. Not by blood, but by choice. We adopted you. I will not tolerate one of my children endangering themselves with something as deadly as…”
I couldn’t handle more railing against Alexi. He’d been a wreck recently. Before I could stop myself I blurted out the rumor running through school: “Max is having sex with multiple partners!”
Oh. Crap.
Mother looked at Max, her eyes glowing.
“Heart-rate-is-elevated,” blared again.
Max went a shade paler. No. Three shades. “Mother, I—” He flopped onto the floor belly up, covering his eyes with his arm. He groaned.
“Maximilian?”
“Mother, I—am—not.” He sighed. He shot me a look. “Not since Paris,” he qualified softly.
“What?” Pietr, Cat, Alexi, and I asked in unison.
Max focused on me. “The things you presume,” he chuckled. “I have a reputation,” he confirmed. “A healthy one.”
His mother rumbled.
“But I only flirt!” he protested.
“Continually,” I groaned.
“And you kiss,” Cat reminded.
He shrugged.
“And grope,” Pietr added.
Max sat up, glaring at him. “So what? You’re continually trying to bash your brains out because you can’t—”
Cat silenced him with a look, eyes sliding to me.
“What are you doing, Pietr?” Mother asked, eyes narrow.
“I am struggling,” he muttered. “This”—for a moment his eyes were on me before they darted away—“is not easy. It is not easy knowing I am dying already and that trying to live endangers others.”
Cat rose, tugging Max to his feet. She caught the guard’s attention. “Switch,” she said. “Jessie, you, too.” She hugged her mother, as did Max, and then, in a few tense moments as the guards looked on, rifles at the ready, the siren blared, the lights flashed, and we exchanged places, Cat and Max glaring at the guards, Pietr, Alexi, and myself staring at Mother.
Pietr’s mother grabbed him and hugged him, only pulling back to search his face. “You are not sleeping,” she surmised. A glance at Alexi and me and she repeated herself. “Why is no one here sleeping?”
“We’ve been searching for you,” Pietr whispered.
“All of you?” She glanced at me.
“Not anymore,” Alexi answered on my behalf. “We simple humans are out of action.”
She nodded. “They like you enough to keep you around. I searched for you as well,” she recalled. “There was a brief time I was free. I followed your scents as far as I could, stumbling through horse farms and parks.… But the river made things difficult.” She sighed. “I found your school just before they recaptured me.”
“It was you in the high school that night,” I realized.
I dropped to the floor and sat Indian-style. I thought back. “But in the rain that other night? That wasn’t you.”
“Why must you bring that up?” Max asked. “I was scouting. And I ran back from that little encounter with a limp.”
My lips curled in over my teeth, realizing.
“When is the logical response to a wolf attack ever to nail the animal in the groin with a big stick?” he asked me.
Pietr, Cat, and Alexi fought back smiles.
“Sorry?” I tried.
He snorted.
Mother was the one to refocus us. “If you opened the matryoshka, where is the pendant?” she whispered, looking at my neckline. “Is that…?”
“No,” I admitted. “It’s my mother’s netsuke.”
“Did you not give her the pendant?” Mother asked Alexi.
“Da, Pietr did.” He looked at him, confused.
Pietr had not told him he’d been given it back.
“Pietr?”
“I have it.”
“Give it to me.” Mother thrust her hand out.
Pietr retrieved it from his pocket and handed it over.
“This is yours,” she confirmed, dropping to her knees before me. “You opened the matryoshka. You are important to us.”
“How?” I whispered. “I don’t know how I’m important to your family. I’ll help however I can—you have to believe me—but…” I shook my head.
Her hands were warm on my face. “Shhhh, Jessie,” she soothed. “Sometimes we do not know what role we play until it is thrust upon us and we can only then do our best to carry it off.” She reached around, fastening the chain behind my neck.
I glanced at Pietr. The chain was new. Heavier. Stronger.
Mother looked at us both. “You had all better go—time—”
The siren blared, “Thirty-minutes-thirty-minutes.”
“Time is up.”
A few quick hugs, another tear or two, and we were out of the cubicle and headed (with our armed escort) to find Wanda and Kent.
We pushed into the lab, where Wanda was having a very animated discussion with Henry. “And what am I supposed to do about this? Hope there are no bodily fluids exchanged? Play keep-away with—”
Henry’s pointed look stopped her midsentence.
“Dammit,” Wanda muttered. “I’ll take care of it,” she assured him. “Sooo,” she said, facing us, her smile thin. “Was Mommy happy to see you?”
Max’s face soured at her use of the endearment.
“We were all glad for a chance to meet,” I said, stroking Max’s arm. He calmed beneath my touch, though I was certain I’d get an earful later about ratting him out to his mother.
“Wonderful,” Wanda chirped. “Let’s close this little get-together up, then, shall we? We’ll want a marrow and fur sample before your next invite. I’ll let you decide when. After that? We may need to do a little renegotiating.”
Cat’s chin rose. “Renegotiating?”
“Cat,” I warned. “She said may.”
Wanda nodded. We trailed behind Wanda to the door like lost puppies. Out and up the stairs, I recounted each one. If we had to do something drastic, it might be dark. Counting stairs might save us from tripping down them.
Finally outside, Wanda slapped her hands together against the cold. “I trust you can find your way home,” she muttered, “since it’s really just around the corner.”
Wow. They’d gotten arrogant.
Wanda’s gaze slid from Pietr to me as if weighing some danger. “Jessica, I’ll be back to take you home soon.”
“Don’t bother,” Max retorted. “I’ll drive her back.”
Again she measured Pietr with a glance. “Huh. Okay.” Wanda shrugged and slipped back inside.
A half-dozen bolts clicked into place behind us.
* * *
“I cannot do this,” Cat murmured as Max pulled out of their driveway. Her voice cracked. “I cannot become like her so soon.…”
“Cat,” I insisted, “You still have years. You all do.”
“Not as many as you will,” she said. “Why can I not be normal—not this?” she asked. “As normal as Jessie?”
I resisted the urge to explain th
at normal was a relative term, and right now it was so relative it didn’t seem to relate to me at all.
From the front passenger’s seat Alexi looked over his shoulder at her. “You are blessed in many ways, Ekaterina,” he said. “You have much that many would kill for—and many have.”
“I would give it all away,” she confessed, “to live out a normal life and reach a normal old age.”
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. “Some normal people don’t live very long, either. What if you give up your gifts—your healing, your agility, your wonderful wildness—and die in an airplane crash? Or crossing a street. It happens, Cat. There is no normal life span. Only average.”
“Perhaps this is simply what we’re destined to be,” Pietr added. “Wild and powerful, and then … nothing. Should we not embrace what is carved into our genetics, be all that we may be for as long as we can be? Live life fiercely?”
Max turned the car up my driveway. “Live fast, die young,” he mumbled.
The car stopped, and I couldn’t get out fast enough. “And what do you leave behind?” I snapped, leaning back in to the open door and scowling at Max because my stinging eyes proved I didn’t dare look at Pietr. “Who do you leave with only memories of you? How many hearts do you break when you risk too much and die too young?”
I slammed the door shut and stalked into the house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“That boy of yours is on the phone,” Dad said, holding the receiver out to me.
“Who?”
“Derek-the-man-Jamieson,” Annabelle Lee called.
I took the phone. “Hey.”
“Hey. I was thinking about you.”
“Oh.” I tramped up the stairs. “That’s nice.” I took off my sneakers with a clunk and peeled off my socks, holding the phone between my shoulder and cheek.
“Your party’s tomorrow night,” he reminded.
“It’s really more the Rusakovas’ Halloween party.”
“Trying to be difficult?”
“No. I’m tired. Things have been pretty weird around here lately.” I took off the rabbit netsuke and left the amber heart. “I was thinking of skipping the party.”
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