Secrets and Shadows (20 page)
“Pietr.”
He paused behind me, and I waited for him by the door.
“Hold on to hope,” she said. “It is the only way to live.”
He shook his head and closed her door behind us.
“Wait!” Feldman shouted, and I heard a faint tap on the door as I sprang toward it and threw it open.
Mrs. Feldman was pale, staring at the door as it swung wide. “Careful,” she breathed, pointing at my feet. A card lay between the toes of my sneakers.
“In al my years … Bring it to me, child.”
“Why’s it…” I stooped to retrieve it.
“It flew out of the deck.” She looked it over. “This is troubling.”
We’d had death and dramatic change and
now
we had the truly troubling card?
“What does it mean?”
“Beware.”
I stumbled backward. Into Pietr.
“Ohhh.” In her wrinkled hand the deck vibrated, the stack shimmying.
A single card slithered forward from between the others. Mrs. Feldman’s eyes found mine and she freed it the rest of the way. “The boy. Beware the boy.”
“Thank you,” Pietr scowled. “Now if she’l just listen.”
We rode back to the school in silence.
* * *
I was digging around in the fridge’s vegetable drawer when I heard the newspaper flop open.
“Dad?” I asked, glancing around.
No one was there. A chil ran across my arms, and I rubbed it away. Maybe I’d left the door open.
Ignoring the newspaper, I stepped to the mudroom. No. The door remained shut. Locked, even.
The newspaper rustled again, and slow as a victim in a horror flick, I turned to watch as the sections and pages rearranged themselves as if a person pawed through them.
Or a ghost.
The sections slapped apart, one fal ing at my feet. The local. “Teen Train Track Suicides Stump Cops.”
“Mom?” I squeaked.
Nothing.
“I’m total y losing it. Thank you, Sophie.” I picked up the paper gingerly, setting it by the sink. I read snatches of it as I made dinner. It mentioned the werewolf connection Hascal and Jaikin had suggested, but only in passing. Instead, they focused on the idea the victims had seemed depressed and might have used drugs causing hal ucinations (although they admitted finding no trace of il egal substances in their systems).
Weird. Werewolves showed up in Junction, then the CIA, and the Russian Mafia, and now there were even more suicides. Maybe normal wasn’t achievable anymore.
I made it through dinner by pushing my food around the plate more than eating it. Dad cal ed to say he’d be working late at the factory, so he wasn’t there to examine my every move. But Annabel e Lee was.
Over the cover of her newest book she watched me.
When I final y rose to scrape my plate, she spoke up. “I saw them kissing.”
My back straightened.
“Pietr and Sarah.”
I sighed. It was one thing to put on a show around me, but to be kissing elsewhere … My stomach clenched, and I was glad I hadn’t eaten much.
“I’m sorry he’s so stupid.”
I set my plate in the sink with a clank. “That’s the problem, Annabel e Lee. He’s not stupid. If he was, I wouldn’t be so, so messed up over him.”
“I’m sorry he’s—” She paused, and I looked at her, waiting. “I’m sorry he’s with
her
,” she concluded.
“Me too.”
* * *
“Oh my God, what’s
that?
” Annabel e Lee raced into my room, dropping her book on my bed as she zipped past me to yank open the window. “A coyote?”
The cal reverberated off the wal s, fil ing my bedroom with its rich song—distinct, distressed, and powerful. My blood rushed in recognition.
Pietr.
“No,” I whispered. “Definitely a wolf.”
She looked at me as I joined her at the open window. “You don’t seem worried about the horses.”
“They’re safe.”
“What do you think it eats?”
“Everything,” I said with a grin. “But not horses.”
“Why’s it out there? Is it hunting?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wel , what does it want?”
“I honestly don’t know.” I grabbed the window frame. “Come on. It’s cold.” I realized, closing the window, I didn’t necessarily mean the weather outside.
* * *
I looked around his shoulder. Sure enough, Pietr’s eyes were fixed on me. Sarah was nowhere in sight.
“I have no idea. Maybe he needs to tel me something.…”
“Go.” Derek didn’t bother to mask his disgust but dismissed me in a very kingly fashion. Which irked me. A lot.
Although no hal way in Junction was particularly expansive, something about crossing from one side to the other—to Pietr’s—made me feel like I was embarking on my longest journey ever.
“What’s going on?” I asked, keeping my tone light. “Other than you watching me makes Derek grouchy.”
“I didn’t mean to stare.”
So much for my little ego trip.
Stupid heart
.
Stupid girl
.
“We have a lead,” he said, eyes glowing. “A place we think they’re keeping her. Cat and I are going to snoop around more today to pinpoint things. Then we’l free her.”
“That’s great!” But the thril drained away, replaced with a sudden and daunting dread as I realized what it meant. “You’l break the agreement. The CIA wil —what’l they do if you…?”
“Try to free our mother?” His eyes narrowed.
“You can’t.”
He drew back, as far from me as the hal way al owed, his back to the wal , eyes hooded.
My mind scrambled. “Don’t you want to get a look inside first? See the lay of the land?”
He stared at me.
“Pietr. Think.” I glanced up and down the hal . Derek’s eyes burned into my back, and I changed my posture. Stiffened—going for an indifferent-seeming stance. Just another lie as my heart threatened to spil out of my mouth. “I know you want her out. And she’l get out.
We’ll
get her out. But why risk angering the CIA? What about our progress?”
“Their
progress
has slowed to nothing.”
Struggling with a reply, I pressed. “What if we wait a little longer? Play this out? Do it their way so we can see how the place is set up inside?”
“Cooperate so they take us into its heart?” He rubbed a hand across his chin and I shivered, remembering the feel of his jaw, the touch of his fingers.
“Yes. Cooperate first. Maybe they’l stil give us what we want,” I insisted.
He closed the smal distance between us before I could catch my breath. He reached out, but dropped his hand, casting a look over my shoulder. At Derek.
“Please,” I begged. “
Puhzhalsta
.”
His eyes snapped closed and he shook his head, fighting some silent inner battle. When they reopened they were the bril iant blue of a clear summer sky. “Fine,” he breathed. “They can take us into the heart of their operation. But understand,” he said, eyes locking with mine, his voice clipped and cold, “if they do not give us what we want, we wil tear that heart out.”
My head jerked down in agreement. And fear.
I wondered if it was possible the CIA’s poor handling of the situation could turn normal y sensible Pietr into the monster he feared was so much part of his nature. What did it take, after al , to make a man a monster?
For once, the CIA’s timing worked in our favor and Wanda drove me to the Rusakovas’ that afternoon, pausing briefly to pick up Officer Kent. I cal ed ahead to let them know our numbers had changed and the agents brought good news.
I hoped I wasn’t lying by proxy.
The car was stifling, warm and thick with an overpoweringly spicy scent. “Your car deodorizer is a bit much.”
Kent chuckled from the back seat.
“Can you even
taste
your coffee?” I asked, peering into the flipdown passenger mirror.
He just raised his ever-present mug in my direction in a silent toast.
When Catherine opened the door to the house, ushering us within, Wanda smiled, pausing just inside the door. “It’s a nice day,” she commented. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Take a walk? You promised good news,” I reminded her. “Do we get to see their mother today?” I asked, aware of the way the Rusakovas bristled and shifted, surely wondering.
Kent grinned and adjusted something inside his coat. Pietr and Max moved in to stand on either side of me. Cat sidled up behind, and Alexi crossed the floor to stand beside her.
“We do,” Wanda assured.
Kent opened the door again, letting the autumn breeze waft through the foyer.
The Rusakovas straightened, drawing up to their ful heights, and I saw their noses wrinkle, faces pul ing into masks of absolute distaste.
“Perhaps Officer Kent needs a shower,” Max snarled, his eyes narrowing.
“Or a drowning,” Cat suggested, covering her nose.
Wanda winked and tugged a pouch from her shirt pocket, dangling it before me.
I sniffed. “What the…?” The same stink as the car’s hung from her hand.
“I guess we won’t need these,” she said, looking at Kent. “Once they know where we are, diluting our scent won’t matter. They’l find us whenever they want.” She shrugged.
I repressed a shiver, wondering what Wanda’s group had that made them so confident about handling any unscheduled meetings with the Rusakovas.
She tossed the pouch into the wastepaper basket by the door. Kent dug into his jacket pocket and withdrew a matching pouch, shook it for sheer devilment, and tossed it away too.
The ful -blood Rusakovas sneezed.
“What’s in that?” I asked.
“An old remedy to deal with pesky tracking dogs—and werewolves,” Kent added, flashing a smile.
“Shal we go now? Times a-tickin’,” Wanda reminded.
Max stifled a growl, and the group of us, an awkward al iance, stepped onto the porch. Alexi pul ed the door shut and I was thrust into the middle of an argument.
“Why are
you
coming?” Max asked his adopted brother. More than a question, it was a chal enge to Alexi’s previous role in the family.
“She’s my mother, too,” Alexi said.
Catherine wedged herself between Max and Alexi, placing her smal hands on Max’s wide chest and peering up into his face.
“He’s right. And Mother would want to see al her children, no matter if they’ve strayed from the pack.”
Looking over her head at Alexi, Max agreed. “I just wouldn’t want to be
you
when Mother learns how you betrayed us.”
Alexi sighed, shoulders slumping.
We walked only a few blocks, out of the Victorian and Queen Anne sections of Junction, and into the smal er remnants of a Colonial farmhouse area.
Wanda paused by a mailbox before passing through a hedgerow dotted with rosemary and other aromatic plants. The place stank of herbs. The dirt around their bases had only recently been disturbed, the plants fresh this season and not meant to last a Junction winter.
I wondered if any of us were.
We walked down a pathway of large, flat rocks and stepped up onto an old stacked stone porch. Here the suburbs and modern living caught up to the past and tried to swal ow it whole. What had once been a large farm plot with one home on several hundred acres had been reduced to a single house, an old garage and gas station at its back. Strange, a fieldstone Colonial, just a few hundred yards and a postage stamp worth of a backyard away from the broken-down Grabbit Mart at its back.
Wanda stepped to the doorway, knocking out a strange rhythm with her fist, and I was surprised when the door swung open revealing two very neatly dressed men. Two men most comfortable when armed
—the two from the abandoned church. I gawked, realizing what their presence implied. “Seriously?”
Where were the thick metal doors that slid open when the right person put their palm on a special sensor? My eyes scanned from the ground to the roofline. One smal camera pointed toward the road, the type anyone could get from RadioShack.
If this was the facility where they contained a secret like werewolves, where was our tax money going?
“Step inside,” Wanda directed us with a curt nod.
Warily we obeyed. Like most Colonials the house was smal , close. The impression of intimacy it gave only made me feel less at ease.
Clustered together in what served as the main hal , we looked expectantly at Wanda and Kent for instructions. That the Rusakovas stood in a house so near their own and yet so wel hidden only made them more anxious. Max shifted from foot to foot, eyes glittering.
“Where is she?” Catherine asked.
The two men looked at Wanda and Kent.
The shorter one spoke. “First things first,” he said. “I believe part of the deal was that we would get blood, skin, and hair samples before any of you see her.”
The heat rol ing off Pietr and Max at mention of the delay threatened to smother me. I kept my tone control ed. “Almost there,” I promised. “We’l see her soon. And what an amazing building.” Casting a glance from one end of the hal to the other, I patted Max’s arm and smiled at Cat. “Just a little longer.”
Pietr watched me, cooling as my logic—and my unspoken suggestion to observe our surroundings careful y—sank in.
