Destiny and Deception (8 page)

“I don’t sleep. Not much,” she retorted. “That’s a habit I’d definitely like to change. I fall asleep as soon as I can. As soon as I…”

There was a stretch of silence.

“As soon as you…?”

“As soon as I can stop thinking about him. And
you
.”

I shifted to peer between the curtains, catching a sliver of their two forms, huddled together, him in a denim jacket—stubborn against the cold—her bundled in a thick coat, scarf around her neck and covering her chin, knit hat pulled down to cover all the way to her eyebrows. Their breath pooled out in soft clouds of steam, mingling and fading into nothing as winter tore all warmth apart.

He reached an arm out to rest around her shoulders. She leaned back. Away. Far enough that he hesitated and dropped his arm down, sitting back to watch her, to wait for some clue to what he should do next.

Max being awkward yet attempting to be something—
someone
—better was fascinating.

“What do you dream about?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

She straightened, going stiff at the question, and shook her head. “No,” she said. “You can ask me almost anything else—but not that.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Okay,” he said. The next words blurted out. “Do you trust me?”

Amy watched him a moment, knowing the question was loaded and that no matter how she answered it’d potentially change everything between them.

“Yes,” she finally said. “Yes. I trust you. Completely. I want no walls between us. Ever. That’s how much I trust you.”

“
Da
. No walls. So sleep with me.”

She shot back from him, her body language all angles that read like a line of exclamation points. “
Sleep
with you?”

He raised his hands. “I don’t want sex—”

“You don’t
want
—”

“Just sleep beside me. Maybe knowing someone you trust is right next to you…”

“Ha.”

“What?”

“You must think I’m stupid. Or easy.” She stood, straight and sharp and, placing her hands on her hips, glared down at him.

“
Nyet
,” he protested. “Why would you think that?”

“Because guys—especially guys with the sort of reputation you’ve
earned
, Maximilian Rusakova—don’t just sleep next to a girl and expect nothing else will happen. And nothing else
is
going to happen, do you understand?
Comprende?
”

He stared at her, stricken. “Nothing else…”

But she turned on her heel and strode away, into the foyer, the door slamming behind her.

“…
was
going to happen,” he concluded. “Damn it.”

I sat still as a rabbit waiting for the hunter’s hound and wishing I could tell him to go to her, to tell her exactly what he’d meant to before she’d cut him off.

Jessie

I brushed the snow off my coat and followed Pietr inside. “So.” I looked him over and did my best to smile.
Suggestively
. “Wanna try and warm me up?”

He nodded. “I’ll heat some water for tea.”

“That’s not what I was thinking about,” I countered, putting a hand on his arm. “I was thinking about something we could do
together
that would get my blood pumping.” I glanced toward the upstairs as plainly as I could.

“Oh,” he said.

“So … shall we?”

He nodded slowly and, taking my hand, we climbed the stairs together and headed to his room. The knot I felt in my stomach eased as the door to his room clicked shut behind us. We had our privacy.

The knot doubled when I sat on the bed and he sat a healthy distance away. “Kiss me, Pietr,” I said, leaning toward him.

His response was a firm closed-mouth kiss that was cool in every way except the good one. Carefully, he put an arm around my waist and I scooted closer so our hips and legs touched.

Oblivious, he just looked at me. Blankly. I pressed myself to him and pushed my lips against his until he responded.

Awkwardly.

Romance is supposed to be awkward,
my mind whispered.
He was just a late bloomer when it came to the awkward, stuttering, and clumsy part of it.

We flopped onto his bed together, kissing, my heart pounding against the cage my ribs formed.

His lips were too soft or too wet or … They never managed to find my own frantic ones as my hands raced across his back.

Or maybe he’s just been an idiot savant and now we are more firmly in the realm of
idiot
than savant.…

“Pietr,” I whispered, surprised by the need I heard in my voice and hoping it was enough to silence the sniping voice in my head …

…
or to help him home in on my lips.…

Damn it.

Then he said, “Jess,” and snuggled me into his arms, holding me so politely and carefully, his chin resting on top of my head, that I wanted to die.

And as long as we lay there together—twenty-seven minutes precisely—that was as far as Pietr was inspired to go.

It felt perfectly like rejection—although I knew it wasn’t; it was the result of the cure, an effect of the very thing my own blood caused.

Like so much else, this was my fault, too.

So I rolled over and placed my head on his chest and tried to enjoy the slower rhythm of his heart at rest.

When I finally gave up on our time turning romantic and tugged free of his gentlemanly embrace, I kissed his forehead and left the room.

Amy sat on the bottom of the steps, staring at the door to the front porch.

I plopped down beside her. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She continued to stare straight ahead.

“What’s got so much of your attention?”

A shadow moved on the door’s other side, and I instantly recognized the silhouette.

“Oh. Not what. Who. What’s Max done now?”

“He asked me to sleep with him.”

A year ago I would have needed to pick my jaw up off of the ground after hearing a statement like that. Now? I barely stopped myself from nodding. “The …
bastard?
”

She glared at me. “He thinks I’m easy.”

“How do you know?”

“Why else would he suggest that I sleep with him if he didn’t think I was easy?”

“Because maybe he actually meant
sleep
with him? Not
sleep
with him. Like, the passive form of the verb, if there is such a thing, compared to the”—I cleared my throat—“more
active
form?”

She snorted. “So you actually think Maximilian Rusakova, stud of Junction High, just wants to have me in his bed to hold me like some lame body pillow—or teddy bear?”

“It happens,” I said with a sigh.

“Really? Max actually means sleep as in
sleep?
”

“Why not?”

“I never thought…” She stared even harder at the door and the small window set into it covered by thin and lacy curtains.

As if by her wish, the door opened and Max appeared, pausing on the Oriental rug, his boots shining with snow and slush. He saw her instantly and hung his head, his tousled curls falling into his eyes.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

How was it that between the two of them that single word had so much more intimacy and immediacy than I’d ever heard it have used in any other way? The weight of those three letters felt totally different stretching across the air between them.

Amy shifted beside me and tugged at her ponytail. “I may owe you an apology,” she said to Max. “It might just be possible I misinterpreted your words.”

Without raising his head, Max lifted a single eyebrow, his eyes darting from one of us to the other and back again as he tried to figure out what she actually meant. “Want to talk about it?”

Amy pulled me close and said in a whisper loud enough for Max to hear, “It freaks me out when he suggests we talk and it doesn’t mean he’s breaking up with me.” Then she turned and looked at him again. “You’re not like most guys, are you?”

He raised his head, straightened his shoulders and back, and gave her a cocky grin. “The werewolf thing didn’t give you a hint?”

She blinked at him, nonplussed.

The grin faded back to a simple smile, and he cleared his throat and tried his answer again. “Undoubtedly not.”

“Good,” Amy said firmly. “Because most guys suck. Let’s talk.”

She rose, pausing to rest her hand on my shoulder. Then she left, taking Max’s hand in her own and leading him down the basement steps so they could be alone and discuss what
sleep
actually meant.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Alexi

I sat in the car, my eyes drifting over the large brick building at the opposite end of the parking lot. The sign reading
GOLDEN OAKS ADULT DAYCARE AND RETIREMENT HOME
was in need of a fresh coat of paint, and what used to be sharp lines of architectural detailing had blurred slightly with time or acid rain. Its window ledges were softened by smudges of snow, but the facility looked respectable.

And I had been here before.

Once to bring home a wayward retiree and once when Pietr called after falling from the second story chasing a kitten and mystifying the onlookers because he walked away with barely any bumps or bruises.

Then I’d returned another dozen times or so since learning my biological mother was a resident. Just to circle the parking lot, look up at the windows, and wonder which one was hers. And if she had ever peered out and noticed a red convertible.

Leaving.

As the sky began to darken at dusk I started the car again, remembering Max had promised to take Jessie home. Pulling out of my parking space, I counted the rows in the lot between the building’s entrance and me.

Twenty-two. The same as my age. A dabbler in the paranormal, as I knew Feldman to be, thanks to Jessie’s descriptions, would have thought there was some significance to such a coincidence.

I knew better. So I left without meeting her or even seeing her.

Again.

Marlaena

The truck rattled, bits of green flaking off its wheel wells. “Jesus, Gabe. Next time you grab a vehicle make sure it’s not gonna shake itself to bits.”

“Want something flashier?” he asked. “I’ve been eyeing other options, but the locals aren’t big on sexy cars.”

I jabbed a thumb in the direction of a gleaming red convertible leaving the school parking lot.

“There are exceptions to every rule,” he noted.

I looked in the rearview mirror. “Got what you need?” The truck heaved and bucked its way to the edge of Junction High’s property.

Fictional supernatural creatures abhorred holy ground. Me? I wouldn’t step foot on school property. Traditional education wasn’t my thing.

Gareth had already signed the appropriate enrollment papers as their guardian. The alpha that always ghosted around his edges made it easy to bluff his way into and out of situations like that.

In the rearview mirror Jordyn and Londyn rested their heads together and peered at me, a smile starting on Londyn’s lips and spreading to Jordyn’s. The twins were amazing. And a touch creepy.

“Bagged lunches—” Jordyn began.

“Full of preservative-rich foods—” Londyn continued.

“That Gabe acquired for us.”

“
Acquired?
”

Gabe mimicked their lazy smile and shrugged, a movement more innocent than he had any right to portray.

“Got pencils and paper?”

They nodded.

“We need more than supplies,” Gabe pointed out. “Instructions.”

“Stay quiet and out of trouble. Below the radar. Sniff around a bit. There’s more going on in this little town. I don’t want us falling into something we can’t fight our way out of.”

The twins nodded again, but Gabe’s eyes narrowed. “When will the rest be enrolled?”

“We’ll go in stages. Play things carefully here. More carefully than in Chicago. The last thing I want is to attract more attention or—”

“More trouble,” Jordyn concluded for me.

“Exactly,” Londyn agreed.

Gabe watched and said nothing.

Jessie

Junction High was swathed in black to acknowledge the latest of what had been dubbed by local newspapers the “Teen Train Track Suicides.” The suicide of Marvin Broderick was one of many. If any of the others
had
been suicides. Wrestling with the last textbook wedged in the bottom of my locker, I struggled with the fact there probably hadn’t been a single suicide among the list except for Marvin’s.

Even that one left doubts in my mind.

Had there been murders? Yes. Probably every death on the train tracks between Farthington and Junction had been the result of one twisted teen.

My head ached just thinking about him and I wondered how long someone that screwed up could maintain a hold on someone’s mind. Even after death.

“I can’t believe Derek’s still missing,” someone said to their friend as they walked down the hall. I shoved the last of my supplies into my book bag.

“It’s so awful,” the other agreed.

I sighed. Presumed missing was the team captain of the Junction Jackrabbits football team: hotshot jock, social manipulator, remote viewer, and energy transferer, Derek Jamieson. A psychic puppet master of sorts. And the guy I had moronically crushed on for years.

But “presumed missing” equated in this case to “dead and
not entirely
gone” since part of him still ghosted through me, skirting my brain and sharing memories. And although my mother had raised me to forgive people, I was finding some of her expectations for me were set a bit too high, considering current circumstances. Derek topped my list of the probably unforgivable.

He had been psychically feeding on both friends and competitors, a vampire of sorts without the need for blood—and most recently feeding on me—his hunger growing along with his other powers. He had also been one of the Rusakovas’ greatest obstacles in freeing their mother from a group believed to be CIA. And he had nearly … I stood, glancing at Amy, who waited patiently by my locker. He had nearly done to me what Amy’s ex had so willingly done to her.