Secrets and Shadows (13 page)
“I had no idea that was being done. I can only guarantee you that with ful cooperation, such things won’t occur again.”
“Ful cooperation?” Cat weighed the words. She turned and glared at Wanda. “How is our mother?”
“Aging. Rapidly. But she has been since her first change, hasn’t she?”
A growl built in Cat’s throat, and I slapped my hand down on her thigh.
“So you need to talk about the Rusakovas seeing their mother and what you want in return.” I looked at Cat. “Soon.”
“You must be there, Jessie,” Cat concluded.
“Why?”
“We may not be able to stop from shredding her if you aren’t there to remind us of our humanity,” Cat stated very matter-of-factly.
“She’s grounded,” Wanda pointed out. “I’l bring additional agents. For safety’s sake.”
“You’l never get in alive. No extra agents. You and one sidearm. Jessie as negotiator.”
“I’m grounded,” I echoed. The last thing I wanted to do was be between a pack of angry werewolves and the wel -armed government agent keeping their dying mother imprisoned.
the wel -armed government agent keeping their dying mother imprisoned.
Wanda squinted at Cat, measuring her intent.
“Make an excuse,” Cat instructed. “A girl’s day out.”
Despite my skyrocketing pulse rate, I laughed. Loudly. “Sure. We’l go shoe shopping, Cat. What color’s fashionable for jackboots?” I doubled over, patting the tops of my sneakers and fighting for breath. “Ugh.
Fine.” I stood. “Cat’s terms.”
“Fine,” Wanda agreed. “Let’s get you home.”
Nearly out the door, I looked over my shoulder to say good-bye to Cat and I noticed Derek. Cat fol owed my gaze, glaring at him.
He said, “Bitch.”
Cat responded, “Manipulative bastard.” Derek shrugged as if to say
touché
. Wanda tugged me out to the car before I had too much time to wonder about their brief exchange.
The next day Sarah caught me between classes, no Pietr in sight. She towed me into the girls’ bathroom.
I’d spent so much time in Junction High’s bathrooms since Pietr’s arrival I expected to start paying rent.
Even Sarah’s perfectly done makeup—yes, I realized, startled, she was back to wearing makeup
—couldn’t hide the faint bags beneath her eyes. “Is there anything you didn’t tel me about that night?”
Crap, crap,
crap!
What night? I’d racked up quite a few lies about particular nights recently. Now it seemed the trick was knowing which night she meant. I was too tired to guess. Just one more thing people never told you: Not only was lying moral y wrong, it was exhausting. “What night?”
Something smal shifted in her eyes, like someone in the background waking.
Amy sauntered in, whistling. “Hey. Heard you were here,” she addressed me. She paused, seeing Sarah. Amy tossed her long mane of red hair and cracked her knuckles.
Sarah ignored her. “June seventeenth. The night your mother died.”
Amy resumed whistling, spun on her heel, and retreated to the hal way. Or maybe class. Some of us stil tried to get to class from time to time.
“Umm.” There was a lot I hadn’t told Sarah about that night. Like the fact she’d caused the accident. Or the fact I hauled her, unconscious, out of her car and to safety because my mother told me to. Or that by saving Sarah I’d doomed my mother to a fiery death. Or that forgiving her was essential y my mother’s dying wish.
Man
. I hoped Mom wasn’t hung up on
that
one.
Where to begin? The truth seemed foreign stacked against such heaps of lies. And what good would the truth do when Sarah tottered on the brink of returning to her old, nasty self? Would knowing help or hurt her?
And how dare I try to make her a better person? She’d seemed quite content being evil. At what point did my desire to make Sarah “better” become some weird God-complex? Shouldn’t she know the truth, make her own choices?
I rubbed my forehead, a headache threatening. “Okay. There’s actual y—”
The fire alarm blared.
“Shit!” Sarah exclaimed.
My heart sped up. The new Sarah was big on word choice: Why use profanity when you could be creatively clean? But the original Sarah … I shivered. “Let’s go.” We stepped into the hal and were quickly separated by the evacuating classes.
Standing outside in the blustering breeze, I wondered if the fire alarm hadn’t been some strange cosmic intervention. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to tel Sarah after al . Or maybe not yet.
Ugh.
If the fire alarm had been a sign, couldn’t it be clearer?
I hopped up and down to stay warm. Rumors spread through the crowd. “… an electronic malfunction…”; “… the library’s on fire…”; “… somebody in Beany Belden’s class lit a match…”
My IQ slipped as I listened.
Max appeared, fol owed by his gaggle of giggling girls. He slipped behind me and draped his arms across me.
I stiffened in his grasp. “What are you doing?”
“You look cold.”
“So do half the girls around here. And you’l get way further with them than with me,” I assured.
“Geez, Jessie, give a guy some credit,” he purred, his mouth so close his breath singed my ear.
“Ohhh, I give you credit, Max,” I returned. “But it doesn’t mean I understand why you’re hanging on me.”
He lowered his voice, his whisper as tangible as the rasp of a cat’s tongue on skin. I ignored the goose bumps rising on my arms in response. “Look. At two o’clock.”
I glanced ahead and to my right.
Pietr was wrapped around Sarah’s slight form, his head turned in our direction. His eyes glowed a faint red.
“We could make him jealous,” Max offered. “It’s a bit of a dirty trick to play on my little brother, but—”
He yawned, and I knew his eyes were taking on the sleepy appearance of someone
very
comfortable.
What some older folks cal ed “bedroom eyes.”
I’d seen Max play a similar game before. Even without looking I knew what Pietr saw.
“Whaddya’ say?” Max rumbled. “Maybe a kiss…?”
“Don’t you dare. Besides, I don’t want him to be jealous. I want him to be smart.”
Max’s laughter shook through me, his body tight to my back. “Good luck with that,” he intimated. “Pietr’s seventeen. He has a girlfriend who throws herself at him. Smart won’t be easy.” His tone changed faintly.
“Why couldn’t you have shaken him off on your other friend? Amy? The hot redhead. We could have taken them apart and I would have been her shoulder to cry on.”
“Amy’s with Marvin.”
“Yeah,” he droned. “I noticed that.” He snuggled closer, and I resisted the urge to elbow him in the groin.
“She’s smokin’.”
“Leave Amy alone, Max. She’s happy with Marvin.”
“And if she wasn’t?”
I growled.
“That’s actual y sexy.” He purred like a lawn mower was lodged in his chest.
Ahead of the crowd teachers waved us back toward the school building. Sighing, I slid out of Max’s embrace and ignored the jealous glares of his groupies.
“So, no to making Pietr jealous?” he tried once more.
“What would you do in my place, Max?”
He looked away from me for the span of one heartbeat, but I caught the path of his gaze.
“I don’t know, Jessie.”
Leading his pack of admirers, he skulked away.
I waved to the couple he’d spotted just before stalking off. Amy tugged free of Marvin’s hold and waved back.
* * *
He wrote the pass, relieved. At least I wouldn’t be his problem anymore. He could return to focusing on filing state-mandated tests and know someone was looking over my shoulder from time to time. He’d save on colored paper clips, too.
* * *
But the chil of the snapping breeze wasn’t nearly as startling as seeing Sarah in Pietr’s welcoming embrace inside. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but somehow it stil did.
The doors flew open at my touch. Crisp autumn air pushed past me, snarling my hair out ahead of me, tangling in fal ’s frosty fingers. The same wind that rattled me rustled the spiking dark mop of hair hanging over Pietr’s eyes.
He raised his head to the breeze, nostrils flaring as his eyes closed, shutting out the world. Something tightened in his face and he leaned over Sarah, murmuring so she laughed. He nuzzled his nose, his lips, into the soft blond hair that whispered along Sarah’s face and down her slender neck.
Where was Coach Mac and his PDA-seeking whistle? I stumbled out of the path of other students but couldn’t pul my eyes away from Pietr. He looked at me, holding my gaze boldly, eyes tinting the red of hel fire, her scent—her
taste
—tearing down his throat. Lingering in his lungs.
That was the first morning I looked for Derek. It took only moments to find him. He glanced up from where he sat chatting with Marvin. And as soon as he saw me it was like nothing else mattered.
I let him lead me to a quiet and poorly lit corner of the math wing. I didn’t stop him when he tried to kiss me. Instead I linked my arms around his neck and hung on, letting his lips smother mine, al the while wishing he was Pietr. When the bel rang I hurried away to show my guidance pass to my next teacher before heading down the lengthy hal way connecting Junction High to the middle school.
I paused outside the middle school’s main office: I’d been burned before. I took a deep breath, readying myself. Reminding myself Harnek hadn’t betrayed me. She actual y rode to my rescue after I took down a tag team of cheerleaders. My hesitation gone, I figured if there was anyone I could trust to help sort out my heart and my mind, it was my old counselor.
In I went. The receptionist looked at my pass. “Oh. Jessie Gil mansen.” Her tone changed, eyes softening in realization. “I’m so sorry about your mom, Jessie.…”
I looked away and closed my eyes; pushing the breath that had caught in my throat out, I regained control. How could people do that? Wreck me so fast with just a mention of Mom? “Thank you.” The answer was stiff. I couldn’t put the right emotion behind some stuff anymore.
People would learn to cope. Or leave me alone. Sometimes I wondered which I’d prefer.
The tag marking Harnek’s door glinted and I shoved toward it, oblivious to the receptionist’s warning,
“She’s busy—”
“Ms. Terrence, Ms. Terrence!” A couple kids bumbled in, their high, demanding voices seeking attention. And the receptionist was overrun with requests from everything from toilet paper for the restrooms to paperwork for a teacher requesting supplies. And there were photocopies to be made.
Her protest was drowned out and I pushed on the door, easing it partway open, not wanting to disturb Harnek but not wanting to be stuck in the mil ing madness of a fil ing office.
“I don’t want to see!” someone hissed from inside the room. Open a crack, the door al owed me a slender line of vision and the advantage of watching without being seen.
Harnek stooped over, holding the attention of whoever sat in the huge chair opposite her desk. “You
have
to. It doesn’t matter that you don’t want to—you
have
to. Otherwise…” She shook her head. “You know.”
There was no reply beyond a deep sigh. Final y a muffled voice—male—agreed. “If it’s absolutely necessary.”
“It is.”
I knocked on the door, opening it further with each light rap of my fist.
“Jessie!” Harnek straightened, smiling, hands clasped together. “Come in. Maloy mentioned you’d be seeing me. He didn’t say
now
.”
“Is it a bad time?”
“No. Nooo. We were finishing up, weren’t we?”
There was a creak of leather. Derek stood up from the glossy seat, his expression a far cry from the frustrated one I’d expected.
“Yeah. Hey, Jessica.” He did that thing that came so natural y to him. More than a smile—a
gleam
that lit his whole face. I couldn’t help but smile back. He glanced at Harnek. “Thanks for your time.”
“Anything for you, Derek,” she replied. “Jessie. Sit.”
Derek squeezed past me, pausing to peer into my eyes. He rested a hand on my arm and smiled, leaning in.
My breath caught; I was mesmerized.
“Nice to bump into you, Jessica,” he whispered, his sparkling blue eyes skimming my face.
“Derek, we’l see you
later
,” Harnek hinted.
His dimples disappeared and he nodded.
Struggling not to stare as he left the room, I blushed and sank into the seat.
“You’re having nightmares?”
I nodded.
“Tel me about them. And don’t worry. I’m entirely nonjudgmental. So no matter how weird or scary it sounds, hit me with it.”
She propped her heels on her desk’s corner and settled in for a long story. Boy, did I give her an earful.
* * *
It wasn’t that he was a bad kisser … far from it. And yet … my mouth stopped moving in time to his.
I
didn’t
want Derek.
As fast as the thought was formed it whisked away, my mind flooding with images of Pietr. Holding Sarah. Kissing Sarah, his eyes fil ed by
just
Sarah.
And I kissed Derek back. Not Pietr.
Derek.
With his blond hair and boy-next-door looks and his scent like sun warming a field of wheat. He pul ed away a moment, blue eyes gone dark as his pupils widened, nearly eclipsing their color.