Secrets and Shadows (31 page)

“
Da
,” Alexi said. “Now it’s a matter of putting it al together. It appears your Mrs. Feldman got further in this than she suspected.” I did not question his reluctance to cal her something more familial. “Her notes are quite promising. This, my research, and Grandfather’s … We may have something. We just can’t define these last two ingredients my grandfather suggested. They don’t make sense when you read them in Russian.”

“Wel , what do they say?” Before he’d opened his mouth I specified, “In translation. Seriously. Russian is lovely, but you might as wel speak Greek to me for al the good it’d do.”

Alexi sighed. “I thought Pietr was teaching you Russian.”

I blushed and Cat giggled. “None that deals with chemical reactions.” I thought for a second. “Or maybe it does,” I said with a snort.

Pietr groaned.

“I don’t want to know,” Alexi insisted. “What’s annoying is it seems he tried to disguise his list. Like he didn’t want his ideas to fal into the wrong hands.”

“Luckily nobody knew enough about his research to go after any of it until very recently.”

“Here,” Alexi tapped the page. “I’m warning you—Grandfather fancied himself a poet. This ingredient is described as: Ancient tears from sappy eyes whose pining tops brush ’cross the skies.”

“Amber,” I said.

They al looked at me.

“What? You guys must total y suck at crossword puzzles. I’l bet I could trounce you in Boggle, too.

Ancient tears, sap, pine. Amber. The pendant … next?” I chal enged.

“This one is wolfsbane,” he mentioned, moving down the short list.

“Seriously?”

He nodded. “Most legends are based on real things.”

“You’d like my history teacher. So. You have any, Alexi?”

“Wolfsbane? Of course.”

Pietr snarled. “Nasty stuff.”

“Easiest way to ground an unruly werewolf,” Alexi chuckled. I looked at him briefly. Ever since the first visit to Mother, Alexi was looking better. Healthier. Letting his pseudo-siblings know he was doing what was needed al along—having Mother’s stamp of approval—made a huge difference. “And this is something like: The life, which liquid, runs in part from trembling hand to heavy heart.”

I shrugged. “Blood.”

“Whose blood?” Cat asked.

“Wait. Um…” Alexi slid out another journal. “Grandfather postulated that opposites attract for a reason, that everything had some strange balance or equilibrium it sought out. Like, once two very different things that everything had some strange balance or equilibrium it sought out. Like, once two very different things came together, you could find their commonality.”

I looked at Pietr. “We’re very different, and yet we’re together. What if it’s my blood?”

Pietr cringed at the thought.

“At the lab the day they did the initial tests…” Alexi closed the journals. “Your sample looked like it was fighting Max’s.”

I gulped. “It’s my heart,” I tugged out the amber pendant, dangling it before them. “My blood. Holy crap.

I’m the cure?” I flopped onto my back. “That’s why Wanda…”

“What?”

“She’s been absolutely refusing to drive me here. She and Dad got into an argument. She wanted me grounded for going off with Max to Marvin’s place and not saying anything.”

“The CIA knows what we’ve known al along,” Cat said. “You’re a real part of this.”

“Ugh. But, Wanda said she wants you al to be cured—to be normal,” I insisted.

Pietr sat up, looking into my face. “A: Max wil never be normal. B: How is it the one werewolf movie you haven’t seen is
Dog Soldiers
?”

“It’s a soldier movie with werewolves, not a werewolf movie with soldiers,” I returned.

“I agree with Pietr,” Alexi said. “The CIA doesn’t want them cured. They need to make more of them and unfortunately they only have directly related purebloods at this point, so they can’t risk breeding them.”

“We’re right here, you know,” Cat said in disgust.

“
Eezvehneetyeh
.” Alexi continued. “So to have any chance at replicating their genetics they need al the DNA they can test before it breaks down too far with age.”

My heart squeezed. “Most human DNA starts breaking down at an
early
age.” I rubbed my forehead and looked at Alexi. He knew. “Oh, God. Your mother’s DNA,” I said. “It can’t do the job. Her…”

Pietr nodded, realization dawning. “Her usefulness has reached its end. Except as a lure to us.” His eyes closed, and I pul ed myself up to wrap my arms around him.

“We need to get her out.” I said what everyone knew even more acutely now.

“And we need to have the cure ready,” Cat stated.

“I’l do whatever I can to help,” I promised.

Cat took control. “
Horashow
. We’l need a sterile kitchen knife, a bowl, and your arm.”

I peeled myself away from Pietr to gather supplies from the kitchen. In the dining room I set down a bowl, a knife, and a mortar and pestle I’d cleaned the dust out of.

Cat brought bandages, and Alexi contributed a pretty awesome chemistry set. Cat pushed up my sweater sleeve as I sat at the table and she swabbed my arm.

Alexi muttered, “If these notes are correct…” He reached for the pendant I gladly gave over. My heart was the least I’d give to help the Rusakovas. “We shouldn’t need much of the amber—or much blood—to make this work.”

He set the pendant in the mortar and handed both it and the pestle to Pietr. “Go ahead. You broke her heart before. This time do it for a decent reason.”

Pietr growled, forcing the pestle into the mortar, and I heard the pendant crunch apart. He ground it slowly, deliberately, so he didn’t stir the fine dust and lose any of the precious stuff.

slowly, deliberately, so he didn’t stir the fine dust and lose any of the precious stuff.

The front door opened and for a moment we al froze, expecting Amy to bound in and up the stairs for a shower. Max surprised us instead, scoping out the situation. “Back in a minute!” he cal ed out over his shoulder.

I felt a slice as the knife zipped across my arm and a warm trickle as my blood ran.

Max was rooting around, looking for something in Amy’s backpack. “That girl’s going to wear me out,”

he admitted, withdrawing a sketchpad and pencils. He grinned. “But I’m loving every minute. Everything okay in here?”

Alexi nodded.

I looked at the red puddle gathering in the bowl by my elbow. “And human blood doesn’t…”

Max snorted and Pietr chuckled.

“Jessie,” Cat admonished. “We aren’t sharks. Or vampires,” she added wistful y. “Human blood doesn’t do it for us.”

“Far too tainted with chemicals and preservatives,” Pietr whispered. “The only time it’s attractive is if it’s laced with a substance a oborot has a major attraction—”

“—or addiction to,” Cat added. “Heroin, meth, cocaine…”

“Pizza,” Max whispered, eyeing me devilishly. “What did you have for lunch today, Jessie?” he growled, licking his lips.

“You’re such a pain,” I muttered.

“Stating the obvious,” Pietr pointed out.

“Hey,” I cal ed to Max. “Has Amy started drawing again?”

“
Da
. But she’l kil me if I show you. Mostly they’re nudes,” he puffed out his chest. “Of
me
.”

“Liar,” I cal ed his bluff. “What’s she real y working on?”

“
Me
,” he declared with a wiggle of his eyebrows. “Almost as much as I’m working on her.” He winked roguishly.

“The blood’s coming faster,” Pietr marveled, leaning over my arm to watch.

“Because your brother’s pissing me off,” I snarled.

“I can show you one I drew of her.…” Max pul ed a loose sheet of paper from between the sketchpad’s pages, holding it up proudly.

A stick figure with a red scribble of hair and boobs stared back at me, smiling.

“Max!” I snapped.

He tucked it away and shrugged. “Yeah. She said:
No more paper for you
!”

“That’s plenty of blood,” Pietr announced, and Cat bandaged me up.

“Glad to speed the process,” Max teased, placing a sloppy kiss on my forehead before heading back to Amy.

Alexi careful y measured the ingredients, mixing some of the powder and dried wolfsbane into the blood before pouring it into a beaker and slowly applying heat.

Max reappeared in the foyer to rummage for something else. His nose wrinkled. “Gross.”

I agreed. “Definitely pungent. That—”

“Smel s like Cat’s cooking,” Max concluded.

“Very nice, Maximilian,” Cat pouted. “I do not recal you complaining when you licked the meatloaf dish.”

“I did that purely in self-defense. If I hadn’t eaten it, it would have come for me,” he protested.

Cat threw a notebook at him.

Max dodged, laughing. “We’l be on the back porch. For … An hour?”

Alexi nodded. “
Horashow
.” He checked the temperature of the mixture and turned off the heat. “Wel . It should be that simple. Amazing what might be undone if someone’s wil ing to make a smal sacrifice and take a risk.”

“So what now?”

“We’l need to test it. See what it does to a sample of their blood on a microscope slide.”

“Do you have a microscope?”

Pietr hissed something at Cat.

Alexi nodded, ignoring them. “Upstairs. I’l go get it. We’l test our cure against their blood and see what happens. If we get a result we can decide if it’s to be ingested or injected.”

Pietr hissed again.

“It wil take a little more time, but science general y does,” Alexi explained.

I couldn’t help it. I turned away from Alexi to see what Pietr was complaining about.

“Cat!” Alexi cried out, staring in horror.

“Time is precisely what we don’t have, Alexi,” Catherine said apologetical y. She smiled, her teeth stained a sobering dark red and brown with my blood. “Weren’t you the one just talking about sacrifice and risk?”

“
Da
,” he whispered. “But, it’s like medicine … the dosage…”

“Wil be fine,” she assured him. “Ugh.”

“What? What is it?” he demanded, giving her a little shake.

She wrinkled her nose. “Little—aftertaste. I think I should sit down. Or—” She looked at me.

“Head to the bathroom?” I was closing the bathroom door behind us when she final y nodded agreement.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She swayed, and I helped her sit on the cold tile floor by the tub. “I wil be far better than okay if this works, Jessie,” she confided. “To be a normal human—have a normal life span—that is better than anything I have ever dreamed of.”

She clutched her stomach and groaned. “Ohhh.”

“I’l get Alexi—” But she grabbed my arm and said plainly, “
Nyet
. I don’t want him to see me—like this

—
ohhh
. Pietr. Get Pietr.” She sagged against the side of the tub, eyes narrow and unblinking.

I barely had time to turn the knob before he slid past me to kneel beside his twin.

“I heard,” he whispered. “It hurts,
da
?”

“
Daaa
.” She bit her lower lip to keep from crying out.

“Like the change?”

“Ugh. More—
noise
,” she panted, pressing her hands to her ears. “Oh. I think—”

I screamed when the wolf flashed into being, wiping out Cat. Eyes burning, tongue darting between snapping teeth, it lunged at me.

Pietr was between us in a heartbeat, crushing the breath out of me as he pinned me against the bathroom door. Alexi shouted for us to let him in from the other side. Pietr’s heart beat so hard it threatened to leap out his back and into me. This was new to him, too.

Not
reassuring.

“Catherine. Ekaterina!” He growled something at her in Russian, and his body burned as fur sprouted al along his head, neck, shoulders, arms, and torso. There was a crunch as if al the bones and joints in him struggled to shift at once. With a wail that rocked me he melted from human to wolf, T-shirt pul ing apart. Slick jaws snapping, he stooped toward her, the hair on his body rising and making him look even bigger—even more terrifying than I’d ever seen him in his wolfskin.

Stil wolf, Cat whined, throat trembling out a final threat as she dropped to the floor and exposed her soft bel y. Submitting.

Pietr’s jaws clamped shut on the ruff of her neck and he pul ed her up, shaking her soundly before dropping her back down. He snorted out a breath so hot it fogged the bathroom mirror.

Cat shivered on the floor while Pietr slowly regained his human form and his senses.

“What’s happening?” Alexi demanded, pounding on the door so hard it rattled me.

“She changed. I don’t know.” I tried to explain through the bathroom door, my hand on Pietr’s bare back.

“It’s like she poofed into her wolfskin and now…”

“
Not
my week to clean the bathroom.”
Max
.

“Get back to the porch and keep your girlfriend busy,” Alexi demanded.

“Hard to keep her focused with so much noise,” Max grumbled, marching back down the stairs.

Beneath his grumpy facade I heard real frustration as he worried about Cat.

“Now what, Jessie? Can you let me in?”

“No. Sorry. Cat said you weren’t al owed.”

“Dammit.” His fists thundered against the door again.

“She’l be fine, Alexi,” Pietr reassured, his voice steady. I was the only one to see the way his hands shook. To see the fear reflected in his eyes.

Suddenly the wolf convulsed, giving one long shudder that shook her from snout to tail and she tore straight down her center, ripping in half as simply as I’d separate a paper towel from the rol . Catherine flopped forward, out of the wolfskin, spattered in gore. Simple, human, and exhausted, she smiled in vindication.

Strangely, things between Sarah and me improved. It was almost like we were back to our pre-Pietr time, Sarah swal owing books whole—Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
and Orwel ’s
Animal Farm
—and me not doing any PDA. Max and Amy made up for my lack of public displays of affection, though, and I worried, catching Marvin glaring at them one morning before Derek led him away, hand on his shoulder. Sophie fol owed our antics from a distance, watching thin air with quiet curiosity almost as frequently as she watched us.