Bargains and Betrayals (21 page)

I smiled. “True.”

“Max finally broke and took me to see you, but they wouldn’t let us in,” she said. “But I knew you hadn’t gone off to some camp. Pietr’s here. You wouldn’t ditch him to learn some new writing technique.”

I shifted on the curb, uncomfortable with her assessment. I would have skipped off to anywhere to learn something new about writing. Before Pietr. “A new writing technique?”

“Yeah. What’d they call it? Oh. The fast-draft technique.”

“Never heard of it.”

“I looked into it,” she said.

“What? You did research while I was gone? That’s very…”

“Unlike me? Yeah. Pietr and I have become nerds in your absence. Maintaining the brainy quota around here without you.”

“What’d you learn?”

“Some people can write a whole frikkin’ book in two weeks.”

My jaw dropped. “No.”

“Yes. They use this fast-draft method to crank it out. Some pretty darn good books have come out of it, too.”

“Well, look at you, saying
frikkin’
and
darn,
” I marveled. “Cat’s really been cleaning up your language.”

She stuck up a single finger.

“But not your attitude. Niiice.” I leaned back and let the wind tease my hair out from under my knit hat. “A book in two weeks. I’d like to try that. After all this craziness is over. If it’s ever over.”

“Maybe I’ll write a book, too,” Amy suggested.

I rolled my head to look at her, awed. “You could totally do it. You have a very creative mind.”

She snorted. “We should both have pen names. But we have time. Like you said:
after
this craziness is over.”

“Yeah. What do you know about this craziness?”

“Enough to know when to walk out of the room.”

“And you don’t want to know any more?”

“Not unless I have to. Look. I’m going back to the trailer tomorrow night.”

I realized she hadn’t called it
home
. From what I’d seen the morning after my birthday party—her dad hung over so bad, he didn’t even know she was gone—it probably hadn’t felt like a home for a while.

“Max insisted,” she explained. “I’ll stay a couple nights, clean the place up, and check on Dad. When you guys say I can come back, I will.”

“I’ve heard worse ideas.”

“Max says whatever you guys are doing will work out.”

I nodded, watching the way she crushed the newspaper, wrapping her arms around herself. “But Max is ballsy. I don’t think he really plans stuff out.…”

I chuckled. So some things
hadn’t
changed since I’d left. “It’ll work out. I’m sure Pietr’s been rolling ideas around in his mind a lot.”

Amy relaxed, smoothing the newspaper out on the curb between us.

The autumn wind tried to snatch it away but only managed to flip a few pages. “Hey!” I exclaimed. “You’re right. There are comics.”

“You can learn two lessons from that,” Amy sniped. “A: I’m always right, and B: Things are looking up already.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jessie

Alexi returned with a sample of Annabelle Lee’s blood, and a belated—
very
belated, considering we were almost entering Christmas vacation—birthday present for me. He looked at me carefully as he handed it over, setting it in my arms so I felt the weight and recognized the size of it.

Amy leaped up, looking at the package expectantly. “Well, aren’t you going to open it?” she said, shifting her weight from side to side. “Who’s it from?”

Without even glancing at the poorly affixed tag, I guessed,

“Wanda and Dad?”

Alexi nodded.

“I’ll open it later,” I assured Amy (who immediately looked disappointed). “Now’s not the right time.”

Alexi nodded again and took the present back. “I’ll put it with the others.”

Others
. Other weapons. There were only so many guns one girl could carry.… Just how many beyond us was
Uncle
Dmitri including?

“Your father says he’s worried, he loves you, and he knows you’re in a bigger mess than you’re saying,” Alexi continued his message. “He also said something about an old song, about wanting to send lawyers, guns, and money, but there’s little of the latter and the former’s scared to death now, so the other will have to be enough.”

I smiled. Dmitri looked from Pietr to myself and muttered something. In Russian.

“Stop,” I said. “You want to say something? Say it in English. If it’s something that shouldn’t be said, don’t frikkin’ say it at all.”

His eyes narrowed, “Little girl,” he began, his voice heavily accented, “this is no game we are playing. You are a liability. How can Pietr focus when he worries about you?”

Amy stood, placed her hands firmly over her ears, and began singing “Happy Birthday” as she exited the room. She didn’t want to know.

“I’m doing my best to make sure he has nothing to worry about.” My gaze flicked to where the package from my father and Wanda rested. Guns.
My
guns.

“You must be one hundred percent when we go in, Pietr,” Dmitri said. “You cannot worry about her.”

Pietr weighed Dmitri’s words.

“Send her home,” Dmitri insisted.

“Pietr,” I growled his name out.

He raised an eyebrow, but his eyes stayed on Dmitri.

“
You
are the alpha,” Dmitri said.

“
Pietr
.”

Max began a slow yawn—

Dmitri snapped, “You let your bitch speak to you that way—?”

Which was cut short when Pietr sprang to his feet, knocking down the chair he’d just been sitting in.

“She is no
bitch!
” he roared, so close the ends of Dmitri’s short hair quivered in the wake of Pietr’s rage.

Dmitri was unmoved. “We see things differently.” He shrugged. “Send her home. Watching out for her was not part of our deal.”

“Our deal,” Piter snarled, “includes everything involved in freeing my mother.” He hissed. “She”—he stabbed a finger in my direction—“is involved!”

Dmitri looked at me.

“I’ve done my part in this bargain,” Pietr said, his volume growing soft and even more dangerous. “Do yours.”

Dmitri rubbed his chin. “
Da
. You have. Mostly.” Dmitri shrugged. “Fine. I will arrange for her to go with some of my men for her part in this.”

“I will go with her as well,” Cat volunteered.

Pietr nodded, but Dmitri’s eyes narrowed. “Will anyone else slow us down?”

Alexi grinned. “We simple humans also have a stake in this event’s success. I am going.”

Dmitri puffed out his breath in exasperation.

Pietr looked at me, eyes guarded. “Your father?”

“And Wanda.” I stared at Alexi, realizing we’d said her name in unison.

He nodded and Dmitri growled. “Will the whole of Junction know of our efforts?”

Pietr chewed his lower lip. “It will be a large party.”

“The more the merrier,” I said, my voice grim as I tried to catch Pietr’s eye.

Dmitri rose from the table and stormed away.

Alexi

The call from Wanda was something none of us expected, but Jessie, Pietr, and I got into the car and headed to Jessie’s horse farm, where Wanda waited with files. Jessie’s dogs, Maggie and Hunter, rushed the car and Jessie briefly tumbled to the ground with them, letting them lick her face and nuzzle her neck. Pietr and I were far less interesting to them.

Pietr scanned the area, scenting and looking for trouble, his back rigid. This place was Jessie’s home—perhaps knowing trouble had come here, too, was more unsettling to him.

The last time they had been here together things had gone very badly. I tried not to think about it.

“Stop, stop.” Jessie laughed, one minute batting at the dogs playfully, the next tugging them close.

Pietr paused in his scan, his focus snapping once more to her and his features both hardened and softened at the same time. “Come now,” he whispered, reaching down to help Jessie out of the dust.

“Leon’s in the barn and will be for a while,” Wanda greeted us from the small porch, opening the door and waving us inside. “He’s seen this already.”

Jessie didn’t bother hiding her surprise.

“I—
reconnoitered
—these files from the bunker, thought they might be useful. It was easier than I expected since I’d been an employee at the warehouse before and it seems everyone in the—let’s call it the company—prefers data files to file folders.”

I nodded. “So you grabbed a paper trail.” I was beginning to almost like her.

Almost
.

“Yes. Always grab anything labeled with your own name and at least one coworker.” She flipped open a file. “The problem is I have nothing that proves the actual CIA—our government—is directly involved. In any way. Because it winds up I’m no longer working for our government. I haven’t been since I was transferred here.”

“You lied.…”

“No,” she assured Jessie. “I was absolutely under the impression my employer hadn’t changed. I was given no reason to assume otherwise. I continued receiving my pay in the same fashion from what appeared to be the same institution.” She pulled out two paystubs.

They looked identical except for the dates.

“One before my transfer. One after.”

I nodded.

“But here’s the deal. The company I’m a current employee of is the same company that hired
these
people.” She flipped open another file, scattering pictures across the tabletop. Some names were different from who I thought the people were, but each face I recognized.

“Our vice principal,” Jessie announced, tapping a photo of a friendly looking African-American man, “Perlson. My favorite counselor, Ms. Harnek,” she said of a smart-looking blonde. She slid the next one aside.

“Officer Kent,” I said, looking at Wanda soberly, “wherever
he’s
gotten to.”

“I doubt it’s much farther than where I left him,” Wanda responded crisply.

So she had killed him to protect Jessie. That, I could respect. Liking Wanda became more of a possibility.

“The boy, Derek,” I said, seeing the next photo.

Jessie glanced at me.

“We had the dubious pleasure of meeting the last time we were at the bunker.”

Wanda broke in. “I wanted to…” She stumbled to a stop and tried again. “I’m so sorry I had to close down visitation to Mother. I had to keep up appearances.”

“Water under the bridge.” I looked at the remaining pictures. “Ah. And this lady was with Derek,” I said, seeing the fine-featured brunette.

“Dr. Sarissa Jones,” Jessie said.

“Is she not helping the students come to grips with the Teen Train Track Suicides?” I asked.

“Probably lining them up for Derek to feed from. What a screwed-up jerk.…” She touched Derek’s picture again and Pietr stiffened, watching her.

“That screwed-up jerk warned us about—” But Pietr cut me off with a pained look.

“Warned you about what?” Jessie asked, turning on me.

I put my hands up and deferred to Pietr. He was alpha, let him admit it.

She swung to face him. “Warned you about what?”

“He warned Alexi that you were in danger in the asylum. That they were going to kill you. And he told Alexi to tell me.”

Jessie sat down hard. “He warned you to make sure I was safe?”

I leaned into her view. “For his own twisted reasons. Maybe for this—to make you doubt how sick he is.”

Pietr stepped back from the table and crossed his arms, watching us with cool eyes.

“It’s not enough, is it?” Jessie mumbled.

“What? What isn’t enough?”

“Saving me isn’t enough to wipe away everything else he’s done, is it?”

I stayed still, letting her work it out.

Pietr turned away to look out the window.

“There’s a point, isn’t there,” she asked, “a point we can’t come back from? A moment we’re no longer redeemable?”

I held my breath.

“
Da
,” Pietr replied from the window. “There comes a moment,” he agreed, his voice flat.

“Geez, my teenage years weren’t this damn dramatic,” Wanda muttered, collecting the photos. “Sooo … I made some phone calls to an old friend and asked some questions. Being too much trouble at my old job—shut up, Jessie—” she warned, seeing Jessie briefly brighten, a smart comment at the ready. “So my old boss
auctioned
me off to this company. They run quite an organization. I haven’t begun to find all the tendrils. They act just like the CIA, except with different funding. And expectations.”

Jessie and I stared at her.

“And they really want your werewolves. Because the guy who helped design them, the one who was second in command to Alexi’s grand—whatever—he’s alive. They’re his pride and joy. He never got full credit on the project and tried a redo years later but was made a laughingstock. So he did other things, chemical engineering and ingestibles, all while still looking into the freaky stuff. He’s got his fingers in everything. Guess what one of his sidelines is?”

“No idea,” Jessie and I admitted simultaneously.

“Institutional food production and delivery.”

“The school food?” Jessie’s eyes lost their focus.

Wanda tapped her nose twice. “So what’s in the food that most every kid in Junction’s eating? Whatever it is, you can bet it’s not something good.” She flipped the files shut and restacked them.

“‘A stronger, better youth for tomorrow,’” Jessie whispered. “Harnek said something like that to Derek.”

“
Nyet
. Not good. You have more files,” I said, seeing the stack and the empty file box.

“Yes.” She spread them before us.

Jessie seemed to recognize one and opened it immediately. “Sophie. They know what she can do.…” She ran her finger down the text of the file. “Senses energy fields and impressions, kirilian photography … They don’t know she sees ghosts.”

Pietr and I looked at her.

She shrugged. “My mom’s hanging around. She follows me pretty often, watching.”

“
Watching?
” Pietr asked. He swallowed hard.

I snickered at Jessie’s expression.

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re totally grounded when we die for—
ample
—public displays of affection.”