The creeping prickle turned into a full-body shudder before I could turn away again. Exhaling, I wondered if Harmony was the thing they’d been looking forward to receiving.
Three-quarters of the way down the hall we stopped outside room 39. A white metal door with a narrow window of reinforced glass near eye level marked the entrance to my private room.
Homey.
Thing Two took a card from his shirt pocket and slipped it into the electronic lock, waiting until the light blinked green to twist the handle. Considering his size and strength I bet the door would open whether locked or not.
Stepping inside, the door shut, bolting behind me and separating me from my Goliath guards.
Spectacular in its solitude, room 39 was so silent my ears wanted to bleed just to hear the rhythmic drip of blood.
I spent the rest of the day there, seated on the edge of my bed, flopped across the middle of my bed, staring at the walls surrounding my bed. I closed my eyes briefly and imagined my mother sitting on the bed’s edge, brushing the hair off my forehead like she used to do when I was home sick from school.
A breeze tickled my face and my hair was swept back from my eyes with a soft caress. I sat up. The room looked empty, but considering the weird things happening around Junction, I knew seeing and believing didn’t equate. “Mom?” My bedsheets fluttered and I caught the scent of sunlit summer fields. Although the air stilled as quickly as it had stirred, flopping back down on the bed, I didn’t feel quite as alone.
When my guards gave up on me going out again and eventually brought my lunch, I ignored them.
When they returned a few hours later with my dinner and a small notebook, a pen tucked in its spiraling spine, I still ignored them.
But ignoring the notebook was impossible.
Inside there were no instructions, just page after page of beautifully blank, lined paper.
I poked at the cube of gelatin glimmering cheerily beside a carton of milk. The journal was far more enticing to a would-be writer than food would ever be.
Tapping the pen on its cover, I enjoyed the echoing sound.
But I got the feeling I was missing something. Like the thing I’d forgotten was so important it should have been impossible to forget.
A question that begged—begged … I paused. A question that begged asking.
It felt as if somehow I’d woken up to find an arm or a leg missing. Only it went deeper, like someone had carved into my chest and left a hollow spot where my heart should have been.
What question had frustrated me so much I needed sedation?
Rolling over on my mattress, my hand landed on my elbow and I looked at the pink-and-tan puncture marks there. Counted them. If I’d been dosed once a day …
I’d been sedated—blind to experience and blunted to emotion—for … one, two … three days. I rubbed at my eyes. What happened four days ago? What should I remember that I couldn’t?
And as the world outside my room’s thickly glassed window grew dark I heard it: the undulating call of an animal in the woods beyond the rolling, manicured lawns of Pecan Place.
Something inside me unfurled and fluttered, remembering and filling the empty space behind my ribs.
My heart pounded, restarting in recognition.
Pietr.
And everything came crashing back to me: the question I should have still wanted an answer to, the reason I’d let myself be locked away …
Pietr.
I rushed to the window to catch a glimpse of him and heard the camera, high on the wall and safe in its cage, turn to follow me.
Yes, everything came back to me then—but the last four days of my life. But I’d gladly bargain them away knowing Pietr was alive—and free.
An alarm sounded and the noise of dogs—hunting hounds—rose to me. A flash of movement blurred across the gathering gray of nightfall and I knew Pietr was on the run.
More importantly, I knew there was still hope.
Jessie
When the next day dawned I was aware enough to notice. I tugged the journal out and paused before jotting down my thoughts. I wanted to use it—I was desperate to write—but I didn’t want my writing used against me later.
I wouldn’t write about werewolves. Or the Mafia. Or the CIA.
I’d write about the farm. About my horse Rio and my dogs, Maggie and Hunter. I’d try some fiction: poems and short stories like I used to write before Pietr showed up and made all fiction pale against a few amazing facts.
Gone was my desire to write about vampires; now my head was full of Pietr, of wolves and darkness, danger, blue-eyed Russian boys and—
If I only wrote about Pietr in his human skin …
My door swung open and my guards stepped in.
I closed the journal and got ready to drag myself to breakfast. It was on the horrendously normal trek to the common room that I heard the request.
“I’m here to see Jess Gillmansen.”
My head snapped up at the sound of his voice, every nerve in my body jangling in response to the richness of his faintly Russian purr. I froze. My pulse jumped, heart stuttering.
In unison, my guards turned, identifying Pietr.
A threat.
I grabbed at their arms, but they didn’t notice.
The nurse flipped through some papers, unaware of the tension rising in the hall behind her. “I’m sorry. You aren’t an approved visitor.”
My throat tight, a sigh still slipped loose and Pietr’s eyes, blue and stormy as a distant sea, rose and caught mine. My knees softened under his powerful gaze.
“Jess.” He vaulted over the nurse’s desk and had me in his arms before the giants could block his path. His lips on mine, arms tight around me, I realized what Pietr Rusakova was doing even as the guards bent to pull us apart.
Pietr was counting.
How long did we have before they grabbed him? I clutched his T-shirt’s collar, slipping my hands around his neck to hold on as long as I could.… How soon before they threw him out?
Pietr would know soon enough.
I kissed him back. Hard.
His eyes snapped open for a moment, but I knew the clock was quickly running down on our little rendezvous.
But by counting the time between his arrival and the guards’ reactions he’d be better prepared next time. Prepared for whatever that beautiful brain of his was already plotting.
I had never appreciated simple numbers so much as when we counted the moments together with our kisses.…
The taste of Pietr’s lips lingering on mine, he was heaved up by one giant’s massive hand to dangle before me. His spiky hair obscuring his right eye, he winked for only me to see and it was then I noticed the still-healing cut on his face.