Crucifixes? No problem.”
“Crucifixes freak you out,” Max corrected, staring her down.
“I simply feel it is strange to display an instrument of torture on your wal .” She shrugged. “We could not get the floor plans through public records,” Cat said, hesitating. “Too many questions.”
“Too little time,” Pietr added.
“It’s easy.” I chewed my lower lip, recal ing details. “The main doors are probably lit. But there’s the door on the right side—up a smal slope—that leads into the nave, and one around back that opens into the acolyte’s waiting room. There’s a downstairs with a kitchen and a big room they turned into Sunday school classrooms with funky folding doors. It’l be quick to see the place.”
They nodded. Cat looked at Pietr smugly. “See, it was good to bring Jessie.”
I knew Pietr hadn’t thought I was needed, but it suddenly sounded like he hadn’t real y wanted me along at al . “Wait. There’s also a basement. In the classroom area there’s a big wooden door in the floor.
There’s a smal staircase, but it was bad even then. The church ladies complained when they put the season’s chowchow down there before the fair.”
“Chowchow? Like the dog?” Cat quirked an eyebrow.
“No, chowchow like beans, cauliflower, and vinegar…”
“Strange people,” Max muttered.
“Seriously?” I strained against my seat belt.
He nodded.
I poked his shoulder. “Borscht-eating werewolf cal ing chowchow-eating humans strange? ”
He grinned, his teeth lengthening and sharpening. “Point taken.” He tapped one growing canine tooth with a finger and chuckled as his voice lowered into the wolf’s deep rasp.
Some moments I believed Max could’ve easily been Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf. But she probably would have liked it.
“We’l return in ten minutes,” Cat assured me, tossing me the keys. “We want to find her, not free her.”
“Not yet,” Pietr qualified, eyes glowing.
Out of the car they wolfed quickly, slinking along the shadows and hugging the hedges that marked the property boundaries of suburbia.
I hopped into the front passenger’s seat and turned the car on to note the time on the dashboard clock.
Ten minutes. Reclining in the seat, I promised myself I’d only worry after fifteen. I pul ed out my worry stone, rubbing my thumb across its glossy variegated surface. Like Pietr’s eyes it was beautiful and blue.
Like what shimmered behind his eyes—complicated.
When fifteen minutes passed and there was no sign of the Rusakovas, I decided I would not panic.
Yet.
By seventeen minutes I’d pul ed apart the car’s interior looking for a weapon: a pocketknife, a pair of scissors, anything. It quickly became obvious that werewolves didn’t bother with standard weapons. Teeth and claws were more than sufficient.
By twenty minutes I’d found a hefty Maglite flashlight wedged under the driver’s seat. It would have to do.
Slipping the car key off the ring, I tucked it in my pocket opposite my worry stone and hid the other keys under the seat.
I was headed to the church twenty-two minutes after the Rusakovas had disappeared into the night.
And I was definitely worried.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I sneaked around the side of the church, wishing for a werewolf’s hearing. Tal , stained-glass windows stretched above me, partial y boarded up. A faint gleam of light warned me something was wrong. I doubted the Rusakovas needed artificial light to perform their search.
Someone else was there. Correction: had been waiting there.
People talked inside while something pounded against … pounded against a wal ? A door? The cel ar door.
Again. And again.
My heart slammed into my ribs, keeping time with the crashing inside. Pressing my back to the wal I tried to think. There were two distinct human voices. Maybe more.
I didn’t have training to deal with even one.
What options did I have? I thought back to when I’d attended Sunday school and church here. What else had the little old ladies complained about?
One particularly wet summer water got in and destroyed the chowchow labels right before the fair.
Where…? I crept back down the little slope, looking for the path the water had taken.
“Ah!” I crouched beside a smal — small—window nearly flush with the ground. Inside, the wolves growled and snapped, hurling themselves up the flimsy staircase and against the door.
With a hesitant finger I tapped the glass fixed in the crumbling brick foundation.
Things inside grew eerily stil . Then the pounding against the door resumed and the window squeaked open. Cat’s face was ghostly against the darkness. “Jessie! Horashow. It was a trrrap.” She snarled out the last word, teeth in her normal y inviting smile spiking to razor sharpness.
I didn’t mention it was Pietr’s job to state the obvious.
“They had—” Words failed her for a moment, and she shook herself, teeth dul ing, eyes shifting from midnight blue to crimson as she struggled for focus—“a pelt that made us think we were on the right track.
”
“A pelt? ”
“Our father’s.”
My stomach churned and I thought about the men inside. “How many of them are there?”
“Two.”
“Distract them. Keep them near the door while I sneak in.”
“Get Alexi,” she suggested.
“There’s no time for that. They won’t keep you here. They’l want you headed to wherever before dawn.”
“What wil you do?”
“Try not to make matters worse. I’l come in up top.”
“We wil keep their attention,” she promised.
A hush fel as the window shut and I circled around to the exterior acolyte’s door.
I tested it, the old decorative knob squealing in my grasp. Slow and easy. I waited for the distraction, remembering the room. The door was often unlocked, until one time the acolyte discovered a deacon slumped against the wal , al the tiny cups of wine drained.
Mom had said it was no surprise, considering how many people showed up only for Communion and holidays instead of every Sunday. They weren’t truly attending church, she claimed, just “paying their fire insurance.” So to show our commitment we had perfect attendance. If we were going to be Saved, we would put in our time. She lived the saying “Nothing’s worth having if you haven’t worked for it.” That applied to heavenly salvation, too.