“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.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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’.”