His eyes closed for one sharp second, and he swal owed.
“It is a repeating cycle, a loop meant to close. You can fight it, but it is coming. Quickly.”
I reached for him, but he stepped smoothly away. “Pietr…”
“This is nothing I don’t already know. If you want to make me a believer in magic, you’l need to do far better.”
“Fine,” she said, lips twisting in a devilish grin. “One more card. For a secret you’re keeping.”
He reached forward, and she jerked the cards back.
“No. Think about it. Hold it in your mind. What do you want to keep hidden most? What secret do you dare not share?”
He licked his lips. His jaw set like stone. Slowly he slid a card out and showed it to her.
Her eyes flicked from it, to him, to me. “Leave the room, Jessie,” she ordered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“But…”
The faint line of a vein appeared by Pietr’s hairline.
“Okay, I’m leaving,” I mumbled, slipping out of the room with Tag stil in my grasp. Only when the door clicked shut behind me did I hear the faint noise of people talking resume. Sighing, I took a tour of the hal way. Could Mrs. Feldman have learned Pietr’s greatest secret? Was she—right now—revealing to him she knew he was a werewolf?
Pietr swung the door open and I jogged back, searching his stony face for some sign. I wanted so badly to touch him, to assure him, but my hand didn’t dare twitch from where it held Tag, Pietr looked so fierce.
So utterly unforgiving.
Mrs. Feldman looked at me. A smile crackled her face into a thousand wrinkles. “Come now, Jessie.
Shuffle the deck and learn your future.”
“I don’t believe in magic,” I confessed, my eyes never leaving Pietr’s face.
He sat, no— perched— on a chair in her room, seeking the corner’s solitary shadow.
“What is it with you children now? Either you believe in magic, spel ing it with a terminal k, as if accepting anything else might indeed be terminal, or you cling to science, dismissing al other possibilities.
Has no one taught you they blend? They interweave. Can we explain the magic of birth as science—yes.
Sperm meets egg,” she confirmed, clapping her hands on the deck. “Until”—she bent forward on her bed as if sharing some secret—“until that first moment a mother or father looks into their child’s eyes and realizes there is indeed magic dwel ing within.”
She shuffled the cards, hands amazingly quick considering they were knotted and gnarled and freckled with spots. The gaudy rings on her fingers sparkled. “Creation. Amino acids encountering the right atmospheric pressure, temperature, and conditions to start life. Science!” she proclaimed. “And yet, where has it happened in our universe? Only here.” She pointed with a vehement finger. “On Earth. That is a kind of magic.”
My eyes fol owed her hands and she raised them, baiting me as she shuffled and danced the cards back and forth. “They work together, magic and science. And any scientist worth his salt wil confess to feeling something magical anytime he or she learns or discovers something new. Have you never thought it is most suitable that science and magic should blur together here in a town cal ed Junction?”
“I never thought about it at al ,” I confessed.
She fanned the cards and snapped them shut. “Shuffle.”
I did, my hands fumbling with the hefty deck.
She took them back, careful y spreading them. “Now pul .”
I drew, holding the card out to her, aware how intently Pietr watched my hand.
“Hmm. You worry too much.”
Pietr snorted and looked at me, his jaw loosening enough for him to speak. “And you say I always state the obvious.”
I thought the ghost of a smile twitched there on his lips, but it was gone too fast to be certain.
“You are surrounded by people who want to protect you.”
I shrugged, wanting to stand as firm as Pietr.
“Draw again.”
I did.
“These people who want to protect you are keeping information—keeping secrets—from you.”
“Why?”
Her gray-and-white curls bobbed as she shook her head. “Only to protect you. If they thought it would help…” She glanced at Pietr, but he silenced her with a look. “It is important to remember they have the very best intentions.”
“The road to hel is paved with good intentions.” I gazed out at Pietr from beneath my eyelashes.
He was unmoved.
“One more,” she urged.
I sucked in a breath and rol ed my lips together, pul ing one last card.
“Ahhh. But the secret far bigger than any they’re keeping from you is a secret flowing within you. There is hope in you.”
“That’s no secret,” I murmured. “But it’s wearing thin.”
“No. It is too great a part of you to ever wear,” she assured me. “The dog.” She motioned.
I held out Tag, and she gave him a cursory pat. “Excel ent. Now go.”
“Thank you,” I said, letting her words dance in my head.
“Pietr.”
He paused behind me, and I waited for him by the door.
“Hold on to hope,” she said. “It is the only way to live.”
He shook his head and closed her door behind us.
“Wait!” Feldman shouted, and I heard a faint tap on the door as I sprang toward it and threw it open.
Mrs. Feldman was pale, staring at the door as it swung wide. “Careful,” she breathed, pointing at my feet. A card lay between the toes of my sneakers.
“In al my years … Bring it to me, child.”
“Why’s it…” I stooped to retrieve it.
“It flew out of the deck.” She looked it over. “This is troubling.”
We’d had death and dramatic change and now we had the truly troubling card?
“What does it mean?”
“Beware.”
I stumbled backward. Into Pietr.
“Ohhh.” In her wrinkled hand the deck vibrated, the stack shimmying.
A single card slithered forward from between the others. Mrs. Feldman’s eyes found mine and she freed it the rest of the way. “The boy. Beware the boy.”
“Thank you,” Pietr scowled. “Now if she’l just listen.”