“Who is she?” Their mother pointed at me again.
“Mother,” Cat’s voice rose. “I said her name is Jessie.”
I looked at Alexi.
“Senile dementia begins early in the species,” he whispered.
“I am not senile, Alexi,” their mother barked. “And I hear quite wel . I want to know who Jessie rrreal y is.
Who is she to my family?”
Who is she to my family?”
I got the impression it was not my place to define my connection to them. And what would I say, anyhow? I almost dated your youngest son, but my sometimes-psycho friend got to him first, so we just sort of messed around behind her back until he changed and now I’m dating the one guy at Junction High he seems to really hate?
Not a way to endear myself to Pietr’s mom.
Cat said simply, “She opened the matryoshka.”
Their mother’s head nearly ripped off, it moved so fast. “She opened it?”
Alexi nodded.
“Then…?”
“Nothing,” Alexi reported. “I have no answers yet. I am at a loss.”
I got the feeling they were talking over my head. About me. Cat, Max, and Pietr looked like they were out of the loop, too. Al eyes were on Alexi.
“Therrre arrre no acceptable losses,” Mother said, her eyes glittering red.
“Heart-rate-is-elevated,” the siren announced.
“Of course it is,” she snarled.
“Mother,” Alexi said. “I am doing the best I can with limited resources.”
Now I was certain the CIA was taking careful mental notes, too, trying to decipher their conversation.
She shook her head, long hair tumbling. “I do not doubt you, Alexi. No matter what steps you had to take to get to this moment.”
Max looked up at her, his expression clearly reading stunned. “You knew? You know? ”
“Alexi knew there would be a time he must make hard decisions—his life has been ful of harsh truths.”
Her face fil ed with pain, and Alexi dropped his gaze. “My poor boy,” she whispered. “He has done his best to protect you, has he not?” she asked Max pointedly.
Max blinked. “But the Mafia…”
“Did he cal them to take you?” she prodded. “Or did he stand beside you? Help you?”
“You know about that?”
“They talk,” she muttered, motioning toward our escorts and guards. “Gossiping like il -bred girls to get a rise out of me.” Her eyes flashed, then calmed. “You should not doubt Alexi, either,” she admonished her eldest ful -blood son. “Just because we do not share a direct heritage does not mean we do not share a legacy. Life is a puzzle, is it not, Alexi?”
“Da.”
“And you are missing one piece?”
“Da. A very important one.”
“Then there is stil hope.”
“Da,” he said, reluctant to commit.
“There is always hope,” I confirmed, though I didn’t know exactly what we were hoping for.
Alexi rested his hand on my shoulder. His fingers shook. He hadn’t had a cigarette since sometime before we’d left the house, and his nerves were starting to show. “You need to quit smoking.”
“You arrre smoking?” Mother growled.
Nuts. Werewolf ears.
Alexi stepped back, hanging his head in shame.
“You are my son, Alexi. Not by blood, but by choice. We adopted you. I wil not tolerate one of my children endangering themselves with something as deadly as…”
I couldn’t handle more railing against Alexi. He’d been a wreck recently. Before I could stop myself I blurted out the rumor running through school: “Max is having sex with multiple partners!”
Oh. Crap.
Mother looked at Max, her eyes glowing.
“Heart-rate-is-elevated,” blared again.
Max went a shade paler. No. Three shades. “Mother, I—” He flopped onto the floor bel y up, covering his eyes with his arm. He groaned.
“Maximilian?”
“Mother, I—am— not.” He sighed. He shot me a look. “Not since Paris,” he qualified softly.
“What?” Pietr, Cat, Alexi, and I asked in unison.
Max focused on me. “The things you presume,” he chuckled. “I have a reputation,” he confirmed. “A healthy one.”
His mother rumbled.
“But I only flirt!” he protested.
“Continual y,” I groaned.
“And you kiss,” Cat reminded.
He shrugged.
“And grope,” Pietr added.
Max sat up, glaring at him. “So what? You’re continual y trying to bash your brains out because you can’
t—”
Cat silenced him with a look, eyes sliding to me.
“What are you doing, Pietr?” Mother asked, eyes narrow.
“I am struggling,” he muttered. “This”—for a moment his eyes were on me before they darted away—“is not easy. It is not easy knowing I am dying already and that trying to live endangers others.”
Cat rose, tugging Max to his feet. She caught the guard’s attention. “Switch,” she said. “Jessie, you, too.” She hugged her mother, as did Max, and then, in a few tense moments as the guards looked on, rifles at the ready, the siren blared, the lights flashed, and we exchanged places, Cat and Max glaring at the guards, Pietr, Alexi, and myself staring at Mother.
Pietr’s mother grabbed him and hugged him, only pul ing back to search his face. “You are not sleeping,” she surmised. A glance at Alexi and me and she repeated herself. “Why is no one here sleeping?”
“We’ve been searching for you,” Pietr whispered.
“Al of you?” She glanced at me.
“Not anymore,” Alexi answered on my behalf. “We simple humans are out of action.”
She nodded. “They like you enough to keep you around. I searched for you as wel ,” she recal ed.
“There was a brief time I was free. I fol owed your scents as far as I could, stumbling through horse farms and parks.… But the river made things difficult.” She sighed. “I found your school just before they recaptured me.”
“It was you in the high school that night,” I realized.
I dropped to the floor and sat Indian-style. I thought back. “But in the rain that other night? That wasn’t you.”