“Why must you bring that up?” Max asked. “I was scouting. And I ran back from that little encounter with a limp.”
My lips curled in over my teeth, realizing.
“When is the logical response to a wolf attack ever to nail the animal in the groin with a big stick?” he asked me.
Pietr, Cat, and Alexi fought back smiles.
“Sorry?” I tried.
He snorted.
Mother was the one to refocus us. “If you opened the matryoshka, where is the pendant?” she whispered, looking at my neckline. “Is that…?”
“No,” I admitted. “It’s my mother’s netsuke.”
“Did you not give her the pendant?” Mother asked Alexi.
“Da, Pietr did.” He looked at him, confused.
Pietr had not told him he’d been given it back.
“Pietr?”
“I have it.”
“Give it to me.” Mother thrust her hand out.
Pietr retrieved it from his pocket and handed it over.
“This is yours,” she confirmed, dropping to her knees before me. “You opened the matryoshka. You are important to us.”
“How?” I whispered. “I don’t know how I’m important to your family. I’l help however I can—you have to believe me—but…” I shook my head.
Her hands were warm on my face. “Shhhh, Jessie,” she soothed. “Sometimes we do not know what role we play until it is thrust upon us and we can only then do our best to carry it off.” She reached around, fastening the chain behind my neck.
I glanced at Pietr. The chain was new. Heavier. Stronger.
Mother looked at us both. “You had al better go—time—”
The siren blared, “Thirty-minutes-thirty-minutes.”
“Time is up.”
A few quick hugs, another tear or two, and we were out of the cubicle and headed (with our armed escort) to find Wanda and Kent.
We pushed into the lab, where Wanda was having a very animated discussion with Henry. “And what am I supposed to do about this? Hope there are no bodily fluids exchanged? Play keep-away with—”
am I supposed to do about this? Hope there are no bodily fluids exchanged? Play keep-away with—”
Henry’s pointed look stopped her midsentence.
“Dammit,” Wanda muttered. “I’l take care of it,” she assured him. “Sooo,” she said, facing us, her smile thin. “Was Mommy happy to see you?”
Max’s face soured at her use of the endearment.
“We were al glad for a chance to meet,” I said, stroking Max’s arm. He calmed beneath my touch, though I was certain I’d get an earful later about ratting him out to his mother.
“Wonderful,” Wanda chirped. “Let’s close this little get-together up, then, shal we? We’l want a marrow and fur sample before your next invite. I’l let you decide when. After that? We may need to do a little renegotiating.”
Cat’s chin rose. “Renegotiating?”
“Cat,” I warned. “She said may.”
Wanda nodded. We trailed behind Wanda to the door like lost puppies. Out and up the stairs, I recounted each one. If we had to do something drastic, it might be dark. Counting stairs might save us from tripping down them.
Final y outside, Wanda slapped her hands together against the cold. “I trust you can find your way home,” she muttered, “since it’s real y just around the corner.”
Wow. They’d gotten arrogant.
Wanda’s gaze slid from Pietr to me as if weighing some danger. “Jessica, I’l be back to take you home soon.”
“Don’t bother,” Max retorted. “I’l drive her back.”
Again she measured Pietr with a glance. “Huh. Okay.” Wanda shrugged and slipped back inside.
A half-dozen bolts clicked into place behind us.
* * *
“I cannot do this,” Cat murmured as Max pul ed out of their driveway. Her voice cracked. “I cannot become like her so soon.…”
“Cat,” I insisted, “You stil have years. You al do.”
“Not as many as you wil ,” she said. “Why can I not be normal—not this? ” she asked. “As normal as Jessie?”
I resisted the urge to explain that normal was a relative term, and right now it was so relative it didn’t seem to relate to me at al .
From the front passenger’s seat Alexi looked over his shoulder at her. “You are blessed in many ways, Ekaterina,” he said. “You have much that many would kil for—and many have.”
“I would give it al away,” she confessed, “to live out a normal life and reach a normal old age.”
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. “Some normal people don’t live very long, either. What if you give up your gifts—your healing, your agility, your wonderful wildness—and die in an airplane crash? Or crossing a street. It happens, Cat. There is no normal life span. Only average.”
“Perhaps this is simply what we’re destined to be,” Pietr added. “Wild and powerful, and then … nothing.
Should we not embrace what is carved into our genetics, be al that we may be for as long as we can be?
Live life fiercely?”
Max turned the car up my driveway. “Live fast, die young,” he mumbled.
The car stopped, and I couldn’t get out fast enough. “And what do you leave behind?” I snapped, leaning back in to the open door and scowling at Max because my stinging eyes proved I didn’t dare look at Pietr. “Who do you leave with only memories of you? How many hearts do you break when you risk too much and die too young?”
I slammed the door shut and stalked into the house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“That boy of yours is on the phone,” Dad said, holding the receiver out to me.
“Who?”
“Derek-the-man-Jamieson,” Annabel e Lee cal ed.
I took the phone. “Hey.”
“Hey. I was thinking about you.”
“Oh.” I tramped up the stairs. “That’s nice.” I took off my sneakers with a clunk and peeled off my socks, holding the phone between my shoulder and cheek.
“Your party’s tomorrow night,” he reminded.
“It’s real y more the Rusakovas’ Hal oween party.”