Destiny and Deception (11 page)

Where was the harm?

I shook the stick at them. “Tell me: What do we have in common with this flame?”

“Some of us are
hot?
” Gabriel’s eyes swept across my form, pausing on key locations that piqued his interest.

I growled at him and shook the stick again.

“The flame is as hot as the fire that burns within us,” a soft but steady voice responded, and my eyes caught Darby’s—a cute strawberry-blond girl who’d had little of the trauma most of us had endured. I’d found her in San Antonio near the River Walk, tired and hungry, the police chasing her away for begging from tourists. She’d worn out her welcome at the local homeless shelters and was as lost as anyone could be.

Until I found her—recognized her for what she was and brought her to the pack.

“Damn right—what else?” I wiggled the stick again, watching as embers tumbled from its tip to be licked up by the flames nestled a few feet below.

Red eyes glowed from one dark corner, and a voice deep as the noise of the nearby train rumbled out of the darkness. “It burns brightly when tended, but never long enough.”

Gareth. The eternal optimist. The man meeting our group’s quota for tortured hero.

My mouth twisted into a grin. “So we tend our inner fire—our wolf—and remember that just because life ends too soon it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the most of it. We seize each day. Make it ours. And why is
that
?” I asked them, looking from face to face in the wavering light the fire cast.

“Because the Wolf is the Way!” Kyanne led the cry.

Grinning, I threw my head back, let out a howl, and joined them in the chorus of “The Wolf is the Way!”

I reached into the blaze and pulled out two sturdy branches, thick with flame. Tauntingly, I jabbed the torches toward my wolves, watching them grin and dodge. I stood as straight and tall as I could, watching the flames flicker and creep closer to my hands.

When the tongues of fire were so close the fine hairs on my hands curled in the heat, I raised the torches over my head …

… and set the ceiling on fire.

Grabbing odds and ends we ran out into the snow, mostly naked but fully alive—and laughing.

Except for Gareth, who merely raised a heavy eyebrow in my direction and shook his head at the growing blaze.
Wanton destruction
, he’d once accused me of. I strode over to him and, with a smile, I bent over to slowly pull on my jeans.

When I rose I knew his eyes only bothered to meet my eyes—that they never strayed to any other bits of me.

Because between Gareth and me, there was only one of us who was ever wanton. So I laughed again.

In his so very serious and disappointed face.

CHAPTER NINE

Jessie

“Seriously? You’re going to play Dungeons & Dragons?” Amy raised an eyebrow skeptically at me. “Why do I feel a need to stage an intervention?”

I laughed. “Well, I’m tempted to agree with the intervention idea, but it’d be aimed at Pietr since he’s initiating a family game night and it seems we’re going on a quest.…”

“I’m so sorry for you.”

I snagged her wrist. “Oh, don’t be sorry for
me
—you’ll be joining in the fun.”

“What?”

“You’re the one suddenly tossing around terms like
grand mêlée
in the midst of a snowball battle.”

“So I’m being penalized for improving my vocabulary?”

I began to drag her toward the dining room as she sputtered out her protests. “I’m really not a gamer.… I don’t know the first thing about this stuff.… This really isn’t my thing.… I…” But her mouth shut when she saw Max sitting next to an open chair.

She shook free of my grip and straightened.

“Hey,” she greeted him. “Jessie was just telling me about this quest.…”

“Great,” he muttered, pulling the chair out for her. “Then you can explain it to me.”

“Jessie!” I heard someone call from the other side of Max. Smith leaned around him, waving to catch my attention. “There’s a seat open here…,” he said, pointing to a spot located conveniently at his side.

Luckily it was also at Pietr’s side.

“Thanks,” I said, slipping into the chair between the two of them and right across the table from where Hascal and Jaikin sat, fully mesmerized by the existence of Cat—who was looking as nervous as her namesake in a room full of rocking chairs.

Alexi lounged nearby, his chair tipping back haphazardly as he texted on his cell.

“Nadezhda back in the States?” I asked him, noting how intent he was on reading and replying.

He spared me a glance and a grin—all I needed to answer my question. Then he returned to what he was doing.

“So,” Smith announced, clearing his throat and rising from his seat, “the first matter of business—”

Amy groaned, “
Business?
Isn’t this supposed to be fun?”

“Just the turn of a phrase,” Smith assured her, looking her over skeptically. He had a gift for occasionally backhanding someone with a wry cynicism, but I knew he’d keep his mouth shut about Amy.

He knew she was my best friend.

And I knew—god help him—he was still crushing on me.
Hard
.

It was flattering, really, having a guy with a full scholarship to nearly anywhere—based on his brain alone—crush on you, especially when it appeared Pietr had nearly become his geeky doppelgänger.

I did a double take.

Well-combed hair, button-down shirts, downcast eyes …

I was sitting between two studious, bright (and decidedly pale, I added to the checklist—Pietr was going to need some light other than what bounced back to him off his computer monitor’s screen) guys. One who’d crushed on me since we started our frequent flirters club in the school van taking us to and from our Service Learning project, and … Pietr.

And as clever as they both were … I would’ve accepted a less studious Pietr if he’d just returned to studying my lips. Or my neck. Or …

I straightened, suddenly warmer than the room should make me. I looked at Pietr. He was looking at a paper. The same type of paper Smith thrust in my direction.

“… character design,” Smith concluded.

I gulped, hoping I hadn’t missed anything vital.

The next twenty minutes were a blur while I tried to catch up and fill in the blanks that had gaped open while I’d fantasized about Pietr kissing me. And holding me … Maybe Pietr was exactly all he could be as a simple human. Maybe if you wiped all the alpha out of any of us you were naturally left with someone gentle and kind and too willing to please and study and …

Focus, Jessie, focus
 …

Dice were rolled, numbers were scrawled on my paper by a doting Smith, and people began babbling knowledgably—even Amy and Max—about a game I was already struggling with.

Smith seemed a bit disappointed in my lack of focus, but he coddled me, repeating things more slowly—and was he using simpler words?!—than with everyone else.

Dude
. I was frustrated, not stupid.

Finally my character sheet was filled out and approved. By none other than Smith: self-appointed Dungeon Master. Where was Amy with a snide remark about the odds of
that?

But leaning against Max and looking as comfortable as I’d seen the two look together in a while, Amy merely yawned and asked, “What time is it?”

“Ten-seventeen,” Max reported as Pietr pushed up a sleeve to check his wrist.

Pietr raised wary eyes at his brother and nodded at the accuracy of his statement.

“Sounds like time to call it a night, boys,” Amy said, slowly rising from her chair and stretching. “Some of us”—she reached down and tapped Max’s stubbly chin—“should call about the status of our job applications in the morning.”

I froze, astonished by how focused she’d become on something other than Marvin’s funeral.

Also in the morning.

“And on that note…” Alexi tucked away his cell phone, rose, and looked at the character sheet sitting before him. “Am I supposed to do something with this?”

Amy snorted. “Give it to me, Sasha. You’re enough of a character. I’ll make you into something new and shiny.”

“Shiny is overrated.” Alexi looked at Smith. “Smith,” he said after a long pause that told me he was working on remembering the name, “thank you so much for starting us on what will surely be an exciting adventure of the imagination.”

I blinked.

Smith knew a dismissal when he heard one and clambered to his feet, quickly collecting his things. He cleared his throat, managing to get Hascal and Jaikin to look away from Cat. For a moment.

“Oh.” They both stood, both apologized, both stumbled over themselves telling Cat what a pleasure it was to meet her … and both headed to the door, Smith lingering a moment longer to wish me good night.

“It was a great deal of fun introducing you to the realm of D&D,” he said. “I hope we can make this a weekly event.”

Oh, god
.

Pietr rose and came to where we stood in the foyer. “I intend to set a schedule of that sort,” he announced.

“What if you get a job and have to work?” I asked, silently hoping. It sucked to spend a Friday night without Pietr, but if it meant spending a Friday night without Smith’s awkward advances and playing a game I somehow missed the point of, I’d send him away.

“I’ll make it work,” Pietr countered.

Smith nodded and the three of them left, leaving Pietr and me alone in the foyer.

He reached over and gave me a hug, pulling away as soon as I started to relax in his grip.

“You’ll make it work, huh?” I asked, looking up into his eyes.

“
Da
.”

I hoped the game night schedule wasn’t the only thing he’d find some way to make work.

*   *   *

I waited a few more minutes after Smith, Hascal, and Jaikin had gone and I cleared my throat to get Amy’s attention. She looked up from where she sat beside Max, playing with his hair, tugging at individual curls just to watch them spring back into place.

Her lips pursed. “I know,” she muttered.

I shrugged. “It has to be your choice. If you want to stay here tonight…”

“Sleep all alone,” she added, her lips turning down at their ends.

Max leaned back and shook his head. “We’ve had this conversation.”

“I just can’t,” she whispered. “I don’t know why.… I trust you, but I can’t sleep in a bed with you. Even though I know nothing’s going to happen.”

He shrugged. “Like Jessie says: your decision.”

“I’ll pack a bag.” She brushed the hair back from Max’s eyes and then headed to the basement.

I pulled out a chair and looked at him. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he agreed, resting his head on the dining room table.

“Are you going tomorrow?”

“To her rapist’s funeral?”

I waited.

“You really need me to say it?” He rolled his head so that he could peer at me without lifting it off the table. “Let me say it like this: If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him.”

“You nearly did before.”

“
Da
.”

“So you won’t go. You won’t be there for her.”

“I can’t. I’d tear the place apart the moment they started saying nice stuff about the bastard.” He raised and lowered his shoulders. “I know my limits. At least in this.”

I nodded slowly. “We always deify the dead.”

“
Da
. Asinine. What is it I’ve heard Amy say: ‘Call a spade a spade’?”

Again I nodded. “So you want to be remembered accurately when you die? Not glorified in any way, shape, or form?”

“
Da
. Let the priest number my sins—at least it will give him material for an interesting sermon.…” He smiled at me with a wicked turn of his lips. “I’ve made mistakes. Bring them up at the end,” he rumbled. “I’ve always done the best I could—
he
didn’t.”

“What if he did?”

He drew back from the table, his eyes narrow and cruel. “Think before you speak,” he warned. “He raped your best friend.”

“I know.” I reached forward to roll a die that had been left behind in the nerds’ scramble to leave. “But what if he was so damaged…”

“
Nyet
.” He leaned back in his chair and, crossing his arms over his broad chest, glared at me. “Just because you’re damaged doesn’t mean you must damage others. You have choices. We all make them every day.”

I blinked. “Good point.”

“Free will. It sucks because it means we’re responsible for our actions. There is no destiny, just difficult decisions.”

“That’s one way to look at it.…”

“I’m ready,” Amy announced from the foyer as she dropped a duffel bag onto the carpet. “Heyyy, what’s got him looking like Mr. Grumpy Pants?”

“My fault,” I said by way of apology.

“
Da
. Free will at work. You have a choice, too, Jessie,” he added, rising from his chair to give us each a hug. Amy’s was much longer than mine.

“My mother would’ve wanted—”

He shrugged again. “I’ll drive.”

We rode in an uncomfortable silence, his words in my head. When we finally got to the farm and stepped onto the porch, he lingered, watching Amy. Worried. “And I will see you back at the house—back home—tomorrow afternoon?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she assured him, slipping her arms around him and resting her head on his chest. “Tomorrow afternoon can’t come soon enough.”

CHAPTER TEN

Jessie

My mother would’ve wanted me to go. My mother would’ve wanted me to go.

That’s what I kept telling myself standing before the bathroom mirror, fists balled and pressed on the countertop, staring at the brown eyes studying me—eyes that’d turned more red than brown with stress, anger, and tears. I was dressed in my black “Sunday best” as my mother would have joked: a long-sleeved blouse with subtle satin trim and a modestly cut skirt.

I tried adjusting the emphasis of the words:
My mother would’ve
wanted
me to go.

Damn it
. So why wasn’t I already downstairs waiting by the door? The funeral service for Marvin started in forty minutes. People were waiting for me. Downstairs my father was probably already standing by the door, watching Annabelle Lee as she put her coat on and braced against winter’s chill.