Rivals and Retribution (18 page)

“Excellent,” Marlaena responded, shaking free of Gareth’s grasp and brushing past my shoulder to better see Pietr as he descended the stairs.

Amy laced one arm through mine and drew me toward the stairs, hooking Pietr with her other.

He moved, joining us as if dazed, pulling his gaze away from Marlaena with a little too much difficulty.

“Max, you too,” Amy commanded over her shoulder. “Looks like I’m moving in with you after all.”

“I have told you for weeks that is the best option,” Max responded with the arrogant flare only he could carry off.

“Yeah, yeah,” Amy said with a snort. “Well, then, thank the wolfpack. Because I still wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for them. You’re difficult,” she added in his direction.

“Difficult?” he said, his voice rising as we started down the basement stairs.

“Mmmm. Maybe not difficult—more
high maintenance,
” she said, as if that label was somehow reassuring in comparison.

“High maintenance,” he nearly squeaked. “That is a label for a
girl
.…”

Amy stopped us all on the stairs, unlinking her arms with ours and turning in the tight space to look up at Max. “I’m guessing saying you’re very pretty wouldn’t help, would it?” she laughed, sticking her tongue out.

He snarled. “I am far too masculine to be pretty,” he said, raising his chin to accentuate the strong angles of his jaw and showcase his Adam’s apple.

Amy just snorted again. “Pretty, pretty,” she teased. “Hairy, but pretty.”

I laughed, too, and looked to see Pietr’s reaction as Amy jogged down the last few steps, fleeing when Max pressed past us, but Pietr was somewhere else—at least mentally. He seemed totally unaware of their antics.

I snapped my fingers in front of him. “Hey.”

He blinked at me, smiled, and continued down the stairs with me.

“You faded out right there. Something on your mind?”

He shook his head a little too readily for me to dismiss the look as nothing.

“Really? Nothing worth sharing?”

“
Nyet,
it’s nothing,” he assured me, his lips slipping into a smile. It was a smile I’d seen frequently on other faces—on Amy’s when Max was suddenly too frisky; on Sarah’s when she couldn’t remember a word she used to toss around so easily; and on my own when I looked into the mirror and tried to convince myself that things were increasingly getting better.

“Okay,” I said.

But it wasn’t. It most certainly wasn’t okay.

Whatever had caught his attention and pulled him away so far and so fast was anything
but
okay.

CHAPTER TEN

Alexi

They had barely moved their negligible belongings in when Max volunteered his services. “I’ll go sniff around. See if I can find Noah and Terra.”

“We will need Pietr and Gareth, too,” I suggested.

“Don’t expect me to just sit here while you three try to do search and rescue,” Marlaena snapped. “They’re two of my pack.”

Max shrugged, but Pietr blanched and looked away.

Gareth nodded. “Fine. We’ll leave Tembe and Judith with the pups here.”

“And what about me?” Jessie piped up. “What’s best—me here or there?”

Pietr chewed his lower lip, his gaze again falling on Marlaena. “I want you safe,” Pietr said as his eyes slid back to Jessie, and for a moment I wondered which one of them the statement was truly intended for.

“Do not count me out,” I insisted.

“This is a scouting mission—if we’re lucky, a rescue—not a party,” Marlaena snarled.

“It’s never a party with you,” I responded, holding my ground.

“Alexi comes,” Pietr said. “He is a great strategist. Max can drive for us. Jess, you stay here with Amy and Cat and keep an eye on everyone.”

“Yeah. We womenfolk’ll stay back with the kids,” Jessie muttered.

Pietr smiled softly at her. “You know it’s not like that.” He stood up and walked over to where she stood on the opposite side of the table and slid his arms around her waist.

But there was something stiff and awkward about the way he embraced her, and I noted an odd hesitancy when he lowered his nose into the hair crowning the top of her head.

Jessie leaned into him. “Just come back safe, okay?”

“
Da,
” he whispered, nuzzling her forehead and cheek.

“And that goes for you,” she said, looking at Max, “and you,” she glanced at Gareth, “and you,” she said, peering at me. No one missed the fact she wasted no good wishes on Marlaena.

Marlaena leaned back in her chair and propped her feet up on the table’s edge.

Cat shook her head, clearing her throat authoritatively, and although Marlaena growled, she put her feet back on the floor. “We want an estimated time of arrival for your return here,” Cat announced.

“Yes, some idea of how long we wait until we press the panic button,” Jessie said.

“We have no idea how long this will take or even if we’ll find them at all,” Marlaena muttered, her eyes focused on Pietr as she looked past Jessie in disgust. “We could be out all night,” she added as a little dig.

Jessie twitched in response. “That’s unacceptable.”

Pietr stepped back so he could look straight into her eyes. “If it means getting Noah and Terra back to their pack safely and breaking ties with Dmitri … isn’t it worth staying out all night?”

She rested her head on his chest. “Yes, of course it is. Just … be careful.”

“I will,” he insisted.

She stepped into his embrace again and stretched up to whisper something into his ear for him alone. A smile twitched to life on Pietr’s sometimes too stoic face and he bent to meet her lips, kissing her gently. She drew back finally, her entire face caught in her smile, and she tapped his hip pocket. “You have a cell phone”—she looked at each of us in turn—“you all do. Make sure you use them. I want to know what’s happening every step of the way. Understood?”

“Da,”
Pietr answered, a gleam to his eyes. “Until we are wolf, you will know everything as we do.”

“And after they are wolf, you will still know all I do,” I reported.

“Good,” Jessie said. “Then get to it.”

And so we gathered our things and piled into the convertible.

Jessie tapped Max’s window.

“Da?”

“Drive carefully,” she added with a stern look.

“I always do,” he replied.

“No. You don’t.”

He shrugged. “It is a hazard of being me,” he said. “And of being Russian. We love to drive quickly.”

“Not tonight,” she warned. “Things will be dangerous enough without the risk of driving too fast in bad conditions.”

I nodded. “You can be very much like a mother hen, you know.”

“As long as my little chickies all return safely to my nest, I don’t care what you call me,” she responded, stepping back from the car.

She stood in the driveway as a few stray snowflakes fluttered down from the tree’s branches above, watching the entire time we backed out of the driveway and pulled onto the street, her face full of the worry that no doubt made her heart pound.

Jessie

The pups were all downstairs, their attention firmly on one another as they played an impromptu game of something that required keeping stuff away from another member of the pack, tagging one another at random, and wrestling.

Amy, Cat, and I paused on the steps to watch them. Without Marlaena lording over them, they were much different. More free. They laughed at one another and themselves, the twins falling into shared fits of giggles.

I hated to break it up, but even descending two more steps they noticed us, and froze.

Waiting for a reprimand?

I grinned at them instead.

“We’re ordering pizza,” I announced. “Anything you want on it?”

Every topping known to man was shouted out from down below and I finally waved my arms, laughing, to get them to quiet down. “Let’s try it this way: Anything you
don’t
want on the pizza?”

Silence.

Amy snorted. “Got it. I’ll call in three trashy pizzas.”

“Only three?” Tembe asked.

“Four?” Amy tried.

Londyn and Jordyn both stuck their thumbs up and jabbed skyward.

“Six?” Amy asked, her voice rising slightly.

Cat said from behind her, “Better make it two more,” she said, and the pups nodded eagerly.

“Eight pizzas? You’re kidding me…”

“It’s like living in a fraternity house,” Cat mused.

“But not as smelly,” Amy said. “No. Don’t ask how I know, but let’s just say large groups of college-age guys should never share the same living space without an established rule regarding room deodorizers and the potential burning of dirty socks and boxers.”

Cat’s eyebrows shot high on her head, imagining what was surely a horrific scene being painted in her head by Amy’s words.

Amy reached up and petted her arm. “Off to your happy place, Cat,” she joked. “I’ll order eight pizzas and make the pizza joint’s evening.” She pressed past us and disappeared upstairs.

My cell phone buzzed with a text from Pietr.

Caught a scent. More soon.

I responded with a quick *
hugs
* and slipped the cell phone back into my pocket.

The pups all watched me, curious.

“So far, so good,” I announced. “We were thinking tonight would be a good night for a movie. What do you think?”

“What movie are you suggesting?” Darby asked cautiously.

I smiled. “How about
Red Riding Hood
?”

They wrinkled their noses at me.

“Maybe something where the wolves aren’t the bad guys?” one of them suggested.

I mentally ticked off titles on the list in my head. Nothing that didn’t in some way vilify werewolves. “Okay, how about no wolves at all?” I tried.

They nodded.

“The Princess Bride?”
It was a personal favorite that I’d introduced the Rusakovas to just before Halloween. “It’s clever and snarky and has a hot guy and sword fighting in it.…”

Some interest, but not as much as I’d hoped.

“An adventure movie,” someone shouted out.

“Spies?” Cat asked, her mouth turning up into a sly smile.

They began nodding.

“Excellent,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Upstairs to take a vote!” she proclaimed, pointing to the door.

They thundered past, thrilled at one aspect of the evening’s homebound adventure. Maybe it was just the fact that they got a vote—that they got a stake in the decision-making process.

Upstairs they gathered around Cat, who held up two Blu-ray cases. The newest in the Bond franchise and the first of the Bourne movies.

“With my father,” she explained, remembering as the words came out, “it was always one of the two B’s: Bond or Bourne. Which shall we start with tonight?”

They examined each case and took a vote. It was all very democratic. Very civilized.

I went to check on Amy while Cat set up the movie.

She was hanging up the phone. “Do you know how much eight large pizzas cost?”

“I’m guessing the proper answer is
a lot.
”

“Yee-ahhh. I don’t know how we’ll be able to support feeding them, too. We barely manage to feed ourselves and make the house payments. I mean, I know Alexi has some little nest egg he’s still drawing from, but they weren’t left with any stash of cash when their parents died, you know? And even the jobs that have been picked up are … well, they’re just above minimum wage.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I guess Marlaena and Gareth and a few of the others will have to go legit. And when the rest of the pups are enrolled in school, surely they’ll qualify for the free lunch program.…”

We stared at each other.

“Not that we want them accidentally exposed to any additives like the other students at Junction were…,” Amy added, her tone low at the thought of it.

“Definitely not.”

“Glad Alexi’s been on top of that,” I remarked.

“Yeah, but what a deal to make, right? Working hand-in-hand with Wondermann to find a permanent cure for werewolves just so Wondermann can reverse engineer it and make the next generation of werewolves irreversible.”

“Alexi doesn’t seem to be one for doing things only half-assed,” I pointed out. My cell phone buzzed again. “New text,” I said, reading it. “They think they’ve found them. The wolves’ll be out of contact for a little while now, but Alexi will keep us updated.” I put the cell away again. “I hate this.”

“Me too. Let’s go watch a movie,” Amy suggested. “The pizzas will be here soon.”

Marlaena

The interior of the convertible bristled with weapons and werewolves. It was good, I thought. Perfect. We were in a sexy car brimming with bullets and bad intentions on our way to rescue Noah and Terra.

Max was at the wheel, leather driving gloves with cutouts to emphasize his knuckles drawing attention to his hands. But with Max driving I guessed girls would have looked at his hands and every other inch of him regardless of sporty gloves.

But Max was not the werewolf on my mind. I pulled the rearview mirror down to peek into the backseat, where Gareth and Pietr acted as bookends to Alexi.

Alexi had been adamant about crowding into the car, even though it meant we’d have to put Terra on someone’s lap on the return trip. I guessed Max would’ve volunteered to suffer through that situation, but, being bulkiest, he was driving. I’d argued with Alexi, but his siblings stood firm. He was the planner. He was their Hannibal (and not the one obsessed with fava beans and that Clarice chick, either).

If their pack was the Scooby Gang, Alexi was Velma minus the skirt and glasses (and plus a good dose of male hormones).

Gareth leaned as hard into the door as he could, trying to give everyone the most room possible. Although we’d been a pack awhile, this concept of such cooperation was new to us. It made me itch.

And so did Pietr’s presence.

I blinked, trying to refocus.

But I felt his eyes boring into the back of my headrest.