Secrets and Shadows Read Free

sorry, Catherine. I had to say something … had to tel someone.…”
    Her fingers twitched by her hip.
    I shut my eyes again, ready as I could be for certain disemboweling. I’d gutlessly betrayed their family, in an attempt to save my sanity. I deserved no better.
    “What are you doing?” Cat’s words rushed out; she stood so close now her breath was a warm breeze brushing across my face.
    “Waiting.”
    “For what?” she asked.
    “Death?” I squeaked, peeling one eye open to watch her—the way I watched most werewolf films.
    She laughed.
    My heart throbbed against my ribs.
    She grabbed me so fast I nearly peed myself. Holding me in a powerful hug, she whispered, “You are a strange, strange girl, Jessie Gil mansen.”
    Says a werewolf.
    “You should stop watching those awful horror movies.”
    “How did you—? Of course. Annabel e Lee.”
    “She is worried about you.”
    “Ha.”
    “We are not Hol ywood’s creations. You know that.”
    “Rational y, yes.” Not Hol ywood’s creations, but rather the descendants of one of the USSR’s surprisingly successful scientific experiments from the earliest years of the Cold War.
    Cat nodded. “Does the doctor believe what you said?”
    “Not a word.”
    “Excel ent.” She grinned her most wicked grin. “Now you can tel her the truth without repercussions.”
    She stepped back, toying with her short, dark curls, glittering eyes fixed on me. “Might she medicate you?”
    “Nope. She insists I embrace sanity without chemical assistance.”
    “You are such a clever girl!” She threw her hands into the air. “Strange in your methods, but clever. Oh.”
    She pinched her ear. “Your father is coming. He should not see me here.”
    “Cat!” I cal ed as she retreated down another hal way. “I need to talk to you about Pietr—”
    She nodded. “I wil find you. Tonight. Listen for me.”

CHAPTER TWO
    Sure enough, Dad was headed down the hal toward me. I shouldn’t have been surprised Cat knew, but it was stil odd—especial y knowing why and how she knew.
    When the Rusakova children each turned thirteen, strange things happened to them—far stranger than the standard hair showing up in weird places that came with normal puberty. At thirteen their ability to hear intensified. At fourteen, their sense of smel sharpened exponential y. When they turned fifteen their strength and agility increased, and sixteen was a year their bodies tried to catch up with the mutations rioting through their systems.
    Then about a week ago, the twins, Pietr and Cat, turned seventeen. To say that turning seventeen had changed them would be an understatement of the oddest sort.
    None of our lives had been the same since.
    “Oh, Jessie!” Dad exclaimed, snapping his cel phone shut. Seeing my eyes pink with unshed tears, he wrapped me in a hug, lifting me and squeezing the air out of my lungs in one long sigh. “The first few times wil probably be toughest,” he said, setting me down.
    He smoothed my hair back from my face. “Let’s go now. You look tired.” Putting his hand flat on my back, he steered me down the hal and out the building.
    He opened the truck’s passenger door, a mismatched green that somehow went with the rest of its blue rust-speckled body, and took his spot behind the steering wheel. The truck roared to life, and Dad twisted the knob on the old radio, turning it down.
    “Why are we listening to this station?”
    “There’s nothin’ wrong with this station,” he insisted.
    “It only plays the eighties.”
    “And I repeat—” But he didn’t. He winked instead. “Livin’ on a Prayer,” he said, nodding toward the radio.
    It seemed that’s what I did most days.
    Mom and Dad had both been huge fans of the big-haired bands of eighties rock. Without Mom around, Dad clung to the bits of life they’d shared even harder. Except when he reached out toward Wanda.
    Blech.
    I tried not to think about it as I sank into my seat and stared out the