To Sergej. Even thinking the name sent a cold shiver through me. Some of the nightmares I was having lately—when I could sleep, that is—were of a slight teenage boy with coppery skin and honey-dark hair, smiling as something ageless and foul shone out of his black, black eyes.
I’d only seen Sergej once. But that was enough.
Graves exhaled more cigarette smoke. “Thanks for asking, though.”
“Can you two have your pissing match some other time?” I kept hold of Ash. It wouldn’t do much good if he decided to go seriously buggy, but if I kept my hand on him he kept calm.
I didn’t know what to think about that. I was stuck with less speed and strength and stamina because I hadn’t “bloomed” yet. I wasn’t a serious match for an upset werwulf without a gun and some running room—and even then it was a pretty chancy proposition.
Especially against a werwulf who had killed three or four suckers at a time.
But he never went ballistic as long as I was holding onto him. I still wasn’t sure if I was brave or really stupid, getting close enough to him to find out. And I’d escaped him before, hadn’t I? Shot him and boogied. Right after I’d killed a burning dog the size of a small pony.
Where had that girl gone—the badass Dru? Right now I was feeling a little less than awesomely tough. And more than a little confused.
“What’s he doing, Dru?” Benjamin’s tone was taut. I could almost see him outside the door, leaning forward, the spike of an emo-boy haircut swooping over his chiseled face. Some of the djamphir are so pretty it almost hurts to look at them. And it was hard to look without feeling rumpled and messy in comparison.
Not that I ever need any help feeling rumpled or ugly. Jeez. At least the plague of zits had passed me by lately.
Go figure. As soon as things most people don’t even know exist start trying to kill me, I get to stop worrying about pimples. Normally I’d say, okay, sure, as long as I don’t go pizza-faced.
But this wasn’t a joke. This was my life. And I was kind of wanting the zits back.
“He’s leaning up against me and trying to change.” It was out of my mouth before I thought about it. My free hand was up, touching my mother’s silver locket. The sharp edges of its etching scraped under my fingertips.
“He can’t change,” someone else said. “He’s Broken, right? That’s what that means.”
“Don’t tell him that,” Graves interjected sardonically. “I don’t think he believes it.”
“Keep being funny, loup-garou.” Benjamin was unimpressed. “Dru, you’re going to have to come out of there. It’s not safe.”
Well, it’s funny, but this is the place I feel safest. In a cell with a Broken werwulf. I swallowed twice. Let go of the locket and ran my free hand back through my hair. Winced as I hit tangles. “He’s not going to hurt me. He only throws himself at the walls when I’m not around.”
“Milady. Please.” And he had that tone in his voice again, the pleading. Dylan used to sound like that, back at the other Schola.
Nobody had seen Dylan since the fighting broke out. And now that I thought about it, I didn’t think we’d ever see him again.
That’s what happens when nosferatu attack. Final things, things you can’t take back. There was a whole mess of things I couldn’t take back, starting with the morning I woke up and didn’t tell Dad I’d seen my grandmother’s owl.
My heart hurt, a sharp piercing pain. If I could just ignore it and deal with what I had in front of me right now, maybe it would go away.
Yeah, good plan, Dru. Stick with it. Maybe it’ll get you somewhere.
“I’m not moving.” The stubbornness caught me by surprise, set my jaw and made both hands curl into fists. Fur rasped against my fingers, and if I was pulling his hair, Ash didn’t make a sign that he noticed. “Dawn’s coming. Once the sun’s up he’ll be better.”
“You should—” Benjamin stopped dead. Maybe because Graves had drawn himself up, taking another drag off the cigarette. Maybe because Ash growled again, and I surprised myself by tapping him on the top of his narrow head with my free hand. But gently, as if I was mock-hitting a boy I liked or something.
“Stop that.” I took a deep breath. The growl had stopped. I just bonked a werwulf on the noggin. Jeez. “You could bring me a blanket or something. This floor’s cold.”
A beat of silence, then footsteps. Someone padding off to get me a nice little blankie. It wasn’t Benjamin because he spoke again. “Very well. But we’re staying here, Dru. Just in case.”
Like I don’t know that. I leave my room for any reason, all of you show up. “You should go back to sleep. Or whatever you were doing.”
“We’re your Guard. This is what we’re doing.” Patiently, as if talking to an idiot. Benjamin was almost as good at that tone as Dylan had been.
My heart gave another funny little hurt squeeze. It’s been doing that a lot lately, except when I’m busy running for my life. But the pain went away when I swallowed, blinked, and focused on the problem in front of me.
“Jailers, more like.” Graves didn’t bother to say it softly. He kept leaning through the door, and the cigarette smoke he exhaled smelled like anger. “Leave her alone.”
Ash growled again. I dug my fingers in, and the rumbling petered out once more. The marks on my right wrist twinged again, but not painfully. “Stop it, Graves. Jeez. All of you, just quit it.”
It was looking to be another long wait for dawn.
CHAPTER TWO
As soon as the sun came up, Ash lifted his head from my lap. He flowed away, curled up under the metal shelf, and promptly went to sleep instead of just lying there with his eyes open and nervousness running through him.
My legs were stiff and numb. Graves had smoked his way through half a pack, field-stripping each butt under his boot. The plaid blanket they’d handed in through the door hadn’t helped me much. I was so cold my teeth threatened to chatter, but I crawled over and spent a minute or two tucking the Broken werwulf in. He’d rip the blanket to shreds when dusk hit, but it couldn’t hurt.
At least, I was hoping it couldn’t hurt.
The silvery streak up the side of his head had gotten longer, pale wiry hairs a different texture than the rest of his fur. The messed-up part of his jaw made me wince every time I looked at it. Wulfen are allergic to silver in a big way; the wound was raw but not seeping anymore. It was healing slowly, I guess—and when it did heal over, what would happen? There was still silver lodged in there.
I didn’t know nearly enough. Story of my life, I guess. When I was with Dad it hadn’t seemed to matter—he was the one who knew what we were dealing with and told me what to do. But since he’d shown up with a serious case of zombie it had been painfully apparent that I didn’t know even a quarter of what I needed to, in order to deal with the Real World.
And I was beginning to wonder if he’d really known all I thought he did.
It was an uncomfortable thought. Almost, well, blasphemous. Even if I’m not a big believer in anything other than holy water. I’ve seen holy water work against roach spirits and some kinds of hexes.
The rest of the God trip I’m not so sure about. There’s just too much nastiness happening to people who don’t deserve it.
Graves field-stripped the last butt under his boot sole and ground the cherry against the concrete. The ash made a black mark. “Hand up?”
“Nah.” I used the shelf-bed to push myself up. Ash made a sleepy sound, chuffing out a breath, and stilled. “Thanks, though.” Four numb-drunk steps across the room, then I had to grab for the doorjamb because the muscles in my legs started to wake up, pin-and-needling. “Ouch.”
Benjamin leaned forward, peering around the corner. A pair of dark eyes under spike-dagger auburn hair, the bridge of his nose just visible. “You’re not dressed.” His tone wavered between shock and disapproval, with a healthy dose of primness mixed in. “You’ve been in there like that the whole time?”
“I’m perfectly d
ressed.” But my jaw kept wanting to clench, muscles locking down with the chill. I shivered, hugged myself. Graves’s sweater rucked up against my ribs. “All my bits are covered.”
“You’ll catch your death of cold,” he muttered, and glanced at Graves. “Come, let’s get you back to your room. You’ll want to change.”
“What for?” Even shifting my weight was agonizing. A heavy werwulf on your lap makes for some damn painful walking afterward. “It’s daytime, right?” Meaning, We should all get some sleep.
“A message arrived just after you went to bed. You’re due in front of the Council in an hour.” Benjamin said it like it pained him. “Alone. To answer questions about Reynard and your escapes from Sergej.”
“What?” But I wasn’t really surprised. They’d debriefed everyone except me already, including Graves, who refused to talk about the whole thing even with me. Right now he was watching Benjamin closely, long-fingered hands dangling. It occurred to me that Graves had been trying to sleep right outside my door.
The djamphir had the rooms all around mine. Just in case. But Graves was loup-garou. Not werwulf, not vampire. Something different. And he obviously wasn’t going to stay in the dorms like they wanted him to.
I tried catching his eye, but he was still staring at Benjamin like there was something stuck on the djamphir’s face. Being surrounded by teenage-looking boys that could be older than your parents gets really weird after a while. You start noticing little things, like how someone moves or goes still, and it shouts their age more effectively than the clues everyone normal wears on their skin.
Benjamin didn’t really feel that old. Older, sure, but not as old as Dylan.
God, was I going to have another day of painful thoughts jumping me every time I relaxed? The obvious solution—to just not relax—was kind of sucking.
“The Council,” he said patiently. “They run the Prima and every other Schola and, by extension, the Order. They’re very interested in you.” Behind him, I heard the slight unsound of the rest of them. Three more boys: two blonds, and a mouse-haired thin kid with a weird crooked smile. “We’ll wait outside. But you’d better get dressed. They’re formal.”
I wished Graves would look at me. But he just stood there, glaring out from under his hair. I’m sure he could have painted fuck off on his forehead and it would have been more subtle. “Okay. All I’ve got is jeans.” Like, one pair of jeans. And this sweater and the hoodie, taking turns.
Benjamin swallowed whatever he was going to say. My legs quit running with iron-tipped needles and steadied. I stepped cautiously out into the hall, between the loup-garou and the djamphir, and wished I could stay back in the cell.
At least with Ash I knew what was going on. Sort of. Maybe.
Silence stretched between us. They had to move so I could close the door, but nobody seemed much inclined to. The mousy kid with the crooked smile—Leon, I remembered with an effort—glanced back over his shoulder, a quick lizardlike flick of his head.
“I guess we’d better close this up, then,” I finally said. “You guys’ll have to move.”
Benjamin stepped forward and I retreated, almost running into Graves. The door was shut and locked in a trice, and Benjamin handed me the key. “You should probably keep this. Since you’re down here every night anyway.”
He said it like he was disappointed.
I felt my chin rising stubbornly, what Gran called that’s a look like a mule. “He’s better.” At least Ash wasn’t throwing himself against the walls. As much.
“He’s Broken.” But Benjamin stepped back, forestalling the same old argument. “To your room, then.”
It sounded like an order, but I didn’t argue. I didn’t have much argue in me.
It was a miracle. But like all miracles, it had a nasty side.
CHAPTER THREE
This is the Schola Prima, the biggest and oldest one in North America: shafts of sunlight falling between velvet curtains to gently brush mellow hardwood floors; priceless antique carpets; more velvet draperies in red, blue, hunter green; marble pedestals holding busts of good-looking teenagers—fighters and diplomats you won’t find in any history book because they’re djamphir. Which meant they fought and made diplomatic agreements with things the rest of the world didn’t think existed.
Beeswax, lemon polish, smell of old wood and dry stone. And the exhalation of a school—something halfway between janitorial cleansers and the oily aroma of lots of kids breathing the same air for a long time. There was an uneasy coexistence between the two—the age, and the youth. Any war was over long ago, and the only thing left was a truce where the parties only glared at each other out of habit.
Benjamin paced in front of me, Leon slightly behind and to my left. Graves, his face damp from a splashing of cold water, kept close by my right. It was like being the center of an amoeba. The other two were behind me, and if there’s anything guaranteed to unsettle a girl, it’s teenage djamphir drifting in her wake and staring at her back. Not that I ever caught them staring, but after being the new girl in a million schools across America, you get the sense of being looked at.
I’d call it having eyes in the back of your head. But I’ve seen that, and it’s disgusting. There was this one place in the Oklahoma panhandle—called Wail, if you can believe it—where the guy who ran the general store had an eye in the back of his shaved and tattooed skull. His front eyes were brown, and the behind eye was blue. It wept a thin red trickle on cold days.
He kept his cowboy hat on a lot.
People came from miles around to visit. They brought things to pay for what he could do, like providing hexes or potions. The thing he liked most as payment was the part of the body he had an extra of.
He fried them. Said they were crunchy and salty, good with mustard.
I shivered. I’d drawn eyes for weeks afterward, doodling them on margins and shading in the irises until Dad got that look that said I probably shouldn’t.
“You okay?” Graves muttered without his lips moving.
“Just thinking. About eyes.”
His shoulders hunched a little under the usual black coat. He wore that thing everywhere. It was kind of comforting. “I know what you mean.”
The familiar weight settled on me. I don’t think you do. Opened my mouth to tell him, shut it. He’d already been introduced to more than his fair share of the Real World. When Ash’s teeth had punctured his skin, they’d stolen his old life. Never mind that it was a life Graves hadn’t wanted. It was still my fault.
“I mean,” he continued a little louder, “could it be any more obvious that they’re watching you? And we can’t trust any of them.”
Benjamin inhaled sharply.
“The way I figure, about the only ones we can trust are wulfen.” Graves stuffed his hands in his pockets, striding alongside me with long grasshopper legs. “Until we know who the traitor is.”
Christophe knows. I pressed my lips together over the secret. I used to spend so much time alone while Dad was gone, and I’d wished to have other people around so hard. I’d hardly been alone since I got here. The chaos at the front door of the Schola had turned into a face-off between the wulfen boys with me and the djamphir boys trying to figure out what to do with me, until finally someone had sent someone somewhere with a message. Orders came back while I stood on the front steps in the weak sunshine, feeling cold, dirty, and very, very exposed.
Two minutes later Benjamin and his crew had shown up to take me to the room and hadn’t left me since. I could shut the door and be by myself, kind of, if I didn’t have the weird sense that the air itself was listening to me.
“Yap, yap, little dog,” someone said behind me, but so low I couldn’t tell who it was. And it wasn’t like many of them spoke up all that often.
Graves spun, an oddly graceful movement. I grabbed his arm. A pedestal next to him wobbled a little bit, dust puffing off the globe of luminescent stone perched atop it. “Stop it. All of you. Jesus Christ.”
I decided to try to be tactful for once. “You guys can go on. I’m sure Graves can show me.” And if he couldn’t, I bet I’d find it anyway. Someone would give me directions, or come to fetch me.
Benjamin inhaled again, like I’d just slapped him. “Milady. We can’t.”
That word again. Milady. What they called Anna. I wasn’t sure what to think about that.
“Sure you can.” I pulled on Graves’s arm, just a little. He visibly subsided. It was amazing. A crazy wulfen and a loup-garou, and I hauled them around like they were baggage. They were stronger and faster—at least until I “bloomed”—but they were boys.
I wasn’t sure if the word boys should mean dim or incomprehensible . I was hovering between the two, with a healthy dose of testosterone-poisoned.
“We can’t.” Benjamin just said it, flatly. Like that was that.
I bristled. “You just toddle off to your rooms, and Graves will take me down to the Council or whatever.”
“We’re your Guard.” Benjamin was really getting on the you are so stupid tone bandwagon here. I suppose it was only fair since I was snotty myself, but jeez.
“So you said a million times, but all you’ve done so far is—”
“We absolutely cannot do that.” Leon was the only one who spoke up. He had an amazingly deep voice for such a mousy, fade-into-the-woodwork kind of kid. Benjamin felt old, but so did he. “If the nosferat—or anything else—attack and get near you, we’re to fight them off. Or die in the attempt. We’re the last line of defense.”
“Bodyguards,” one of the blonds supplied in a clear tenor. “But why they chose us—”
“She doesn’t know enough to do the choosing yet, and they haven’t held Trials,” Benjamin said decisively. “Which leaves it up to us. Enough dawdling. Milady, the Council awaits.”
“Call me Dru.” I squeezed Graves’s arm, hoping he’d get the message. “But I’m not sure I need bodyguards.”
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