“What?” Now he sounded annoyed.
I saw her at the old Schola. She wants me to hate Christophe, and you know . . . I can’t even say what I’m thinking to myself. “I don’t know what to do.” Admitting it out loud was probably the scariest thing I’d done in the last week, and that was saying something.
When Dad was alive, I knew what to do. He told me, and he never let me flounder. When he showed up all zombified, things started spinning hard, but Graves had been there. And as long as I was focusing on keeping Goth Boy out of trouble, the not-knowing had seemed more manageable. Plus, I’d been the one with the books and the guns and some knowledge of the Real World. He’d been a civilian. Now we were both in the same leaky boat, and I didn’t want him to know I had no idea where we were going.
Graves let out a long breath, closing his eyes. A thin line of dark-brown hair showed at his temples. Roots. The black-dyed bits were growing out. “Right now we catch some sleep. Then I go find Bobby and Dibs and see what they say. Then we find out how to work that computer and those credit cards and get you some clothes.” He paused, added an afterthought, glancing at me like he expected me to disagree. “And me, too.”
It was a pretty good plan, one I should’ve come up with. “But what if . . .” I stopped. The vampires probably hadn’t found me through the Internet, for Christ’s sake. No, they’d been told where to find me. Christophe had as much as said so, and so had Dylan. “Then what do we do?”
“Watch and wait.” He yawned hugely. I could almost see his tonsils. “Tell Shanks and Dibs the score so they can watch you when I can’t. I don’t trust those djamphir.”
“I don’t either.” But what choice do we have? And here he was, thinking he was going to be protecting me now. I wasn’t sure I liked that. If I wasn’t taking care of him, well, what did he need me for? “Graves?”
“What?” Now he sounded truly aggravated. He flung his arm over his eyes, almost hitting me with his elbow. I didn’t even move—he could have cracked me a good one and I’m not sure I would’ve moved.
“I’m glad you’re here.” A flush was working its way up my throat, staining my cheeks. I had another thing or two I wanted to talk to him about, but the time never seemed right.
It never does. And how do you tell a half-werwulf Goth Boy that you really like him, especially when he seems pretty determined not to hear? I mean, he knew, right? I’d as much as told him. And here he was.
“Yeah.” Another jaw-cracking yawn. “Now be a good girl and don’t get into trouble for a bit, okay? I’m bushed.”
Irritation flashed through me; I swallowed it. It tasted bitter, and I decided to go brush my teeth. He didn’t say anything else when I slid off the bed, and by the time I reached the bathroom door again he was snoring.
I didn’t blame him. Sleeping in hallways was probably not good for him.
I stood in the middle of the thin swords of sunlight spearing toward the carpet, my arms loosely crossed like I was hugging myself. Looking at him. With his arm over his face and his mouth agape, all you could see was part of his nose and the stubble. He sprawled across the bed, a black blot on all the blue. Chapped hands and tangled hair, and his jeans were developing holes in the knees. His T-shirt rucked up, showing a slice of belly ridged lightly with muscle, a line of light furring marching down from his belly button and vanishing under the edge of a pair of black boxer-briefs.
I looked away, toward the door. My cheeks burned. All the locks were turned, and I’d dropped the bar into its brackets. I was alone in here with him. The flush spread all over me, from my toes up into my hair. My internal thermostat was shorted out in a big way.
Well, I wasn’t going to be sleeping. So I should probably do something useful, like brush my teeth and get some clothes ordered for Graves.
It looked like I was going to be here for awhile.
I was in the little box of a kitchen when Augustine came back. Two weeks and I’d just gotten him to buy some bread. I once tried for flour so I could make it, but he’d hustled me out of the grocery store like I’d made some sort of strange bodily sound. I was just putting the pan from my dinner—beans and biscuits, since he’d finally brought back some flour last night—in the hot soapy water when I heard the scratching at the door.
I froze and looked at the end of the counter where the snub-nosed .38 sat. If you are in here, sweetheart, and you think it may not be me coming back, you use one of these.
I’d asked him what the hell would happen if I shot him by mistake, and he grinned at me and told me not to be silly. It was kind of like Dad.
Not really.
Brooklyn breathed outside the window. The kitchen looked out onto a blank brick wall. But there was a ledge outside, and August had made me look out at the handholds going up to the roof or down to another window in a hall two floors below. No sunlight ever got in here, but the bedroom window sometimes had some. It was like living in a hole. And he never let me go outside for very long, and never alone.
The touch told me it was August. And that something was wrong.
The door scraped open. He must have been fumbling with his keys. That wasn’t like him.
I bolted for the door. There was a gun on the spindly little table right beside it, tucked behind a dusty vase of artificial flowers. He was a hunter, like Dad, so he was always prepared. And he’d taken me through where all the weapons were, just in case.
August spilled through the door, shoving it shut behind him and almost overbalancing. I caught him, and I smelled something coppery.
I knew blood when I smelled it, even at this age. “Jesus Christ.” I found out I was saying it over and over again, found something different to say. “What happened?”
He shook his head, blond hair moving oddly, as if it was wet. Was it raining out there? I didn’t know. August was tall, muscle-heavy, and almost tipped both of us over as his legs gave out. He was muttering in Polish. At least, I guessed it was Polish. As if he was drunk. But he wasn’t drunk.
He was hurt bad, and there was nobody here to help him except me.
“What?” I had to know if he’d been followed, or what. Dad had never come home this beat-up. August’s familiar white tank top was torn and dirty, dyed bright red. His jeans were a mess of ribbons, and he held his blue plaid shirt over his chest with one arm. His boots were soaked and dark. I started dragging him toward the bathroom. “August, dammit, what happened?”
He shook free of me and scrambled for the bathroom. I ran through all the first aid I know—I can handle pretty much anything short of a gunshot wound, really. First I had to find the damage, then stop the bleeding, check him for shock—
“It’s all right.” He made it to the bathroom door, a slice of white tile behind him. The entire apartment was suddenly too small. I mean, it was a cracker box anyway: one bedroom, the kitchen and dining room the size of a postage stamp and papered with movie posters, the tiny bathroom with its claw-foot tub. “Looks worse than it is. Bring vodka.” His accent—half Brooklyn, half Bronx, all Bugs Bunny—cut every vowel short. But something else was rubbing through the words, too. The song of a different tongue.
I made it back into the kitchen on shaking legs. If we had to blow this place, he wouldn’t have asked for vodka. Relief burst through me.
After all, he’d come back. He went out almost every night to hunt. I guessed New York was pretty dangerous, all those people crammed together and the things that go bump in the night hiding in all the corners. I wished I knew a bit more about the things that inhabited here—rat spirits, certainly. Hexes and voodoo, certainly. Sorcery, you bet. Other predators. There were probably werwulfen too, but Dad never messed with those. And August wasn’t like Dad; he didn’t tell me anything about what he did. I wasn’t his helper.
Missing Dad rose like a stone in my throat. I grabbed the Stoli bottle from the freezer, sloshed it, and decided to put a fresh one in. Before I carried it into the bathroom, I uncapped it and took a healthy swallow. It burned the ba
ck of my throat, cold fire.
I knocked on the bathroom door. “Augie?”
No sound for a long moment. I had a vivid mental image of him standing in front of the sink, bent over halfway, his lips pulled back from his teeth and a haze of red spreading out from—
He jerked the door open. “Brought the vodka?”
His hair was dry, springing up in soft golden spikes. I didn’t think about it. I was more concerned with him bleeding, so I pushed into the tiny bathroom and grabbed the Medikit in its green nylon bag. “Where’s the worst of it?”
He screwed the cap off the vodka and took a long pull. If he found out I was sneaking gulps he might have gotten mad. But then, I didn’t think he’d notice. Dad never noticed I’d been sneaking Jim Beam. It tasted foul, but it did steady you. Gran always said a bit of hooch was good for the nerves. Her people had been rumrunners back in the day.
I pushed the flannel shirt aside. He winced. There were claw marks, but the blood didn’t look to be all his. He was only scratched, the scratches flushed and angry, diagonally across his chest. One of them jagged down like something had tried to eviscerate him, but it petered out. He was lucky.
“Jesus. What did this?” My hands moved all on their own, opening the Medikit and sitting it in the dry sink. I grabbed his shoulder. He sank down on the toilet. Thank God the lid was down. We had a running battle going on over that. He was male, after all.
“Nasty things. Nothing a nice girl needs to know about, eh Dru?”
I rolled my eyes, opened up the cabinet, and got the peroxide down. He took another shot of vodka. “Is it raining out there?”
He shook his head, still swallowing. His throat moved. He closed his eyes, but not before I got a flash of color—yellow, like sunshine.
But August’s eyes were dark. I didn’t know then that he was djamphir . Whenever I thought about it, it made sense. He’d been struggling to keep the aspect down so I wouldn’t ask him questions, and I’d been oblivious.
Hey, I was young. And I didn’t even know djamphir existed. I’d heard of suckers, of course—everyone who interacts with the Real World knows about them. But Dad never said a word about half-sucker vampire hunters. I never had a clue.
I had the scissors and was cutting his tank top before he realized it. “Settle down,” I told him, slapping his left hand away. “Let me look. I patch up Dad all the time.” When I glanced up, he was looking at me, and his eyes were dark again.
“It’s no problem, Dru. I heal quick.”
He did. They were already fading, the claw swipes on his chest. “Jesus.” I ripped open a packet of gauze. “I’m going to clean them anyway. You never know.”
“If it makes you happy.” He shrugged, wincing, and lifted the vodka bottle again.
He stayed long enough to change into fresh clothes and smoke one of his weird foreign cigarettes while I fixed an omelet. He lived on eggs and vodka. Said it kept him young. I mean, he was what, twenty-five? At least, he looked twenty-five. God knows how old he is. If I ever see him again, maybe I’ll ask.
Then he told me to stay inside, stocked up on ammo again, and was gone inside twenty minutes. Leaving me staring at a pile of bloody clothes, the ashtray with a still-smoking butt, two spent clips that needed to be refilled, and his plate on the table.
At least he’d promised to bring home some bread. Maybe just to shut me up, I dunno.
I bolted for the window in the bedroom. Sometimes if I was quick enough I could catch a glimpse of him on the street, moving with his head up and a spring in his step. Sometimes he might as well have vanished as soon as the apartment door locked.
Outside, streetlights fought with the darkness. It wasn’t raining. It was foggy, a wet cotton-wool fog, and the Hefty bags of trash stacked on the sidewalk were just like they always were. The trucks came around twice a week, but the amount of trash never seemed to go down. It was filthy here, and cold. I wouldn’t have minded if I could get out and see some things—I’d’ve loved to go to the Met, or even just walked around downtown and seen stuff.
But August said no. And he was gone every night.
I sighed, resting my forehead on the cold glass. Every time he left I wasn’t sure he’d come back.
Story of my life.
I finally slid off the bed and plodded out into the living room. At least I could clean things up while he was gone. So that if—when—he came back, he’d see I wasn’t any trouble. I was pulling my own weight.
Besides, it was something to do until Dad came back.
If . . . when he came back.
CHAPTER SIX
It was early afternoon by the time I switched the computer off. I stretched, yawned, padded for the bed and dropped down. That woke Graves up, where my clicking at keys and sometimes swearing under my breath hadn’t.
“Huh?” He half-sat up, and I took the chance to rescue one of the pillows from under his head. “Whaaa?”
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.” I squiggled around, getting comfortable. “I just finished, that’s all.”
“Okay.” He settled back down again, and I lay there for a few seconds feeling him move around before I opened my eyes and found him almost nose-to-nose with me. His silver skull-and-crossbones earring glinted at me. His irises were oddly luminescent, and a shadow of stubble spread over his jaw.
Weird. He kind of was getting hairy, but it was just a five o’clock shadow. I had the sudden urge to touch his jawline, a feeling so intense my fingers itched. The skin underneath, on the curve where his throat made a hollow before his collarbone and shoulder, looked so fragile. His lips were slightly parted, and we looked at each other for a long few seconds before he moved back slightly. “Sorry,” he half-whispered. “I haven’t brushed my teeth.”
“It’s okay.” I stayed where I was. He was still inside the personal-space boundary, the one that even friends don’t cross. “Look . . .” But I ran out of words and courage at the same time.
How did I get to be such a wuss?
“What?” He didn’t look irritated, just curious. And was he blushing?
He was. High flags of color stood out on his cheeks. The blush spread down his neck, and he went still all at once, like a dog sensing something dangerous or interesting about to happen.
If I could draw him just like this, in charcoal maybe on good paper, catching the way the light slid over his high cheekbones and touched his mouth, I would tear the picture out and keep it in my bag. The one that I keep for emergencies.
I grabbed every last failing scrap of courage I had left and leaned forward. The last time I’d tried to do this, I’d ended up plastering a kiss on his cheek. But since then, he’d admitted to being interested. Sort of.
I was about to find out.
Our mouths met. He was absolutely still, and a flash of hot embarrassment went through me. Oh, crap. He didn’t mean it.
But then he moved, too. His arms came around me, and we sort of melted together. I’m no prude, really, I’ve had my share of kissing behind bleachers or awkward snatched moments of makeout in halls or band rooms, so I’m not completely hopeless. It was pretty quickly apparent Graves was a novice.
He learned quick, though. Some people just get kissing; others never will. He got it. There was none of the loose-mouth sloppy spit stuff some guys do, none of the mashing that happens when a guy thinks girls like to have their lips crushed against their teeth. Which, you know, jeez. Let a girl breathe, huh?
His arms tightened, and I was kind of worrying what to do about my arm, the one trapped under my pillow. But then he really got the hang of it and leaned even further in, his tongue doing some really interesting things I’d never even thought of, and I was feeling . . . was I? Yes.
I was feeling safe. Not the kind of safe where you know there are still bad things howling outside the door waiting to get in. No, it was the kind of safe where you sink down in your bed at the end of the day and know you can go to sleep and everything is going to be the same tomorrow.
&
nbsp; He felt like home. Not like a scary roller-coaster ride, like Christophe.
Don’t think about that, Dru. I did my best to shove Christophe out of my head. The thought went quietly.
I got my arm around him and tightened up, but just at that moment he broke away. I ended up with my face in his throat, so close I could smell a healthy boy who needed his daily shower and was just about to get right on that. It was a nice smell, and I filled my lungs with it.
But right under it was another aroma, just as delicious. A copper tang, with a hint of wildness and moonlit nights. It was the fluid in his veins, and my teeth tingled a little. The smell of his blood tickled that place at the back of my throat. The place normal people don’t have.
The place where the red thirst lives.
No. Jesus Christ. I didn’t want to even think about what would happen if he found out I was growing fangs with my face so near his neck. Was that why he’d all of a sudden gone still again? Could he smell the bloodhunger on me?
Would Christophe smell it?
“Dru,” Graves whispered.
I found out I’d snaked my leg between his and curled us up together like kudzu tangling on a fence. There was definitely something happening below his belt, and confusion swamped me. Did he not like me? Could he help it? What was with him, anyway?
I stayed where I was, breathing deep and fast, hoping the tingle in my teeth and the dryness in my throat would go away. It was like that old dream of walking down the school halls and finding out you’re naked.
“Dru?” He sounded like he had something caught in his throat. “Look, I’m sorry. I just . . .”
I would wriggle away, I told myself. In just a second. A hot flush suffused me, like the cloudiness in water when you drop the macaroni in. My teeth went back to normal; I swallowed several times.
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