If Bruce came to pick me up I could look forward to some small talk. He was approachable in a way the others weren’t. Hiro was generally the nicest and didn’t blink no matter how many questions I asked—even if his answers were more like riddles. Kir, though, didn’t say a word. He spent the meetings looking at me with a puzzled expression, like I was a dog sitting up and talking instead of barking on the floor where I belonged.
He set a quick pace, too, and I struggled to keep up. Kept my head down and stretched my legs. At least while he was clearing traffic and I was hurrying, I didn’t have to really think. It was like tagging along after Dad.
Not really.
Leon brought up the rear, drifting in my wake. He didn’t even look out of breath. We arrived at the carved door in a shorter time than I’d thought possible. It opened, and Kir stepped aside. “Milady.”
I stepped on through, into the shabby sitting room. It wasn’t until the doors had clicked shut behind me that I realized Kir hadn’t followed. I stood there for a second, my bag strap sliding down my shoulder, and when the doors on the other side of the room ghosted open I was as ready as I was going to get.
Some part of me was expecting this. I smelled spice and perfume, and the flash of red jerked me up short like a watchdog on a chain.
Anna, framed in the door, stared at me. I stared back.
She looked a bit thinner, but what would make someone else haggard was only glamorous on her. It was the first time I’d seen her in anything other than an old-time dress. She was in fashionably frayed designer jeans and a scrap of red silk that had to be a top more expensive than any sane person would pay for. She was pale, bare arms and cleavage in a peeping-out red lace bra. I’m no bodybuilder, but Dad would have taken one look at Anna’s arms and pronounced them “weedy.” It wasn’t his most damning adjective, but it was close.
She was actually even smiling, heart-shaped face open and bright. “Well, hello there, stranger!”
I swear to God, she chirped at me.
A brief uneasiness filled me. I thought of stepping backward, decided it was better to show no fear. It was an article of faith with both Gran and Dad that showing fear was a good way to madden an already unpredictable person or animal.
“Hey. Kir said there was—”
“I asked him to bring you a little early. Girl time, you know.” She strolled into the room casually, dropped down on one of the leather couches. It didn’t even creak, receiving her the way it would a queen. “It gets so, well, tedious. Just boys hanging around.”
Something about the way she said it told me she didn’t find it boring at all. No, it sounded like she was expected to perfunctorily bemoan it, while looking at her nails and smirking that pleased little half-smile.
I stood there, not wanting to come any further into the room. Had no idea what I was going to say next, but my mouth up and took care of that for me. “Where’re your bodyguards? I never see them with you.” And they all wear red shirts, don’t they? I’ll bet they do. And tight jeans.
“Oh, them.” She waved a hand. “They’re around. I don’t need them in here with a fellow svetocha, of course. They watch from in Shadow when I don’t want to be bothered.”
“In Shadow?” I repeated stupidly.
She waved one elegant hand. The cameo on a black ribbon at her slim white throat shifted a little. “We can go unnoticed, you know. And surely you’ve noticed that you only have to state a wish before they leap to obey? Such good little boys. I’ve trained them that way. It was hard work, but I managed.”
“Huh.” I eased a little farther into the room. Maybe the sense of danger before hadn’t been from her specifically.
Well, she hated Christophe. But it was easy to see how someone could. He was just so . . .
. . . what? I tried to come up with a word, but all I could think of was the boathouse at the other Schola. Where he’d held the knifepoint against his chest and said, Don’t hesitate. And where he’d put his arms around me, and I’d felt safe. Not the type of safe I’d felt with Graves, but still.
The fang marks on my wrist burned. I sat down on another couch, one with a straight shot for the door. This was the one Hiro most often perched on, his quick dark eyes taking in everything in the room.
I kind of wished he was here now. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“That’s one thing about a Schola, Dru. Someone’s always watching.” A bright sunny smile. “Always. It’s like a big . . . security blanket.”
Funny, it didn’t sound like a security blanket. It sounded like a threat. Her bright blue eyes were on me, but I didn’t sense anything other than lazy contentment swimming through the windowless room. The fire—there was always a fire in here—crackled companionably. The touch was quiescent inside my skull, and I relaxed a little bit.
But if it hadn’t been Anna giving me the sense of danger before, then who? Or what? One of the Council?
The traitor, maybe? Everyone seemed to be so sure it was Christophe. Except me, and maybe the wulfen whose lives he’d saved. I was supposed to find out who wanted me dead here, but I wasn’t having any luck.
Jesus, I wish Dad was here. “Anna.” I decided a frontal assault would be best, so to speak. “Can I ask you something?”
“You just did.” She made another lazy, hand-waving gesture. “But go ahead, dear.”
What the hell are you playing at? But I chose something else instead. “Why do you hate Christophe?”
She stiffened a little, eyelids dropping a fraction. The smile fell away, like a china plate dropping from a wall hanging. “I don’t exactly hate him.”
“Then what is it?” I figured out she was keeping one eye on me and one eye on the door. Maybe she was just as nervous about me as I was about her, and the bitch cheerleader vibe was her protective coloration.
It was a sobering thought. Did that mean I’d made a snap judgment about her, the same thing I hated when people did it to me?
“Did he tell you?” One corner of her candy-gloss mouth turned down.
“He was kind of busy keeping us all alive. He didn’t mention you.” Beyond, Oh, Anna, spreading her poison. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. And Dylan hadn’t seemed too happy to see her either. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. It would be a bad idea.
“Would it surprise you to know that Reynard was my first love?” Now her attention was all on me. Weighing, watching, greedy little eyes. I tasted oranges and wax, but faintly. The fang marks in my wrist tingled, itching. The irritation in them was getting more intense. “Yes? I see by your expression that it does surprise you. He’s a heartbreaker; it’s his one true gift. Along with treachery.” She made a slight movement, settling herself more comfortably in the couch. “We were an item for quite some time. A few years.”
I was surprised. I couldn’t even imagine the two of them in the same room together. Not without feeling a little queasy. And why hadn’t Christophe told me this? “I don’t think—” I began. Was I actually going to defend Christophe to her?
“No, you don’t. Let me give you some sisterly advice, Dru. The next time you see Christophe, run. If my experience of him is any indication, he’s up to no good. He likes impressionable young girls. A lot of djamphir do. Human women, you know. Svetocha are supposed to be infinitely more attractive, but there are so few of us.” A quiet little laugh. “Just you and me. Don’t you feel special?”
Something curdled in my chest. If I need a reason now, Dru, it will have to be you. But here she was telling me . . . telling me what?
God, I sure could pick ’em. After a long run of no dating at all, here I was learning all sorts of things about the boys I liked.
Except I didn’t like Christophe that way, did I? I’d told Graves flat out that I didn’t. That he scared me in some weird deep-down way.
A change of subject would be a great idea, I decided. It was stuffy in here, and I was sweating. My ears were beginning to ring. “Why did you come all the way out to that reform
Schola to see me? You could have brought me here.” There was a whole Schola burned down, wulfen and djamphir dead, and here she was, pretty as a picture and pulling all sorts of strings.
She eyed me like I’d made an embarrassing bodily noise. “I thought the Council was going to bring you here.” It sounded flat and unconvincing. “We’re still trying to find out how you ended up out in the boondocks.”
It had the brassy bitter taste of a lie the liar doesn’t really expect you to swallow. Christophe had tried to send me here to the Prima. Dylan himself had tried to get word out that I was upstate and in danger.
I stared at her, she stared at me, and I had just opened my mouth to inform her she was lying, when the outside door flew open hard enough to bang on the walls on either side.
I leapt up, my bag spilling off the couch. Anna laughed. It was a high breathless titter.
Hiro stalked into the room, his aspect on and his fangs out. His gaze made one brief pitiless arc over everything in sight—Anna lounging, me with crimson cheeks, breathing hard, and probably looking guilty as hell—and he checked, coming to a complete stop.
Kir trailed behind him. Bruce followed, looking thoughtful. And, once he saw me, palpably relieved.
“Milady.” Again, Hiro made it clear—I wasn’t sure quite how—that he was talking to me. “Forgive the intrusion.”
I swallowed what felt like a good chunk of my heart. The sense of danger returned, the reek of waxed oranges bursting on the back of my palate. “Yeah. I, um. There’s a Council meeting?”
“No.” Bruce’s relief turned to perplexity. “But . . . did you want to call one?”
Call one? What the hell for? I shook my head. “No, I . . . wait, there’s no meeting?”
It wasn’t until Hiro was already halfway across the room, bearing down on me, that I realized I was scrubbing my left wrist against the hem of my hoodie. Quick as a striking snake, his fingers closed around my wrist, and he dragged it away from my body.
I almost dropped my weight down into my knees, bracing myself to tear my arm away. But he looked down at the marks, pushing my sleeve up. “These are old. Weeks old.” He darted a single, malicious glance at Anna. “Let me guess. Reynard.”
“What?” Bruce crowded him aside. Inhaled sharply. “Why didn’t you tell us you were marked?”
“He . . . uh, well . . . Christophe had to. The suckers were coming to kill us. He asked if he could borrow something from me. I didn’t know it was . . . that.” Memory swallowed me whole, and I shuddered.
. . . Christophe jerked his head back, fangs sliding free of my flesh, and something wrapped itself tightly around my wrist, below his bruising-hard grip on my forearm. He exhaled, shuddering, and Graves tried to pull me away again. My arm stretched like Silly Putty between them, my shoulder screaming, and I couldn’t make a sound.
The winter blue of Christophe’s irises clouded, dark striations like food coloring dropped in water threading through the light. They still glowed even more intensely, in a way that shouldn’t have made sense. “Sweet,” he hissed, and made an odd hitching movement. His chin dipped, and his fingers tightened bruising-hard on my wrist, like he was going to do that again.
I wanted to scream, couldn’t. Nothing worked. My body just hung there, frozen and unresponsive.
“Christophe.” Shanks sounded nervous. “Um, Christophe?”
The world trembled on a knife edge. Blackness crowded in around the corners. My head tipped further back. Graves held me up, both arms around me now. It was work to breathe. In, out; in, out, my ribs almost refused to rise. There was air outside my face, but it was just so hard to bring it in. Instead, the sea of atmosphere pushed down on me, crushing.
“Jesus,” Graves whispered. “What did you do to her?”
“How much did he take?” Hiro asked quietly.
Over his shoulder, Anna’s face floated. She was white. Not pale, like she usually was. White. As if she’d just seen a ghost. Red pin-pricks flickered in the depths of her pupils, and there was a sudden overwhelming certainty that if Hiro wasn’t between us she would want to talk to me. Right up close.
Right up hard.
“She’s with him,” Anna hissed. “A traitor, right under our nose. Just like Eliza—”
Hiro let go of me and turned sharply. He actually bumped me, he turned so fast, and I stumbled back, almost falling on the couch. Bruce’s hand closed around my upper arm, bruising-tight, and his other hand shot out, wrapping in the back of Hiro’s high-collared gray silk jacket-shirt. The material gave a weird slippery sound, like it was straining.
“You accuse so easily, Anna.” Hiro was cold, cutting-calm. Roaring filled my ears. I felt light-headed. “And yet—”
Kir was suddenly there, between the svetocha and Hiro. His fangs were out, red hair thickly streaked with pure gold as the aspect touched him. A deep thrumming sound tightened all the available air, turned it to soup. Bruce’s stance hardened, and he gave me an unreadable glance.
“Let’s all be reasonable here,” he said quietly. His tone sliced through the growling, and I realized the weird skritching sound was the silk threads in Hiro’s jacket stretching and tearing a little at a time. “Dru.”
Wait. She was about to say Elizabeth. Did she know Mom? My legs had turned to wet noodles. I stood up, though, sweating and shaking. “Yessir?” As if he was Dad, and we were in a bar with a bunch of Real World baddies and someone had just made the mistake of messing with him.
“How much did Reynard take? It hurt, didn’t it? How many times?”
“I . . .” I hated thinking about it. The shaking got worse. “Three. Mouthfuls. Gulps, whatever.”
Anna let out a hissing sound, like a kettle near full steam. Her face contorted and smoothed, and Hiro leaned forward a little more. Sooner or later that jacket was going to rip, and God alone knew what was going to happen.
“That’s all right then.” Bruce’s grasp on me gentled. “You certainly have led an eventful life, Milady.”
“How do we know she’s—” Anna began.
“You don’t want to finish that sentence.” Hiro cut across her words. Some essential tension leaked out of him, though, and Bruce obviously felt it too. Because he let go of Hiro’s jacket and braced me. I was going to have a bruise on my arm, though. I could just tell.
“We don’t doubt a svetocha’s word.” Bruce was looking up over my head when he said it, but his jaw was set. A muscle flicked once in his cheek, and his hawklike face had settled into a cruel, beautiful picture, each plane and line pared down. His aspect wasn’t on, but I sensed it running under the surface, like a current under still black bayou water.
“That’s right.” Hiro straightened his sleeves. I don’t know how he did it, but he seemed a few inches taller. “We don’t doubt a svetocha’s word.”
Anna looked like she’d been slapped. Rosettes of feverish color bloomed high up on her perfect cheeks. Her fangs peeped out, and I swear to God I heard a cat’s hiss, too. The prettiness she wore like a shield slipped, and for half a second something ugly showed underneath it.
Then she was gone, moving too quickly to be seen. There was a sound like paper tearing and nasty chittering laughter in its wake as she did the trick I’d first seen after Christophe drove Ash off in the snow, what seemed like a million years ago and miles away.
I swallowed. My throat was burning, a cartload of dry ice. I was cold, even though I was sweating and the fire was putting out a roaring wall of dry heat. The bloodhunger folded back down, leaving just a rasping at the very back of my palate. “What. The hell.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, Hiro.” Kir, shaking his head. His aspect was gone now, and he looked oddly sad.
“Little red lapdog.” The Japanese djamphir’s words could have carried more contempt, I suppose, if they’d rented out a U-Haul. Maybe.
“She is the head of the Order,” Kir retorted stiffly.
“Gentlemen.” Bruce raised his hands. “Let’s be civilized. We all
know Milady Anna is . . . difficult, and—”
“She drove Elizabeth out, just as—” Hiro began, but Bruce shushed him. Actually shushed and looked at me.
I didn’t even care. I picked up my bag with shaking hands. When I looked up, all three of them were staring at me.
“I know she doesn’t like me.” I tried to sound steady. “I can’t even figure out why.”
I was trying to express something about antimatter girls, but I gave it up as hopeless. No matter how adult they were, they were boys. They just wouldn’t get it. Why would I explain anyway?
If Anna had a thing for Christophe, and he was hanging around me . . . yeah, I could see where that could make some problems.
Hiro looked about to say something, but I’d had enough. I took two sliding steps to the side. Bruce didn’t twitch, but I got the idea he wanted to.
“I’m going to class,” I said in a small voice and fled. I ran back up to my room, locked the door, and didn’t open it until Leon, Benjamin, and Graves all showed up to pound on it. And I didn’t say a word when they asked me what the hell had happened.
I know the rules. You don’t squeal, not ever. You take care of things on your own.
And besides, I figured it out while I was hunching in the bathroom, hyperventilating and rocking back and forth. I didn’t even want to think about Anna and Christophe, or whatever. He didn’t like her, she hated him, and maybe they had once dated and she didn’t like him hanging around other girls. Who cared? There were bigger problems.
Anna was the head of the Order, and at least one person on the council—Kir—was on her side completely.
Which brought me to the scariest question of all.
Which one—or possibly more—of the djamphir guarding me was one of Anna’s creatures?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The session with Ash was mercifully short that night. He had quieted down long before dawn. I hadn’t wanted to leave him, but Graves rolled his eyes and told me he needed some sleep. And I was so worn-out and jumpy I just gave in.