Jealousy (22 page)

If I got to Graves first and told him about this, maybe I could somehow make him understand that we needed to leave this place before things got any worse.

Shanks squatted, an easy graceful movement. “Don’t worry, I can smell the red on you. Not gonna get close until you calm down.” A quick flick of a glance up over my head. The owl gave one last soft hoot, and the sound of wingbeats retreated. “Which you’d better do soon, before someone comes in here and finds you like this. You’re bleeding.”

That, right now, was the least of my worries. I shut my eyes and dragged a deep breath in. Blew it out between pursed lips. “Don’t. Tell.” I needed to talk to Graves first. To
explain
.

“Hm.” He didn’t agree or disagree, just made a noncommittal noise. “I never thought I’d see the Red Queen in person. She don’t show herself to the peasants much.” He glanced up at the door she’d retreated through. “Jesus.”

Red Queen
? I made a shapeless noise, but it was definitely a question.

“Oh, yeah.” A small, humorless laugh. “Wulfen know about her. We’re not stupid, Dru. We like to know who’s playing the game.”

I was bruised and
scraped all over, both my shoulders ached like they’d been dislocated and put back wrong, and my legs were like wet noodles. The shiner had gone down, though. A bit. Now it looked deep blue, fading into green-yellow instead of fresh and dark red. The baths worked wonders.

I was still standing there, looking at myself in the stripe I’d swiped away from the condensation on the mirror, when someone banged on the locker-room door. “Dru! You in there?”

It was Graves.

Shit
. I watched my eyes widen and my mouth pull down and wished for a better poker face. “Yeah,” I yelled back. My split lip had closed up, but it was still tender and puffy. I pulled down the neck of my T-shirt, winced at the cuff of bruising crawling up my shoulder. “Go on, I’ll catch up.”
As soon as I can figure out how to explain this to you.

“No
way
. I’m on duty right now. Benny and Leon got called away for something.” The door opened a bit more, but he didn’t stick his head in. Echoes bounced eerily off blue tiles, split themselves on the edges of the shower stalls and choked over the top of the bubbling of the not-water in the sunken tubs. “You’re gonna be late! Come on!”

“Just
go!
” My voice broke. I turned the cold tap on as high as it could go. Maybe it would take some of the swelling down, and the sound of it would drown out whatever he wanted to say.

I should’ve known better. Because he banged the door open and stamped right on in.

“For Christ’s sake, can’t you be on time even once in your…” His boots squeaked as he stopped. I grabbed both edges of the white porcelain sink and shook my hair down. “Dru?”

My knuckles were white and my legs refused to quite hold me up. So Shanks hadn’t said anything. Or if he had, Graves had shrugged it off.

He touched my shoulder. I flinched.

The breath left him in a hard puff, as if he’d been punched too. He was staring at the swipe in the mirror, where he could see my bruised, puffing face. “Jesus
Christ
.”

“It’s not bad,” I lied and jerked away from him. He grabbed my arm, though, quicker than he should have been able to. I kept forgetting how fast he was with the
loup-garou
burning inside him. His fingers sank in, and I let out a short bark of pain as they ground into a fresh bruise. “Graves—” I searched for the words to make him see.
We have to leave. Please listen to me this time.

“Who?” He all but shook me, and the deep vibration under the surface of the word was a
loup-garou
’s command-voice. The wulfen use the Other inside them to put on fur and strength, but someone half-imprinted and inoculated against wulfbite like Graves uses it another way—for mental dominance. I’d seen him hold a roomful of angry wulfen back with that voice. I’d seen him press a fellow wulf down into a crouch with just the weight of his will alone.

He was full of surprises, my Goth Boy.

The steam in the air shredded away in shapes with sharp teeth and pointed noses. I tore myself away and grabbed at my own arm, a fresh bruise rising under the old one. “Ow!”

He drew himself up, shoulders straining under the black fabric of his coat. “
Who
?”

He sounded just like my grandmother’s owl. The thought hit me sideways with unreliable, unsteady, panicked hilarity. I choked down a laugh that felt like a sob. “Graves, we have got to get out of here. Please. Let’s just go.”

Because I knew something else; I’d known it even when we started whaling on each other. It would be her word against mine, and she wouldn’t have come down here without a good story in place to cover her ass. The fact that Shanks had seen the whole thing wouldn’t help in front of the Council—he was a wulf.

Not a
djamphir
.

Besides, you don’t ever be the first one to tell. It’s not Dad’s code. It’s kids’ code, learned every day at lunch and recess. Anna could break it—she was an adult, even though she looked my age.

But me? I couldn’t. I didn’t want to tell. I wanted to get the hell out of here. Sooner rather than later.

Like
now.

Graves’s eyes glowed, sharp green. He obviously didn’t believe me.
“Who
?” The word rattled the mirror against the wall, its plastic brackets chattering. The steam streamed away, surrounded us like the white flying bits inside a snow globe. The kind that you shake while it plays a stupid song from some forgettable saccharine Disney movie.

“Don’t worry about it.” I shrugged my hoodie further up, zipped it all the way to my chin. “Let’s just go. I’ve got money; we can get off the grounds before they even know we . . .” I ran out of words, staring at him. “Please.” I searched for more to say. “
Please
, Graves. I have to get out of here.”

He stared at me, deathly pale under his even caramel coloring. When he did that, he looked almost gray. His mouth set itself in a thin line, and his hair all but stood up, snapping with vitality. His earring glittered, a sharp dart of light.

“You’ve got to calm down.” I sounded pale and unhealthy even to myself. “Graves. Please. You have
got
to calm down. I need—”

He lifted one hand, a fist. His index finger popped out accusingly, and he pointed at my face. There was a faint crackling sound as he bulked up. He wouldn’t get hairy, but he does definitely sort of swell when the
loup-garou
comes out. “Who. Hit. You?”

That’s not fucking important!
Why couldn’t he just
listen
to me? “I just . . . just . . . I . . . Graves—” Of all the times for my mouth to fail me, this was the worst. But his rage, swimming in the air and rasping against the
touch
, made it hard to think. And worst of all, the bloodhunger came back, circling that special space at the back of my palate with cat-tongue fingers. Rasping. My entire mouth tingled.

If I sprouted fangs now, what would he think of me?

“You had better tell me something,” Graves said quietly. “I hate not being told, Dru. You know I hate not being told.”

What?
He was making no sense. I opened my mouth. Nothing came out, and I shut it again.

Because I could feel the fangs lengthening. They touched my bottom teeth lightly, the entire shape of the jaw changing.

“Fine.” Graves turned on one heel, so fast his coat flared out and touched my knee. Stamped away, paused right next to the door. His head dropped, shoulders shaking, and one fist pistoned out.

The wall gave a crack. Powder and dust puffed out; tiles shattered and split in zigzags. I flinched again. “
Stop
!” I yelled, and every droplet of fog in the locker room flashed. Tiny little diamonds, all hanging spinning in the air.

“When you feel like telling me,” he said very softly, “come and find me.”

He shrank a little, the
change
receding through him. Took his fist away from the divot in the wall and shook it briefly, flinging little shards of tile away. Startling red spattered on the wall, and the smell of blood exploded inside my head.

Almost-wulfen. A tang like strawberries mixed with incense. Green eyes and the metallic hint of snow, caramel skin and chapped hands. It was like seeing him in four dimensions, an extra layer added onto the everyday Graves who slept in my room and pecked me on the cheek each evening.

I held onto the sink like it was a raft and I was drowning. “Please. Let’s just leave. You and me.” A faint, girlish whisper. “Graves.
Please.
”

“Yeah. Run away. Sure. Just like my mom. Run away and go back each time.” He waved his lacerated hand. The wounds were already closing—wulfen heal fast, and he’d gotten a full dose of that talent, even if he didn’t get hairy. “But I swear to God I will find out who did this to you. Even if you don’t think you can trust me.”

The thirst roared through me and my fingers sank into the porcelain with little creaking sounds. If he went running off after Anna right now . . .

He yanked the door open so hard it hit the wall and more tiles shattered. The mirror above the sink cracked in gigantic zigzags, a spiderweb of expended force.

He was gone. I stood there, clinging to the stupid sink, every inch of me hurting and hot tears slicking my cheeks. I folded down, rested my hot forehead against the cool smoothness, and that’s how Benjamin and Shanks found me ten minutes later.

Shanks leaned against
the door, his arms folded. “I guess Graves wanted to surprise you.”

“He didn’t go to class.” Dibs’s fingers were gentle. The blond wulfen smoothed some goop over my bruised cheek. He’d bandaged and gooped up the rest of me and was now working on my face with butterfly-light touches. “Hold still. I wish someone would have come and gotten me sooner. I can’t do much once it starts to get this dark.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. My split lip hurt. All of me hurt. I seemed to have only gotten to the morning-after part of healing—the part where you’re stiff and wish you’d never been born, let alone in a fight. I didn’t even have the adrenaline rush or the part where you feel like you’ve kicked the world’s ass.

No, I just felt damaged all over.

“He saw you like that?” Shanks kept repeating it. He pulled the sleeves of his blue cable-knit sweater up, his large bony wrists exposed. “Man, oh man. Oh,
man
.”

“I didn’t have a chance to even talk. He got too mad.” I flinched as Dibs started smearing the stuff on my eyelid. Arnica, he called it. Good for the bruises. I’d’ve preferred Gran’s mugwort and a bunch of aspirin. “I, uh. You know.” I couldn’t even begin to explain it.

“I don’t wanna be the wulf in his way when something happens to you.” Dibs’s wide blue eyes were dark and worried. His black medical bag lay open on the bed next to me. He kept wiping the arnica stuff on his gray T-shirt absently whenever he needed his fingers cleaned. “He’s crazy-mad.”

I could even feel Benjamin outside the door, waiting and worrying. It was Shanks who had argued him into getting Dibs out of class, and it was Shanks who had shoved him out the door when I got all girlie and started crying some more. A pile of tissues scattered over the blue carpet, and the particular darkness of 1:00 a.m. filled the window.

I was beginning to wish I’d never gotten out of bed. If I hadn’t, Graves would probably still be here. It would’ve been nice.

Dibs dabbed at my eye. I hissed in a short sharp breath, and he gave me a quick look of apology.

“You did pretty good,” Shanks said suddenly. “I mean, she’s older. And fully trained. You still kicked her ass.”

“She’s rusty.”
And weedy.
I suppressed the urge to shake Dibs’s hands away from my smarting eye. “That was the only reason I had a chance. I don’t think she practices.”

“The Red Queen’s dangerous. Hold still.” The stuff he was smearing on me smelled nose-numbing weird. “This will sting if I get it in your eye.”

Like it matters—what’s one more thing to hurt?
I had a better question. “What exactly do you know? Was I, like, the
only
person not to know who she is?”

Shanks shrugged. He tilted his head a little, listening to the hall. “Benjamin’s gone back to his room. Thank God, that was starting to bug me.” A little bit of the tension in him bled away. “I don’t know much, really. Just that the head of the Order’s the Red Queen. She’s been pressing for renegotiation of some Treaty terms for a long time. She gets a lot of what she wants; the Council just gets worn down. My parents used to talk about it after the cubs went to bed.” A shrug. “There’re just . . . rumors.”

“What kind of rumors?” I shut my eyes when Dibs murmured at me. He was so gentle, and I began to feel a little less battered. At least here with him and Shanks, nobody was messing with me.

“Just rumors. Nothing I can put my finger on, just saying that it’s better not to be in her way.” He gave me a long, measuring glance. “I can see why.”

So could I. “I didn’t know she hated my mother.”

He let out a laugh that was like a bark. White teeth flashed. “You sounded pretty sure.”

“It was a guess.” Or it was the
touch
blurring in my head, showing me other people’s business. Gran was big on minding your own business, but sometimes you just can’t. “A pretty good one, I suppose.”

Thinking about Gran made my head hurt. Her owl had pretty much saved my bacon so many times. I’d always thought of it as
her
owl because it showed up the night she died.

Now I wasn’t so sure.

“Why would she hate your mother?” Dibs finished smearing goop on my face. “Okay, that’s it. Let me take another look at that wrist. You’re not healing right.”

“I don’t
know
.” I tried not to sound fretful. “What do you mean, not healing right?”