Jealousy (24 page)

Choices, choices.
“Shoot.”

“’Cause you know, you’re
svetocha
and I’m a lowly wulf fresh outta reform school. You shouldn’t even be talking to us, let alone acting like Dibs and me’s your best friends.”

“But you
are
my best friends. I can’t trust anyone else!” I actually pitched forward, throwing the words at him like a dodgeball.

“Like I said. But anyway . . . I don’t trust this. Something’s hinky. What with Red getting all aggro on you and someone scratching at your window, not to mention the fact that you shouldn’t’ve been sent to our backwoods Schola in the first place
and
more vampires than I’ve ever seen in my life chasing you down. And let’s not even talk about Reynard, okay?” He stopped, waited for my nod, and continued. “I’m saying it might not be so good an idea for you to sleep up here if someone you trust isn’t with you. So. Either we stash you someplace nobody knows about, or . . .” His face worked itself up a little, like he was sucking significantly on a lemon. Like I should know where he was going.

It took my poor busted brain a few seconds to figure out what he was suggesting. “Or you stay here. Um, I guess not, Shanks. I mean, I trust you and all, but I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

He looked almost green with relief. “Well, cool. Because Graves would have a fit. He’ll probably be back anytime now. He knows we can’t leave you alone. So—”

A lightbulb turned on inside my head. “I’ve got an idea,” I said, and I told him.

Like I expected, he didn’t think much of it. “You’ll end up with your guts for garters, Dru.”

I shook my head. “He hasn’t hurt me. Not yet. And can you think of a better place? Nobody would expect it.”

“Bad idea.” Shanks shook his head so hard his shoulders moved, too. “Jesus Christ. You’re nuts. Completely bazonko.”

“All you have to do is act like I’m in here.” I sounded perfectly reasonable, even to myself. “And for Christ’s sake, it’s not like I’m not down there every night
anyway
.”

“But . . . ” He stopped. “You know, it’s actually not such a bad idea. Completely crazy, but not such a bad idea.”

“Exactly.” I stuffed my hands gingerly in my hoodie pockets. The wrapping on my wrist helped. Once you get all bandaged up, the fight is really over. You can afford to relax a little bit.

Maybe. Until the next crisis comes along. And I was jumpy. Who wouldn’t be, after all this?

Shanks thought everything over. “But when Graves comes back . . .”

“He’s smart. He’ll figure out where I am.” He would, and he’d either be angry or . . . what? What would he be like when he came back?

I ran up against the wall of everything I didn’t know about him. The Council had never mentioned his file again, and I hadn’t even been tempted to ask. I figured he’d tell me what he wanted me to know, and—

Shanks made a restless motion, like a dog shaking away water. “If he can figure it out, someone else can too.”

Werwulfen function on consensus among themselves. Getting them to poop or get off the pot is pretty impossible sometimes. Don’t get me wrong—when you’ve got teeth and claws and superhuman reflexes, it’s a good thing to want everyone to agree without violence. I’ll be the first to admit that.

But sometimes it just drives me up the fricking wall. “Then they can all come down and we’ll have a coffee klatch.” I rolled my eyes. “He killed three suckers at the other Schola, Shanks. He’s good protection.”

“I’m not worried about suckers just yet. I’m worried about him going crazy and opening you up like a can of Pringles.”

I was getting to the point where that thought was losing its ability to scare me. “Well, then this will all be academic, won’t it? And everyone will be ever so much happier without the problem that is me hanging around.” I shuffled over to the side of the bed, picked up the sleeping bag and the pillow. “That’s what I’m doing. I’ll stash myself someplace nobody except Graves will think of to look for me. You just hang out by the door until Benjamin comes to check in on me, and pretend I’m in the room. And ta-da, tomorrow Graves should be back and calmed down enough to be reasonable and we’ll figure out . . . something else.”

Like getting the hell out of this place. Hey, you can even come along. The more the merrier.
I sounded hopeless even inside my own head.

Shanks was looking at me weird.“He’ll be back tonight. I’ll stick around and wait for him, I guess. You really want to do this, Dru-girl?”

I’d had about all I could take of boys looking at me funny, but I gave him a smile that hurt my face. My split lip cracked a little, and the bruises all twinged. “Yeah. What’s the worst that could happen?”

As soon as I said it I wished I hadn’t. But Shanks just shook his dark head, opened the door, and peered outside, sniffing. “It’s clear,” he finally muttered. “Come on, then.”

“Thanks. I mean it. For everything.” I shifted the sleeping bag around and winced when my arm almost cramped, the way bruises do when they settle down to the painful business of healing.

As usual when I thanked him, he shook it off and snorted. “Always was too curious for my own good. Be careful, okay?”

“I will be.” And I set off down the hall before either of us could get any more embarrassed.

The metal shelf
was hard, and I probably should have brought my sneakers down here with me. And an extra blanket. But I just unrolled the sleeping bag and made sure the key was in my pocket for the fiftieth time.

You know that feeling—you’ve got your bus ticket or something important in your pocket, and you have to keep checking just to make sure it’s there? Like that. It’s like a nervous tic or something when you’re traveling or really, really bushed. Or maybe I’m the only person who does it, I don’t know.

Ash’s breathing was steady. He lay curled up under the shelf-bed, and there was another sticky tray in the corner. I’d gotten close enough to it to smell the red copper of blood, and the image of a brown Jersey cow popped up big as life inside my head, the
touch
throbbing. I’d retreated to the other side of the room in a hurry. At least he was being fed. I would have a crazy well-fed werwulf to contend with instead of a crazy hungry one.

You take what you can get, I suppose.

I plopped the pillow down, fluffed it up, then stood and stared at the sleeping bag. It smelled like Graves. Healthy teenage boy, his deodorant, and the cold moonlight tang of
loup-garou
.

I eased myself down cautiously, my knees complaining when they hit cold concrete. My wrapped wrist twinged, too. I peeked under the shelf.

There was a faint orange gleam of eyes in the deeper shadow. His breathing hadn’t changed, but he was awake. Every inhale ended on a slight bubbling sound through his ruined mouth.

“I’m sorry about shooting you.” The words surprised me. Even more than that, I was surprised to find out I really
was
sorry. Even if Benjamin was right and the only thing keeping him from doing what Sergej wanted and killing me was a faceful of silver grain, I still felt bad about shooting him. “It must hurt, huh?”

The shadow didn’t move, but I could tell he was paying attention by the way the silence in the room changed. Ordinary people can hear that, too—what happens when someone is suddenly paying attention.

“Go figure.” The cold of the floor grabbed the bruises on my legs with bony fingers. “This is about the only place I feel safe. And you could bite my head off without even thinking about it. Do I smell weird to you, too? I guess I must.”

No answer. Just the soft burble of his breath. The tiny glimmers of his eyes winked out, and he settled farther back, against the wall.

I didn’t zip the sleeping bag up, but I did tuck it all around me. The metal was hard and uncomfortable, but no worse than a motel-room floor. I just couldn’t get easy, especially with the bruises and muscle aches playing pinball all through me. Every time I shifted my weight the bag’s zipper would rub a little bit against the metal bed, or a bruise would set up a yell of pain, or some damn thing. But I was exhausted, and pretty soon I started to feel drowsy.

I woke with a start, hearing the deathly stillness of everyone in the Schola gone to their early-morning rest. It took me a few sleepy seconds to realize it was before Ash usually began his regular 3:00 a.m. yowling, and he wasn’t making a sound. Instead, I blinked fuzzily a few times, and in the faint illumination through the barred aperture in the door I saw a long furred shape with orange eyes.

He lay across the threshold, narrow head on his paws, and watched me.

That should really creep me out.
But I fell back asleep again. A long slow velvet time of dreamless darkness enfolded me.

And then . . .

 

She held
malaika
, the slightly curving wooden swords, with sweet natural grace. One of them made a half-circle, so sharp you could hear the air being cut. Perched atop the altar, her Keds shuffling as she stepped back and the swords made a complicated pattern, she was a deadly beautiful bird mantling its wings.

I couldn’t get enough of seeing her again. She was breathing easily, and she pushed away a stray curl with the back of her hand, the
malaika
held as easily as a butter knife. She was so graceful. I saw, as if I had a pair of binoculars, that her fingernails were bitten down, too.

Every little girl thinks her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world. But my mother was. She really
was
.