“Christophe . . .”
It was the first time I’d seen him even
close
to flustered. “Don’t worry, I won’t look. See?” He backed up two steps, turned as if he was on parade, and headed for the closet. Scooped up the shotgun and crossed to the window. Stood in the sunshine, the blond highlights in his shaggily cut hair lighting up.
I’d never seen him in full sun before. The blond streaks turned to gold, and the texture of his skin glowed. The light bounced off the metal of the shotgun’s sawed-off barrel. His head was down, like he was looking out the window.
Some of what he’d said sank in. My mother’s room. There were books on the stripped-pine bookshelves. Hers?
Do that again. . . . Go ahead, Beth. I’ll let you
. The dream rose up in my head. Was it what Gran called a true-seeing? Dreams were slippery, best not to put any weight on them. What you wanted could turn into what you saw, not what actually was.
But I’d been dreaming more and more lately, about things I found out were true. Like Dad in a long concrete corridor, walking toward his death. Like my mother hiding me in a closet and going out to fight Sergej.
I grabbed a longer flannel and wrapped it around myself, buttoned up. “Where’s all my pants?”
“Check the dresser. Your other room was torn apart. Someone betrayed its location. You should be safer here.”
Gooseflesh rose hard and chill on my legs as I slid them gingerly out of bed. I was all over bruises, some yellow-green and some red-blue, and my palms were raw. There were also rough red patches like carpet burn wherever the vampire blood had splashed. It doesn’t eat through skin, but it
is
caustic. The muscles alongside my spine twitched and sent little
we’re not happy
messages all up and down.
After boys hit the drift, they heal up from just about anything in a matter of hours. I was using the
aspect
, but I wasn’t healing like they do. Sucks being a girl sometimes.
I shuffled over to the dresser, found out someone had just tossed my undies and bras in higgledy-piggledy in the top drawer on the left-hand side, and was relieved. Whoever had put them there hadn’t, well, lingered over them.
It’s the little things you end up being grateful for,
Gran had always said.
I found a pair of jeans, too. About half my stuff was here. The other half, who knew? Bled on by vampires? Burned? Just left where it was?
And where were Graves’s clothes? I grabbed the edge of the drawer, my knuckles turning white.
My voice surprised me. “I hate this.”
Christophe didn’t turn around. “What?”
“Vampire attacks. I get used to something, and they come riding in and destroy everything. Then I have to get used to something else all over again. It’s . . . Jesus. It’s
lame
.” I couldn’t come up with a better word, for once, and felt completely inadequate, standing there with jeans and a fistful of blue bikini briefs.
“I’m sorry.” He
sounded
sorry, too. “It will be better now. I promise.”
Graves wouldn’t have said that. He’d have made an ironic little comment and I’d’ve laughed and felt better. My heart dropped another few inches. “There’s no making it better, Christophe. This is going to keep going until they kill me, or until—”
“They’re not going to kill you.” Hard and fast. His shoulders came up as if I’d hit him. “Not while I’m here.”
“But that’s just the point.” It was nasty of me, I know. It was also true. “You’re going to disappear again, and I’ll be dealing with it all on my own. Again.”
Mom putting me in the hidey-hole in the closet, telling me I was her own good girl. Gran in the hospital bed, sliding away hour by hour. Dad walking down that concrete corridor toward the door that would open onto something grinning and hateful—and deadly.
And now, Graves.
Christophe sounded like he had something stuck in his throat. “When do you think I haven’t been watching over you? But I’m not going to ‘disappear’ again, Dru. That’s done now.” Christophe shifted his weight as if he was going to turn around, and I clutched the clothes to me just in case.
“Yeah. Sure.” I headed for the white-tiled glare I was certain was a bathroom. I hoped someone had thought to bring my toothbrush, too. If the vampires hadn’t bled on it. “Sure it is.”
“Wait and see.” The mockery was back. “I’ll be hard to get rid of from now on,
moj maly ptaszku.
”
I found out it was indeed a bathroom. White and scrubbed, antique brass fixtures and a skylight letting in a flood of sunshine. Wow. You could get a tan standing around in the shower, for Christ’s sake. “It’s easy to get rid of people, Christophe. All you have to do is rely on them.” I swung the door shut and locked it, feeling like I’d won a small victory.
It was ridiculous. What was there to win? He hadn’t been fighting.
I just, God, I wished he would have been Graves. I wanted to see that lopsided half-pained smile and those green eyes more than I could even admit to myself.
When you want to tell me, you come and find me.
Which meant he was coming back, right? Where the hell was he? It wasn’t like him. But he’d been pretty mad. Put his fist almost through the wall. Because I hadn’t been able to open my mouth fast enough.
Even Shanks said he was coming back. But Shanks didn’t know him that well, did he? There hadn’t been time for them to get really tight.
Did
I
even know my Goth Boy that well?
It was looking like I didn’t.
Graves was the one thing I could depend on in this utterly screwed-up situation, and without him around I was . . .
Way to go tough girl, Dru. Jeez. He’s just a boy. Get over it.
But he wasn’t
just
a boy. He was the only boy I’d found worth dating in God knows how many schools. I mean, ever since he’d been bitten by a werwulf he’d been rock-steady. The best thing about this totally effed-up situation.
And now he was gone. And I had a funny idea, no matter how I tried to shake it, that he wasn’t going to come sauntering back into the room and throwing around ironic one-liners.
So you go find him, just like he said. Right?
Except I didn’t have a clue where to begin looking. My thinker was pretty busted.
The bathtub was a big cast-iron thing, and the shower looked older than I was. There was a brand-new plastic shower curtain on a ring bolted to the wall. The water ran rusty-red into the scrubbed white bowl of the sink for a few minutes when I turned it on, then cleared and warmed up.
I tried not to think about it.
I found I was crying silently. I didn’t look in the mirror above the sink. There was a cabinet built into the wall with fresh white towels that smelled of fabric softener. I muffled the sobs in one of them while the shower ran, then got in and washed my aching self free of the sweat and the snot and the tears and the stickiness of fear, not to mention the stink of rotting vampire blood. There was shampoo. Conditioner. Soap in a waxed paper wrapping with French stuff written on the outside. Someone
had
remembered a toothbrush and the Crest from my room.
It was like being in a hotel room again. Only this time Dad wasn’t outside the door, watching TV while he loaded clips or cleaning his guns or looking through his contacts list. No, outside the door there was a listening silence, as if Christophe knew I was crying.
And I hated it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
There was a
tiny table near the hall door, and when I finally stalked out of the bathroom with a handful of damp towels balled up around my underwear, I found out what it was used for. There was a tray on it, with a paper coffee cup. A covered dish, polished silver so it shone. A stack of buttered wheat toast, visibly steaming, and a small bowl of strawberries and blueberries. A little silver thing of cream.
All in all, it looked like the regular Schola breakfast. Down in the caf you don’t get the silver. But everything else, sure, spare no expense and feed the kids good. Even if they aren’t kids.
“I wasn’t sure what you’d want.” Christophe picked up the paper latte cup. He was back to the faint mockery. The shotgun was nowhere in sight. “Leontus insisted about this, though.”
It was a banana latte. I took it from him gingerly, not touching his fingers.
I guess some things are reliable.
“I, um. Yeah. Thanks. Christophe—”
“I don’t blame you.” Quietly. “You’ve been shuttled from one place to another like a chess piece. A pawn. You must have wondered several times if I was placing you as bait, or if I cared at all.”
Wow. Uncomfortable, especially since he was right. And my mouth, so used to coming up with smartass at other times, completely failed me now. “I, well. Um.”
“I didn’t know you existed until your father called me. Augustine never told anyone either.”
August. He’d vanished after verifying Christophe was a part of the Order. It was August vouching for Christophe over the phone that made me trust him the first time around. “Why would he call—”
“He didn’t know who to trust. I was under suspicion and . . . well, there are other reasons.” Taller than me and looking down, His hands hung empty and graceful at his sides. “Your mother, she always wanted a normal life. She was a . . . gentle soul.” He made a slight noise, clearing his throat as if embarrassed. “We are not often gentle souls.”
The starch threatened to go out of my legs. I backed up, found the bed by running into it, and sat down so hard my teeth clicked together.
Christophe continued, choosing each word carefully. “I don’t know how your father found me. It was a surprise, especially since the last time I spoke with him things did not, um. They did not go well.” He touched the silver dome over what was probably a plate of breakfast. “At all.”
He found you the way we always found stuff out—in spooky little occult stores and other places I pointed him at. Maybe you’re what he was looking for all along.
I lifted the paper cup to my mouth. Paused halfway because he seemed to have run out of words. “What happened?”
His head dropped forward, as if he was praying.
Gran had been big on prayers. Only hers were a little off the beaten path. She talked to God like some people talk to a psychologist. When she wasn’t telling him how things could’ve been done a little more efficiently, but then, He was God and she was just an old lady and what did she know, eh?
I’m thinking God was in for a hell of a surprise when Gran showed up at the pearly gates.
“I found her. She left the Schola, left everything. Took one small suitcase. She wouldn’t tell me why, and I don’t think she really thought she could hide from me. Them, yes. Me? No. Not me.” A deep breath, his shoulders coming up as if under a burden. “When I found what she’d settled for . . . I was furious. Threatened him. But I never meant anything by it, Dru, I
swear
. She loved him; I could not hurt her by taking that away. She’d already had so much taken. She saw her parents die. Did you know?”
My mouth was numb, even full of hot coffee. I swallowed hard. It burned all the way down. “N-no. Nobody ever told me.”
I mean, Gran talked about relatives—mostly dead ones. Dad talked about Gran sometimes; she’d raised him after
his
father skipped out and left her pregnant. But neither of them ever talked about Mom’s side of the tree. Dad never talked much about Mom, either. He would just get that look on his face—the
I miss her but don’t you dare mention it
look he was so good at.
I didn’t ask many questions. I knew better. Besides, what was there to ask? I never doubted he loved me. I never doubted something had happened to my mother. I never doubted Gran loved me, too, but was too old to stay around for me.
I guess when you’re a kid you don’t think too much about that sort of stuff. It’s just there, like your birthmarks. Those were the rocks the world was built on, and they didn’t move. Not when I was little.
Now everything was shifting, and I couldn’t find a solid place to jump to.
Christophe’s shoulders were stiff-tense. He held himself like he expected a punch or two. “I don’t know if she told him. Her father was Kouroi, her mother pure human. But they created a miracle. She was fifteen when they were raided. Murdered. Sergej, again. We barely got there in time; she survived only by accident. She was brought in. It was a shock. Her father . . . he wanted her to know a normal life. I suppose he thought that living in the middle of a clear zone, it was a luxury he could afford.” A laugh like a mouthful of bitter ashes. “She wanted to be normal; she wanted to go
home
. Over and over she said as much. I thought she would eventually understand it was impossible.”
What could I say to that? I licked my dry lips. “She called you youngblood.” I guess I wanted to know. If it was real, or if I’d dreamed it.
He whirled and stared at me. The
aspect
slid over him like a cobra’s hood, danger radiating in every direction. His eyes burned, his hair slicking back and turning dark. But I felt a weird, curious comfort. I knew I was right, deep down. There’s nothing like feeling a little bit of certainty while the world’s jigging and jiving around you.
“Yes,” he said, finally. “It is . . . was . . . slang. Back then. She found it amusing.”
I took another gulp of banana latte. I so seriously needed caffeine if I was going to deal with this. Every bruise twinged a little, settled back into a low-level ache. “So, um. You really liked her.”
A shrug. His
aspect
retreated, the blond highlights slipping their fingers though his hair again. “She made certain I stayed here. In the light.”
If I need a reason now, Dru, it will have to be you.
I knew I hadn’t dreamed
that
bit, especially the pressure of his lips against my own. That was right after he’d covered our escape from the other Schola. The burning one, where he’d dragged me out of the flames.