Reckoning

course, here on this side of the ridge the storm hadn’t fallen so hard. “As you like, moja ksiezniczko. There’s a decent-sized town not too far. We’ll acquire transport and supplies; this car won’t last long.”

Great. “All our supplies were in the house.” I sounded numb. The words wouldn’t go together quite right. “Gran’s house. They just . . . it’s burning. There was so much rain; why was it burning?”

“Either they thought you were still inside, or it was fired to deny you shelter.” His expression turned grim, no amusement remaining. He kept pulling at the cigarette, too, like it personally offended him. “Your loup-garou perhaps thought to hold them off by himself. Foolish.”

Graves took the bait. “Fuck off.” The command under the words—a loup-garou’s mental dominance—made all the space in the car shrink, hot and tight. I craned my neck, looking over my shoulder. He was sitting right behind Christophe, his cigarette held to his mouth and his other hand a fist against his tattered, mud-coated knee. “How do we know you didn’t lead them here, Reynard?”

Christophe was silent, but his hand tightened on the wheel.

“Quit it. Both of you.” I swallowed again. The tingling in my fangs was going down, thank God. I didn’t have to hold my tongue carefully or try to talk with my lips kept stiffly over my teeth. “Let’s just all get along, all right? And not do the vampires’ work for them.”

“Anything for you, Dru,” Christophe said, level and cold. “And I mean that. Now be quiet and let me concentrate.”

Graves stared at me, his eyes gone dark. He and Christophe were running neck and neck in the mad sweepstakes, it looked like. I’d never seen Goth Boy look so blackly furious.

“Hey.” I worked my left hand free, reached into the backseat. “Graves. Graves.”

He was shaking, I realized. His long black coat was gone—had it been inside the house? He looked odd without it, kind of. But the skull-and-crossbones earring glittered in his ear. It gave me a funny feeling, seeing that gleam.

Like I’d lost something.

His T-shirt was a mess of rips and tears, and the bruising on his face was going down. Werwulfen, even loup-garou who don’t get hairy, don’t wear the damage long. Not if they can rest and eat. The physical injuries healed right up.

Now I wondered about the hurts inside, where that healing wouldn’t reach.

Ash whined again, softly, in the back of his throat.

Before I knew it, I was up on my knees in the passenger seat, twisting around. “Graves. Look at me. Look.” He was looking at me, but I wanted him to see me. He looked . . .

Jesus. He looked angry, and scared, and like he was a short breath away from hurting someone. His irises were almost black, so dark I had trouble seeing what his pupils were doing.

“Dru.” He rolled his window down, chucked the still-fuming cigarette. “Don’t worry about me. Put your seat belt on.”

Say what? “You look—”

A shrug, his shoulders moving under the wet, filthy T-shirt. A faint gleam of green came back into his irises. He shook his head, hard, like he was dislodging a nasty thought. Water flew from the ends of his hair. “Sucker-boy up there pisses me off. Mellow down easy, everything’s copacetic.”

“Graves—”

“Sit down.” The rage faded. Now he just looked tired and irritated, and his eyes flushed with green glow again. His stubble had gotten thicker since this morning—I’d always thought half-Asians didn’t get much in the way of facial hair, but it looked like he was changing all that. “Put your seat belt on. Don’t make me worry about you while that asshole’s driving, okay?”

I was too tired to fight. I did it. Then I curled up against the door and shook while Christophe drove, Graves seethed, and Ash eventually stopped making that noise. When we broke out of the woods and bumped up onto the highway, the sun burst out from behind the clouds, and I closed my eyes.

CHAPTER TEN

The Holiday Inn shower was a little piece of heaven. And afterward, dry clothes were a luxury. Just a black T-shirt and jeans, no underthings, but I wasn’t complaining. You can always buy panties later, you just can’t buy them if you’re dead.

And Christophe had gotten the right sizes, too. That was food for thought, but I didn’t want to eat it. I had enough to chew.

As soon as I was out of the bathroom, Graves nipped in. Christophe was still rubbing at his hair with a hotel towel, standing by the room’s window and peering out through the small crack in the cheap curtains. A thin bar of sunlight striped his face, and he glanced at me. A faint smile touched his lips.

“You’ve bloomed.” He didn’t sound surprised. Just pleased, and congratulatory.

Well, hallelujah. At least someone noticed when my face changed and the rest of me did too.

Ash crouched in a corner. He was still covered in mud, and I had to figure out how to get him cleaned off just as soon as Graves was out. There was a stack of towels on one twin bed, I grabbed one and started working at my own hair. I had a comb in my bag, thank God.

“Yeah.” To be warm and dry was pretty much all I could ask for right now. “I know, I look different. It’s pretty weird.”

“Weird?” He let the towel drop, dangling from his hand. He’d taken care of everything, getting a room, cleaning up a little and vanishing for twenty minutes while Graves prowled the room and Ash crouched in the corner and I stared longingly at the bathroom, reappearing with a few crackling Walmart bags and a brand-new messenger bag slung across his new black V-neck T-shirt. One of the shopping bags he’d pushed into my hands and told me to wash up. We can wait. Go.

It hadn’t occurred to me to argue.

“You know, my face is all different. I look strange.” I dropped down on the bed closest the wall; I was betting Christophe had put my bag there so I would stay where he wanted me.

Away from the door and the windows.

It was a sobering thought. To add to all my other happy-dappy thinking.

“You’re beautiful.” He said it so flatly I almost missed the meaning of the words. “As always, kochana. Room service should be up soon.”

All the breath left me in a rush. “Christophe . . .”

He turned his back completely to the window. And even though he’d been working at his hair with a towel, he still looked impossibly finished, the blond highlights in his layered cut behaving perfectly. The faint traces of mud and damp still on him looked planned, too. “I’ll ask for an explanation once you’ve eaten. Just so I know what’s going on. But let’s get something straight, first.”

Mud still clung to his boots, and he paced across the room toward me, tossing the towel onto the other bed. Ash rocked back on his heels, watching carefully, his eyes flaring orange and his expression flickering between somber and . . . was it frightened?

I couldn’t tell.

Christophe bent down, his booted toes precisely placed in front of my bare feet. A warm draft of apple-pie scent drifted across me. It was so familiar I could’ve started crying again. I’d gotten so used to that smell over the past few months.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed him. Most of all, I missed the sense of someone watching, the sense that I could just relax and someone else would handle things. It’s not that I’m weak.