Strange Angels

What did I want? Was it worth keeping this guy around?

Did I even have a choice? I had the gun now, but I had the sneaking suspicion Christophe was letting me keep it. I had another suspicion, too—if he could smell something on Graves, or something on me, he could probably smell the zombie stain in the living room. Why wasn’t he saying anything about that, friends and neighbors?

The rushing in my head was really bad. It covered up other sounds I didn’t want to hear—tapping on a window, the soft wump! of flames sprouting along a broad hairy back, or the terrible howls of a streak-headed werwulf. This was getting to be too much for me.

I was pretty much at the mercy of whatever this guy decided to do anyway. Wasn’t it just this morning I’d been resigning myself to him killing me?

“So what’s it going to be?” Christophe asked, as if he could read my mind. The spaces between his words were odd, as if he had some sort of weird American accent. I’ve heard just about everything on the continent, but I couldn’t place it. “You’re going to have to trust someone, Dru.”

I’m thinking I trust Graves, even if he is seriously wigging me out with this growling and leaping around thing. I’m thinking you’re lying about my mother.

Why bring her up at all, though? Dad didn’t talk about her, even to August. He just never mentioned it. How could this guy know anything about her?

I had other things to worry about. I’m thinking I don’t trust you until I know why you want to be so helpful.

But it was, I had to admit it, comforting. He was a professional. He’d taken care of the streak-headed werwulf and chased it off, and could obviously handle himself. Having someone else in my corner, someone more experienced who knew more than I did, wasn’t something to be sneezed at.

Wasn’t that what I’d been wishing for? And now here he was in my kitchen. Smelling like apple pies and looking at me with a direct seriousness that made him even cuter. The bruising spreading up the side of his face had halted, and under it he was very pretty. Not jock-pretty, or the hurtful kind of pretty that tells you a guy is too busy taking care of his royal self to think about you.

No, his face just worked. Everything in proportion, the artist in me noted. Except the sharpness of his chin and that shadow in his eyes. Like he knew more than he was telling.

Way to judge him on his looks, Dru. Come on. The rushing noise in my head drained away. I swallowed drily. “All right.” I clicked the safety on and set the gun aside. “What do you suggest?”

“That’s a good girl.” He grinned. It wasn’t the feral grimace he’d used before, but a genuine smile that lit up his cold eyes. There was blood drying in his hair, and he was dripping on the kitchen floor, but that smile more than made up for it. “First, Miss Dru, we take stock of your weapons and I bring some of my own. Then, before dark, we ward your house again. We may well have visitors tonight.”

* * *

“I don’t like it,” Graves whispered. All in all, he was taking this pretty calmly. He touched the cookie jar, running his finger over the cow’s belly, and took his hand back when I gave him a raised-eyebrow Look.

I closed the dishwasher, twisted the knob to turn it on. My hair was drying into frizz, but I felt a lot more human after a hot shower and some honest-to-God lunch. “I don’t either. But he knows things. Like about you.” I caught myself whispering too, as if Christophe hadn’t left to go “pick up a few things, be back before dark.”

“I thought you knew things.” Graves picked up an empty pizza box—I’d sprung for delivery, since the road was clear and we’d pretty much eaten the house clean. Groceries were in order. If there was no more snow tomorrow I’d go to the store.

It was like having Dad in the house again. Only not really. Dad would have been watching cable or quizzing me on tactics. Graves was just following me around and half-jumping nervously every time something creaked.

“I do know things. He knows more things.” I eyed the stack of plates left over and popped the drain stopper in, reached for the dish soap. “You’re taking this awfully calmly.”

His face twisted up wryly. “It was amazing. It was like I could smell everything. Like the world was slow but I was moving at regular speed.” He set the empty box aside, opened up one that still held two pieces of pepperoni with extra cheese. “God. I never thought I could be this hungry.”

“There’s cereal, too, when you’re finished with that.” I stared at the bubbles rising in the sink, white froth. Stole a sideways glance at him from under my lashes, looked hurriedly back at the soap foam. “Graves? Thank you.”

He hastily swallowed. “For what?” Took another ginormous bite. His hair was a mess and his eyes glowed feverishly. The brighter green looked really nice on him.

“For everything. I mean . . . you didn’t have to.” You didn’t have to get me a cheeseburger. You didn’t have to hide me. You didn’t have to stick around or get me out of school today. You didn’t have to be . . . trustworthy.

“Hey.” He shrugged and grinned, cheese hanging from the corner of his mouth before he hooked it in with his tongue. “It’s not like I have anyone else, Dru. I figure we’re both in the same boat.”

Yeah. And it’s sinking fast. I paddled my fingers in the water. “So what happened to your parents?”

He tossed the half-eaten slice back into the box. “They didn’t want me. I bounced around in foster homes for a while, had some bad times. Almost got stuck in juvie because they didn’t know what to do with me. Then I figured, I’m smart enough to take care of myself. So I did some lying and some moving around, and made myself a plan for getting all grown up and never being helpless again. Ever.” His eyes narrowed and he shrugged, as if there wasn’t a world of pain hiding behind the words. “I’ve done pretty good, too. Mostly it’s arranging things so people just assume someone’s responsible for me.”

“Yeah.” I knew all about that.

There’s a fifty on the counter, Dru. And do your katas. But Dad loved me, and there was never any question that he wanted me. He would never have just dropped me off somewhere and abandoned me, would he? He’d always come back.

But I’d always worried. Always. And this time he hadn’t come back at all, had he?

“So what are we going to do before he comes back?” Graves eyed me, and I put the first three plates in the soapy water. Flipped the water off.

We. It sounded so simple when he said it like that. “We do the dishes. Then I show you how to ward the house—” I caught his wide-eyed almost-panic, and an unwilling laugh bubbled up in my throat. “Don’t worry. All it takes is imagining—it’s simple. We’ll go over it before Christophe comes back. He helped close up the house before he left, but it doesn’t hurt to do it again—and it doesn’t hurt to have you know how to. My grandmother said you should do it every couple of days anyway to keep it fresh.” It hurt a little to talk about Gran. Not nearly as much as it hurt to think about Dad, but close.

My brain returned to Mom, playing with the idea like a cat pawing a mouse. It couldn’t be true. Mom wasn’t a sucker, and neither was I. It was impossible. I went out in the sun like everyone else.

Including Christophe. He was out by day, too. Jesus.

“And then?” Graves asked, picking up a towel. I rinsed off the first plate and handed it to him. It was nice having him around; Dad couldn’t be bothered to dry dishes.

“Then we look in a few books and figure out if everything Christophe told me before he left is true.” Especially about loup-garou.

“Okay.” He stared at the plate, polished it in circles with the towel. “Dru?” He opened up the right cabinet, set the plate gently away.

“Hm?” I swirled my fingers in slippery soap-water. The patterns almost made sense if I unfocused my eyes. The touch was getting stronger. Gran had told me it might happen, but she hadn’t been too specific, and I hadn’t really thought much about what that might mean.

The lump in my throat wasn’t quite disgust and it wasn’t quite fear. I couldn’t figure out what it was. Svetocha. Part nosferat. Is he serious?

Well, we were going to find out. Funny how having something solid to work on gave me the sense of things