Betrayals

“Never mind. Maybe… they… decided you’d be safer at a smaller school. And it does make things easier for me.”

“What kind of things?” I sounded suspicious even to myself. My cheeks were on fire again, and my knees didn’t feel too steady.

“Things like watching over my careless little bird until she blooms. This Schola is fairly well known to me. No, your mother was never here.”

Thanks, Christophe. I didn’t ask. But it felt sneakingly good to know. Another one of those uncomfortable quiet spaces between us. I tried not to hunch my shoulders. “What else haven’t you told me?”

“Nothing important. Nothing critical. But you want me to talk?” His chin tipped down and he stared at me. “So, skowroneczko moja, come sit at my feet and listen. We don’t have much time. And I have something to give you.”

CHAPTER 5

I sat on my bed, my arms wrapped around my knees. Sometimes I moved so my legs didn’t fall asleep. Most of the time, though, I just sat and stared at the thin gray daylight coating the window, sleet beating in waves now. He’d gone out through the window and just… vanished, even though I ran across the room and stuck my head out like an idiot, peering after him.

Christophe left behind the fading smell of baking apple pies, wet footprints on the carpet, a soaking towel with spots of rust, a sodden computer chair… and the two wooden things.

Practice swords? I touched one handle. It was warm, the wood worn down and oiled, dark with use. Fine-grained, and very hard.

No. Christophe had touched one of them, just the way I was touching it now, running his fingers gently over the curves. These are malaika, made of hawthorn. They are not made for practice.

These are for killing things that walk the night, and they were made for a svetocha’s hands. Very few djamphir are skilled in the use of the Kouroi’s traditional blade anymore.

But what good are wooden swords? Long, slightly curving, oddly leaf-shaped blades. They looked like they belonged in a high-budget chop-saki movie, the kind I’d seen a hundred times on late- late-night cable while waiting for Dad to come back.

I winced at the thought. It was much easier and nicer to think of Christophe’s measured, even voice.

Hawthorn is deadly to nosferatu, and even deadlier when wielded by a Kouroi. How much more deadly, then, when wielded by you? Be good, and you’ll learn to use them. When it’s safer, and I come back.

And he’d left them here. Weapons. They might have been wood, but their edges were bastard sharp. To prove it, Christophe had sliced off a little bit of his hair. The small lock of blond-streaked brown lay on the nightstand next to the stiletto. A keepsake, he’d said. So you know I’ll return.

And I’d blushed, again, like an idiot. It was absurdly comforting to know that someone would be coming back for me. Now that I’d lost everything, everyone, else.

I stared down at the swords, the hot flush dying in my cheeks, sliding back down my throat to settle in my chest next to the acid bubble. The locket was a warm spot on my breastbone.

Pale gray light ran over every curve. They looked like they belonged here on the bed, against the rucked-up velvet of the quilt cover. More than I did, at least. There was a fresh scab on my unshaved knee, a rash of red rug burn on my other leg.

As the afternoon wended toward evening, I got up. My legs were a little unsteady from sitting curled up on the bed for so long. I carried one of the wooden swords into the bathroom. There was a mirror over the sink, a nice big one. The light in here was good too, warm gold from the dusty bulbs.

It ran over my tangled hair and the hollows under my eyes.

Just one average teenage girl, rangy and awkward. Cheekbones too big for her face, blue eyes a different shade than Christophe’s. My eyes were all Dad’s, right down to the faint lavender lines in the irises. My hair was Mom’s, but without the sleek glossiness of her ringlets. The curls tangled every which way, but they weren’t the halo of frizz they used to be.

I wasn’t breaking out anymore. The bath, I guess. I couldn’t even feel good about that. I was too dead-pale. Between the rings under my eyes and the two fever spots on my cheeks, I looked like a ghost.

And I should know. I’ve seen a few.

I lifted the sword, tipped its curve down, back up. “Malaika,” I whispered. It did look like it belonged here. With the velvet and the satin and the chipped stone.

But not me. The circles under my eyes were the remains of bruises. My upper lip was too thin, lower lip too fat, my nose too long, and my hair was hopeless. The plaid shirt was a glaring mixture of red and yellow and green, and my sleeping boxers had penguins on them. They were still crawling up my ass crack.

Yeah. I’d never win any prizes.

I was tough, though. Wasn’t I? I could spot Dad, no matter what he was benching. I’d gotten Graves away from a crazed wulfen and out of a deserted mall, through a snowstorm, and faced down Sergej on my own. So what if I’d had to be rescued? I’d still gone a couple rounds with him, shot him in the head, and managed to come out still breathing.

Dad. And Gran. And Mom. All gone.

Something too hot and sharp to be tears rose up in my throat. I was the only one left.

If you are a good girl, go to classes no matter how boring, and keep your ears open; I’ll teach you how to use these. Your mother was a master of the malaika. I don’t know why she left hers behind. He had touched a hilt again, his fingers oddly gentle and his mouth drawn down bitterly. I have the pair she used in a safe place. When you’re ready, they’re yours.

My breath hitched in my throat. I let myself remember my mother. It was the most painful of all, because… well, just because.

Her hair always smelled of warmth and fresh perfume. Her heart-shaped face and the prettiness of even her smallest gestures. Her dark eyes and Dad’s picture of her kept in his wallet, with a shiny place rubbed in the plastic over her face.

That shiny place was still there, though the picture was gone. If I dug out Dad’s billfold, I would find the photo missing and the place where I always ran my thumb while getting out a twenty or a fifty would glare at me. If I stared long enough, I could probably even see the curves and lines of her face from a long time ago.

Oh God. I pushed away the memory that wanted to rise to the surface, but not nearly quick enough.

You can’t ever stop thinking something quick enough. Something that hurts always gets the knife in too fast for you to slam a lid on it and shove it away.

We’re going to play the game, Dru. She’d hidden me in a closet and gone out to fight Sergej.

Dad had left me at the house and gone to face Sergej alone. Gran had tried to stay with me, but old age had taken her. Her body had failed right out from under her, and I could tell she’d hated leaving me. She’d held on all through summer, but the first cold wind coming up the valley had been too much for her, and the hospital…

There it was again, a hurtful thought. I let out a long, slow breath, as if I was working through a cramp. It didn’t help. This cramp was on the inside, someplace no deep breathing could touch.

I wasn’t as pretty as Mom, or as smart as Dad. I wasn’t good at everything I touched, like either of them. I was just one scrawny punk-ass girl.

I met my own gaze in the mirror. I didn’t look like I should be holding the wooden sword. I clasped it