Betrayals

whistle when he saw the bruises ringing my shoulder, my ribs, and the fresh ones beginning on my arms and the side of my right leg. My socks were filthy, and I’d lost a sneaker somewhere. I honestly didn’t remember where. I hadn’t even noticed it was gone.

His hands were scorching hot; he dragged me to the lip of the closest tub and paused for only half a second, looking up at the ceiling like he was gathering himself. His beat-up black nylon wallet landed on the floor three feet away, and he pitched down the steps and into the huge tub with me, fully clothed, his shoes giving one forlorn underwater squeak before I lost my footing and cried out miserably. It felt like being dipped in hot lava, but he held onto me, guiding me down.

I’d never been in the baths in my underwear. The feeling was weird, like sitting in a hot tub full of Jell-O while wearing a swimsuit that definitely wasn’t made for this sort of thing.

“Dru?” For the first time that evening, he sounded scared. “Come on. Say something.”

The chattering had stopped, but I was still shivering. Somehow my arm had ended up around his waist, and he settled onto the seat right next to me. The surface of the bath crackled against his sweater. I gasped again, my skin pain-peeled like after a sunburn, and tipped my head back.

Bubbling not-water turned gray, dirt swirling through it before it was whisked away by the current.

A leaf fell out of my hair, hit the turbulent surface, and was pulled under. The not-water was neck-deep on me, and only chest-deep on him.

“Dru?” Now he sounded close to panic, and I realized I was making another low, keening sound.

My throat was full of something too hot and nasty to be tears. “Say something, dammit.”

I swallowed the weird moaning sound I was making. My mouth opened. “S-s-s-something.” I paused. “D-d- dam-mmit.”

He snorted. The laugh caught him sideways, his usual bitter, sarcastic little bark, and I was too grateful to still be alive to really think about the fact of being half-naked in a tub with a boy.

Besides, it was Graves. And his arm was still around me. I put my head down on his shoulder and forgot about everything other than the stinging heat pushing its pins and needles into my flesh.

I hadn’t been this close to him since we’d both squeezed onto a helicopter lifting out of a Midwest snowstorm. I’d been crying then, too.

Now I wondered about all sorts of things. Especially about him having to fight the first night he got here. Getting Dibs alone and having him explain a few things seemed like a good idea. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. My head was so heavy, and Graves’ shoulder was bony but comfortable.

“Talk to me,” he pressed. “Don’t pass out on me, Dru. Hey, I got a question.”

“Huh.” An affirmative noise was about all I could come up with. So do I. Why didn’t Ash kill me? And how in God’s name do I start telling you about all this when it doesn’t make any sense even to me?

“What’s Dru short for?”

Jesus. It was my turn to half-snort a laugh. “D-don’t ask.”

“Too late. I been wondering all this time.”

The shivers started easing up. My jaw was sore when it finally unclenched. “Tell you l-later.”

“Mh. So you wanna tell me what happened?” Gently, carefully, like he was lifting up a Band-Aid and checking underneath it.

“I—” The water bubbled. The door banged a little, like someone was leaning on it. The sound echoed through the locker room. I blinked, waking up inside my own head. “Oh jeez. You’re in here.”

“Uh, yeah.” He didn’t sound surprised. “Was thinking you might fall and hurt yourself or something. Drown. If you’re okay, or—”

I kept my head on his shoulder. Pressed it down a little and made my arm tense up. “Don’t. Don’t leave.” My teeth ached. Even my hair ached. “There was… I saw… okay, it was my grandmother’s owl.” A brief flare of panic worked up inside me, I’d never really wanted to tell anyone about it, and the habit of the secret was hard to break.

But this was Graves. And he didn’t disappoint me. He just accepted it. “Owl.” Nodded, his sharp chin dipping. “Okay.”

“And it led me outside, and I ran. I think it was trying to get me away from the suckers. I ended up in some bushes and I saw…” The rest of it spilled out in an incoherent jumble, but he nodded every once in a while. I liked that about him. He was so smart you didn’t have to hold his hand and walk him through everything. He could fill in the blanks on his own.

“You’re sure it was the same one?” His eyes had half-lidded. The not-water began to calm down, bubbling and fizzing. It stung my scratched hands and spread up my shoulder in little waxy dollops, heat sinking in.

I suddenly wanted to wash my hair. My scalp crawled. My heart had finished its pounding and finally settled down. “I guess. How many werwulfen with white streaks on their heads have we seen?”

“Point.” His head dipped in another nod. His hair, getting damp from the steam, fell in his eyes.

He tossed it out with a shaking, sudden motion.

I let out a sigh. I couldn’t keep it in any longer. It came out in a whisper. “I saw Christophe. During the day.” It was more like three or four days ago, but I didn’t want to tell him that.

Graves stiffened. A full thirty seconds ticked by, him staring at the mirrored wall through veils of steam. “Jesus, Dru.”

Like it was my fault. “I couldn’t get you alone to tell you.”

“So you tried this?” But he was joking. He shifted uneasily, moving as if his arm was cramping, but he left it where it was, his fingers no longer burning my other shoulder. “Where did you see him?”

“He came in through my window. You can’t tell anyone.”

He rolled his eyes. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the movement. And the rolling of teenage eyes has a noiseless noise all its own. “Duh. But what was he doing coming through your window?”

Hell if I know, kid. “Giving me some things. Stuff like my mother owned. And telling me some things.”

“How the hell did he have things that belonged to your mother?”

Trust Graves to boil everything down to its essentials. “They aren’t; they’re just like hers. And, well, I guess he knew her.” I hadn’t thought about it just that way before. He’d certainly sounded like he knew her. And now that I thought about it, he’d said specifically that the wooden swords weren’t hers. I opened my mouth to go on with explanations.

But he asked the other sixty-four-thousand-dollar question before I could. “Just how old is he, anyway? And who is he?”

“I dunno.” I slid down a little further into the not-water’s embrace, and another cloud of dirt from my wet hair went through the bubbling jelly. Jeez. How much guck did I get rolled in? “I’m more worried about Ash not killing me. He had the chance. He got rid of those other suckers, and—”

“You saw that?”

“I saw one. Stands to reason he did the other two.” A tremor went through the center of my bones.

“Jesus.” I could have died. There’s no way out of that classroom, and three suckers…” He was right nose to nose with me, Graves. Nose to nose.” My brain kept making a funny hitching stop when it got to the memory, replaying it, throwing up its hands in horror, and stalling like an engine. “And the fog…”

But I didn’t want to think about the fog ever again. Thank God it hadn’t touched me. If it had… I didn’t know quite what would have happened, but it would have been bad. I knew that much, all the way down to my quivering, aching bones.

It’s hard to argue with certainty like that.

Graves was more worried about essentials. “A wulf working alone did that? And he just… what, ran away?”

“Guess he heard the rest of you coming.” The shaking intensified. It wasn’t shivering. It was my body rebelling against everything. I wanted a cheeseburger, and I wanted to curl up and sleep, and I wanted things I