Betrayals

steps. I stared at the picture and my skin went cold, then hot, then cold again. Every muscle ache twinged once, then hardened into nausea.

Have you ever felt so sick your entire body feels like throwing up? Like that.

The last time I’d seen that house was in a dream.

Or was it a dream? Something I’d woken up from with Christophe and Graves both in the room, fighting off a dreamstealer, a winged serpent sucking at my breath, a thing that slunk away to lay eggs in my neighbors. Those eggs had hatched the next morning, and driving through a bunch of young wiggling dreamstealers to escape the wulfen attack on my house had been a nightmare.

I’d thought maybe it was a hallucination, the impossibly clear and detailed vision of my mother hiding me in the middle of the night.

It wasn’t a dream. A chill hard voice spoke up in the very middle of my head. It was memory.

That was what happened when Mom died. This is the house she died in. She hid me in the closet and went out to fight. And she got killed.

The svetocha next to me flipped the photo aside. Next was another glossy eight- by-ten. This time, the oak was in full summer leaf, except for the huge scorched half of it, twisted and blackened by some horrible thing still vibrating in the branches. The screen door was busted off its hinges, and the steps were shattered.

There was something terrible caught in the tree’s clutching fingers. Something human-shaped, but agonizingly distorted. The image seared itself on my eyes, burrowed into my brain.

“We think she died on the steps,” Anna said softly, “but Sergej hung her in the tree and… well. We didn’t get there in time. Your father was long gone, too, with you. We didn’t even know about you until years later.”

He hung her in the tree. Oh God. “You didn’t know about me?” I sounded breathless even to myself.

When she answered, there was a faint tinge of something, bitterness? Anger? I couldn’t decide and didn’t care. “No. Your mother… left the Order for her own reasons. Nobody knows what those reasons were.”

I don’t either. I blinked hard. Cleared my throat. “I thought svetocha were toxic to suckers. That’s what—” That’s what Christophe said.

“We are. We poison them just by breathing, just by existing in their vicinity. But some, a very few, nosferatu are powerful enough to endure that toxicity for a short amount of time. And a short amount of time was all Sergej needed.” Her perfect eyebrows drew together. “There is a reason he is their leader.”

It was weird. Nobody else would say his name. They said he or you- know-who. But Christophe, and this chick, said it quietly. Like they were talking about someone they knew.

I didn’t want to think about it. My entire body, and everything inside my head, felt like throwing up, passing out, or just sinking down on the floor and trembling for a bit. “What does this have to do with Christophe?”

She flipped that photo over too. The back of it had a scribble in blue pen, a streak like someone had slashed at it. More papers. “This is a transcript of a call between an unidentified member of the Order and a nosferat of Sergej’s line. In it, the unidentified Kouroi gives your mother’s location. Christophe is the only person who might have known, he trained your mother personally, and they were close.”

He trained her? “Close? How old is he?”

“Old enough to remember the last half of the First World War, Miss Anderson. We have no more proof, the recording is gone and the person who transcribed it died in battle. Rather suspiciously, I might add.” She was watching me very carefully, I realized. There’s a certain way people look when they’re not focusing forward, when they’re tracking you in their peripheral vision. “It is very likely Christophe will seek further contact with you. If and when he does, it is imperative that you notify an advisor and stand by for debriefing. Is that clear?”

The tone of command was something new. I got the idea that when this lady said jump, everyone around her made like a basketball player going up for a dunk.

The words hovered right on the tip of my tongue. He’s already been to see me. A few simple words, and I could stop feeling like there was a weight pressing against my heart. I could lay the problem in someone else’s lap and stop worrying about it. I could hand it over to an adult and be done.

But I heard the sound of soft wings again, and feathers brushed my face. I almost flinched, the feeling was so real.

Look what happened last time you tried to dump the problem in someone else’s lap, Dru. You called Augustine, and things seemed like they were going to get better, and now look at where you are.

It was a warning, delivered just like all of Gran’s lessons. Simple and without a lot of bullshit messing it up. “Crystal,” I heard myself say. It was the first time I’d ever sounded as weary and adult as Graves sometimes did. Did he ever feel this weight pressing on him too?

He probably did. I wanted to see him so bad my hands almost shook.

“Then I shall be on my way.” She scooped the file together, and I glanced up. Dylan looked worried, as usual, and he was staring straight at me. It was like he was willing me to figure something out, his lips pressed together and his dark eyes beaming a message I couldn’t decode.

“The transcript. Do I get to look at it?” I didn’t mean to sound stubborn, but I guess I did. Dylan actually flinched, and Anna drew herself up.

I finally figured out what bothered me about her face. She looked Popular. She’d never been an outcast; we all just existed to throw her own reflection back at her. There was the same unfinished, greedy kind of prettiness I’d seen on cheerleaders and female boa constrictors all over America. If she wasn’t djamphir, she’d probably have ended up as an obese, lacquered middle-aged woman with a turned-down, bitter mouth. The kind that makes a huge fuss in a grocery store over an expired coupon, or a can of corn costing fifteen cents more than she’d thought.

The kind that always gets her way, because she’s shameless when it comes to wearing you down over it. Like that.

“It’s classified, Miss Anderson. When Christophe contacts you, listen to what he has to say. Remember it, and be ready to repeat it.” She nodded brusquely and tucked the manila folder under her arm. Her silk swished as she headed for the door. “My bodyguard will see me out, Dylan. Thank you.”

“Milady.” How he managed to say the word without choking, I don’t know. She swept away, her heels tapping with little sharp sounds.

The door swung shut. Cobwebs up at the top of the tall bookcases made little shushing movements. The ceiling tiles in here were rotting too.

This place was really falling apart in more ways than one.

Dylan tilted his head, one eyebrow raised. I stood there, aching and wet with sweat. I didn’t realize I was shaking until I sat back down in the chair, hard. Every part of me was quivering like electrified Jell-O. Her smell left reluctantly, heaviness coating the back of my throat, especially that place on the palate normal people don’t have, the place where I taste danger.

It’s like the pickled ginger you get with sushi. That always tastes like perfume to me. This was heavy, oily perfume too.

What does that remind me of? I swear to God it reminds me of something. But the little spring that wheels memories out of their slots and throws them into the soup of your brain was busted in my head. I just couldn’t come up with anything coherent.

Climbing up the stairs to my room seemed like an awfully huge task. But the thought of hiding under the bed with the dust kitties, the malaika, and Dad’s billfold more than made up for it. I was glad, for no reason that I could name, that Mom’s locket was tucked safely under my T-shirt. The idea of Anna seeing it made my heart feel cold.

Dylan’s shoulders slumped. “They’re gone,” he said quietly. “Are you all right?”

What a question. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Peachy. Perfect. Not.”

“I’m sorry.” He really did sound sorry. But then, he always did. “She insisted on seeing you, and…”