Betrayals

His hair flopped over his face as he nodded. “Bobby. That’s his nickname, he’s tall, especially when he changes. Grasshopper legs.”

“Oh.” Aren’t you just making friends all over. “You going out again after classes?”

“Yeah, we’re going running. There’s going to be a full moon in a couple weeks; some of the kids are going to do their first Change. If I do my parkour practice right—”

“Parkour. That’s a funny word.” I said it for the hundredth time, and watched him grin for the hundredth time.

His eyes really lit up. He actually looked happy. “You’d really like it. Freerunning is awesome. And once they teach you how to fall and leap and stuff, it’s super easy.”

“But just for wulfen?”

Another shrug. “You could come along. Some of the djamphir do it too. The practice, not the actual runs.”

“Graves! Hey, Graves!” someone shouted, and he looked up. A curly-headed wulf yelled something across the lunchroom, and Graves whipped him the bird almost faster than the eye could follow. A tide of growling swirled through the room, but it subsided as Graves looked steadily at the wulf in question, his green eyes narrowing.

Back in the Dakotas, Goth Boy would never have done that. He’d been on the bottom of the food chain, same as me. But now, he was actually, sort of, kind of… well, popular. Or at least getting there. It helped that he was loup-garou, all of the benefits of being wulfen without the crazy part. He didn’t get seven feet tall and hairy like an overgrown toupee. Christophe had said it would make him a “prince” here.

And Graves was all over it in a big way.

I stared back down at my tray. Nothing on it looked even remotely edible anymore, so I took another gulp of my latte. It splashed in my stomach, gurgled a bit, and subsided. “What was that?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. They like to tease.”

“About…?” About you sitting next to the Typhoid Female?

“Nothing, Dru. Here.” He scooted my tray away and slid a small plate off his, setting it in front of me. A burger, a mound of fries. “It’s hot. Eat.”

I picked up a fry. He had packets of ketchup, too, and squeezed one out on his plate. We lapsed into silence, a bubble of companionable quiet almost deep enough to swallow the empty chairs ranked along the sides of our table.

Maybe I had some sort of social plague. Besides, I didn’t want to talk. Except to Graves, and there was really nothing to say.

I found out I was hungry after all. He’d even dumped pickles on the burger and left off the onions.

He must’ve been sure I’d eat. “Thanks.”

“Hey, no problem. First one’s free.”

I dredged up another unwilling smile. “This isn’t the first burger you’ve gotten me.”

“Won’t be the last, either. It’s the first one I’ve gotten you today, so just eat, all right? I’ve got a half hour before I have to be down to get my ass beat up. So talk to me. You get anything ordered to your room finally?”

“Nope.” The clothes I was wearing now had shown up in packages with a post office box number on them, a number different than the mail stop on the info sheet in my room. I’d written it down and stashed it in my bag, information like that might be useful later. Someone had guessed at my sizes and done a handy job of it. And the wulfen had taken Graves into town, there was something close by, even though this place sat on a few acres of Sticksville, to get kitted out.

But not me. They couldn’t have anyone knowing about a girl up here at this school.

I wondered where all the money came from, then decided maybe I didn’t want to know. I had a roll of cash in my battered black canvas bag, and it’s usually no big trick to get more.

But still. I’d never had to get more on my own before. I knew how, sure. But Dad had always been there, and—

“Hello? Earth to Dru?” Graves waved a broad, long-fingered hand in front of my face. “Whatcha thinking? It must be deep.”

I shrugged. Took another french fry. “I was just wondering where all the money comes from. This isn’t a cheap operation they’ve got going. I wonder if the other schools are bigger. Which still leaves the question of how they pay for this.”

Graves studied me sideways for a moment. That adult look was back, as if he was listening to a song I couldn’t quite hear. “That’s true. I thought about that too. Want me to see if I can find out?”

“Sure.” Another fry, and another bite of burger and sip of latte. “Can I come with you? To sparring?”

His pause was long enough that I knew what he’d say. Probably not a good idea, Dru.

I wanted to hear him say it, anyway. The bubbling ball of acid inside my chest swelled another few notches. “Why?”

He hunched his shoulders. It was no good, he wasn’t as birdlike-thin as he’d been a couple of weeks ago, before he’d gotten bit. He couldn’t look small anymore. “No offense, but you like to pick fights too much. And I hate having a chick see me get my ass handed to me. It’s a guy thing.”

My face felt funny, so I let my hair fall down between us, curtaining my expression. Long hair is good for some things. And since we weren’t in Midwest Podunk anymore, my hair had actually been behaving. Go figure. “This chick could hand your ass to you, you know.”

“One of the teachers would jump me or throw me out of here if we got into it, Dru. Let’s not.”

“They wouldn’t throw you out. I’d leave too.” I’d go just about anywhere to get out of here. But I couldn’t, could I. Not with the vampire king looking for me, right?

“We’d both end up dead.” He sounded uncharacteristically serious, and his free hand came up, touched his opposite shoulder. Right where he’d been bitten. He rubbed at it a little, as if it still hurt.

“Please, Dru. Let’s not do this, okay?”

I dropped the burger. It splatted down on the plate and I pushed my chair back. My lips were greasy. Chewed food sat in my stomach like a bowling ball. “Fine. Let’s not. Have fun at sparring.”

“Dru—”

But I got up, shoved my chair back under the table, and fled. When he came by my room later, I kept the door closed and locked. He knocked for a while, but then he went away. And I sat there on the bed, fingering my mother’s locket and wondering how much longer I was going to be trapped here.

CHAPTER 4

Tap. Taptap. Tap. I turned over restlessly. Sleep retreated like a cat, on soft little feet. I didn’t want it to go, clutched at it with dreaming fingers. I had been dreaming of something important, a warning, owl wings brushing the air around me.

The bed was wide and deep and soft, a maple four-poster with filmy, dusty blue curtains drawn back. The whole room was blue, from the indigo velvet quilt cover to the pale-sky wallpaper figured with gold crosses, to the tinted varnish on the seven bookcases and the heavy cobalt velvet drapes. The rug was sapphire, and thick enough to lose dimes in even though it was older than me.

The window behind it didn’t have iron bars, because it opened onto a little private garden completely enclosed by high, blank walls, three stories down, with a barred door I could reach only by going out my door, making three turns, and going down two flights of stairs.

A lot of effort to spend if I wanted to walk outside into a raw, blustery little plot of ground with gravel paths and leafless, pinched-looking things that might have been rosebushes, in spring, that is.

If I really, truly wanted to wander around thorny stabbing vines under a gray sky.

Instead of bars, there were heavy iron shutters, with little hearts and crosses punched out in even rows marching down their lengths.