Jealousy

SNAP! just like a mousetrap going off. I actually saw a mousetrap inside my head, leaping up as the spring’s energy was released and the mouse skittered away, alive but without its cheese.

Fast light-tapping footsteps in the hall outside. Graves muttered and thrashed uneasily. I found out sweat had sprung up on the curve of my lower back, in my armpits, and along my forehead. A headache threatened, steel bands around my temples.

I blew out a long, soft breath. Lowered the switchblade. As my only weapon, it sucked. As a comfort, it kind of sucked as well.

More footsteps. Heavier, but just as quick. Djamphir even sound graceful while they’re running. I wondered how they did that and watched the wards.

Not a spark. They just kept humming blue.

“Dru!” It was Benjamin, and he just kept going right on down the hall. “Milady! Dru! ”

I stuffed the switchblade in my pocket and got the bar unstuck with shaking, sweaty hands. Threw the locks as Graves woke up and cussed again behind me, the window going blind-dark as the sun slipped fully below the edge of the horizon. I tore the door open and jumped out into the hall, narrowly missing a collision with Leon, who stopped on a dime and glared at me through his mousy, tangled hair. He looked like he’d just woke up, but his combat boots were laced up and tied tight, and that takes awhile.

“What the fuck’s going on?” he snarled.

“I don’t know!” I snarled right back. “Benjamin went that way—” I pointed, but the mousy djamphir boy was already gone, running with the eerie stuttering speed that verges on disappearing because the eyes can’t track it.

“She’s here!” Leon yelled. “Benjamin! Dammit, she’s here! ”

The two blonds appeared. They weren’t quite twins, but since both of them were wearing black T-shirts and jeans, it was harder to tell them apart. One of them was in sock feet, and the other one carried a Walther PPK, pointing it at the floor as his eyes roved. I grabbed the doorjamb and kept my eyes on him while the one in socks walked past me, turned military-sharp, and leaned against the hall wall on the right side of the door.

Guarding me. It was a nice thought, and I was more comforted than I should have been.

“Are you all right?” the blond with the gun asked me. Thomas, I remembered his name with the sort of gut-wrenching mental effort I usually associate only with higher-level math classes. I mean, I can balance a checkbook, calculate a tip from sales tax in sixteen states, and do ammo checks. Calculus? Forget it.

I nodded. Leon appeared at the end of the hall, shaking his head. Right behind him, Benjamin stalked. He looked up, saw me, and stopped dead for a few seconds.

The next thing I knew, he was right in front of the door. “You were here? You’ve been here?”

I hate it when they blink in and out of sight like that. I almost flinched. “Uh, yeah.” I couldn’t even say it like he was an idiot or anything. I was too badly rattled. “Had my door barred and everything. But I . . . heard something.”

“Is some sleep too much to ask?” Graves moaned from the bed. “Jesus Christ, what’s happening now?”

“This is bad,” Leon murmured, finally arriving and casting a mild, raised-eyebrow look down at Blond No.1’s sock feet.

Dammit, why couldn’t I remember their names? Thomas and something. Something with a G, maybe?

“What did you hear?” Benjamin planted his sneakered feet and leaned forward, like a terrier straining at the leash. “Dru?”

George. I remembered the name and felt immediately, oddly better. Like I’d accomplished something. “Someone knocked. But it didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel like opening the door.” Great. Now he was going to think I was a stubborn brat or something.

So let him. What was Anna doing anyway? Why would the warding react to her and not to the boys?

Because she was up to no good, Dru. Duh. And if you weren’t so busy trying to explain it away, you could probably figure out why.

Amazingly, Benjamin looked over his shoulder at Leon. They shared the kind of Significant Glance I was used to seeing between adults. Then the dark-haired djamphir shook his emo-boy fringe down and turned his attention to me. “That’s good.” As if praising me for a test answer. “Don’t open your door if you’re not sure. You should trust your instincts on this. And we’ll post a guard instead of—”

“What did you see?” Screw the rest of it. I wanted to know that, first.

“I thought . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I thought you were running down the hall to visit the Broken again. I’ve heard a svetocha can do that—make a game out of slipping away sometimes. It must be . . . hard, to have someone with you everywhere you go.”

Boy, you don’t know the half of it. I shrugged. I’d still prefer it to being killed by a sucker.

Always assuming, of course, that I could trust whoever was guarding me. That was the whole problem, wasn’t it?

“What the hell’s going on?” Graves wanted to know.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” I told Benjamin. “I know better.” Unless one of you is a traitor and looking to kill me. I didn’t say it, but I also didn’t stop watching the kid with the Walther. He was staring off down the hall the other way, his back to the wall, but it’s Rule Numero Uno when there’s a gun out—you make sure you know where it’s pointed at all times.

“That’s good.” Benjamin sounded relieved. “That’s really good. I thought I saw you running down the hall. But it couldn’t have been you, since you were here. Maybe it was a curiosity-seeker or something.” He gave me a Significant Glance, as if I was supposed to help him out with this.

Yeah, that really makes sense. “I dunno.” I closed my mouth after that. Anna was supposed to be a secret, but she sure didn’t act like it. And would she be a secret here at the Schola Prima, among all the djamphir? She’d walked right past Graves and Benjamin and them to get into the Council room, right?

Still, just because she was all over the place didn’t mean I had to hand out information like cupcakes. Besides she predated me here and was the head of the Council.

“Oh, come on.” Leon actually snorted. “It was the Red Queen.”

“Isn’t she a myth?” Thomas noticed I was looking at the gun and actually flushed. It went into a holster under his left armpit, and I relaxed a little. “Oh, sorry.”

I shrugged. Again. I was getting good with the shrugging. I could practice in front of the mirror and have a different one for each occasion.

Benjamin was watching my face, too. “No, she is not a myth. She’s just kept from the hoi polloi like us. And very busy with her duties. You saw her this morning.”

Thomas absorbed this. “I thought she’d be taller.”

Sockfoot George asked the question I wanted answered most. “What was she doing here, then? And without bodyguards? Unless they were here in Shadow.”

Oh, great. All eyes on you, Dru. “I don’t have a clue.” And I didn’t.

They all stood there for a couple seconds just looking at each other. And I jumped—Graves was right behind me. He did something odd, then—he put his arms around my waist and hugged me. We’re both tall, but he seemed to have gotten taller. Back in the Dakotas we were almost eye to eye. Or maybe it just seemed that way because he hunched over all the time, his body shutting itself away from a world it wanted no part of.

And the djamphir boys stared at me again. I blushed for no discernible reason. I was turning red an embarrassing amount of the time lately.

So first Graves liked me too much, but then he would hug me in front of other boys?

“Yes. Well.” Benjamin cleared his throat. “Twenty-four-hour guard. Posted at the door. Someone with her at all times.”