Jealousy

“In Shadow?” I repeated stupidly.

She waved one elegant hand. The cameo on a black ribbon at her slim white throat shifted a little. “We can go unnoticed, you know. And surely you’ve noticed that you only have to state a wish before they leap to obey? Such good little boys. I’ve trained them that way. It was hard work, but I managed.”

“Huh.” I eased a little farther into the room. Maybe the sense of danger before hadn’t been from her specifically.

Well, she hated Christophe. But it was easy to see how someone could. He was just so . . .

. . . what? I tried to come up with a word, but all I could think of was the boathouse at the other Schola. Where he’d held the knifepoint against his chest and said, Don’t hesitate. And where he’d put his arms around me, and I’d felt safe. Not the type of safe I’d felt with Graves, but still.

The fang marks on my wrist burned. I sat down on another couch, one with a straight shot for the door. This was the one Hiro most often perched on, his quick dark eyes taking in everything in the room.

I kind of wished he was here now. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“That’s one thing about a Schola, Dru. Someone’s always watching.” A bright sunny smile. “Always. It’s like a big . . . security blanket.”

Funny, it didn’t sound like a security blanket. It sounded like a threat. Her bright blue eyes were on me, but I didn’t sense anything other than lazy contentment swimming through the windowless room. The fire—there was always a fire in here—crackled companionably. The touch was quiescent inside my skull, and I relaxed a little bit.

But if it hadn’t been Anna giving me the sense of danger before, then who? Or what? One of the Council?

The traitor, maybe? Everyone seemed to be so sure it was Christophe. Except me, and maybe the wulfen whose lives he’d saved. I was supposed to find out who wanted me dead here, but I wasn’t having any luck.

Jesus, I wish Dad was here. “Anna.” I decided a frontal assault would be best, so to speak. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.” She made another lazy, hand-waving gesture. “But go ahead, dear.”

What the hell are you playing at? But I chose something else instead. “Why do you hate Christophe?”

She stiffened a little, eyelids dropping a fraction. The smile fell away, like a china plate dropping from a wall hanging. “I don’t exactly hate him.”

“Then what is it?” I figured out she was keeping one eye on me and one eye on the door. Maybe she was just as nervous about me as I was about her, and the bitch cheerleader vibe was her protective coloration.

It was a sobering thought. Did that mean I’d made a snap judgment about her, the same thing I hated when people did it to me?

“Did he tell you?” One corner of her candy-gloss mouth turned down.

“He was kind of busy keeping us all alive. He didn’t mention you.” Beyond, Oh, Anna, spreading her poison. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. And Dylan hadn’t seemed too happy to see her either. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. It would be a bad idea.

“Would it surprise you to know that Reynard was my first love?” Now her attention was all on me. Weighing, watching, greedy little eyes. I tasted oranges and wax, but faintly. The fang marks in my wrist tingled, itching. The irritation in them was getting more intense. “Yes? I see by your expression that it does surprise you. He’s a heartbreaker; it’s his one true gift. Along with treachery.” She made a slight movement, settling herself more comfortably in the couch. “We were an item for quite some time. A few years.”

I was surprised. I couldn’t even imagine the two of them in the same room together. Not without feeling a little queasy. And why hadn’t Christophe told me this? “I don’t think—” I began. Was I actually going to defend Christophe to her?

“No, you don’t. Let me give you some sisterly advice, Dru. The next time you see Christophe, run. If my experience of him is any indication, he’s up to no good. He likes impressionable young girls. A lot of djamphir do. Human women, you know. Svetocha are supposed to be infinitely more attractive, but there are so few of us.” A quiet little laugh. “Just you and me. Don’t you feel special?”

Something curdled in my chest. If I need a reason now, Dru, it will have to be you. But here she was telling me . . . telling me what?

God, I sure could pick ’em. After a long run of no dating at all, here I was learning all sorts of things about the boys I liked.

Except I didn’t like Christophe that way, did I? I’d told Graves flat out that I didn’t. That he scared me in some weird deep-down way.

A change of subject would be a great idea, I decided. It was stuffy in here, and I was sweating. My ears were beginning to ring. “Why did you come all the way out to that reform Schola to see me? You could have brought me here.” There was a whole Schola burned down, wulfen and djamphir dead, and here she was, pretty as a picture and pulling all sorts of strings.

She eyed me like I’d made an embarrassing bodily noise. “I thought the Council was going to bring you here.” It sounded flat and unconvincing. “We’re still trying to find out how you ended up out in the boondocks.”

It had the brassy bitter taste of a lie the liar doesn’t really expect you to swallow. Christophe had tried to send me here to the Prima. Dylan himself had tried to get word out that I was upstate and in danger.

I stared at her, she stared at me, and I had just opened my mouth to inform her she was lying, when the outside door flew open hard enough to bang on the walls on either side.

I leapt up, my bag spilling off the couch. Anna laughed. It was a high breathless titter.

Hiro stalked into the room, his aspect on and his fangs out. His gaze made one brief pitiless arc over everything in sight—Anna lounging, me with crimson cheeks, breathing hard, and probably looking guilty as hell—and he checked, coming to a complete stop.

Kir trailed behind him. Bruce followed, looking thoughtful. And, once he saw me, palpably relieved.

“Milady.” Again, Hiro made it clear—I wasn’t sure quite how—that he was talking to me. “Forgive the intrusion.”

I swallowed what felt like a good chunk of my heart. The sense of danger returned, the reek of waxed oranges bursting on the back of my palate. “Yeah. I, um. There’s a Council meeting?”

“No.” Bruce’s relief turned to perplexity. “But . . . did you want to call one?”

Call one? What the hell for? I shook my head. “No, I . . . wait, there’s no meeting?”

It wasn’t until Hiro was already halfway across the room, bearing down on me, that I realized I was scrubbing my left wrist against the hem of my hoodie. Quick as a striking snake, his fingers closed around my wrist, and he dragged it away from my body.

I almost dropped my weight down into my knees, bracing myself to tear my arm away. But he looked down at the marks, pushing my sleeve up. “These are old. Weeks old.” He darted a single, malicious glance at Anna. “Let me guess. Reynard.”

“What?” Bruce crowded him aside. Inhaled sharply. “Why didn’t you tell us you were marked?”

“He . . . uh, well . . . Christophe had to. The suckers were coming to kill us. He asked if he could borrow something from me. I didn’t know it was . . . that.” Memory swallowed me whole, and I shuddered.

. . . Christophe jerked his head back, fangs sliding free of my flesh, and something wrapped itself tightly around my wrist, below his bruising-hard grip on my forearm. He exhaled, shuddering, and Graves tried to pull me away again. My arm stretched like Silly Putty between them, my shoulder screaming, and I couldn’t make a sound.

The winter blue of Christophe’s irises clouded, dark striations like food coloring dropped in water threading through the light. They still glowed even more intensely, in a way that shouldn’t have made sense. “Sweet,” he hissed, and made an odd hitching movement. His chin dipped, and his fingers tightened bruising-hard on my wrist, like he was going to do that again.

I wanted to scream, couldn’t. Nothing worked. My body just hung there, frozen and unresponsive.