Jealousy

“Christophe.” Shanks sounded nervous. “Um, Christophe?”

The world trembled on a knife edge. Blackness crowded in around the corners. My head tipped further back. Graves held me up, both arms around me now. It was work to breathe. In, out; in, out, my ribs almost refused to rise. There was air outside my face, but it was just so hard to bring it in. Instead, the sea of atmosphere pushed down on me, crushing.

“Jesus,” Graves whispered. “What did you do to her?”

“How much did he take?” Hiro asked quietly.

Over his shoulder, Anna’s face floated. She was white. Not pale, like she usually was. White. As if she’d just seen a ghost. Red pin-pricks flickered in the depths of her pupils, and there was a sudden overwhelming certainty that if Hiro wasn’t between us she would want to talk to me. Right up close.

Right up hard.

“She’s with him,” Anna hissed. “A traitor, right under our nose. Just like Eliza—”

Hiro let go of me and turned sharply. He actually bumped me, he turned so fast, and I stumbled back, almost falling on the couch. Bruce’s hand closed around my upper arm, bruising-tight, and his other hand shot out, wrapping in the back of Hiro’s high-collared gray silk jacket-shirt. The material gave a weird slippery sound, like it was straining.

“You accuse so easily, Anna.” Hiro was cold, cutting-calm. Roaring filled my ears. I felt light-headed. “And yet—”

Kir was suddenly there, between the svetocha and Hiro. His fangs were out, red hair thickly streaked with pure gold as the aspect touched him. A deep thrumming sound tightened all the available air, turned it to soup. Bruce’s stance hardened, and he gave me an unreadable glance.

“Let’s all be reasonable here,” he said quietly. His tone sliced through the growling, and I realized the weird skritching sound was the silk threads in Hiro’s jacket stretching and tearing a little at a time. “Dru.”

Wait. She was about to say Elizabeth. Did she know Mom? My legs had turned to wet noodles. I stood up, though, sweating and shaking. “Yessir?” As if he was Dad, and we were in a bar with a bunch of Real World baddies and someone had just made the mistake of messing with him.

“How much did Reynard take? It hurt, didn’t it? How many times?”

“I . . .” I hated thinking about it. The shaking got worse. “Three. Mouthfuls. Gulps, whatever.”

Anna let out a hissing sound, like a kettle near full steam. Her face contorted and smoothed, and Hiro leaned forward a little more. Sooner or later that jacket was going to rip, and God alone knew what was going to happen.

“That’s all right then.” Bruce’s grasp on me gentled. “You certainly have led an eventful life, Milady.”

“How do we know she’s—” Anna began.

“You don’t want to finish that sentence.” Hiro cut across her words. Some essential tension leaked out of him, though, and Bruce obviously felt it too. Because he let go of Hiro’s jacket and braced me. I was going to have a bruise on my arm, though. I could just tell.

“We don’t doubt a svetocha’s word.” Bruce was looking up over my head when he said it, but his jaw was set. A muscle flicked once in his cheek, and his hawklike face had settled into a cruel, beautiful picture, each plane and line pared down. His aspect wasn’t on, but I sensed it running under the surface, like a current under still black bayou water.

“That’s right.” Hiro straightened his sleeves. I don’t know how he did it, but he seemed a few inches taller. “We don’t doubt a svetocha’s word.”

Anna looked like she’d been slapped. Rosettes of feverish color bloomed high up on her perfect cheeks. Her fangs peeped out, and I swear to God I heard a cat’s hiss, too. The prettiness she wore like a shield slipped, and for half a second something ugly showed underneath it.

Then she was gone, moving too quickly to be seen. There was a sound like paper tearing and nasty chittering laughter in its wake as she did the trick I’d first seen after Christophe drove Ash off in the snow, what seemed like a million years ago and miles away.

I swallowed. My throat was burning, a cartload of dry ice. I was cold, even though I was sweating and the fire was putting out a roaring wall of dry heat. The bloodhunger folded back down, leaving just a rasping at the very back of my palate. “What. The hell.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Hiro.” Kir, shaking his head. His aspect was gone now, and he looked oddly sad.

“Little red lapdog.” The Japanese djamphir’s words could have carried more contempt, I suppose, if they’d rented out a U-Haul. Maybe.

“She is the head of the Order,” Kir retorted stiffly.

“Gentlemen.” Bruce raised his hands. “Let’s be civilized. We all know Milady Anna is . . . difficult, and—”

“She drove Elizabeth out, just as—” Hiro began, but Bruce shushed him. Actually shushed and looked at me.

I didn’t even care. I picked up my bag with shaking hands. When I looked up, all three of them were staring at me.

“I know she doesn’t like me.” I tried to sound steady. “I can’t even figure out why.”

I was trying to express something about antimatter girls, but I gave it up as hopeless. No matter how adult they were, they were boys. They just wouldn’t get it. Why would I explain anyway?

If Anna had a thing for Christophe, and he was hanging around me . . . yeah, I could see where that could make some problems.

Hiro looked about to say something, but I’d had enough. I took two sliding steps to the side. Bruce didn’t twitch, but I got the idea he wanted to.

“I’m going to class,” I said in a small voice and fled. I ran back up to my room, locked the door, and didn’t open it until Leon, Benjamin, and Graves all showed up to pound on it. And I didn’t say a word when they asked me what the hell had happened.

I know the rules. You don’t squeal, not ever. You take care of things on your own.

And besides, I figured it out while I was hunching in the bathroom, hyperventilating and rocking back and forth. I didn’t even want to think about Anna and Christophe, or whatever. He didn’t like her, she hated him, and maybe they had once dated and she didn’t like him hanging around other girls. Who cared? There were bigger problems.

Anna was the head of the Order, and at least one person on the council—Kir—was on her side completely.

Which brought me to the scariest question of all.

Which one—or possibly more—of the djamphir guarding me was one of Anna’s creatures?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The session with Ash was mercifully short that night. He had quieted down long before dawn. I hadn’t wanted to leave him, but Graves rolled his eyes and told me he needed some sleep. And I was so worn-out and jumpy I just gave in.

I turned over, punched my pillow again. Sighed.

“Want to tell me what’s wrong?” Graves’s voice, not quite a whisper but not normal volume either. I guess he thought that if he said it that quietly, I had the option of ignoring.

I considered telling him about Anna, but if I did Christophe would come up. That was no good. It was such a tangle I didn’t even have it right inside my head yet, and until I did I couldn’t hope to explain it to him in a way that wouldn’t end up with him thinking something I didn’t want him to think. About Christophe, and more importantly,