Jealousy

neck. “You’ll never be good enough. They won’t love you. Not the way—”

“Nobody loves you.” I didn’t know it was true before it came out of my mouth. It stung like a bad hex biting before you can unravel it. The owl banked, dove sharply across the space between us, and veered off just at the last second before its talons hit. The wind of its passing ruffled Anna’s hair, and she actually ducked, the rest of her not-so-carefully-coiffed-anymore curls falling down. The aspect fled her, and she looked like a little girl before she broke and ran for the door with eerie, stuttering speed. It opened, she piled through, and I heard boy voices.

I braced myself, waiting for whatever would happen next.

The owl cruised in another tight circle overhead. I wasn’t inside it anymore, just inside my own scraped-raw, throbbing skin. The aspect retreated, and I sagged, my knees hitting the mats with a jolt that smacked my teeth together. They were only bluntly human now. I was glad. Sharp fangs might have taken a chunk out of my lip, and that would have been no fun.

What the hell was that?

I bent over. My stomach hurt. Nausea filled it, kicked against its rubbery insides, and I was glad I hadn’t eaten lunch.

“That was interesting,” someone said from behind the bleachers. They rattled a bit as a shape slid out from behind them.

What? I turned my head gingerly. Blinked a couple of times. The clarity had gone, and the world was getting fuzzy.

Shanks picked his way over the mats, shoulders hunched. “You don’t look so good.”

“How—” I bent over as a retch came painlessly up from my guts and was kept occupied by the struggle not to paint the mats with anything my stomach could come up with.

“Figured I should stick around. Graves is going to shit a brick over this one.”

“Don’t . . .” I tried swallowing; it hurt my throat. Smelled the fur and wildness on him, a collage of brunet scent that made up his gangly long legs and quick dark eyes. It was like the pictures the touch painted inside my head when the ampoule of blood broke open in Aspect Mastery. “Don’t—”

I meant, Don’t come any closer. The bloodhunger was clear and unavoidable, burning just under my skin. Like the touch.

Like the anger. Rage. It was just looking for an outlet.

If I got to Graves first and told him about this, maybe I could somehow make him understand that we needed to leave this place before things got any worse.

Shanks squatted, an easy graceful movement. “Don’t worry, I can smell the red on you. Not gonna get close until you calm down.” A quick flick of a glance up over my head. The owl gave one last soft hoot, and the sound of wingbeats retreated. “Which you’d better do soon, before someone comes in here and finds you like this. You’re bleeding.”

That, right now, was the least of my worries. I shut my eyes and dragged a deep breath in. Blew it out between pursed lips. “Don’t. Tell.” I needed to talk to Graves first. To explain.

“Hm.” He didn’t agree or disagree, just made a noncommittal noise. “I never thought I’d see the Red Queen in person. She don’t show herself to the peasants much.” He glanced up at the door she’d retreated through. “Jesus.”

Red Queen? I made a shapeless noise, but it was definitely a question.

“Oh, yeah.” A small, humorless laugh. “Wulfen know about her. We’re not stupid, Dru. We like to know who’s playing the game.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I was bruised and scraped all over, both my shoulders ached like they’d been dislocated and put back wrong, and my legs were like wet noodles. The shiner had gone down, though. A bit. Now it looked deep blue, fading into green-yellow instead of fresh and dark red. The baths worked wonders.

I was still standing there, looking at myself in the stripe I’d swiped away from the condensation on the mirror, when someone banged on the locker-room door. “Dru! You in there?”

It was Graves.

Shit. I watched my eyes widen and my mouth pull down and wished for a better poker face. “Yeah,” I yelled back. My split lip had closed up, but it was still tender and puffy. I pulled down the neck of my T-shirt, winced at the cuff of bruising crawling up my shoulder. “Go on, I’ll catch up.” As soon as I can figure out how to explain this to you.

“No way. I’m on duty right now. Benny and Leon got called away for something.” The door opened a bit more, but he didn’t stick his head in. Echoes bounced eerily off blue tiles, split themselves on the edges of the shower stalls and choked over the top of the bubbling of the not-water in the sunken tubs. “You’re gonna be late! Come on!”

“Just go!” My voice broke. I turned the cold tap on as high as it could go. Maybe it would take some of the swelling down, and the sound of it would drown out whatever he wanted to say.

I should’ve known better. Because he banged the door open and stamped right on in.

“For Christ’s sake, can’t you be on time even once in your…” His boots squeaked as he stopped. I grabbed both edges of the white porcelain sink and shook my hair down. “Dru?”

My knuckles were white and my legs refused to quite hold me up. So Shanks hadn’t said anything. Or if he had, Graves had shrugged it off.

He touched my shoulder. I flinched.

The breath left him in a hard puff, as if he’d been punched too. He was staring at the swipe in the mirror, where he could see my bruised, puffing face. “Jesus Christ.”

“It’s not bad,” I lied and jerked away from him. He grabbed my arm, though, quicker than he should have been able to. I kept forgetting how fast he was with the loup-garou burning inside him. His fingers sank in, and I let out a short bark of pain as they ground into a fresh bruise. “Graves—” I searched for the words to make him see. We have to leave. Please listen to me this time.

“Who?” He all but shook me, and the deep vibration under the surface of the word was a loup- garou’s command-voice. The wulfen use the Other inside them to put on fur and strength, but someone half-imprinted and inoculated against wulfbite like Graves uses it another way—for mental dominance. I’d seen him hold a roomful of angry wulfen back with that voice. I’d seen him press a fellow wulf down into a crouch with just the weight of his will alone.

He was full of surprises, my Goth Boy.

The steam in the air shredded away in shapes with sharp teeth and pointed noses. I tore myself away and grabbed at my own arm, a fresh bruise rising under the old one. “Ow!”

He drew himself up, shoulders straining under the black fabric of his coat. “Who?”

He sounded just like my grandmother’s owl. The thought hit me sideways with unreliable, unsteady, panicked hilarity. I choked down a laugh that felt like a sob. “Graves, we have got to get out of here. Please. Let’s just go.”

Because I knew something else; I’d known it even when we started whaling on each other. It would be her word against mine, and she wouldn’t have come down here without a good story in place to cover her ass. The fact that Shanks had seen the whole thing wouldn’t help in front of the Council—he was a wulf.

Not a djamphir.

Besides, you don’t ever be the first one to tell. It’s not Dad’s code. It’s kids’ code, learned every day at lunch and recess. Anna could break it—she was an adult, even though she looked my age.

But me? I couldn’t. I didn’t want to tell. I wanted to get the hell out of here. Sooner rather than later.

Like now.

Graves’s eyes glowed, sharp green. He obviously didn’t believe me. “Who?” The