Jealousy

word rattled the mirror against the wall, its plastic brackets chattering. The steam streamed away, surrounded us like the white flying bits inside a snow globe. The kind that you shake while it plays a stupid song from some forgettable saccharine Disney movie.

“Don’t worry about it.” I shrugged my hoodie further up, zipped it all the way to my chin. “Let’s just go. I’ve got money; we can get off the grounds before they even know we . . .” I ran out of words, staring at him. “Please.” I searched for more to say. “Please, Graves. I have to get out of here.”

He stared at me, deathly pale under his even caramel coloring. When he did that, he looked almost gray. His mouth set itself in a thin line, and his hair all but stood up, snapping with vitality. His earring glittered, a sharp dart of light.

“You’ve got to calm down.” I sounded pale and unhealthy even to myself. “Graves. Please. You have got to calm down. I need—”

He lifted one hand, a fist. His index finger popped out accusingly, and he pointed at my face. There was a faint crackling sound as he bulked up. He wouldn’t get hairy, but he does definitely sort of swell when the loup-garou comes out. “Who. Hit. You?”

That’s not fucking important! Why couldn’t he just listen to me? “I just . . . just . . . I . . . Graves—” Of all the times for my mouth to fail me, this was the worst. But his rage, swimming in the air and rasping against the touch, made it hard to think. And worst of all, the bloodhunger came back, circling that special space at the back of my palate with cat-tongue fingers. Rasping. My entire mouth tingled.

If I sprouted fangs now, what would he think of me?

“You had better tell me something,” Graves said quietly. “I hate not being told, Dru. You know I hate not being told.”

What? He was making no sense. I opened my mouth. Nothing came out, and I shut it again.

Because I could feel the fangs lengthening. They touched my bottom teeth lightly, the entire shape of the jaw changing.

Oh, please, no. No.

“Fine.” Graves turned on one heel, so fast his coat flared out and touched my knee. Stamped away, paused right next to the door. His head dropped, shoulders shaking, and one fist pistoned out.

The wall gave a crack. Powder and dust puffed out; tiles shattered and split in zigzags. I flinched again. “Stop!” I yelled, and every droplet of fog in the locker room flashed. Tiny little diamonds, all hanging spinning in the air.

“When you feel like telling me,” he said very softly, “come and find me.”

He shrank a little, the change receding through him. Took his fist away from the divot in the wall and shook it briefly, flinging little shards of tile away. Startling red spattered on the wall, and the smell of blood exploded inside my head.

Almost-wulfen. A tang like strawberries mixed with incense. Green eyes and the metallic hint of snow, caramel skin and chapped hands. It was like seeing him in four dimensions, an extra layer added onto the everyday Graves who slept in my room and pecked me on the cheek each evening.

I held onto the sink like it was a raft and I was drowning. “Please. Let’s just leave. You and me.” A faint, girlish whisper. “Graves. Please.”

“Yeah. Run away. Sure. Just like my mom. Run away and go back each time.” He waved his lacerated hand. The wounds were already closing—wulfen heal fast, and he’d gotten a full dose of that talent, even if he didn’t get hairy. “But I swear to God I will find out who did this to you. Even if you don’t think you can trust me.”

The thirst roared through me and my fingers sank into the porcelain with little creaking sounds. If he went running off after Anna right now . . .

He yanked the door open so hard it hit the wall and more tiles shattered. The mirror above the sink cracked in gigantic zigzags, a spiderweb of expended force.

He was gone. I stood there, clinging to the stupid sink, every inch of me hurting and hot tears slicking my cheeks. I folded down, rested my hot forehead against the cool smoothness, and that’s how Benjamin and Shanks found me ten minutes later.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Shanks leaned against the door, his arms folded. “I guess Graves wanted to surprise you.”

“He didn’t go to class.” Dibs’s fingers were gentle. The blond wulfen smoothed some goop over my bruised cheek. He’d bandaged and gooped up the rest of me and was now working on my face with butterfly-light touches. “Hold still. I wish someone would have come and gotten me sooner. I can’t do much once it starts to get this dark.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. My split lip hurt. All of me hurt. I seemed to have only gotten to the morning-after part of healing—the part where you’re stiff and wish you’d never been born, let alone in a fight. I didn’t even have the adrenaline rush or the part where you feel like you’ve kicked the world’s ass.

No, I just felt damaged all over.

“He saw you like that?” Shanks kept repeating it. He pulled the sleeves of his blue cable-knit sweater up, his large bony wrists exposed. “Man, oh man. Oh, man.”

“I didn’t have a chance to even talk. He got too mad.” I flinched as Dibs started smearing the stuff on my eyelid. Arnica, he called it. Good for the bruises. I’d’ve preferred Gran’s mugwort and a bunch of aspirin. “I, uh. You know.” I couldn’t even begin to explain it.

“I don’t wanna be the wulf in his way when something happens to you.” Dibs’s wide blue eyes were dark and worried. His black medical bag lay open on the bed next to me. He kept wiping the arnica stuff on his gray T-shirt absently whenever he needed his fingers cleaned. “He’s crazy-mad.”

I could even feel Benjamin outside the door, waiting and worrying. It was Shanks who had argued him into getting Dibs out of class, and it was Shanks who had shoved him out the door when I got all girlie and started crying some more. A pile of tissues scattered over the blue carpet, and the particular darkness of 1:00 a.m. filled the window.

I was beginning to wish I’d never gotten out of bed. If I hadn’t, Graves would probably still be here. It would’ve been nice.

Dibs dabbed at my eye. I hissed in a short sharp breath, and he gave me a quick look of apology.

“You did pretty good,” Shanks said suddenly. “I mean, she’s older. And fully trained. You still kicked her ass.”

“She’s rusty.” And weedy. I suppressed the urge to shake Dibs’s hands away from my smarting eye. “That was the only reason I had a chance. I don’t think she practices.”

“The Red Queen’s dangerous. Hold still.” The stuff he was smearing on me smelled nose-numbing weird. “This will sting if I get it in your eye.”

Like it matters—what’s one more thing to hurt? I had a better question. “What exactly do you know? Was I, like, the only person not to know who she is?”

Shanks shrugged. He tilted his head a little, listening to the hall. “Benjamin’s gone back to his room. Thank God, that was starting to bug me.” A little bit of the tension in him bled away. “I don’t know much, really. Just that the head of the Order’s the Red Queen. She’s been pressing for renegotiation of some Treaty terms for a long time. She gets a lot of what she wants; the Council just gets worn down. My parents used to talk about it after the cubs went to bed.” A shrug. “There’re just . . . rumors.”

“What kind of rumors?” I shut my eyes when Dibs murmured at me. He was so gentle, and I began to feel a little less battered. At least here with him and Shanks, nobody was messing with me.

“Just rumors. Nothing I can put my finger on, just saying that it’s better not to be in her way.” He gave me a long, measuring glance. “I can see why.”

So could I. “I didn’t know she hated my mother.”