Jealousy

“It is you, Dru. You’re not like Elizabeth. You’re a fighter. You can help us turn the tide even more.” His eyes glittered, his face set in hard lines. Even cloudy sunlight was good to him, burnishing his pale skin. “This is why you’re so important. He’s the closest thing to a king they have anymore. Kill him, and—”

My stomach flipped over. “Whoa, hold on a second. Kill him?”

“That is certainly the only solution I can see.” The sunlight dimmed even further, and the shadows under his eyes and cheekbones evened out. “But you have hard training before that’s even possible. There are other hurdles to clear, too.”

“Yeah. You could say that again. Look, Anna’s still alive, right?”

“She’s never faced Sergej.”

Wow. This was just an eye-opening conversation all the way around. “Never?”

“Not once. She was rescued from an ordinary nosferatu attack, brought in, and hasn’t stirred outside the Schola’s walls without a contingent of bodyguards and security that makes the President look like an easy target.”

“But she came to the—”

“She came to the reform Schola where she’d diverted you, yes. Why is that, do you think?”

Wait a second. What?

“She . . .” I absorbed this. The latte began to gurgle in my stomach. Have you ever burped acid, banana syrup, and coffee? It’s not fun. My lips were numb. My heart was pounding like a freight train’s wheels. “I thought we didn’t know how I’d ended up there.”

“Now I do. What did you think I was doing, other than watching your window? I’ve been gathering evidence, Dru. And even though you won’t tell me what happened between you and Anna yesterday, I can guess.”

No, I didn’t think he could guess. Not really. The dream I’d been trying to push away for weeks came back, all ash and smoke and terror.

Don’t let the nosferatu bite.

I sat there. A horrible shape was rising up out of the bottom of my mind, like a body you know isn’t human under a sheet. I pushed it away, but it wouldn’t go. There was only one thing that would explain all of this, explain everything I’d seen.

The Schola was silent, but I heard the wind outside. It was a soft spring breeze, and I wanted to yank the window open and leap out. I wanted to run. I hadn’t really been outside since I got here, and it bugged me. I needed some fresh air.

Right after I threw up everything I ever thought of eating.

“She wanted me to hate you.” I sounded about five years old. “I . . . she looked at me like she wanted to know something.”

“She did want to know, Dru. She wanted to know what you remembered. She wanted to know what you saw—”

I didn’t see. I heard. I was only five! “Shut up.” The latte dropped out of my hand and plopped on the hardwood floor. It sloshed but stayed miraculously upright. “Shut up.” I even clapped my hands over my ears. “Shut up shut up shut up!”

He grabbed my wrists, and I got a good faceful of that apple-pie smell. For some reason it broke everything inside me, and the world went white-fuzzy for a few seconds. When it came back I’d somehow ended up on the floor, my knees still jolting from landing hard, and I was hitting Christophe wildly. Not even any weight behind the strikes, just flailing.

“Shut up!” I screamed. I kept screaming it, even though he wasn’t saying anything. He was just letting me hit him, deflecting the blows when they threatened to get near his face. When I paused for breath he didn’t try to make me stop. He just kept letting me hit him, and when I stopped and bowed forward under the weight of it, he folded me in his arms and stroked my hair while I sobbed.

It wasn’t just the horrible thought in my head. It was everything. It was Gran and my dad and the dreams and the locket, the wulfen and the vampires and Sergej and my mother. It was Graves gone and the attacks and the uncertainty and that horrible hole inside my chest cracking open and bleeding. You can only shove shit under your bed for so long before it starts moving around and wanting to get out.

You can only cope for so long before everything breaks. And if he was going to handle something, if I wasn’t alone, it meant I could break. It meant I didn’t have to keep everything bottled up so tight.

I tried hitting him a few more times, halfhearted swipes, crying so hard I couldn’t breathe.

“Let it out,” he whispered into my hair. “Let it out, moj maly ptaszku.”

I guess most of all it was because he’d come back for me again. It was like the relief I used to feel each time I heard Dad’s truck door close, each time he stamped into the house or the apartment or hotel room or whatever damn place we were living. Each time my heart would swell up like a balloon because he hadn’t forgotten me or left me behind. Every kid’s afraid of that, right? That someday you’ll be left in a corner, like a toy, staring with button eyes and a broken heart.

Christophe kept coming back for me. He was here now. He’d saved my life again.

But God, how I wished he was Graves.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

When you cry that hard, it leaves you washed-out and not quite numb. And embarrassed, especially if you have tears and snot all over you. I sat on the floor with my back against the white bed, staring at the sticky stain of banana-flavored coffee. My brain tuned to that weird hum when you’ve cried yourself past everything and you don’t want to think. Everything retreats to white noise again.

Christophe brought me a cool wet washcloth and a box of tissues. He settled down cross-legged on the floor a few feet away. What do you do when a beautiful djamphir watches you so closely? He was staring like he saw something green. Or like I had a bunch of snot on me and he was just too nice to say so.

I blew my nose, mopped myself up. The pile of used tissues got larger, and I finally pressed the washcloth onto my hot, aching face. Smoothed it gingerly over the bruises. A nice cool washcloth is good after you’ve been sobbing your heart out. Gran used to put a cool rag on the back of my neck when I finished crying over something from the valley school, or anything else. It’s good after you have the stomach flu and throw up, too. Soothing.

It got hard to breathe through the thick terrycloth, though. So I had to peel it away and face the world again.

He was still watching me, the faint suggestion of a line between his dark eyebrows. Like he was worried about me or something.

I didn’t blame him. I was worried about me, too.

After a little while, he could probably tell I was ready. He was looking at me so intently, maybe he was reading my expression. My poker face was really sucking after all this.

“My Trial begins at sundown.” His hands rested on his knees, loose and easy. He always looked so impossibly finished, every thread tucked away and every surface carefully buffed. I never saw him taking any time in the bathroom to fix his look or anything. I was beginning to think he’d look like that even if he wasn’t djamphir. “If all goes well, it should take a little over an hour for all to come to light. Then . . .”

“What are you going to do?” I pressed the washcloth against my forehead again.

“I’m going to make certain Anna can’t hurt you. I’m going to make certain she pays for what she’s done.” His jaw set, and I was suddenly grateful he hadn’t ever talked about me in that chill, factual way. “When this all ends you won’t have to worry. Not about the Order, at least. Unless Sergej’s corruption runs deeper than I’ve found.” A muscle flicked high up on one smooth cheek. “But even then, I won’t leave you. I’m not going anywhere, Dru.”

“Yeah. Sure.” I closed my eyes, laid the cloth over them. It felt good. “Whatever. I want to find Graves.”

“Everyone is looking for him. He’s picked a good hiding spot. Unless . . .”