Jealousy

and got away while she was trying to sell me eye shadow. This reminded me of that.

Shanks drew in a soft breath. Christophe was utterly silent behind me, but warm tendrils of apple-pie scent curled across the cold rain-washed breeze.

I smelled wet earth waking up after winter, the river sending up a flat tang of oily water, the city all around the Schola Prima’s grounds in a tide of concrete and exhaust, the classrooms full of chalk dust and the war of young and old. Sap rising in the trees, the hardy green smell of grass’s first spring growth mowed in the morning.

The wingbeats crested, like a little feathered thing in my hand, its heart beating frantically. Gran said it was no trick to charm sparrows out of the sky; you had to charm them and return them safely, that was the trick.

No use doing what you dunno to undo—or even if’n you kin undo. You mind me now, Dru.

My hand jabbed out, index finger pointing. I opened my eyes and the world rushed in so hard I had to squint against it. Darts of sun speared my eyes, and I had to blink to focus. Hot tears swelled up, trickling down my cheeks.

The lump in my throat wasn’t mine. It was Graves’s. I could see him, a shadowy ghost in the gathering dusk, like powder on a moth’s wings. He left a scorch on the air, like a hot kettle set on a counter. It was helpless anger, a ball of rage I would never have suspected him of feeling. He was always so . . .

You don’t know anything about this kid, Dru.

He stamped away toward the baseball diamond, coat flapping silently. Phantom pins and needles slid through my fingers and toes. I leaned forward, saw him veer away from the baseball field. He crouched and sprang, his hands jetting out, grabbed the top railing of the bleachers, and cleared it in a swoop of graceful authority no human body would have been able to pull off.

He’d taken to being loup-garou like a duck to water.

He stood up on the bleachers, irresolute, his head tipped back as if he was watching the sky. It would have been dark and cold—the middle of the Schola’s “day.” Shanks would have been inside, trying to calm me down and get me to my room.

The ghost of Graves hunched down, a supple movement. His attention focused outward now, alert. His hair stood up in long curling spikes, vital and powdery black at this distance. You couldn’t see his roots.

He leapt forward. A burst of static boiled inside my head. My face jerked aside as if I’d been slapped. I pitched forward, Christophe grabbed at my arm but I evaded him, and I was halfway down the path before I realized I was moving. The pins and needles should have made me clumsy, but they didn’t. I ran past the bleachers, was just in time to see the ghost of Graves streaking toward another small stand of oaks.

He ran like the running was joy to him. Wulfen move fast and fluid, and he did it without getting hairy. His coat snapped behind him, a faraway sound, and he plunged into the stand of trees just seconds before I did.

The trees crowded close around a small clearing, and the grass here wasn’t mowed. Shade and light whirled together, there was a snap! inside my head, and everything . . . stopped.

Darkness dilated in the evening air. The oaks drew close, whispering with their fresh new green leaves, and I caught a confused jumble of activity before Shanks bolted into the clearing and nearly collided with me.

He yelled something unrepeatable and leapt away, almost hitting a tree. I jolted back into my body and stared at him.

“Don’t do that!” he yelled. “Jesus!”

“I lost it!” I yelled back. “I almost had it!”

“What the—” But he shut up as Christophe stepped past him, appearing out of thin air with a whispering sound.

“This is not a good idea.” The djamphir’s eyes glowed blue in the shade. Light does funny things this close to dying altogether; the shadows moved like live things over Christophe’s pale skin and turned Shanks into an umber statue. “Come back inside, Dru.”

I searched for the internal tingle that would tell me the touch was willing to show me more.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Until a soundless flash filled the whole clearing, lighting it up inside my head like kliegs on a football field. I stalked past Shanks and stopped, kneeling in front of a weird thorny bush. It might even have been a rosebush, but it looked blasted and half-crushed.

A tiny strip of material, no bigger than my pinkie finger, clung to it. Heavy black cotton, from a long black coat. I gingerly tweezed it free, held it up. It had dried stiff, probably because it’d gone through dew falling. “He came this way. Can we—”

“I don’t smell much.” Shanks hunched his shoulders miserably. “They cut the grass earlier today, but I . . .”

I waited, but he just spread his hands. The entire clearing was a thick soup of shadows and a chill that wasn’t just evening creeping up. It was cold, and I smelled intent, like a hex brewing in a dark corner.

My hand turned into a fist around the scrap of material.

“Maybe he just needed to go out and get his head clear.” But Shanks didn’t sound like he believed it.

“There’s nothing we can do now.” Christophe’s hands dangled loosely by his side, but his entire body shouted, Ready to move. “Please, Dru. Inside is better. Especially this close to dark.”

“You can’t smell him?” I tried not to sound like I was begging Shanks.

“Enough to know he came this way. That’s all. He could have just brushed up against it, but he can see in the dark. Like we can.”

I let out a deep, frustrated sigh. Heard footsteps in the distance, and was that Leon calling my name? I guess you really can’t go anywhere in the Schola without being watched.

Who had been watching me all this time? What hadn’t I seen?

“Fine.” But I stuffed the strip of material in my pants pocket. When I had some time to think I could probably figure something out.

Come and find me.

It wouldn’t be the first time I’d found someone with just a scrap of cloth. Once you have that physical link, it’s the easiest type of finding.

I let Christophe lead the way out of the stand of trees. The sun was heading for the horizon, disappearing behind buildings.

Time for a Trial.

CHAPTER THIRTY

In the very center of the Schola Prima’s main building, the one all the wings come off of like they’re a spider hugging its web, is a huge open space with a glass roof. I say glass roof when what I really mean is a dome big enough to host a Deep South gun show underneath, made of huge glass panels webbed with stone supports. It was probably a marvel of architecture, but it looked like it might come crashing down at any moment. The space underneath it was stone-floored, except for long runners of dusty red rugs. A high dais in the center held seven iron chairs, three on either side flanking a huge confection of spikes and a big red cushion, hung with swathes of crimson silk.

Two guesses whose that is, and the first one don’t count. Hot bile crawled up my throat. I shuffled along behind Christophe, Leon right behind me, and kept my head down, glancing up in quick spurts.

The wide spaces were filling up with djamphir, most of them older. The younger ones trickled in and stood near the back, and I saw one or two wulfen lingering near the exits. They were gone as soon as I looked twice, craning my neck.