Jealousy

in your classrooms. I’ve saved a svetocha, which is more than any of you have done in the last sixty years. I’ve kept one step ahead of the nosferatu and those sent to kill me— the Kouroi sent to kill me. I’m here because I choose to be, because Milady requests it.” He tipped his head slightly toward me, and I wondered how he made it so effing clear just who he was talking about. Of course, I was the only girl in the room. But I was looking around for Anna. She had to be here somewhere.

“No Kouroi have been sent to—” Alton began.

“They have.” Kir had turned green under his paleness. “I signed the orders. At the Head’s request.”

Nobody moved; nobody even blinked. Bruce’s fangs slid out from under his top lip. He stood, rigid, and I got a very bad feeling about all this. Nausea and terror all rolled together, roiled in the pit of my stomach.

Christophe stood, very straight and slim, his boots placed military-precise against the stone floor. “Set against each other. Divide and conquer. At least she learned well.”

“An extermination order on another Kouroi?” Hiro shook his head. “That is against the Codes.”

“Milady . . . ” Kir shrank into himself. “The Head said it was a matter of necessity. She . . . she showed me a transcript. Of a call made to betray the position of Elizabeth Lefevre. She died eleven years ago, and the transcript was proof that Reynard had betrayed her to the nosferat.”

Leon’s hand came down on my shoulder. He pushed me back down in the pew. “But—” I began. Lefevre? That had to be her maiden name. Funny, I’d never thought about it before. It was like Mom’s life had only begun with Dad, and with me.

“Be quiet,” he hissed in my ear. “Please, Dru!”

I subsided.

“Lies!” someone yelled from far back in the crowd. “Lies, and I can prove it!”

Wait a second. I knew that voice, and if Leon hadn’t been holding onto me I would have been up out of that pew like a rocket.

Bruce didn’t look surprised, but he did lift his head and stare in the general direction the voice had come from. “Approach,” was all he said.

“Oh, Christ,” Kir moaned. “What have I done?”

“She promised you the Princeps, didn’t she?” Christophe’s hands curled into fists. “I wondered who’d signed the orders. Did you also sign the directive to send wulfen teams after me in the Dakotas?”

Kir actually stumbled back and collapsed in his chair. “I did. I swear to God, Reynard, she told me we had to protect the—”

“What about Dru?” Christophe was pitiless. “Did you sign the directives to keep her in a reform Schola, unprotected and vulnerable? Did you?”

“No.” Marcus stood straight and defiant. “I signed those. The Head told me they were for a troublesome new Kouroi, not a svetocha . And when I went back later to check them, after Milady Dru told us her tale, I found they had vanished.”

Oh. Well, that answered that question. It wasn’t like I was surprised, but I was happy to know. Kind of.

Now if I could just keep my stomach from unloading itself all over the floor, I’d be peachy.

An avenue had opened in the crowd. I let out a breathless little cry. It was a djamphir I knew, his blond hair mussed and his eyes blazing. He was crusted with dried blood. His standard uniform of white tank top, red flannel shirt, and jeans was tattered and torn. Bruising marched up his familiar face on one side, and he held—of all things—a red collapsible file folder. “I can prove it!” he yelled again. And he held himself ramrod-straight, the same shoulder holster under his arm and the familiar gun butt peeking out as he moved.

“Augie—” It was barely a whisper. My mouth wouldn’t work right. Oh my God, it’s him. It’s really him.

“I barely escaped Sergej himself.” The name made everyone wince and sent a glass spike of pain through my head. I finally shook away from Leon’s hand and made it to my feet. “It’s all here. The original transcript and a recording. Treachery so unspeakably vile it would steal the heart of any who heard it. Copies of the directives, signed by each member of the Council, altered after the signing.” August gasped in a breath, and Christophe stepped aside, deftly focusing every eye on him. I saw it, even though I didn’t believe it. The relief was . . . Jesus.

Indescribable. That was the only word that applied.

August never once used the aspect that month I stayed in his Brooklyn apartment. He went out almost every night, hunting, and came back battered sometimes. I’d cooked him dinners. I’d helped him bandage himself, and I hadn’t thought much about how fast he healed. In the Real World, anything goes. I didn’t have any gift for healing; that was Gran’s thing.

Still, seeing him, even as beat up and bloody as he was, was like Christmas.

“August!” I yelled and slipped my arms out of my hoodie as Leon grabbed at its back. I was over the wooden railing in a second, and I hurled myself at him. “August! ”

“Eh, Dru.” Half-Bronx, half-Brooklyn, all Augie. “Never thought I’d see you again.”

I shoved past Christophe and threw my arms around August. Hugged, hard. He smelled horrible, but I caught the familiar tang of cigarette smoke. August could make a thin yellow flame spring up on his index finger.

He was real, and he was here, and he was a piece of the life I thought was gone for good. I forgot everything else, even the tangle that was Graves missing and Anna lurking somewhere, in the flood of scalding relief.

Hot tears slicked my cheeks. I just kept saying his name over and over. He winced, and I eased up on the hug a little.

“Dru—” Christophe said, trying to pull me away.

But I clung to Augie. I wouldn’t let go. He wrapped one arm around me. “Easy there, księżniczko. Break my ribs, eh?”

“Augie!” The sickness went away. I hugged him even harder, forgetting again that he was hurt. And the smell of dried blood on him didn’t make the aspect rise. I was too goddamn happy. “Jesus! Augie!”

“Pick one,” he said. “Now be quiet, Dru. Got work to do.”

I shut up. But I still kept hugging him.

“I got here in time.” He lifted the large red file with his free hand. It was spattered with blood, both black and crusty drying red. “It’s in here. Christophe?”

“I did not doubt you, Augustine.” Christophe subtracted it from his fingers. Opened the accordion file and pulled out, of all things, a mini tape recorder. The papers inside made a whispering sound as he closed the file with its rubber band, then tossed it. A passionless, accurate throw, flying in a perfect arc to land at Bruce’s feet.

“I require the Council to view—and hear—the evidence,” Christophe said and held the recorder up.

He pushed the “play” button. It was an old-fashioned model, and the hiss of magnetic tape filled the expectant, watery silence. I might’ve worried about nobody being able to hear it in this cavernous space, but the djamphir were all utterly quiet.

I’d read the transcript when Dylan dug it up. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the shock. The first voice was cold and male, with a funny lisping tone because the fangs made it hard to enunciate. It was a sucker’s voice, chill and final as the grave, rasping with hate.

“Do you have it?”

The other voice . . . God. “The information’s well-guarded.”

The sucker sounded like he was losing patience. “That’s none of our concern. Where is she? We are prepared to pay for the information.”

“Keep your money,” Anna said. “I just want the bitch dead.”

The sucker laughed, a horrible silk-soft, rotting sound. “I can arrange that.”