Defiance

beauty on him. He leaned in close enough that his cheek was next to mine. And that made the skin on that whole side of my body heat up. The flush went all the way through me.

His tone was just the same, low and even, every word chosen carefully and the spaces between them echoing with a foreign tongue. “If he is dead, you cannot help him. If he is still alive, you will do him exactly no good by haring off and getting caught by Sergej yourself.” His mouth turned down, briefly, before he continued. “Not to mention you could waste several of the Order in an assault to free you, because we would certainly throw everything we have into the attempt. Your task is the hardest, Dru. It is to wait and to train. I would change it if I could.”

My chin jutted stubbornly. He read the mutiny on my face, plain as a billboard.

“Don’t even think about it.” The aspect ruffled through him again, blond-streaked hair turning dark and sleek, laying flat against his skull. The whispering sound of its shifting was like the ocean far away. “If I had to come fetch you, Dru, I would be very displeased. And despite what you think, every time I’ve gone up against my father”—his lip curled, fangs sliding free—“I’ve achieved no better than a draw.”

I was about to point out that he’d rescued me from his father, but then I thought of how close a thing it had been. The snow and the cold and the wulfen and Graves staring through the crack-starred windshield through a mask of bruising and bright blood.

There. I’d thought his name again. Graves. I winced.

The aspect retreated, and Christophe’s fangs disappeared. A djamphir’s fangs are meant for puncturing flesh, but they have almost no growth in the lower fangs. A nosferat’s are bigger yet, and ugly, and big on both upper and lower jaw. They deform the entire mouth, so that when suckers hiss, they look like a snake fixing to swallow an egg.

“I swear we will find him. But it takes time.” He straightened, apparently considering that to be that. “I’m on guard tonight. May I stay?”

I struggled with myself for a few seconds, gave up. “For a little while,” I said finally, and his whole face changed. It wasn’t the slow, dangerous grin he used when he wanted to scare someone. No, this was a genuine smile, ducking his head a little like he was pleased. And it warmed me right down to my bare toes.

Even if I didn’t really want it to. But some part of me did, right? Some part of me must, given the way I got all gooshy inside and how my internal thermostat went out of whack whenever he got close.

I couldn’t even figure out why. I mean, I didn’t like him that way, did I? I’d told Graves I didn’t. But here I was, and pretty much everything in me just wouldn’t listen. I kept doing weird things whenever I got a whiff of Apple Pie Boy.

Even though I knew he probably smelled like that because he fed from the vein. Like a sucker. A “glutter,” the wulfen called it—a djamphir that drank human blood.

They don’t have to. But it kickstarts them, gives them greater strength and speed and accelerated healing. The tradeoff is the risk of the aura-dark, an allergy to sunshine that can induce anaphylactic shock. Still, some djamphir do it. They aren’t supposed to . . . but they do, for that extra strength and speed. I hadn’t worked out if Christophe smelled like that because he drank, or because . . . I don’t know, some other reason. I couldn’t figure out where he’d find the time to bite someone, hanging around and training me all the livelong night, but still.

And was I a coward, because I didn’t ask? I had enough to worry about, right?

Right?

He stayed for a bit, and we talked about other things. Mostly about the paranormal biology textbook and where the tutor had left off, what the chemical processes were that allowed djamphir to sniff a victim’s or a nosferat’s blood and tell things about them—age, sex, sometimes even hair color. And what was the standard method for taking down a well-organized hunting pack of older nosferat instead of a Master and acolytes. Equals don’t often pack up, because they’re jealous and nasty even to each other, but it had happened sometimes and the Order knew how to deal with it.

I swear, sometimes I learned more from him in the last few hours of my “day” than from all the tutors. He never acted like my questions were stupid, or like I should have known everything in the first place, the way some of the other djamphir did.

So it got harder and harder, each dawn, to watch him walk out into the hall. Then to shut the door and know he was leaning against it on the other side and wishing he could stay inside while he heard me flip the locks and settle the bar in its brackets, the warding strengthening as I touched it.

But I kept sending him out each night. Because when I crawled into bed and dragged the long black coat up from underneath the covers—Nathalie always replaced it when she changed the sheets, and she didn’t say a word —and hugged it, smelling the fading breath of cigarette smoke and healthy young loup- garou, I didn’t want Christophe to see.

CHAPTER SIX

In the long golden time of afternoon, my window rattled. Tiny stones, flung with more- than-human accuracy, popping and pinging against the glass because the screen was gone. Later in the summer I’d figure out something to do with the screen, but for now it was sitting in a disused classroom a couple floors up, and I didn’t mention it to Christophe or Benjamin.

Another sound, a soft exhalation, and a shadow in the window. I was up and waiting, sitting on the wide white-satin window seat. I jammed the switchblade with its silver-loaded flat into my back pocket and pulled the stamped-iron shutters aside. Late-spring sunshine flooded me, and I glanced back at the barred door. Benjamin was on guard duty out in the hall; it was his day.

I felt bad about it for a half-second. At most.

Nat’s blue eyes sparkled, her sleek hair glistening in the sunlight, her blue Converse sneakers balanced on the ledge outside my window. She didn’t wait, just fell backward out into space. She twisted, lithely, and landed in a pool of dappled shade, the gravel walk in the gardens silent under her feet. This postage-size garden was full of roses, and the apartments facing it were meant for svetocha . There were a couple baseball diamonds, a track and a polo field, and some other gardens inside the Schola’s protective wall; it was a microcosm that almost blocked out the hum of the city day-drowsing outside.

I was out the window in a flash, leaving it partly open as I fell, too. A moment’s worth of wind whipping my hair and a sudden nausea; the aspect boiled up and snapped over my skin like a rubber band. And I landed lightly as a cat too, braced and ready, my hands out just a little as if I expected a punch or needed to balance myself.

Christophe taught me that.

Nat was suddenly beside me, crowding me back against the wall. There were shrubs here, spiny and thorny things. “You’re too loud when you hit,” she whispered.

“Must be my fat ass,” I whispered back, peering up at my window. It looked just the same, only half open. Like I needed some daylight air or something.

She grinned, tugging on her cropped, faded denim jacket to straighten it, and I had to stop the laugh boiling up in my throat. Daytime Nat was a pretty humorous creature. It was at night that her serious side came out.

Because night was more dangerous, I guess. What with all the suckers around.

We slid soft and easy along the strip of shaded shrubbery, and Nat held up one slim pale hand when we reached the corner. The blue Lucite bangle on her wrist slid down her forearm, and I wondered again how she could look so impossibly finished all the time. Sometimes I even thought I should learn some of the girl stuff that looked so effortless when she did it.

Yeah. Then I woke up.

It wasn’t exactly dangerous to be out during the day . . . but the Council, every one of them, up to and including August, would have kittens and penguins and little baby narwhals, too, probably, if they knew what I was up to. Still, I figured I was safe enough with all the sunshine. And with wulfen.

Pretty much the only people who hadn’t tried to kill me were wulfen. I mean, unless you count Ash, and he’d been doing a pretty good job of not killing me since I shot him in the face with silver-grain bullets. Maybe that shot broke . . . Sergej’s . . . hold over him.