For some reason Leon found that utterly fricking hysterical. He snorted and chuckled all the way through Housewares to the Health and Beauty section, and even Benjamin unbent enough to grin.
* * *
We did stop in the Sports section for a sleeping bag, and I made Graves get a good one, too. Clothes are one thing, but you don’t skimp on gear. I also dawdled in the office-supplies section until Graves threw a couple pads of paper and some pencils in the cart, glaring at me like he dared me to take them out.
Benjamin tried to take us to some Italian place for lunch, but Leon asked about Mexican food. And that sounded really good, so we ended up in some hole-in-the-wall place where I hogged a lot of tortilla chips and Benjamin got two margaritas by just smiling at the waitress and asking politely. He looked like he needed them at that point.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
First I was back in Target picking out wedding dresses. Yards of white lace and froth, while invisible people stood around and commented. “No, too small . . . too big . . . will never fit you . . . too classic, too tight . . .”
Until I felt like screaming because all I wanted was a dress that worked. Then I was trying to try them on and there was no dressing room because if I went in there I might disappear, so at the end of a row between clearance racks I was struggling into one dress after another, and they all had holes. Big, wide, moth-eaten holes, my bra and skin peeking through, and someone said, “You’ll have to pay for that.”
The walls of the store receded, smears of red paint streaking them and turning into long screaming faces. I felt the prickling buzz in my fingers and toes, like when your limbs go so numb you can’t even walk.
I know that feeling. It comes with dreams that show me things. “True-seeins,” Gran called them.
“Real nightmares” might be a better term.
For a moment I thought hazily that it might be the most horrible dream, the one where my mother picks me up out of my bed and takes me downstairs, tells me I’m her good girl, and tucks me in the hidey-hole in the closet. I struggled toward waking, but the dream had other ideas. It was in the driver’s seat, not me. I couldn’t fight it.
* * *
I lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was a regular popcorn ceiling, the kind with gold sparkles. Fluid shadows from the tree outside danced between the sparkles.
The dream-me was a little girl. She was sleepy, drifting in and out of that quiet space where kids suck their thumbs and their eyes stare without seeing from under heavy lids.
Mom had been anxious that day, cleaning everything. Tense, nervous. I was fractious, too, but she had read me stories and rocked me for a long time, then laid me in bed and covered me up. I heard her moving around the house downstairs, the regular noises of her fixing Dad’s late-night lunch—because he was working long shifts at the base and sometimes came home for forty-five minutes or so in the middle of the night on his break—somehow missing. I heard a jingle as she dropped one of my toys. She was hurrying, putting them away. I heard her curse softly as she hid my high chair in the pantry.
But I didn’t think about it. Instead I sucked my thumb and watched the ceiling.
Tap tap tap. A pause. Tap tap.
Someone at the front door. Not ringing the bell. That was strange.
Silence. The air itself seemed to be listening before I heard Mommy’s footsteps, quick and light. She jerked the front door open, and voices drifted up the stairs.
Women’s voices.
“What are you doing here?” Mom sounded . . . angry. And a little surprised, like she hadn’t expected whoever it was. I could almost see her cocking her head a little, blue eyes turned cool and considering. She sometimes looked at people that way, especially when they wanted something out of her. Grocery store checkers or salesmen paled under that look, especially if they were trying what Dad called “funny business.”
Your mom, he sometimes said, when he’d had some Jim Beam and could be coaxed to talk about the past. She didn’t stand for no funny business.
“I came to visit. Such a charming little house.” Tinkling laughter, and the rustle of silk skirts.
“You’re not welcome here.” Mommy’s voice was sharp and angry, a warning all its own. “I left the Schola Prima, the entire Order, to you. What more do you want?”
The pretense of laughter left the other woman’s voice. It dropped away like the mask it was, and when she spoke again her words crawled with nastiness and hurt.“Where is he?”
My mother’s tone turned cold and businesslike. “What, my husband? He’s human, what is he to you? You even come near him, and I’ll—”
“Human? A human husband? You’re kidding. Even you wouldn’t sink so low.”
A charged, crackling silence. I could tell just from the sound that Mom was furious. She was never angry; Dad called her sweet-tempered. He said he’d eat his goddamn hat if she ever said a mean word about anyone.
This was new and strange. I didn’t like it. I closed my eyes and turned over, burrowed into my pillow. It was warm and safe up here in my bed, even if the wind fingered the sides of the house with a hungry whispering sound.
“Oh.” Sudden comprehension. I heard my mother move, a drawer opening. “He’s left, then. He always said he would.”
“You know where he is.” Sharp and accusing. “You know. He’d run to you.”
“He’s not here.”
“Maybe I should look around and make sure.”
The drawer closed with a bang. There was a heavy metallic click. “Anna.” The tone of warning was new, too. It prickled through me just like the buzzing static did. Child-me moved restlessly again, kicking at my covers. “Get. Out. Of. My. House. Or I will kill you.”
“You’re not a good hostess.” But was that fear in the other woman’s tone? Camouflaged, but still quivering and raw. Of course, if Mommy talked to me like that I’d cry. I was glad she never had. “Swear to me he’s not here!”
“I’m not swearing a single goddamn thing to you. Get out of my house. Or I will shoot you and the Order will need a new head bitch.”
“If you see him . . .” But the woman stopped, her whine trailing off. I didn’t like her voice. It hurt me. My head was full of bad images, mud and blood and sharp teeth, and the only thing that kept me from whimpering was a sudden thickening in the air around me. I was so tired, and if I made a noise, Mommy might come upstairs and talk to me in that cold, angry voice.
And I didn’t want that. I would never want that.
“If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. I can’t imagine it will make much difference. He does what he wants.”
“Oh, I know that.” Bitterness now, and I could hear the front door creaking as it ghosted wide open. They hadn’t even shut it during this entire conversation. “If I find out you’re hiding him here, Elizabeth—”
“I have a life. One that doesn’t include him or you and your petty little games. Don’t darken my doorstep again.”
“Sleep well, then.” A smirk even I could hear, upstairs in my room. “Don’t let the nosferatu bite.” A cruel, chilling little laugh, and the front door slammed.
I heard my mother let out a shaky breath. And the buzzing was back, rattling in my head, running through my bones. I knew what came next.
Next I would fall asleep. And when I woke up in the dark, I knew what would happen. It will be that dream again, the worst of all dreams.
Then the buzzing pours through me, and the prickling like steel needles in my flesh. I struggle against the dream. I don’t want to remember this. I never want to remember this, and each time is more painful because I know—
She is leaning over my crib, her face bigger than the moon and more beautiful than sunlight, or maybe it’s just that way because I’m so young. Her hair tumbles down in glossy ringlets, smelling of her special shampoo, and the silver locket at her throat glimmers.
But there is a shadow in her pretty eyes; it matches the darkness over the left half of he
r face. It’s like the shadow of rain seen through a window, light broken in rivulets.
“Dru,” she says softly but urgently. “Get up.”
I rub my eyes and yawn. “Mommy?” My voice is muffled. Sometimes it’s the voice of a five-year-old; sometimes it’s older. But always, it’s wondering and quiet, sleepy.
“Come on, Dru.” She puts her hands down and picks me up, with a slight oof! as if she can’t believe how much I’ve grown. I’m a big girl now, and I don’t need her to carry me, but I don’t protest. I cuddle into her warmth and feel the hummingbird beat of her heart. “I love you, baby,” she whispers into my hair. She smells of fresh cookies and warm perfume, and it is here the dream starts to fray. Because I hear something like footsteps, or a pulse. It is quiet at first, but it gets louder and more rapid with each beat. “I love you so much.”
“Mommy . . .” I put my head on her shoulder. I know I am heavy, but she is carrying me, and when she sets me down to open a door I protest only a little.
It is the closet downstairs. Just how I know it’s downstairs I’m not sure. There is something in the floor she pulls up, and some of my stuffed animals have been jammed into the square hole, along with blankets and a pillow from her and Daddy’s bed. She scoops me up again and settles me in the hole, and I begin to feel a faint alarm. “Mommy?”
“We’re going to play the game, Dru. You hide here and wait for Daddy to come home from work.”
I know what will happen. Daddy will come home and find me, but things will never be the same.
Because that was the night Sergej came, the night he killed her, but he did not find me.
And it is all my fault.
The dream turns to rotting cheesecloth veils, strangling me. Wrapping around wrist and ankle and hip with clammy-cold touch and I struggle up, screaming, desperate for air. I don’t want to see, I don’t want to see—
“—don’t want to see stop it I don’t want to see!” I fought, blindly, screaming and sweating and shaking. Struck out with fists and feet, starfishing. Hit nothing but empty air.
“It’s just a dream!” Graves said urgently. “Just a dream!”
No, it’s not, I wanted to scream. It’s real. It happened; it keeps happening.
Someone was pounding at the door. I choked, stared up at Graves. Blinked furiously. I must’ve been crying in my sleep; my cheeks were wet and my nose was full. The scream died in my throat. I gulped in a breath. My T-shirt was twisted all around, and my new boxers were all bunched up, too. They get that way when you thrash.
Dusk was filling the window with purple. It was my first day of actual classes. And someone was hammering at the door, yelling my name.
“Dru.” Graves had my shoulders. “It’s just a dream, okay? Okay? You’re here, I’m here, everything’s okay. You’re safe, I promise.”
I wiped at my cheeks with shaking hands. It was Benjamin at the door. “Oh,” I whispered. “Jesus. I . . . I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Green eyes burning, Graves was almost nose-to-nose with me. I could see the fine golden threads in his irises, and a little crusty from sleep caught in his right eye. It was enough to make me cry with relief, because he was safe and real. His sleeping bag lay wadded up on the floor. “You were moving around a lot, and then you started screaming. Really yelling, like you were . . .”
“Sorry.” My heart pounded, I sniffed cry-snot back up. The door was actually shivering against the bar. “That’s Benjamin.”
“I better let him in. Guess we’re going to class.” But he still held my shoulders, his long callused fingers gentle. As if he had all the time in the world to half-kneel on my bed and study my face. His T-shirt had a hole in one shoulder, and it made my chest feel kind of weird to see that. “You okay?”
I grabbed myself with both hands, as Gran would say, and nodded. “I think . . . yeah. Sorry. That was . . . pretty intense.”
“Okay. I’ll deal with Benjamin. You’re safe, okay? Nothing’s gonna happen.” His mouth pulled tight against itself. And now I was having some sort of heart attack. Because when he looked at me like that, my chest started to feel like it was turned inside out. “Promise.”
And that—the promise, the way he said it with utter certainty—was enough to make me tear up again. He let go of me and stalked for the door, skinny kid in boxers and a holey T-shirt. His legs had bulked up, too. He wasn’t so bird-thin as he was back in the Dakotas. And he was starting to move like the werwulfen, graceful and assured.
I clutched the blankets to my chest and shut my eyes again. Heard him taking the bar off its brackets. “Calm down!” he yelled. “She’s okay! Bad dream! It was just a bad dream.”
Except they’re never just bad dreams. But I had other things to occupy my mind. I was grateful, and my eyes snapped open. I fought my way out of the tangled covers and bolted for the bathroom. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this, and I wanted to start getting ready to face the day. Night. Whatever.
But most of all, I didn’t want to think about what I’d just dreamed. I would do my best to forget it, I decided. It was already fading, retreating quietly into the space where dreams live while you’re walking in daylight.
I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Two weeks later, dusk fell in purple bands across the city and the Schola Prima woke up. Here there was no bell for wake-up or between class periods. There wasn’t even a Restriction bell. I was nervous about what would happen if the suckers attacked, but Benjamin said it didn’t happen often.
Not like the reform Schola. And that was just the beginning of the differences. All in all, I liked this place better.
Sort of.
Graves shrugged back into his long black coat, ran his fingers through his hair again. It stood up in wild, vital springing curls, and he grimaced as he ripped through a tangle. He shoved his rolled-up sleeping bag up next to the bed. “Come on, you’re going to be late.”
“Shit.” I hurriedly wrote down the last two answers, slammed the book shut, and scooped it into my bag. Grabbed a piece of toast and a new red hoodie and was heading for the door when there was a rattling series of knocks. Graves swept the door open and Shanks poked his head in. He was on duty for the last hour before classes in the morning, and Benjamin seemed okay with a werwulf hanging out at my door so everyone could get ready for the night.
“Jesus,” the wulf said, swiping at the emo-swoosh of dark hair across his forehead. It was a popular style this year. “Are you going to be late every day?”
“Hey, Bobby. Girl just can’t get out the door on time.” Graves sounded relieved.
It’s not my fault. “Shut up.” I hitched the new brown canvas messenger bag up on my shoulder and tried to stuff all the toast in my mouth at once. Graves and I piled out the door, Shanks gracefully avoiding me. He has the longest legs I’ve ever seen on a boy and moves with a kind of halting lope, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to him.
Dibs was in the hallway, his golden hair disarranged. He looked like one of those cherubs you see painted on old-lady plates. All cheeks and curls. “Hi, Dru,” he mouthed, and immediately blushed and looked down.
Benjamin appeared out of thin air, handing me a sheaf of paper in a plastic report binder. “I got your paper printed. Leon will be with you until lunch; the others and I have a combat practical this morning. Have you eaten?”
I swallowed a huge mass of toast and almost choked, got it all down and nodded. Leon stepped out the room next to mine and swept the door shut. He was carrying—oh, thank God—two paper cups that stood a good chance of being coffee.
“I did.” I took the report binder, thought about jamming it in my bag, and decided just to carry it. “Jeez, thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”
“My pleasure.” He grinned, and for a moment he looked very young. His dark eyes sparkled. “I’ll bring your Para Bio and chem books to lunch, okay? And George’ll get your gym bag before afternoon sparring.
”
“You’re a lifesaver.” For once, I didn’t think about the irony of saying it to a djamphir. “Go on, go. I’ll be fine. I’ll just make it to class.”
“Not if you don’t hurry up, you won’t.” Graves grabbed my arm and pulled. He already had a cigarette lit. “See ya, Benjy.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake. But Leon was already there, subtracting my hoodie and report, handing over the coffee, and giving my bag a hard look. I hitched it up higher on my shoulder and hurried to keep up with Graves. “Thanks.”
“Nichts zu danken.” Leon looked about ready to grab at my bag again. But Graves didn’t let go of me, and I kept a firm grip on it.
That was one of the weirdest things about the Schola—being expected not to carry anything. And another weird thing? Not a single vampire attack since I’d got here. Three whole weeks. I’d gotten so used to one every couple of days, it was like a vacation.
A vacation where I was actually going to classes and learning about the Real World, that is. And getting some sleep because Ash was up like clockwork between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m., just the time when everyone was winding down and going to bed. That took up all the time that I’d normally use for homework, which meant a couple hours of slogging after dawn and then falling into bed while Graves half-snored in the sleeping bag on the floor. We went round and round over working out some schedule for sharing the bed or getting a camp cot in here, but he was stubborn. Like it this way. Good for my back. Go do your chem homework.
I suspected it was because he thought anything coming in the door would have to walk over him to get to the bed. But how could I ask him about that?
We didn’t talk about anything I really wanted to know. He kept his distance, at least an arm’s length away at all times. I was beginning to seriously think kissing him was a dream. God knew the Technicolor nightmares were popping up every night, though I’d stopped waking up screaming.
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