“You’re going to regret this.” Now she was calm. Or at least, she sounded disdainful, cool as a cucumber. The mask of blood on her face said otherwise, along with the dead paleness and the splotches of feverish ugly red high up, an unhealthy mix. Somehow her sweats had gotten torn and there was a stripe of blood high up on her biceps along with flowering red marks that would certainly turn into bruises; I didn’t remember how that happened. I struggled to stay still, to keep my feet in one place.
Because a good bit of me wanted to leap across the room and finish this fight.
“You started it,” I reminded her. “You had everyone clear the room twice now because you thought I’d be easy. You came creeping by my door when you thought I was asleep. Coward.”
She actually flinched, like I’d thrown something at her. “You should have stayed with your stupid human daddy.” The ugly red spots became a flush suffusing her entire face, spreading down her neck. “You’ll never be good enough. They won’t love you. Not the way—”
“Nobody loves you.” I didn’t know it was true before it came out of my mouth. It stung like a bad hex biting before you can unravel it. The owl banked, dove sharply across the space between us, and veered off just at the last second before its talons hit. The wind of its passing ruffled Anna’s hair, and she actually ducked, the rest of her not-so-carefully-coiffed-anymore curls falling down. The aspect fled her, and she looked like a little girl before she broke and ran for the door with eerie, stuttering speed. It opened, she piled through, and I heard boy voices.
I braced myself, waiting for whatever would happen next.
The owl cruised in another tight circle overhead. I wasn’t inside it anymore, just inside my own scraped-raw, throbbing skin. The aspect retreated, and I sagged, my knees hitting the mats with a jolt that smacked my teeth together. They were only bluntly human now. I was glad. Sharp fangs might have taken a chunk out of my lip, and that would have been no fun.
What the hell was that?
I bent over. My stomach hurt. Nausea filled it, kicked against its rubbery insides, and I was glad I hadn’t eaten lunch.
“That was interesting,” someone said from behind the bleachers. They rattled a bit as a shape slid out from behind them.
What? I turned my head gingerly. Blinked a couple of times. The clarity had gone, and the world was getting fuzzy.
Shanks picked his way over the mats, shoulders hunched. “You don’t look so good.”
“How—” I bent over as a retch came painlessly up from my guts and was kept occupied by the struggle not to paint the mats with anything my stomach could come up with.
“Figured I should stick around. Graves is going to shit a brick over this one.”
“Don’t . . .” I tried swallowing; it hurt my throat. Smelled the fur and wildness on him, a collage of brunet scent that made up his gangly long legs and quick dark eyes. It was like the pictures the touch painted inside my head when the ampoule of blood broke open in Aspect Mastery. “Don’t—”
I meant, Don’t come any closer. The bloodhunger was clear and unavoidable, burning just under my skin. Like the touch.
Like the anger. Rage. It was just looking for an outlet.
If I got to Graves first and told him about this, maybe I could somehow make him understand that we needed to leave this place before things got any worse.
Shanks squatted, an easy graceful movement. “Don’t worry, I can smell the red on you. Not gonna get close until you calm down.” A quick flick of a glance up over my head. The owl gave one last soft hoot, and the sound of wingbeats retreated. “Which you’d better do soon, before someone comes in here and finds you like this. You’re bleeding.”
That, right now, was the least of my worries. I shut my eyes and dragged a deep breath in. Blew it out between pursed lips. “Don’t. Tell.” I needed to talk to Graves first. To explain.
“Hm.” He didn’t agree or disagree, just made a noncommittal noise. “I never thought I’d see the Red Queen in person. She don’t show herself to the peasants much.” He glanced up at the door she’d retreated through. “Jesus.”
Red Queen? I made a shapeless noise, but it was definitely a question.
“Oh, yeah.” A small, humorless laugh. “Wulfen know about her. We’re not stupid, Dru. We like to know who’s playing the game.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I was bruised and scraped all over, both my shoulders ached like they’d been dislocated and put back wrong, and my legs were like wet noodles. The shiner had gone down, though. A bit. Now it looked deep blue, fading into green-yellow instead of fresh and dark red. The baths worked wonders.
I was still standing there, looking at myself in the stripe I’d swiped away from the condensation on the mirror, when someone banged on the locker-room door. “Dru! You in there?”
It was Graves.
Shit. I watched my eyes widen and my mouth pull down and wished for a better poker face. “Yeah,” I yelled back. My split lip had closed up, but it was still tender and puffy. I pulled down the neck of my T-shirt, winced at the cuff of bruising crawling up my shoulder. “Go on, I’ll catch up.” As soon as I can figure out how to explain this to you.
“No way. I’m on duty right now. Benny and Leon got called away for something.” The door opened a bit more, but he didn’t stick his head in. Echoes bounced eerily off blue tiles, split themselves on the edges of the shower stalls and choked over the top of the bubbling of the not-water in the sunken tubs. “You’re gonna be late! Come on!”
“Just go!” My voice broke. I turned the cold tap on as high as it could go. Maybe it would take some of the swelling down, and the sound of it would drown out whatever he wanted to say.
I should’ve known better. Because he banged the door open and stamped right on in.
“For Christ’s sake, can’t you be on time even once in your…” His boots squeaked as he stopped. I grabbed both edges of the white porcelain sink and shook my hair down. “Dru?”
My knuckles were white and my legs refused to quite hold me up. So Shanks hadn’t said anything. Or if he had, Graves had shrugged it off.
He touched my shoulder. I flinched.
The breath left him in a hard puff, as if he’d been punched too. He was staring at the swipe in the mirror, where he could see my bruised, puffing face. “Jesus Christ.”
“It’s not bad,” I lied and jerked away from him. He grabbed my arm, though, quicker than he should have been able to. I kept forgetting how fast he was with the loup-garou burning inside him. His fingers sank in, and I let out a short bark of pain as they ground into a fresh bruise. “Graves—” I searched for the words to make him see. We have to leave. Please listen to me this time.
“Who?” He all but shook me, and the deep vibration under the surface of the word was a loup-garou’s command-voice. The wulfen use the Other inside them to put on fur and strength, but someone half-imprinted and inoculated against wulfbite like Graves uses it another way—for mental dominance. I’d seen him hold a roomful of angry wulfen back with that voice. I’d seen him press a fellow wulf down into a crouch with just the weight of his will alone.
He was full of surprises, my Goth Boy.
The steam in the air shredded away in shapes with sharp teeth and pointed noses. I tore myself away and grabbed at my own arm, a fresh bruise rising under the old one. “Ow!”
He drew himself up, shoulders straining under the black fabric of his coat. “Who?”
He sounded just like my grandmother’s owl. The thought hit me sideways with unreliable, unsteady, panicked hilarity. I choked down a laugh that felt like a sob. “Graves, we have got to get out of here. Please. Let’s just go.”
Because I knew something else; I’d known it even when we started whaling on each other. It would be her word against mine, and she wouldn’t have come down here without a good story in place to cover her ass. The fact that Shanks had seen the whole thing wouldn’t help in front of the Council—he was a wulf.
Not a djamphir.
Besides, you don’t ever be the first one to tell. It’s not Dad’s code. It’s kids’ code, learned every day at lunch and recess. Anna could break it—she was an adult, even though she looked my age.
But me? I couldn’t. I didn’t want to tell. I wanted to get the hell out of here. Sooner rather than later.
Like now.
Graves’s eyes glowed, sharp green. He obviously didn’t believe me. “Who?” The word rattled the mirror against the wall, its plastic brackets chattering. The steam streamed away, surrounded us like the white flying bits inside a snow globe. The kind that you shake while it plays a stupid song from some forgettable saccharine Disney movie.
“Don’t worry about it.” I shrugged my hoodie further up, zipped it all the way to my chin. “Let’s just go. I’ve got money; we can get off the grounds before they even know we . . .” I ran out of words, staring at him. “Please.” I searched for more to say. “Please, Graves. I have to get out of here.”
He stared at me, deathly pale under his even caramel coloring. When he did that, he looked almost gray. His mouth set itself in a thin line, and his hair all but stood up, snapping with vitality. His earring glittered, a sharp dart of light.
“You’ve got to calm down.” I sounded pale and unhealthy even to myself. “Graves. Please. You have got to calm down. I need—”
He lifted one hand, a fist. His index finger popped out accusingly, and he pointed at my face. There was a faint crackling sound as he bulked up. He wouldn’t get hairy, but he does definitely sort of swell when the loup-garou comes out. “Who. Hit. You?”
That’s not fucking important! Why couldn’t he just listen to me? “I just . . . just . . . I . . . Graves—” Of all the times for my mouth to fail me, this was the worst. But his rage, swimming in the air and rasping against the touch, made it hard to think. And worst of all, the bloodhunger came back, circling that special space at the back of my palate with cat-tongue fingers. Rasping. My entire mouth tingled.
If I sprouted fangs now, what would he think of me?
“You had better tell me something,” Graves said quietly. “I hate not being told, Dru. You know I hate not being told.”
What? He was making no sense. I opened my mouth. Nothing came out, and I shut it again.
Because I could feel the fangs lengthening. They touched my bottom teeth lightly, the entire shape of the jaw changing.
Oh, please, no. No.
“Fine.” Graves turned on one heel, so fast his coat flared out and touched my knee. Stamped away, paused right next to the door. His head dropped, shoulders shaking, and one fist pistoned out.
The wall gave a crack. Powder and dust puffed out; tiles shattered and split in zigzags. I flinched again. “Stop!” I yelled, and every droplet of fog in the locker room flashed. Tiny little diamonds, all hanging spinning in the air.
“When you feel like telling me,” he said very softly, “come and find me.”
He shrank a little, the change receding through him. Took his fist away from the divot in the wall and shook it briefly, flinging little shards of tile away. Startling red spattered on the wall, and the smell of blood exploded inside my head.
Almost-wulfen. A tang like strawberries mixed with incense. Green eyes and the metallic hint of snow, caramel skin and chapped hands. It was like seeing him in four dimensions, an extra layer added onto the everyday Graves who slept in my room and pecked me on the cheek each evening.
I held onto the sink like it was a raft and I was drowning. “Please. Let’s just leave. You and me.” A faint, girlish whisper. “Graves. Please.”
“Yeah. Run away. Sure. Just like my mom. Run away and go back each time.” He waved his lacerated hand. The wounds were already closing—wulfen heal fast, and he’d gotten a full dose of that talent, even if he didn’t get hairy. “But I swear to God I will find out who did this to you. Even if you don’t think you can trust me.”
The thirst roared through me and my fingers sank into the porcelain with little creaking sounds. If he went running off after Anna right now . . .
He yanked the door open so hard it hit the wall and more tiles shattered. The mirror above the sink cracked in gigantic zigzags, a spiderweb of expended force.
He was gone. I stood there, clinging to the stupid sink, every inch of me hurting and hot tears slicking my cheeks. I folded down, rested my hot forehead against the cool smoothness, and that’s how Benjamin and Shanks found me ten minutes later.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Shanks leaned against the door, his arms folded. “I guess Graves wanted to surprise you.”
“He didn’t go to class.” Dibs’s fingers were gentle. The blond wulfen smoothed some goop over my bruised cheek. He’d bandaged and gooped up the rest of me and was now working on my face with butterfly-light touches. “Hold still. I wish someone would have come and gotten me sooner. I can’t do much once it starts to get this dark.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. My split lip hurt. All of me hurt. I seemed to have only gotten to the morning-after part of healing—the part where you’re stiff and wish you’d never been born, let alone in a fight. I didn’t even have the adrenaline rush or the part where you feel like you’ve kicked the world’s ass.
No, I just felt damaged all over.
“He saw you like that?” Shanks kept repeating it. He pulled the sleeves of his blue cable-knit sweater up, his large bony wrists exposed. “Man, oh man. Oh, man.”
“I didn’t have a chance to even talk. He got too mad.” I flinched as Dibs started smearing the stuff on my eyelid. Arnica, he called it. Good for the bruises. I’d’ve preferred Gran’s mugwort and a bunch of aspirin. “I, uh. You know.” I couldn’t even begin to explain it.
“I don’t wanna be the wulf in his way when something happens to you.” Dibs’s wide blue eyes were dark and worried. His black medical bag lay open on the bed next to me. He kept wiping the arnica stuff on his gray T-shirt absently whenever he needed his fingers cleaned. “He’s crazy-mad.”
I could even feel Benjamin outside the door, waiting and worrying. It was Shanks who had argued him into getting Dibs out of class, and it was Shanks who had shoved him out the door when I got all girlie and started crying some more. A pile of tissues scattered over the blue carpet, and the particular darkness of 1:00 a.m. filled the window.
I was beginning to wish I’d never gotten out of bed. If I hadn’t, Graves would probably still be here. It would’ve been nice.
Dibs dabbed at my eye. I hissed in a short sharp breath, and he gave me a quick look of apology.
“You did pretty good,” Shanks said suddenly. “I mean, she’s older. And fully trained. You still kicked her ass.”
“She’s rusty.” And weedy. I suppressed the urge to shake Dibs’s hands away from my smarting eye. “That was the only reason I had a chance. I don’t think she practices.”
“The Red Queen’s dangerous. Hold still.” The stuff he was smearing on me smelled nose-numbing weird. “This will sting if I get it in your eye.”
Like it matters—what’s one more thing to hurt? I had a better question. “What exactly do you know? Was I, like, the only person not to know who she is?”
Shanks shrugged. He tilted his head a little, listening to the hall. “Benjamin’s gone back to his room. Thank God, that was starting to bug me.” A little bit of the tension in him bled away. “I don’t know much, really. Just that the head of the Order’s the Red Queen. She’s been pressing for renegotiation of some Treaty terms for a long time. She gets a lot of what she wants; the Council just gets worn down. My parents used to talk about it after the cubs went to bed.” A shrug. “There’re just . . . rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?” I shut my eyes when Dibs murmured at me. He was so gentle, and I began to feel a little less battered. At least here with him and Shanks, nobody was messing with me.
“Just rumors. Nothing I can put my finger on, just saying that it’s better not to be in her way.” He gave me a long, me
asuring glance. “I can see why.”
So could I. “I didn’t know she hated my mother.”
He let out a laugh that was like a bark. White teeth flashed. “You sounded pretty sure.”
“It was a guess.” Or it was the touch blurring in my head, showing me other people’s business. Gran was big on minding your own business, but sometimes you just can’t. “A pretty good one, I suppose.”
Thinking about Gran made my head hurt. Her owl had pretty much saved my bacon so many times. I’d always thought of it as her owl because it showed up the night she died.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
“Why would she hate your mother?” Dibs finished smearing goop on my face. “Okay, that’s it. Let me take another look at that wrist. You’re not healing right.”
“I don’t know.” I tried not to sound fretful. “What do you mean, not healing right?”
“Too slow, especially if your aspect is rubbing through. Could be because you’re not fully bloomed yet. I wish I’d thought to bring that textbook. Maybe we should call Benjamin in—”
“No!” I yanked my hand away. Dibs squeaked a bit. “He’s already going to ask me what happened!”
“What would be wrong with that?” Shanks peeled himself away from the wall. “I’m a witness. She hit you first.”
I didn’t think I’d have to explain it to him of all people. “She’s the head of the Order, right? Who’s going to believe she jumped me first?”
Besides, I couldn’t tell him that I wanted to find Graves and get the hell out of here. The need to get on the road was itching under my skin in a big way.
“It’s the truth, though.” Dibs gently but firmly grabbed my hand, started manipulating my left wrist. It hurt. “Shanks saw it. Right?”
“You’re such an optimist.” Shanks sighed, crossed the room to the window. “She’s right. Her only witness is a werwulf from a reform Schola. Nobody will believe it. On the other hand, you did give as good as you got, Dru-girl. Maybe she’ll be embarrassed.”
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