Jealousy

by Lili St. Crow

  I felt . . . responsible.

  “The loup-garou has a Record.” You could just hear the capital letter in Hiro’s tone. “Normally he would be at a . . . satellite Schola, even with the happy accident of half-imprinting.”

  “All the benefits, few of the drawbacks. And less hair.” Marcus leaned back in his chair. I didn’t see how he could lounge in something so hard and uncomfortable, but he managed it. “He’s a fortunate one.”

  There it is again. Something crystallized inside my head.

  There were no wulfen in this room. Here I was full of breakfast, and Graves was waiting outside, probably hungry. These were the heads of the Order, and there wasn’t a single wulfen in here. It was always djamphir in control and snarky comments about the wulfen. Talking about how lucky Graves was because he didn’t get all furry.

  Gran raised me in Appalachia, and Dad and I stayed below the Mason-Dixon most of the time. I know the word for behavior like this, and I’ve seen it all over. It’s never pretty. Maybe I’m lucky, since moving around so much showed me people are the same everywhere. Still, there’s something ugly down South. When you aren’t sure you’re at the top of the food chain, it doesn’t make sense to make everyone below you on that chain suffer—but people do it anyway, and they do it all the time. Because it makes them feel bigger, more secure.

  I was just about to say something—I don’t even know what, maybe something like, He’s a person too, you know—when the mahogany doors swung open. A flash of crimson silk, a long fall of curly reddish hair, and high-heeled boots with buttons marching up their front all came to a halt. Just like a cat will see you looking at it and stop dead, one paw in the air.

  Did I just imagine it? I was exhausted and running on nerves, but I swear to God I saw a flash of something nasty far back in the other svetocha’s eyes.

  Sometimes you meet a girl and it’s like matter and antimatter. You just hate each other for no damn reason. I already knew I didn’t like her. Besides, she hated Christophe.

  Why did I care so much about that?

  Anna lifted her pointed chin, and her blue eyes widened just the tiniest bit. She was in a different red silk dress than the one I’d seen last time, something with a full skirt and a bodice that was just short of indecent. A cameo on a thin gold chain rested in the hollow of her slim white throat, and long delicate golden teardrop earrings trembled as she halted. And, God help me, she actually chirped at the roomful of boy djamphir. “Well! Late again, but I see you’ve started without me.”

  “You’re safe.” Bruce didn’t sound surprised. “We worried needlessly.”

  A taffy-stretching silence ticked by. Kir’s chair scraped against the floor as he stood slowly, and the rest of them followed suit. I stayed where I was.

  I stayed because my knees had gone mooshy, and the muffled beat of feathered wings filled my ears like a heartbeat. Cold little prickling fingers skittered over my skin, and I was suddenly very sure something was Not Right. A draft of warm perfume dipped in spice marched down the table toward me.

  Why did she smell like that? And Christophe, why did he smell like a warm apple pie?

  The scalding flush that poured through me at the thought of Christophe being here met the icy consciousness of danger, and they both fought over me. I began to wish I hadn’t drunk so much coffee. Why is it that the only thing you can think of when you’re terrified is how much you need to pee?

  Maybe that’s just me, though.

  “I was en vacances; you know how I lose track of time. Perfectly safe, with my boys watching over me. And it’s Dru!” She sounded oh-so-happy to see me, a candy-coated voice and a wide dimpled smile. “When did you come in? I’m glad they didn’t keep you at that second-rate Schola for very long.”

  They? Who was she talking about, they? The guys in this room, who didn’t seem to have any clue about where I’d been or what I’d been doing?

  The standing djamphir were completely motionless, but I could feel the tension running through them. Hiro’s fingertips rested on the tabletop, half an inch away from his silver fork. I had a sudden Technicolor vision of him picking up the fork and launching himself at Anna. Blood spurting, screaming, the fork making a popping sound as it buried itself in one pretty blue eye.

  I sucked in a small breath. Hiro’s head moved the slightest fraction, and I was suddenly very sure he was keeping track of me in his peripheral vision.

  Maybe it’s me he wants to stick a fork in. My mouth started working again. When in doubt, say something flip. “I got in a couple days ago. It was fun.”

  “Fun?” She raised one exquisitely arched eyebrow, the open door yawning behind her. The fire in the study room popped once. She looked like a storybook illustration, and I wished I could sink back into the chair. My face felt greasy and I could still taste bacon.

  It was official. I disliked her. She probably felt the same way. But she was older, right? She wouldn’t act like a teenager, would she?

  But I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Yeah, fun. A real blast.” My right hand rested on my knee under the table. I stopped it from creeping up to touch the reassuring bulge of the switchblade with an effort of will that threatened to make me sweat. “I almost got burned alive. There was a car chase, too. If it wasn’t for Christophe I’d’ve been dead.”

  “Christophe? Reynard?” Her candy-pink-glossed mouth turned down a little. To give her credit, she didn’t look in the least surprised. “Really.”

  “Really.” Flat and unapologetic, as if she’d just insulted me.

  “I’ll expect your debriefing, then.” A sparkle in those narrowed baby blues. Like a cheerleader taunting a nerd.

  Even if she was older, she was cut from the same cloth. There’s only one reason someone like that is even civil to someone like me.

  It’s either because they’re setting you up for something, or they want something.

  A nasty supposition rose like bad gas in a mine shaft, up from the very bottom of my mind. I stared at her, wishing I could shut out all the tension and awkwardness in the room and just think for a bit.

  But one thing was for damn sure—I wasn’t going to tell the whole story again. Not to this lacquered, pretty cheerleader. “I’ve already given it.” I made my hands come up and flatten on the tabletop. It was hard, with the muffled wingbeats in my ears trying to drown everything out. I hoped Gran’s owl wasn’t about to make an appearance. That was the last thing I needed right now.

  Of course, if nobody else could see the owl, I was worrying about nothing. They probably wouldn’t think I was crazy. But I wasn’t gonna take any chances.

  Not anymore. I figured I’d better stop taking chances, starting yesterday.

  I pushed myself up slowly. My eyes refused to move away from Anna’s face. I stared at her liked she was a rattler I wanted to keep in view while I reached for the shovel to behead it. It made me think of Gran, actually. Which was a painful comfort. Move nice an’ slow, and don’t you give that snake a reason to strike at you. Just slow an’ easy, honey.

  “And very charmingly, too.” Marcus glanced significantly at Hiro. “I think we may excuse Milady Anderson; she’s very tired.”

  Bruce stiffened, Kir’s eyebrows went up, and Ezra smirked. He smirked so loudly, in fact, that I could almost hear it through the noise in my head.

  “Milady.” How Hiro managed to make it clear he was talking to me without taking his eyes from Anna I don’t know. “I shall escort you to your Guard.”

  Well, wasn’t that nice of him. I got the feeling there were two different groups here. One of them was maybe on my side, but the other was definitely on hers. And if it came down to it, she was the queen of the school, right? You bet she’d have her group of adoring boys. Girls who look like that always do.

  Anna’s face hardened, but her tone didn’t change. “I suppose a transcript will be made available to me?”

  Good God, if she put any more syrup over that she’d drown in it. I swallowed hard. The
stone in my throat had gone away, replaced with a faint tang of waxen, rotting citrus. Gran called it an arrah—an aura, like migraine sufferers get right before their heads cave in.

  Me, I get it right before someone tries to kill me, when an old friend is going to show up, or when the serious weird is about to happen. If I weren’t so busy trying to stand up straight and look a little less scruffy, I might have been laying odds with myself over which one I was looking at now.

  “Of course.” Bruce said it the way adults do when they really mean, No, are you stupid?

  Now that was interesting. It was tug-of-war in here, and I was the rope. How long had she been here, the only girl in a school full of boys? And looking like that, she probably had a really great time with it. Things were probably so easy for her.

  It was enough to make you want to hate someone. As if I didn’t already feel like she was fingernails on chalkboard.

  Hiro’s chair scraped against the floor as he pushed it further back. I took that as my cue to get moving, and the taste of wax-rotted oranges flooded my tongue as I stepped away from the chair at the head of the table.

  I stopped just once, my gaze still locking with Anna’s. Her cheeks had turned pink. A spark of crimson fired in the back of her pupils and snuffed itself out just as quickly.

  I got going again.

  Walking down the side of the table was uncomfortable, to say the least. I hate being stared at. And by the time I got down to the end, Anna had folded her arms and was standing right in the doorway, framed by the shabby, plush textures of the study.

  Which presented an interesting choice. Did I slide right past her, hunching my shoulders and being the good little nerd, or did I say fuck it and call her on this cheerleader bullshit? I seriously had to pee, and she was top of the heap here at the Schola.

  But Anna hadn’t told anyone here about me. What kind of secret was I, for her? Was she “protecting” me? Even though the vampires had found me after all?

  She wanted me to hate Christophe, too. Why?

  More questions. And I had half a second to decide what I was going to do.

  I squared my shoulders, tilted my chin up, suppressed a bacon-smelling burp, and walked straight for her. Hiro made a graceful, blurring movement, and before I knew it he was somehow in front of me. Anna stepped aside, smart as you please, and I sailed past her like I was on a parade float.

  “Dru.”

  I looked over my shoulder. The thought—I turned my back on her—made my skin tingle with awareness. Like waiting for the slap of a paper sign taped to the back. Or the prick of a knife blade sliding through cloth.

  Anna leaned against the open door, just like an illustration in a fashion magazine. Perfect, poreless, and with a sweetly poisonous smile. Another nasty, tiny little thought struggled in the back of my head, then drowned in the need to find a bathroom really, really quick.

  “What?” As in, What do you want now?

  “Welcome to the Schola Prima, sister.” Her glossy mouth quirked up at one corner, a half-smile that held no warmth. “We’re going to be great friends.”

  If she was aiming for sarcasm, she was doing a pisspoor job of it. “Yeah. Great to be here.” I didn’t have to work to sound snide. “I wonder who’s going to try to kill me next.”

  I followed Hiro’s narrow back through the hall, and the uncarved door shut behind us with a dry little click.

  “That was unwise.” He avoided the chairs with an ease that spoke of long habit and led me through the mahogany door, and I had the sudden sense that I was in an air lock. No windows in here, no sunlight coming in. Just the fire and electric lights, and when the study closed itself up behind me, there was no air moving.

  You’d think djamphir would want all the daylight they could get.

  “What?” I really, really wanted to find a toilet. Next time I drank coffee, it wasn’t going to be by the gallon. And good luck getting any sleep for awhile. My heart was pounding, both from caffeine and from the persistent idea that I was somehow in some kind of danger.

  It was ridiculous. Here was where I should have been safest, with a bunch of djamphir and werwulfen trained or training to fight the suckers off. And the Council were the bosses of the Order, right? And the Order wanted me alive because I was girl djamphir. Rare enough that there were only Anna and me, and Christophe telling me I was precious.

  “Anna is . . . difficult. She is the head of the Council, head of the Order, the only svetocha we’ve managed to save for years upon years. She’s used to a certain amount of deference.” One shoulder lifted and dropped, a shrug. “You have friends here. But still . . . be careful.”

  Be careful about what? “I’m always careful,” I mumbled. The soft wingbeats receded, and the taste of breakfast fought with wax oranges over my tongue. “Well, nearly always.”

  “Be more than careful, then, Milady Anderson.” The huge iron-bound door ghosted open as soon as Hiro got near it. “Be vigilant.”

  I could have asked him what he meant, but my bladder was about to explode. And I had a funny feeling I wouldn’t get anything but cryptic Christophe-style answers out of him anyway. So I nodded, tried not to notice how relieved Benjamin looked or the thundercloud on Graves’s face, and got the hell out of there.

  “Standing out in the goddamn hall with half-vampires. Jesus.” Graves stalked to my window. It was a bright sunny day, early enough in the morning for birds to be singing, and in the garden my room overlooked, everything was green with springtime. “Supercilious bastards. What took you so long?”

  “I had to tell the whole story.” I headed straight for the bathroom. Tiled in deep blue with brass fixtures and a tub deep enough to drown a werwulf in, it was acres of uneasy space. I almost wanted to turn on the faucet to drown out the Grand Canyon echo of a severely abused bladder.

  A few minutes later and several pounds lighter, I dug in my battered black messenger bag for a comb and came out to find him lying across my bed, fingers laced behind his head and the curtains mostly drawn.

  The room was twice as big as the one at the other Schola, and in blue as well. Carpet you could lose quarters in, empty bookshelves with a few antique brass knickknacks—one of them was a small brass tortoise heavy enough to chuck at an intruder if you didn’t mind killing someone by tchotchke—but no marble busts, thank God. The bed was king-size, princess-and-pea deep, and in a weird frame swathed with blue gauze. It looked like a fairy was going to choke to death in there at any second.

  There was a high-end computer I hadn’t bothered to turn on yet and three credit cards lying in paper sleeves on the rosewood desk next to the keyboard, all registered to Sunrise Ltd. A typed sheet with the address and a mail-stop number, as if I was living in an apartment or something. A walk-in closet the size of the Titanic, completely empty. All the clothes I’d gotten at the other Schola were gone, and if there hadn’t been a small stackable washer and dryer tucked in a separate closet here I don’t know what I’d’ve done. As it was, wearing the same jeans and T-shirt was getting old.

  “I think we should get a couple sleeping bags.” I dropped down on the bed next to him. “Have you seen Shanks yet?”

  “I can find him. If you want him. What do you want sleeping bags for? Got a nice bed right here.” He stared up at the ceiling, green eyes half-closed and his expression halfway between angry and constipated. “What happened? Who was that girl?”

  Which answered one question. Anna had walked right by him. Where was her set of bodyguards? “That’s Anna. Another svetocha.” I almost tacked an Edgar onto the end of the sentence, decided at the last second not to. It probably wasn’t wise to tease him right now. Though I wouldn’t have minded a laugh or two, he didn’t look in the mood to chuckle.

  He glared at the ceiling, anger winning out. “I thought you were the only one.”

  What could I say? So did I, and then I couldn’t tell you. “They kind of keep her a secret so the vampires don’t attack, I guess.”

  Graves snorted.
“Yeah, the same way they keep you a secret? Don’t tell me you fell for that.”

  Now that I was lying down, the bed seemed really, really comfortable. My nerves were twitching and jumping from the caffeine. “I think some of them were trying to keep me a secret. But maybe not in a good way.”

  Because the more I thought about it, the more the Council’s reactions didn’t make sense. Neither did Anna’s. It was like she was trying for damage control. Why? Because here I was at the Schola Prima, her stomping ground, instead of stuck out in the back of beyond at a reform school? She was probably way, way used to being the only girl in town.

  I couldn’t really think clearly about it, could I? Because she just grated on me. She wasn’t just your garden variety teenager, either. If she was old enough to know Christophe she was an adult, even if she looked like a cheerleader. And why had she come all the way out to the other Schola? Trying to trap Christophe, for some reason? Did she really think he’d betrayed my mother? It seemed like a lot of people thought so.

  Except Dylan, maybe. And me.

  Don’t hesitate, Christophe had said, holding the knifepoint against his chest. Pulled hard, as if he was going to stab himself. He swore he hadn’t betrayed my mother. And he’d been there, in that dark room at the werwulfen compound.

  If I need a reason now, Dru, it will have to be you.

  I trusted him, didn’t I? But he’d left me here. Alone. Again.

  Or maybe not alone because Graves was right beside me, thinking. Absorbing what I’d said. That was one thing I liked about him—you didn’t have to spell anything out for him. He got there on his own with only a hint or two. But where he ended up this time surprised me. “You don’t seem too surprised to see another one of you wandering around.”

  “She’s not like me.” It came out all in one breath, immediate and insistent. Thin blades of light slid between the heavy velvet drapes. The windows had steel shutters on the inside, too, just like the ones at the old Schola. Only these looked more durable, and had a pattern of hearts stamped into them—and another iron bar I could brace them with, with its brackets sunk into the stone wall. “Look, Graves . . .” I decided to just keep the Edgar thing to myself for right now. If he’d wanted me to call him Eddie, he would’ve told me.