Jealousy

by Lili St. Crow

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.

  I hadn’t seen hide or hair of Anna. The Council “requested” my presence every two or three days, an uncomfortable hour of not-so-small talk where they went over everything about me. Where Dad and I had gone. What I remembered about Mom. Everything Christophe had ever said to me.

  Kir stared at me through the whole thing.

  They didn’t ask me about Anna showing up at the other Schola, and I didn’t say anything. I figured it was the safest course. Besides, I was too busy to worry about her right now. She didn’t take classes; she was fully trained and fully bloomed. She was occupied with running the Order, and I guess that made for a lot of paperwork. I gathered she was a world traveler, always jetting off somewhere. Paris for the spring season, London when she wanted a change of pace, Fiji when it got too cold, Russia when she wanted something exotic. Plus, I guess, if she moved around a lot the suckers had less chance of finding her.

  When and if she showed up again, I’d figure something out.

  The windows were full of the syrupy gold of sunset, white marble and greenery both glowing outside. It was actually really pretty, and as soon as we got down the stairs and took a sharp right, we were in a long gallery with windows all along one side. The sun lit up Dibs’s hair, gilded Shanks’s perfect skin and white teeth, and fired in Graves’s eyes. Me, I just blinked and tried not to look half-asleep—and tried as well not to choke on huge gulps of banana latte.

  Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Banana latte is awesome.

  The end of the gallery was a big set of double doors, and I inhaled sharply just like I did every evening before Leon swept the door open and glanced out. He nodded, and it was only then that Graves eased up on my arm and we all got through the doors and into a crowded hall full of boys.

  Attending a Schola is like walking into a sea of extras from toothpaste commercials and sitcoms. The wulfen are taller and the djamphir are built slighter. They’re in every conceivable human shade. Wulfen tend to be more brunet, djamphir to have more extreme hair colors—not just blond but platinum or gold, not just dark-haired but raven or sandalwood. The skin colors are even and beautiful, not a pimple or discoloration to be found. The eyes are glowing or gemlike, and djamphir have sharper facial features. Plus, they move differently. Wulfen move like they’re shouldering fluidly through long grass, and boy djamphir move with an eerie natural grace. It’s not so noticeable if you’re just looking at one, but a crowd of them? The wrongness just explodes all over the inside of your brain and tickles that little instinctive spot on the back of your neck. The one that tells you something is dangerous.

  Or that could just be me. Because as usual, the moment I stepped out into the hall, they were looking at me.

  I guess I’d be curious about the only boy in an all-girls school. It’s just, you know, being the only girl in an all-boys school was different. Because it was me being stared at. After practicing invisibility as an art form in school halls all over the U.S., this was new and unwelcome.

  Antique metal lockers stood at attention between classroom doors, and the sounds of slamming lockers and drumming feet, as well as the occasional catcall, didn’t penetrate the bubble of whispering around me. I put my head down, as usual, and let my shower-damp hair slide forward, curtaining me. Dibs drew closer on my left, and Graves held his chin up, a bounce in his step and his earring swinging. He didn’t seem to mind the whispers or the looks.

  Course, he probably got a fair share of both as a goth boy in a Dakota town. Stands to reason he’d have a good front to show the world. Sometimes he even reached down and took my hand, fingers slipping through mine. It was a touch I was both grateful for and confused by.

  But not today. Today I went it alone.

  I got another gulp of coffee down, inhaled at the wrong time, and almost sprayed it all over the floor. Being stared at will do that—make you clumsy.

  “You okay?” Graves sounded worried.

  “I got all my homework done.” My nose stung from coffee. I stared at my sneakers on the hardwood. One step, two steps, three steps. Leon cut traffic so I didn’t have to worry about running into anyone. “I think . . .”

  I really think he’s going to change back, I almost said, but shut my mouth. It wasn’t the sort of thing to talk about in a hallway. Especially since anything I said would fall into a big rippling pond of quiet.

  Each night Ash struggled, bones cracking, to change. And each night I thought he might really do it. Benjamin said he wouldn’t. Shanks shrugged. Graves said nothing, and Dibs wouldn’t even go near the hall that housed Ash’s room. He turned an interesting shade of white every time it was even mentioned.

  I almost ran into Leon when he stopped. “Last stop, Grand Central, everyone out,” he said with one of his crooked little smiles. Seen in sunlight, his mousy hair took on threads of gold, brown, and ash-blond and was fine instead of lank. He had a sharply handsome face, and I was still trying to figure out how he did the fade-into-the-background thing. It didn’t seem natural.

  “I’ll see you at lunch.” Graves took another puff off his cancer-stick. “We’ll do Para Bio together. It’ll be fun.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You bet. Bye, guys. Thanks.”

  “Ciao, Dru-girl. Don’t forget, Saturday we’re doing a run in the park. Graves’ll
bring you.” Shanks waved, slung an arm over Dibs’s shoulders. “C’mon, boyo. Race you to Red Wing.”

  “I won’t forget.” It was the third time he’d reminded me. But he was already gone. Just like that, heading for the wing where wulfen had their classes. The hall was emptying rapidly, no few of the boys sneaking glances at me. I waited, expectant.

  Graves gave me a once-over, green eyes glowing. Apparently satisfied, he leaned in and pressed his lips to my cheek. A quick peck, then he straightened, turned on his heel, and walked off very quickly.

  It was the same thing every day. As a public display of affection, it kind of left a little to be desired. Maybe he was taking it slow because of everything going on, or maybe he just . . . I don’t know.

  Leon made a short, suppressed sound. The door squeaked a little as he leaned back, pulling it open and glancing inside. He waved a slim languid hand at me. “After you, Milady.”

  God, I wish you wouldn’t call me that. But I just hitched my bag higher on my shoulder and stamped past him. It was hard to have a satisfying snit on when you were just wearing sneakers, but I tried.

  Since I was a few minutes behind, everyone was already there. Even the teacher, Beaufort, a tall thin late-blooming djamphir in a faded blue-velvet jacket and striped hipster trousers.

  Late drifters—they call puberty for djamphir boys “hitting the drift”—look like they’re in their mid twenties instead of solidly teenage. They also have something . . . I can’t quite explain it. A shadow around the eyes, or the occasional quick flicking restless movement as if they’re in pain. Augustine had done that too. At the time I’d just thought he was weird. A lot of human hunters have tics. Like Juan-Raoul de la Hoya-Smith, another one of Dad’s old friends. He hunts chupacabras and other stuff down Tijuana way. He also spits on the floor every time someone says something unlucky, and his idea of luck is . . . weird.

  A ring around the moon? Bad luck. Hat on the bed? Major bad luck. Seeing a squirrel first thing in the morning? Good luck. Canadian geese? Good luck. But seagulls? Bad luck. He calls them “rats with wings.” But he loves pigeons. Go figure.

  Beaufort made an odd movement, as if he wanted to bow and stopped himself just in time, straightening and pulling his cuffs down. Under the blue velvet, the teacher’s shirt was frilly and weird. It looked like threadbare silk. “Ah, hello. Hello.”

  A rustling movement went through the boy djamphir. None of them had sat down yet; the sofas and easy chairs arranged in a double circle around the teacher all stood empty. And all of them were looking at me.

  This never got any easier.

  I picked a sofa in the second row and dropped down. Leon stood behind me, a silent reminder. I knew without looking that his hands were crossed, resting comfortably, and his head dipped forward a bit so his eyes were lost behind a thin screen of fine hair.

  He seemed to make just about everyone uncomfortable.

  They all sank gracefully down into their chosen seats. The other half of my sofa stayed empty. Just like always.

  It was like having the plague.

  The teacher cleared his throat. “Pass in your papers, please.”

  I leaned forward. The kid who usually sat in front of me—hair the color of butterscotch and a fondness for really expensive silk button-downs in jewel tones—glanced back, took the plastic report binder I held out, and blushed bright crimson.

  I tried not to sigh. Slid a yellow legal pad and a couple of pencils out of my bag, settled down, and waited. A sketch filled the edges of the piece of paper on top: blocks of masonry, grass shaded in at the bottom, and a huge empty space in the middle.

  I could never seem to draw the middle. So all my notes were decorated with this odd churchlike ruin, hovering like a bad dream.

  As usual, once he didn’t have to look directly at me, Beaufort seemed okay. “Very good, very good. Now, we left off with the first real attempt the nosferat made at domination of the civilized world, in 1200 BC. There are garbled legends of this time, mostly concerning the Sea People, though most of the archaeological evidence is spotty at best. So how do we separate fact from fiction?”

  “Oral tradition,” a blond djamphir in the front row said. “Then cross-checking against the archaeological record and extrapolation from what we know of nosferat behavior.”

  The teacher nodded. “Our oral tradition is very precise, specific, and unapologetic on one point. Once, the wampyr could move by day. Once, the sun was not a bar to them. They were weakened, certainly, by its presence—but it was not the deterrent it is today. So what happened?”

  Silence. I glanced back over my notes. Nothing that might answer the question. Of course, I didn’t ever raise my hand—but I liked knowing before he called on someone else. Beaufort liked to give everyone time to digest and come up with something, too. He wasn’t one of those teachers who delights in catching kids out.

  That was one thing I was getting used to here at the Schola. The grading was fierce and the teachers were smart, but they weren’t trying to play petty power games. At least not in the classrooms.

  The answer surprised all of us. It came from over my right shoulder, and it was a sibilant hiss threading through the quiet of a thinking classroom.

  “Scarabus.” Leon shifted his weight slightly; I almost felt the movement through the couch. “He rose from the sands and walked among them, killing where he chose.”

  “I see someone here has done his required reading. However, Leontus, you are not a first-year student.”

  Silence again. Leon exhaled, a slight but definite snicker.

  I liked him more and more.

  “I’ve heard of that,” the blond in the front row finally said. “Scarabus. Thought he was a myth.”

  The teacher cocked his head. “Oh, he was definitely not a myth. If we Kouroi are said to survive as a species today, it is due to him. His name is lost, but the wampyr called him Scarabus. He was ephialtes .” Beaufort’s face puckered up like he’d gotten a mouthful of sour candy against rotting teeth.

  I wrote that down, spelling it as best I could. The teacher paused. “Anyone?”

  “Greek name,” a redheaded djamphir off to my left supplied. “Right?”

  “It means traitor. The term did not originate until hundreds of years after Scarabus, but it is accepted usage now. He was a djamphir who specialized in one thing: killing his own kind for his wampyr masters. Some few of our kind were allowed to live and hunt their brethren for sport, and also to keep us from banding together and taking on the fiends whose blood we bore.”

  He’s getting really into it. Sometimes this guy got a little too into the history, talking about it as if he was there. I guess you never can tell among a bunch of djamphir. And to be honest, this was fascinating.

  Beaufort rested a fingertip against his pursed lips. He turned in a complete circle, his blue eyes passing over us all and threads of darkness sliding through his hair. The aspect passed through him, his fangs sliding out and dimpling his lower lip. The fangs retreated, his hair returned to normal, and I let out a soft breath, notepaper crumpling under my left hand before I eased my fingers out of the fist.

  I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the aspect passing through a djamphir. It’s the part we get from the suckers. The part that makes us stronger, faster . . .

  . . . and thirsty for the red stuff in the vein.

  You don’t get used to that. Not easily, and not soon.

  “Many djamphir have been ephialtes in their time,” Beaufort said softly. “Even the best of us. Raised to hunt our own kind, we know nothing else. It is the original question of nature versus nurture.”

  Christophe did that. Hunted other djamphir. A chill moved down my back. After all, he was Sergej’s son. They told me Augustine had brought him in, and my mother was the reason he stayed in the Order.

  Except Christophe had told me something else.

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

  Talk about an uncomfortable t
hought. The fang marks on my wrist throbbed a little, but I ignored the feeling. I was getting good at ignoring stuff. If there was an Olympics I’d probably qualify. I’d go for the gold.

  “After a certain amount of time, every ephialtes will question why he is killing his brothers. And what will eventually happen to him once his masters tire of him, no matter how useful he is. Scarabus questioned, and he turned against them. Normally he would have been hunted down by every ephialtes and wampyr his masters could induce to do such a thing. But Scarabus had an advantage.”

  Leon stirred restlessly behind me.

  Beaufort finished his last slow turn, and his eyes settled on me. “He had a sister.”

  A ripple went through the room. A few of the boys, unable to help themselves, actually glanced at me and away quickly.

  Great. I sank back into the couch, wishing for some of Leon’s wallflower juice.

  “Scarabus’s first act of disobedience was taking his infant sister and hiding her. Their human mother died in childbirth, and Scarabus must have told his master that the child had died as well. Such things being common in antiquity. Nothing more is known until fifteen years later, when the sister was on the verge of blooming. He could no longer keep her a secret, so he drank her dry.”

  My stomach turned over hard. “He what?” It burst out of me.

  Beaufort actually winced. “He, ahem, killed her. Drank past the point of bonding, past the point of the blood-dark, past the point of crippling. He absorbed his sister. And used the strength in her blood to become something the wampyr could not stand against. At least, something the taproot of their species could not stand against. Without that taproot—”

  “Whoa. He ate his sister?” It was the guy in front of me. I was feeling kind of glad someone else was having the same reaction. Guess chivalry isn’t dead.

  Beaufort sighed. It was a Dylan-class sigh, but without the shades of patient aggravation Dylan could have put into it. “Essentially, yes. He absorbed her essence and used the resulting aura-dark to strike at the Vampire King. Who was, incidentally, Scarabus’s master for most of his life.”