Jealousy

by Lili St. Crow

  I was so fricking tired of omelets.

  “No thanks,” he said finally. “Staying in tonight.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I found a pair of my jeans and folded them swiftly. Then one of August’s flannel shirts. I’d offered to iron them, but he got a weird look on his face and told me not to. I did some anyway, but when he came home and saw them he took the iron and put it somewhere.

  Weird. But then, hunters are weird. Even Dad has his tics.

  There. I’d thought about Dad. I’d never asked August when he was coming back. Sometimes a job will take awhile, right? I was sure he’d come back.

  Wasn’t I?

  I tried not to think about it. He’d always come back before. But . . . I was never sure, way down deep, if each time he did would be the last.

  I looked at the television. For a guy with such a nice bit of plasma hardware, he didn’t watch a lot of it. When he did, it was always black-and-white movies. Why have a great TV if all you can see are shades of gray?

  Someone banged on the door. My heart jumped into my throat like a jackrabbit on speed. I would have leapt to my feet, but August was already rising, grabbing his cigarette and taking one last drag before grinding it out. “Steady, princess.” He looked amused. “If there was trouble I’d be outside, leading it a chase. This is good news. I can smell it.”

  Now I was folding a blue sweater. I carefully focused on the sleeves while August got the door. Please let it be him, I prayed. Please.

  And then, wonder of wonders, God came through. I heard my father’s voice.

  “Goddamn you, Dobrowski. Why do you have to live up three flights of stairs?” He stamped, as if his boots were full of snow.

  August sounded amused. “It’s safe up here. You look like hell. Did you—”

  Clipped and final. “I didn’t get him. Where’s Dru?”

  August sighed. “Safe and sound. She’s obsessed with toast, of all things. Move, so I can shut the door.”

  My eyes blurred. I let out a long breath, my shoulders sagging. My heart was thumping, a high hard gallop of happiness. I knew what luggage felt like at the airport the moment it was picked up, the instant familiar fingers closed on its handle.

  It was Dad. He’d finally come back. He was here, and we were going to move on. Happiness filled me until I thought I would burst, and I swiped the tears away angrily. If I broke down crying he’d get That Look, like I was a weepy girl and he didn’t know what to do. But I couldn’t stop leaking. Now I could admit that I’d been afraid I would be stuck here forever.

  Now it was safe.

  I rolled the sweater up as if I was packing it in a box. He was here. It meant we were leaving.

  I couldn’t wait.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  White walls. Sunlight. It smelled of lemons, of furniture polish, of fresh air. My eyes drifted open, took this in. I stayed there, just looking, for a long while. Curiously, comfortably numb.

  I heard someone breathing, and hot lightning-streak relief poured through me. Graves? Oh thank God. Do I ever have a lot to tell you.

  I rolled over slowly. My back had stiffened up; so had my arms and legs. My neck twinged. I felt crusty and sweaty, my skin slipping against clean sheets. I was in my underwear and nothing else. Not even the bandage on my wrist, not even a bra.

  How did that happen? The ceiling was white plaster, a repeating pattern of diamonds and roses sharply sculpted on it. The other Schola had been dirtier—grime in the corners, the mats in the sparring chapel used until they fell apart, the girls’ locker room musty around the edges. Even chlorine can’t kill that sort of funk.

  But not here. Here at the Prima it was all bright and clean, and I wondered about that. I never saw anyone dusting. You’d think there would be an army of janitors.

  There was a lamp on a white-painted nightstand with spindly legs. It had crystal chandelier-drops instead of a shade, and it was still burning. Little rainbows caught in the drops, light reflecting on the antique brass base. I pushed myself up on my elbow, staring at it like it was a spaceship or something.

  Where the hell am I?

  I hate waking up with that question. It’s cliché, sure, but it’s also a deep well of insecurity swallowing whatever rest you might have gotten during the night. My pulse leapt. I sat up slowly, clutching the pale cream top sheet and white down comforter to my chest. Cool air brushed my naked, dry-sweat-crackling back.

  The room was small but perfect, one wall lined with stripped-pine bookshelves. The windows were huge, open, and full of afternoon sunlight falling past net curtains and a wide white satin window seat. A small white rolltop desk stood across the room, a clunky antique office chair of pale wood with its back to the window in front of it. A slightly open door showed white tile and what was probably a bathroom. Another door must’ve led to the hall because it was studded with locks and barred. A mirrored door to a walk-in closet was half-open, too, and I saw familiar clothes hanging in there. Big white dresser with a vanity mirror and a white-cushioned satin seat, the vanity’s surface curiously bare in front of the antique brass-curlicued mirror frame.

  What the hell?

  In the shadowed space between the desk and the bookshelves, Christophe sat on the floor. His head was tipped back, his throat stretched out, hair mussed artistically. His eyes were closed and his lips parted slightly. He was deeply asleep, and a shotgun—probably the one I’d seen him with in the Dakotas—lay across his lap. His hands lay limp and graceful, and he wore yet another thin black V-neck sweater and jeans. With his legs outstretched, the tips of his boot-toes fell apart slightly, the worn soles making a V and sunlight caressing their edges.

  I reached up, touched my mother’s locket. Kept the covers clutched up to my chest while I looked around for some clothes. If all else failed I’d tear the sheet off the bed, but—

  When I snuck another glance at Christophe, his eyes were open, blue fires in the shadow of the bookcase. His breathing hadn’t changed. Neither had a single muscle. He looked at me, and Jesus. A hot flush worked its way up from my neck, burned in my cheeks. The healed-up fang marks on my wrist filled with an odd tingling, and I forced my fingers away from the warm metal of the locket.

  He was smiling faintly, too. Something about the smile made me vaguely uncomfortable. I swallowed hard.

  “You’re safe,” he said finally. And there it was again—the gentle tone, not his usual faint mockery. He never sounded like that with anyone else around. “North wing. This was your mother’s room. I had them bring your clothes up. Your computer and everything else will follow, as soon as they’re scanned and pronounced safe.”

  I just kept clutching the covers stupidly and staring at him.

  “At sunset, they’ll hold my Trial. You needn’t worry, though. Everything’s going to be fine.” He still didn’t move, except for his eyelids, a rapid blink. “And by the way, good morning. Would you like some breakfast? Lunch? I suppose it’s lunchtime. For daywalkers, anyway.”

  I had the unsettling sensation that the world had shifted out from underneath me again. “Graves. Ash. Shanks, Dibs. Are they okay?”

  “The Broken is in the infirmary, sedated and restrained. He might even live. Robert and Samuel are both well; Samuel’s in the infirmary, too. He has quite a gift for medical work.”

  Samuel? Oh, yeah. Dibs. “Graves? And Benjamin, Leon, the guys?”

  “Benjamin and his cadre are very well, all things considered, and standing guard at both ends of this hall. We’ll figure out a tutor schedule as soon as this unpleasantness is over, and—”

  I didn’t care. “Graves. Where’s Graves?” Tell me you’ve found him. But I thought I knew.

  I just wanted him to tell me I was wrong.

  His mouth pulled down, just slightly, before the smile returned. It was a faint ironclad grimace this time. “Nobody’s seen him, Dru.”

  My chest squeezed down on itself. “But . . .”

  “Every teacher and student is on the lookout. Unless the
wulfen are hiding him in the dorms somewhere, and Robert swears they’re not. We’ve accounted for everyone, wounded or whole, except him. No severe casualties from this attack, thank God.”

  “Oh, God.” I found a word for what was boiling up in my throat.

  It was the same old feeling. Abandonment. He’d left me behind, just like Mom and Gran and Dad. Where the hell would he go?

  I realized with a jolt that it didn’t matter. Away from me, he was safe. I just never thought he would leave me behind. I honestly didn’t.

  Except now I was horribly, awfully afraid that he had.

  “Did something happen?” Christophe laid the question quietly in the sunshine-flooded room, and he sounded like he really wanted to know. “Between you two?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. I guess. Look, I just . . . are those my clothes?” And who took my bra off? My cheeks were about as red as Kir’s hair, if the scorching in them was any indication.

  Kir. Jesus. A cold shiver traced down my back. He was on the Council, and he was on Anna’s side. What if he’d—

  Christophe was on his feet in an instant, the shotgun held loosely and expertly, pointed at the floor. I would have been worried about someone wandering around my room with a gun, but he was a professional. And to tell the truth, I was glad he was here.

  He’d come back for me. Again. The intensity of the relief was pretty ridiculous. When you’ve spent your entire life being a piece of luggage for people to collect, even when you’re a helpful piece of luggage and you know they love you, you get to feeling like a golden retriever when someone comes home.

  He swept the closet door open, laid the shotgun down carefully, and stepped inside. “Anything in particular, or just something to cover up? You had nosferatu blood on your clothes; Samuel cut them off so you could sleep a little more comfortably. I didn’t think you’d mind much.”

  Did you look? But it wasn’t the sort of question I could ask him. I could have played it as a joke with Graves, but not Christophe. For one thing, he was in my closet. For another, there was that shotgun. And I was still blushing and feeling like I’d done something wrong by passing out. “Oh. Okay. I, uh, wondered about that.”

  “Here.” He emerged with an armful of clothes. “One of these, I think. Is there something specific you’d like to wear? Or will . . . here, look.” He slid them off his arm onto the foot of the bed. Six T-shirts, two flannels, a hoodie—Jesus. That was a quarter of my wardrobe right there.

  “Christophe . . .”

  It was the first time I’d seen him even close to flustered. “Don’t worry, I won’t look. See?” He backed up two steps, turned as if he was on parade, and headed for the closet. Scooped up the shotgun and crossed to the window. Stood in the sunshine, the blond highlights in his shaggily cut hair lighting up.

  I’d never seen him in full sun before. The blond streaks turned to gold, and the texture of his skin glowed. The light bounced off the metal of the shotgun’s sawed-off barrel. His head was down, like he was looking out the window.

  Some of what he’d said sank in. My mother’s room. There were books on the stripped-pine bookshelves. Hers?

  Do that again. . . . Go ahead, Beth. I’ll let you. The dream rose up in my head. Was it what Gran called a true-seeing? Dreams were slippery, best not to put any weight on them. What you wanted could turn into what you saw, not what actually was.

  But I’d been dreaming more and more lately, about things I found out were true. Like Dad in a long concrete corridor, walking toward his death. Like my mother hiding me in a closet and going out to fight Sergej.

  I grabbed a longer flannel and wrapped it around myself, buttoned up. “Where’s all my pants?”

  “Check the dresser. Your other room was torn apart. Someone betrayed its location. You should be safer here.”

  Gooseflesh rose hard and chill on my legs as I slid them gingerly out of bed. I was all over bruises, some yellow-green and some red-blue, and my palms were raw. There were also rough red patches like carpet burn wherever the vampire blood had splashed. It doesn’t eat through skin, but it is caustic. The muscles alongside my spine twitched and sent little we’re not happy messages all up and down.

  After boys hit the drift, they heal up from just about anything in a matter of hours. I was using the aspect, but I wasn’t healing like they do. Sucks being a girl sometimes.

  I shuffled over to the dresser, found out someone had just tossed my undies and bras in higgledy-piggledy in the top drawer on the left-hand side, and was relieved. Whoever had put them there hadn’t, well, lingered over them.

  It’s the little things you end up being grateful for, Gran had always said.

  I found a pair of jeans, too. About half my stuff was here. The other half, who knew? Bled on by vampires? Burned? Just left where it was?

  And where were Graves’s clothes? I grabbed the edge of the drawer, my knuckles turning white.

  My voice surprised me. “I hate this.”

  Christophe didn’t turn around. “What?”

  “Vampire attacks. I get used to something, and they come riding in and destroy everything. Then I have to get used to something else all over again. It’s . . . Jesus. It’s lame.” I couldn’t come up with a better word, for once, and felt completely inadequate, standing there with jeans and a fistful of blue bikini briefs.

  “I’m sorry.” He sounded sorry, too. “It will be better now. I promise.”

  Graves wouldn’t have said that. He’d have made an ironic little comment and I’d’ve laughed and felt better. My heart dropped another few inches. “There’s no making it better, Christophe. This is going to keep going until they kill me, or until—”

  “They’re not going to kill you.” Hard and fast. His shoulders came up as if I’d hit him. “Not while I’m here.”

  “But that’s just the point.” It was nasty of me, I know. It was also true. “You’re going to disappear again, and I’ll be dealing with it all on my own. Again.”

  Mom putting me in the hidey-hole in the closet, telling me I was her own good girl. Gran in the hospital bed, sliding away hour by hour. Dad walking down that concrete corridor toward the door that would open onto something grinning and hateful—and deadly.

  And now, Graves.

  Christophe sounded like he had something stuck in his throat. “When do you think I haven’t been watching over you? But I’m not going to ‘disappear’ again, Dru. That’s done now.” Christophe shifted his weight as if he was going to turn around, and I clutched the clothes to me just in case.

  “Yeah. Sure.” I headed for the white-tiled glare I was certain was a bathroom. I hoped someone had thought to bring my toothbrush, too. If the vampires hadn’t bled on it. “Sure it is.”

  “Wait and see.” The mockery was back. “I’ll be hard to get rid of from now on, moj maly ptaszku.”

  I found out it was indeed a bathroom. White and scrubbed, antique brass fixtures and a skylight letting in a flood of sunshine. Wow. You could get a tan standing around in the shower, for Christ’s sake. “It’s easy to get rid of people, Christophe. All you have to do is rely on them.” I swung the door shut and locked it, feeling like I’d won a small victory.

  It was ridiculous. What was there to win? He hadn’t been fighting.

  I just, God, I wished he would have been Graves. I wanted to see that lopsided half-pained smile and those green eyes more than I could even admit to myself.

  When you want to tell me, you come and find me.

  Which meant he was coming back, right? Where the hell was he? It wasn’t like him. But he’d been pretty mad. Put his fist almost through the wall. Because I hadn’t been able to open my mouth fast enough.

  Even Shanks said he was coming back. But Shanks didn’t know him that well, did he? There hadn’t been time for them to get really tight.

  Did I even know my Goth Boy that well?

  It was looking like I didn’t.

  Graves was the one thing I could depend on in this utterly s
crewed-up situation, and without him around I was . . .

  Way to go tough girl, Dru. Jeez. He’s just a boy. Get over it.

  But he wasn’t just a boy. He was the only boy I’d found worth dating in God knows how many schools. I mean, ever since he’d been bitten by a werwulf he’d been rock-steady. The best thing about this totally effed-up situation.

  And now he was gone. And I had a funny idea, no matter how I tried to shake it, that he wasn’t going to come sauntering back into the room and throwing around ironic one-liners.

  So you go find him, just like he said. Right?

  Except I didn’t have a clue where to begin looking. My thinker was pretty busted.

  The bathtub was a big cast-iron thing, and the shower looked older than I was. There was a brand-new plastic shower curtain on a ring bolted to the wall. The water ran rusty-red into the scrubbed white bowl of the sink for a few minutes when I turned it on, then cleared and warmed up.

  I tried not to think about it.

  I found I was crying silently. I didn’t look in the mirror above the sink. There was a cabinet built into the wall with fresh white towels that smelled of fabric softener. I muffled the sobs in one of them while the shower ran, then got in and washed my aching self free of the sweat and the snot and the tears and the stickiness of fear, not to mention the stink of rotting vampire blood. There was shampoo. Conditioner. Soap in a waxed paper wrapping with French stuff written on the outside. Someone had remembered a toothbrush and the Crest from my room.

  It was like being in a hotel room again. Only this time Dad wasn’t outside the door, watching TV while he loaded clips or cleaning his guns or looking through his contacts list. No, outside the door there was a listening silence, as if Christophe knew I was crying.

  And I hated it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX