Betrayals

CHAPTER 11

When you’re up all night all the time, midnight is the middle of the day. It’s not late enough to be lunch yet, but it’s too late for breakfast, and when you’ve been chased and have rolled around in muck, are you hungry anyway?

I was. I was starving. But instead of being in the caf, I was sitting in Dylan’s office again.

Looking at the shelves of leather-bound books and waiting. It was just like the principal’s office, and Graves had vanished after handing me a fistful of dry clothes brought from my own room through the door of the girls’ locker room.

I didn’t like that. It was just numbers one and two on a list of things I didn’t like. Someone, maybe even Graves himself, would have had to go through the rosewood dresser in my room, and whoever it was even brought panties, for God’s sake. It was creepy. Thank God I hadn’t hidden anything in there. I mean, the panty drawer has got to be the first place anyone’s going to look, right?

And where was Graves? I had a funny squirrelly feeling in my chest when I thought about him not being here. I wanted to see him.

I wanted to see any friendly face. Nobody else here qualified except maybe Christophe, and he was nowhere around. I didn’t have any clue where he was.

Dylan was off doing whatever it was he did when he wasn’t sighing at me, or preparing to come in and sigh at me. Which left me all alone, my hair washed clean and dripping and my teeth clenched together. Not to mention with my head full of questions, and arms and legs that didn’t feel too steady.

I slumped in the usual high-backed, carved chair, staring at the books. They were a treasure trove of titles about the Real World, from demographic surveys on werwulfen to a whole section on witchcraft and black hexes, their spines lettered with crimson foil.

I bit on my right index fingernail, chewing along until it was nonexistent. Moved to the next nail.

What I wouldn’t have given to have a crack at some of those while Dad was alive. He might’ve liked it too. I wouldn’t have minded a peek at the hex books. Dad preferred human intel, asking questions in occult shops and bars where the Real World congregated. I’d been in and out of those places ever since Gran died and Dad came to pick me up, and I was beginning to think it had been a lot more dangerous than even he had thought. Every time he took me into another place to get the lay of the land, he got really tense.

Now I wondered if it was because I was with him, or because a misstep could have meant both of us ending up dead. And I wondered why he never told me about Mom being svetocha. Why hadn’t he said something? Anything? Was he planning on telling me when I was old enough? How old was “old enough”? What the hell had he been waiting for?

Or had he not known? Had it been my mother’s secret?

How could it have been?

I started chewing on my right ring fingernail. Then again, Dad never was a touchy-feely say-everything kind of guy. We could spend whole days not talking, just getting things done. I was always proud of knowing exactly what to do without him having to tell me every time. Gran hadn’t been a big one for talking either, preferring to teach by example, but next to Dad she was positively chatty.

And how would Dad have told me, anyway? Dru, honey, your mother was part vampire, which means you are too. Sorry about that.

My heart hurt. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried not to think about it.

The door opened. I stayed slumped in the chair, even though my heart leapt nastily and I had to swallow a gasp. I grabbed at the chair’s arms, and my feet slid in a little bit in case I had to stand up in a hurry.

Almost dying will make you a little jumpy.

“Here she is.” Dylan sounded tired. “Entrez-vous, my space is yours.” I heard a light step and a swish of something. A spicy, pretty smell filled the air, and I craned my neck, opening my mouth to ask Dylan where the hell Graves was.

The words died in my throat as the advisor stepped to one side, closing the door and standing at attention right in front of it. A shadow slid past him and glided toward me.

She was tall for a girl, and her hair was a glory of reddish curls. Narrow shoulders, wide blue eyes, a pointed chin, and a long, old timey dress of red silk. That hair was perfect, held back from her heart-shaped face with two black-velvet bows. She half-turned, leaned back, and hopped up to perch on Dylan’s desk, shoving paper back with her skirt.

I stared. Her boots were pointed and heeled, and rows of tiny buttons marched up her shins. She crossed her ankles and looked at me. Her eyes turned a little lighter as dark streaks slid through her hair, the curls becoming looser and longer as her aspect flooded her. The twin points of delicate little fangs touched her pink-glossed lower lip.

Holy shit. I stared some more.

“Dru,” Dylan said, calmly enough. “This is Lady Anna. Milady, this is Dru Anderson.”

“Hello, Dru.” She had a sweet, chiming voice. I stayed where I was, nailed in place, my mouth half-open. “Is that a nickname? What is it short for?”

I was so not going to answer that. But my mouth opened anyway. “You’re svetocha.” The words just fell out. “Jesus Christ. I thought I was—” I sounded accusing, and Dylan straightened self-consciously, his jacket creaking. “Holy shit.”

Her smile faltered for a moment. “I’m a well-kept secret. If the nosferatu suspected, they would attack every place we own, even this small satellite of the Order, with far more frequency. Already, with you here for such a short period of time, we’ve had several students injured and a marked increase in the number of… incidents.”

So that’s my fault? Jesus. A hot ugly feeling welled up inside me. I closed my mouth with a snap.

We looked at each other for a few minutes, her fangs retreating and the curls in her hair tightening up, until she looked just like a storybook impression of a princess.

“We are hoping that the attack on this Schola was merely routine, a matter of them probing our defenses. Though it seems unlikely, doesn’t it?” She tilted her perfect head. “Hopefully none of them escaped to carry tales.”

I finally dug up something to say that wasn’t a cussword. “Where’s Graves?” This was all very well, but he was the one person I wanted to talk to. I needed him here for this.

Dylan shifted uneasily. “He’s in the dorms.” His fangs were out, and he looked unhappy. It was just a subtle downward tilt to the corners of his mouth, but it was such a change from his generally irritated expression, it was pretty shocking. “Milady wanted to meet you, Dru. It’s a high honor for a first-year student.”

Color me all impressed and shit. “Why? I mean, why did she want to come here? If I’m such a problem.”

“You’re not a problem—” Dylan began, but the girl glanced at him mildly, and he shut up so fast I was surprised he didn’t lose a chunk of his tongue.

“May I?” She cocked her head, and Dylan spread his hands helplessly. She smiled a little bit.

Those teensy little fangs were creepy as hell, especially when she tilted her head and looked cat-content. “You are unruly, Miss Anderson. You have been here barely two weeks and have already pressured a Kouroi into sparring with you, with unpleasant results. You seem to have no pride in your heritage, which isn’t your fault, given your upbringing, but it is distressing. You have so much potential, but you seem content to waste it on pointless intransigence.” She was solemn now, her mouth turning down like she tasted something a little unpleasant but was too polite to spit it out. “That’s our fault. We have not expressed to you the reasons why we do things as we do, and I confess I have been very busy making arrangements for your continued safety, as well as other… arrangements for the safety of others in the Order. The work has taken up so much of my time that I have been unable to meet with you before now. And… well, I suppose the best way to say it is just to say it.”

I don’t like the sound of that. My “wrong” chimes were ringing like mad. I shifted uncomfortably. The chair had gotten really hard all of a sudden. Dylan made a soft coughing noise, clearing his throat. His dark eyes flashed, but whether it was a warning or an allergy attack, I couldn’t tell.

Anna lifted one narrow hand, and her nails were lacquered pink too. My God. All she needs is a muff and a cute little pink cell phone all covered in rhinestones. Ugh. The smell of her, spice and goodness and warm perfume, reminded me of something, but I didn’t know just what. I was too busy staring at her flawless face, the blush rising in her matte cheeks, the arc of her eyelashes.

My next thought was sudden and chilling. I could never in a million years look like that. I’m not sure I’d want to, either.

“We don’t know why Reynard saved you from Sergej.” Her tone dropped to confidential instead of just worried and hoity-toity. “Did he tell you anything at all?”

Reynard? Oh yeah. She meant Christophe. “He said he was part of the Order, and—”

“He said that?” Her gaze sharpened over my shoulder, and I knew she and Dylan were exchanging a Look that could have been Parental. Or at least Teacherlike. How old was this girl? She looked about eighteen, which could have meant anything here. “Would it surprise you to know Christophe Reynard hasn’t been an official part of the Order for a good seventeen years or so? The negotiations to bring him back to us have been… difficult.”

“Nobody trusts him.” Next to her careful, polite, well-modulated tone, my voice was harsh. I’d scraped my throat raw with coughing. “Dylan said when he came back he’d train me, because—”

“Dylan is of Christophe’s camp. He’s been his supporter for a long time, and indeed was Reynard’s sponsor. He argued and pressed and cajoled to have Reynard accorded the honor of membership in our ranks, despite his… unfortunate ancestry.”

“His what? Slow down and speak English.” I pushed myself upright in the chair. I was tired and hungry, and I wanted to see Graves. And oh yeah, I wanted to curl up in bed and shake. I wanted to lock my door and the shutters over my window and spend a little time just trembling. It sure as hell sounded good.

There was a slow, uncomfortable silence. “You might as well tell her,” Dylan said. “If you’re going to.”

“I suppose so.” She fixed me with her limpid look, and I felt every pimple I’d ever had fighting toward the surface again. “Did Christophe tell you anything about his family?”

“Just that his mom was dead too, I think.” It was hard to remember when I was thinking through soup. Come to think of it, he hadn’t told me much at all. “Other than that, nothing. What’s this all about? He didn’t tell me a goddamn thing, and nobody’s told me really anything since I got here.”

“It would surprise you, then, to know that Christophe’s given name was Krystof Gogol?” A significant pause while I shook my head, mute, wondering where the hell she was going. “And the nosferat you escaped from two months ago, the acknowledged king of those who hunt the night, was born Sergej Gogol?”

“Huh?” I was exhausted. That’s the only reason why it took ten full seconds for what she was really saying to trickle through the fog in my head. “You what?”

Anna’s shoulders slumped. For the first time, she looked a little tired too. But it was just a gloss over her prettiness. “You didn’t know. Christophe is Sergej’s son. The eldest and, for a time, the most proud and wicked of his progeny. He saved you from his father and disappeared. But even before that, Reynard was interfering in your family.”

My heart was beating very loudly. All the breath had whooshed out of me. “Say what?” It was a tiny little squeak from a dry throat.

Anna hopped off the desk and faced me squarely, her hands clasped in front of her. She said what I was afraid she’d say. “We have reason to believe, Miss Anderson, that it was Reynard who gave away your mother’s location to Sergej. And we need your help to find out if he did.”

She laid the manila folder on the desk’s cluttered surface. Her pink-lacquered fingernails scraped slightly. “This is what we think happened. Your mother was in a safe location.” The folder flipped open, and the world skidded to a halt underneath me.

My teeth ground together behind the frozen lake of my face. They were tingling again, and the red sparkles at the corners of my vision were back. I swallowed harshly, tasting danger and rage.

It was an eight-by-ten glossy in full color, and it showed a yellow house with an oak tree growing by the front steps. I stared at the picture and my skin went cold, then hot, then cold again. Every muscle ache twinged once, then hardened into nausea.

Have you ever felt so sick your entire body feels like throwing up? Like that.

The last time I’d seen that house was in a dream.

Or was it a dream? Something I’d woken up from with Christophe and Graves both in the room, fighting off a dreamstealer, a winged serpent sucking at my breath, a thing that slunk away to lay eggs in my neighbors. Those eggs had hatched the next morning, and driving through a bunch of young wiggling dreamstealers to escape the wulfen attack on my house had been a nightmare.

I’d thought maybe it was a hallucination, the impossibly clear and detailed vision of my mother hiding me in the middle of the night.

It wasn’t a dream. A chill hard voice spoke up in the very middle of my head. It was memory.

That was what happened when Mom died. This is the house she died in. She hid me in the closet and went out to fight. And she got killed.

The svetocha next to me flipped the photo aside. Next was another glossy eight-by-ten. This time, the oak was in full summer leaf, except for the huge scorched half of it, twisted and blackened by some horrible thing still vibrating in the branches. The screen door was busted off its hinges, and the steps were shattered.

There was something terrible caught in the tree’s clutching fingers. Something human-shaped, but agonizingly distorted. The image seared itself on my eyes, burrowed into my brain.

“We think she died on the steps,” Anna said softly, “but Sergej hung her in the tree and… well. We didn’t get there in time. Your father was long gone, too, with you. We didn’t even know about you until years later.”

He hung her in the tree. Oh God. “You didn’t know about me?” I sounded breathless even to myself.

When she answered, there was a faint tinge of something, bitterness? Anger? I couldn’t decide and didn’t care. “No. Your mother… left the Order for her own reasons. Nobody knows what those reasons were.”

I don’t either. I blinked hard. Cleared my throat. “I thought svetocha were toxic to suckers. That’s what—” That’s what Christophe said.

“We are. We poison them just by breathing, just by existing in their vicinity. But some, a very few, nosferatu are powerful enough to endure that toxicity for a short amount of time. And a short amount of time was all Sergej needed.” Her perfect eyebrows drew together. “There is a reason he is their leader.”

It was weird. Nobody else would say his name. They said he or you-know-who. But Christophe, and this chick, said it quietly. Like they were talking about someone they knew.

I didn’t want to think about it. My entire body, and everything inside my head, felt like throwing up, passing out, or just sinking down on the floor and trembling for a bit. “What does this have to do with Christophe?”

She flipped that photo over too. The back of it had a scribble in blue pen, a streak like someone had slashed at it. More papers. “This is a transcript of a call between an unidentified member of the Order and a nosferat of Sergej’s line. In it, the unidentified Kouroi gives your mother’s location. Christophe is the only person who might have known, he trained your mother personally, and they were close.”

He trained her? “Close? How old is he?”

“Old enough to remember the last half of the First World War, Miss Anderson. We have no more proof, the recording is gone and the person who transcribed it died in battle. Rather suspiciously, I might add.” She was watching me very carefully, I realized. There’s a certain way people look when they’re not focusing forward, when they’re tracking you in their peripheral vision. “It is very likely Christophe will seek further contact with you. If and when he does, it is imperative that you notify an advisor and stand by for debriefing. Is that clear?”

The tone of command was something new. I got the idea that when this lady said jump, everyone around her made like a basketball player going up for a dunk.

The words hovered right on the tip of my tongue. He’s already been to see me. A few simple words, and I could stop feeling like there was a weight pressing against my heart. I could lay the problem in someone else’s lap and stop worrying about it. I could hand it over to an adult and be done.

But I heard the sound of soft wings again, and feathers brushed my face. I almost flinched, the feeling was so real.

Look what happened last time you tried to dump the problem in someone else’s lap, Dru. You called Augustine, and things seemed like they were going to get better, and now look at where you are.

It was a warning, delivered just like all of Gran’s lessons. Simple and without a lot of bullshit messing it up. “Crystal,” I heard myself say. It was the first time I’d ever sounded as weary and adult as Graves sometimes did. Did he ever feel this weight pressing on him too?

He probably did. I wanted to see him so bad my hands almost shook.

“Then I shall be on my way.” She scooped the file together, and I glanced up. Dylan looked worried, as usual, and he was staring straight at me. It was like he was willing me to figure something out, his lips pressed together and his dark eyes beaming a message I couldn’t decode.

“The transcript. Do I get to look at it?” I didn’t mean to sound stubborn, but I guess I did. Dylan actually flinched, and Anna drew herself up.

I finally figured out what bothered me about her face. She looked Popular. She’d never been an outcast; we all just existed to throw her own reflection back at her. There was the same unfinished, greedy kind of prettiness I’d seen on cheerleaders and female boa constrictors all over America. If she wasn’t djamphir, she’d probably have ended up as an obese, lacquered middle-aged woman with a turned-down, bitter mouth. The kind that makes a huge fuss in a grocery store over an expired coupon, or a can of corn costing fifteen cents more than she’d thought.

The kind that always gets her way, because she’s shameless when it comes to wearing you down over it. Like that.

“It’s classified, Miss Anderson. When Christophe contacts you, listen to what he has to say. Remember it, and be ready to repeat it.” She nodded brusquely and tucked the manila folder under her arm. Her silk swished as she headed for the door. “My bodyguard will see me out, Dylan. Thank you.”

“Milady.” How he managed to say the word without choking, I don’t know. She swept away, her heels tapping with little sharp sounds.

The door swung shut. Cobwebs up at the top of the tall bookcases made little shushing movements. The ceiling tiles in here were rotting too.

This place was really falling apart in more ways than one.

Dylan tilted his head, one eyebrow raised. I stood there, aching and wet with sweat. I didn’t realize I was shaking until I sat back down in the chair, hard. Every part of me was quivering like electrified Jell-O. Her smell left reluctantly, heaviness coating the back of my throat, especially that place on the palate normal people don’t have, the place where I taste danger.

It’s like the pickled ginger you get with sushi. That always tastes like perfume to me. This was heavy, oily perfume too.

What does that remind me of? I swear to God it reminds me of something. But the little spring that wheels memories out of their slots and throws them into the soup of your brain was busted in my head. I just couldn’t come up with anything coherent.

Climbing up the stairs to my room seemed like an awfully huge task. But the thought of hiding under the bed with the dust kitties, the malaika, and Dad’s billfold more than made up for it. I was glad, for no reason that I could name, that Mom’s locket was tucked safely under my T-shirt. The idea of Anna seeing it made my heart feel cold.

Dylan’s shoulders slumped. “They’re gone,” he said quietly. “Are you all right?”

What a question. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Peachy. Perfect. Not.”

“I’m sorry.” He really did sound sorry. But then, he always did. “She insisted on seeing you, and…”

And what? What the fuck was that? I stared at the space on his cluttered desk where the file had rested. I knew it existed now. I’d seen where my mother died.

He hung her in the tree. Her sweet little voice, saying it like it was nothing when it wasn’t. It wasn’t nothing. It was my mother, and she—

“Have you seen Christophe, Dru?” His jacket creaked as he leaned away from the wall. “I don’t think I have to tell you he’s in deep shit. And it’s getting deeper.”

I was trying to think, but he was making it harder by talking to me. “I want to go to my room.” I sounded about five years old. “Please.”

“All right.” But he just couldn’t let it be. “Dru—”

“Who was supposed to be watching me?” The space where the file had been was a hole in the world, and I wasn’t sure I liked the way the wind was whistling over it. I hate that empty sound, like a storm rasping against the edges of an empty house while you’re waiting for your dad to come home and collect you. That low, impatient moaning. “Who was supposed to take me up to my room when the bell went off? it’s the only time someone hasn’t come to get me.”

“I don’t know, I didn’t get a chance to check the schedule. And now the duty roster’s disappeared.” He moved again, restlessly, leather creaking. I coughed once more, a deep hacking sound. “I was called to greet Anna’s transport. We never receive any warnings for her visits, so—”

“She doesn’t live here?” But I didn’t care. My legs felt like they would work now. Kind of.

Something else he said seemed important, but I couldn’t make my brain work.

“No, she doesn’t.” He stopped short again, and I was getting really tired of the feeling that he wasn’t telling me everything. Or even anything.

I braced myself on the chair, pushed. Failed the first time. Dylan stepped forward like he wanted to help.

I leapt up as if burned, put the chair between us, and stared at him.

“Dru—” He stopped dead. We watched each other over a couple yards of traitorous air. There didn’t seem to be enough of it to breathe, but there was sure enough to press down on me from all sides. Had anyone ever drowned on air?

I sidled toward the door. He kept very still, like he wasn’t sure which way I was going to jump.

The aspect folded over him, retreated, his fangs sliding under his lips.

“I’m on your side,” he said, when I was almost at the door. “I wish—”

“I don’t have a side,” I informed him, found the doorknob with one numb hand and fled. All the halls were empty, and I managed to make it to my room without anything else happening.

It was a completely unexpected gift. I half-expected there to be a fire, or another attack, or some other damn thing.

I locked the door, put my back against it, and held up my hand. It was shaking like a windblown leaf. The room was dead silent, the curtains askew just a little bit, and a square of white paper against the blue of the quilt cover.

Hot and cold swept over me in alternating waves. I set out across the acres of blue carpet. My socks whispered, and could anyone else see the faint marks where Christophe’s wet feet had rested?

Even though I was jolting from the fading adrenaline overload and seriously busted up, I am not stupid. It was too wrong. Two photos of the house I’d lived in before, before Mom died and the world changed, didn’t make a case against Christophe. If the information was so secret and classified, Anna shouldn’t have brought the file out at all. And ordering me around is exactly the wrong way to make me do what you want.

Yeah, I mean, I understand about obeying orders when you’re under fire. That’s totally different.

But Dad hadn’t raised a blindly obedient idiot. I don’t think he was capable of it.

The paper was crisp, heavy, and expensive. The writing was careful copperplate script.

Svetocha, Be careful. Nothing here is what it appears to be.

Meet me at the boathouse.

Your Friend

I collapsed on the bed. If it was a code, the message was lost on me. What the fuck?

And what was someone, maybe Christophe, doing leaving messages on my pillow when vampires were trying to kill me? While Ash, of all people (was people even the right word for a werwulf?) was rescuing me?

Had Ash been trying to rescue me?

My brain finally kicked in, far too late. And now the duty roster’s gone. Which meant whoever was supposed to be watching me had taken it, because they knew I’d be attacked.

Killed. Not just attacked, but killed. Call it what it is, Dru.

I let out a long, shuddering breath. Christophe. Sergej’s son. He was right, someone was trying to kill him. But he wasn’t telling the whole truth either. All these lies, crowding all around me, hemming me in. Dangerous lies.

Deadly lies. What happened tonight could have easily ended with me murdered out in the woods.

I could end up dead tomorrow. In my sleep, even. I shivered, hugging myself for warmth. The room was cold, and it wasn’t mine.

The one person I could have talked to, the one person who could have helped me make sense of this madness, was down in the dorms. I didn’t feel up to going down there. Not now.

I huddled on the bed. Outside, it was night, and the Schola was awake and alive. The not-noise of people living in a space, filling it up with their breathing and heartbeats, quivered in the air. I still felt completely, utterly alone. More alone than I’d ever felt in a house waiting for Dad to come back, and that’s saying something.