Jealousy

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.