Jealousy

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Shanks leaned against the door, his arms folded. “I guess Graves wanted to surprise you.”

“He didn’t go to class.” Dibs’s fingers were gentle. The blond wulfen smoothed some goop over my bruised cheek. He’d bandaged and gooped up the rest of me and was now working on my face with butterfly-light touches. “Hold still. I wish someone would have come and gotten me sooner. I can’t do much once it starts to get this dark.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. My split lip hurt. All of me hurt. I seemed to have only gotten to the morning-after part of healing—the part where you’re stiff and wish you’d never been born, let alone in a fight. I didn’t even have the adrenaline rush or the part where you feel like you’ve kicked the world’s ass.

No, I just felt damaged all over.

“He saw you like that?” Shanks kept repeating it. He pulled the sleeves of his blue cable-knit sweater up, his large bony wrists exposed. “Man, oh man. Oh, man.”

“I didn’t have a chance to even talk. He got too mad.” I flinched as Dibs started smearing the stuff on my eyelid. Arnica, he called it. Good for the bruises. I’d’ve preferred Gran’s mugwort and a bunch of aspirin. “I, uh. You know.” I couldn’t even begin to explain it.

“I don’t wanna be the wulf in his way when something happens to you.” Dibs’s wide blue eyes were dark and worried. His black medical bag lay open on the bed next to me. He kept wiping the arnica stuff on his gray T-shirt absently whenever he needed his fingers cleaned. “He’s crazy-mad.”

I could even feel Benjamin outside the door, waiting and worrying. It was Shanks who had argued him into getting Dibs out of class, and it was Shanks who had shoved him out the door when I got all girlie and started crying some more. A pile of tissues scattered over the blue carpet, and the particular darkness of 1:00 a.m. filled the window.

I was beginning to wish I’d never gotten out of bed. If I hadn’t, Graves would probably still be here. It would’ve been nice.

Dibs dabbed at my eye. I hissed in a short sharp breath, and he gave me a quick look of apology.

“You did pretty good,” Shanks said suddenly. “I mean, she’s older. And fully trained. You still kicked her ass.”

“She’s rusty.” And weedy. I suppressed the urge to shake Dibs’s hands away from my smarting eye. “That was the only reason I had a chance. I don’t think she practices.”

“The Red Queen’s dangerous. Hold still.” The stuff he was smearing on me smelled nose-numbing weird. “This will sting if I get it in your eye.”

Like it matters—what’s one more thing to hurt? I had a better question. “What exactly do you know? Was I, like, the only person not to know who she is?”

Shanks shrugged. He tilted his head a little, listening to the hall. “Benjamin’s gone back to his room. Thank God, that was starting to bug me.” A little bit of the tension in him bled away. “I don’t know much, really. Just that the head of the Order’s the Red Queen. She’s been pressing for renegotiation of some Treaty terms for a long time. She gets a lot of what she wants; the Council just gets worn down. My parents used to talk about it after the cubs went to bed.” A shrug. “There’re just . . . rumors.”

“What kind of rumors?” I shut my eyes when Dibs murmured at me. He was so gentle, and I began to feel a little less battered. At least here with him and Shanks, nobody was messing with me.

“Just rumors. Nothing I can put my finger on, just saying that it’s better not to be in her way.” He gave me a long, measuring glance. “I can see why.”

So could I. “I didn’t know she hated my mother.”

He let out a laugh that was like a bark. White teeth flashed. “You sounded pretty sure.”

“It was a guess.” Or it was the touch blurring in my head, showing me other people’s business. Gran was big on minding your own business, but sometimes you just can’t. “A pretty good one, I suppose.”

Thinking about Gran made my head hurt. Her owl had pretty much saved my bacon so many times. I’d always thought of it as her owl because it showed up the night she died.

Now I wasn’t so sure.

“Why would she hate your mother?” Dibs finished smearing goop on my face. “Okay, that’s it. Let me take another look at that wrist. You’re not healing right.”

“I don’t know.” I tried not to sound fretful. “What do you mean, not healing right?”

“Too slow, especially if your aspect is rubbing through. Could be because you’re not fully bloomed yet. I wish I’d thought to bring that textbook. Maybe we should call Benjamin in—”

“No!” I yanked my hand away. Dibs squeaked a bit. “He’s already going to ask me what happened!”

“What would be wrong with that?” Shanks peeled himself away from the wall. “I’m a witness. She hit you first.”

I didn’t think I’d have to explain it to him of all people. “She’s the head of the Order, right? Who’s going to believe she jumped me first?”

Besides, I couldn’t tell him that I wanted to find Graves and get the hell out of here. The need to get on the road was itching under my skin in a big way.

“It’s the truth, though.” Dibs gently but firmly grabbed my hand, started manipulating my left wrist. It hurt. “Shanks saw it. Right?”

“You’re such an optimist.” Shanks sighed, crossed the room to the window. “She’s right. Her only witness is a werwulf from a reform Schola. Nobody will believe it. On the other hand, you did give as good as you got, Dru-girl. Maybe she’ll be embarrassed.”

What a cheerful thought. My wrist sent sharp jolts of pain up my arm as Dibs’s long slim fingers probed and poked and pulled.

My T-shirt was filthy with dried blood, sweat, and stuff I couldn’t remember getting on it. “You embarrass a bully, they’ll just lie in wait for you somewhere. Ouch! Stop yanking on it!”

“I think maybe I should splint this.” A crease deepened between Dibs’s fair eyebrows. He’s all business when he’s patching someone up. Hard to believe he’d barely even talk to me out in public because he’s so shy. “So what do we do, then?”

We? I don’t know about you, but I’m finding Graves once he’s calmed down and making the case to get the hell out of here. Like, yesterday.

“Leave it alone, I’m fine.” It hit me hard. I put my head down, breathed in softly. He’d said we. He took it for granted that it was his problem too. We. I didn’t think I’d be so grateful for one little word.

All at once I felt horrible about leaving him behind.

Dibs shrugged. “Wait and see. All we can do. Graves might have a bright idea. And Jesus, Dru. You should at least tell Benjamin. He wouldn’t have this job if he didn’t know how to play the game.”

“You keep saying it’s a game.” I let Dibs mess with my wrist some more. The blond wulfen produced a brand-new Ace bandage from the depths of his medical kit.

“Hold still.” He tore the package open with his white, sharp teeth.

Shanks let out an ironic little half-laugh.“Of course it’s a game. Djamphir are like suckers, always looking to one-up each other.” He gave me a guilty glance, tugged at the window sash. “’Cept you, of course. And then there’s Reynard. Wonder what the deal is with him and Red. You said she was trying to get you on her side about him.”

“If I find him I could maybe get him to answer some questions. Good luck with that, though.” It was weird to have someone else bandaging me up. I usually did the first aid for Dad. I remembered patching up August, too, more than once. My shoulders sagged. “Do you have any aspirin, Dibs?”

“Ibuprofen’s probably better. We should ice this.” He still looked troubled, beginning to wrap my wrist. “Shanks doesn’t mean djamphir are bad.”

He was always like that, looking to smooth over everyone’s feelings. Said it was part of being a “sub”—submissive and born that way. The only time I ever saw him with his back up was when he was bandaging someone.

“She knows what I mean, Dibsie.” A cold breeze touched the dark wulf’s hair, mouthed at his sweater. “I never thought I’d miss reform school.” He played with the curtains, his fingers flicking at the velvet. Took a deep lungful of night air, rolling it around in his mouth like champagne. “Huh.”

Dibs glanced up. His hands paused, the Ace bandage half-wrapped. His eyes widened, and he sniffed, too.

Tension threaded through my aching muscles. I couldn’t smell anything but my own snot, since I’d been crying so hard. “What?”

Shanks cocked his head. It reminded me of the RCA dog on some of Gran’s ancient record sleeves when he did that. “Dunno. Just . . . smells unsettled. Could be you, though. Whenever you get upset, the spice comes out.”

“Spice?” This conversation was getting better and better.

“You smell like cinnamon rolls,” Dibs volunteered helpfully. “All svetocha are supposed to smell different—some flowery, some spicy. It’s pretty strong on you. They smell that way whether or not they’ve fed.”

“Whoa. Back up. I smell?” Heat rose up from my throat, touched my bruised cheeks. Blushing again. At least I wasn’t sobbing like a baby.

All things considered, I was doing pretty well. I might earn my tough-girl card back if this kept up. But ouch. I didn’t want to earn it this way.

“It’s not an insult!” Dibs sounded half-panicked. “He’s not saying you’re a—”

“Just chill.” Shanks stood in the window. “I’m not saying you’re a glutter.”

“A what? You know about me, Shanks. Give me a vowel or something.” I mean, I was learning by leaps and bounds, and I’d known about the Real World pretty much all my life, but what Dad and I had been able to piece together was nothing compared to everything the Order had. Things even a baby werwulf would take for granted were news to me.

The blond werwulf finished wrapping my wrist, with prissy exactitude. “A glutter’s a djamphir who drinks like the vampires do. It makes them stronger. But they’re not supposed to do it. And we can smell them, glutters.”

I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this. “But I’ve never—”

“Svetocha smell because they’re, um, when they get to puberty, they . . . ” Dibs looked over his shoulder. Shanks said nothing, but his shoulders quivered slightly.

Was he laughing?

Dibs gathered himself. He started cleaning up the detritus of used first-aid supplies on the bed. “When they’re, you know, fertile. They start smelling good. Glutters smell, too, like candy. Something about metabolizing the hemo. You can’t tell if a girl djamphir is a glutter, but you can tell if a boy is.”

“Oh.” I checked the wrist wrapping. If I blushed any harder, my skin would probably combust. And now I was wondering why Christophe smelled like apple pies baking, but none of the other djamphir boys did. Was he . . . did he actually . . . “I didn’t know about that.”

“I thought Graves’d be back by now. He had a lot of mad to run off, but still.” Shanks had apparently decided it was time to move on from Teaching Dru About Stuff She Should Know Anyway. “If he’s still off-campus by dawn it’ll be bad for him. But, still, he’s your problem. Or so they think. They might overlook it.”

“He was really mad,” I offered inadequately. “You said something about ibuprofen, Dibs?”

“Have you eaten anything?” He had a huge double handful of Band-Aid wrappers, cotton balls, and an empty tube of arnica ointment. “Because if you haven’t—”

“Give her the goddamn Advil, Dibs. Jesus.” Shanks leaned out, testing the wind, and I had a sudden, vivid mental image of him falling. The windowsill hit him right in the middle of his quads, and all it would take was a good shove. There wasn’t even any screen to hold him back. “She looks like she needs it.”

Dibs shrugged and headed for the bathroom to toss everything. The water turned on in there. He was fanatical about washing his hands after bandaging. I thought about offering him a T-shirt, since his was all smeared with arnica.

I watched Shanks nervously.

A few weeks ago I didn’t even know these guys, and now here I was worried one of them would fall out a window and hurt himself. I didn’t even know if that drop would injure a wulf. They can do some amazing things. “Be careful there, okay? There’s no screen on the window.”

“I was just noticing that. Seems weird, though. The other ones all have screens.” He bent over, braced his hands on the sill. Even so, he looked poised instead of hunched. “Looks like this one had one until recently. There’s scratch marks here, too.”

It hasn’t had a screen since I moved in. My throat was dry. I hurt all over, and suddenly I just wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over my head. “Do you think he’ll come back?” My voice sounded very small. The bed was soft, and to hell with climbing into it—I decided I wouldn’t mind climbing under it and hiding for awhile.

“Graves? Yeah. He just needs to run off the rage.” Shanks shrugged. “He’d come back to a burning house for you. Did it once already.” He turned on his sneaker heel and stalked for the bathroom.

“What do you mean, he came back?” I remembered the Schola burning, and I remembered Christophe dragging me out. But Graves—

“He was the one who made us go back to pick you and Christophe up. We would have been hell and gone if not for him.” The bathroom door shut, and Shanks said something I couldn’t hear over the plashing of water.

Every inch of me ached. My heart hurt worst of all. I was beginning to think it was normal to feel like it was being pulled out of your chest all the time. The toilet flushed after a little while, but at least the wulfen were tactful. Whatever they were arguing about, they were doing it quietly. Dibs sounded worried, Shanks determined.

I pushed myself off the edge of the bed, made my legs straighten. Got my hoodie on, zipped it up. Stood swaying for a few moments. The sleeping bag was neatly rolled up and pushed against the night table on this side, and his pillow was tossed back up on the bed. Graves’s T-shirts, including the “velociraptor with a light saber” one—which he’d looked pleased over—were still hanging up in the closet, half of the drawers in the huge antique dresser holding them as well. I’d gotten used to the sound of his breathing in the room with mine. Ever since Dad had shown up dead but still walking, Graves had been the one person I could depend on.

What exactly was I afraid of?

The same thing I was always afraid of, I guess. That I’d be left behind somewhere—like in the hospital corridor after Gran died, just repeating over and over again that Dad was coming, that he would know what to do, that he was on his way, and hoping like hell it was true.

Dad had shown back up and taken care of everything, but I was always afraid one day he wouldn’t. And one day . . . he hadn’t quite come back. Shambling into your kitchen as a zombie and trying to kill your daughter doesn’t really qualify as a grand return.

And Graves . . . he was thinking I was like his mother, or something? Had he just decided I was too much trouble to deal with? Or what? Shanks said he’d come back once he got rid of the anger. That’s what wulfen do—they run it off.

It’s either that or hunt something down and eat it. Everyone should be glad they usually go for the former. Except most normal people will never ever even hear of stuff like this.

The weight in my throat, prickling behind my eyes, was loneliness.

The toilet flushed again. All the starch went out of my legs and I sat down hard. Here I was again, sitting and waiting for someone to come back. But I was hearing wulfen argue in the bathroom, instead of just the creaks and thumps of an empty house while the wind moaned hungrily outside.

It wasn’t much of an improvement, but I’d take it.

Dibs gave me some ibuprofen and told me to ice my wrist. He looked unhappy, but he just gave Shanks a meaningful stare and carried his medical bag out, shaking his golden head. Shanks shut the door, turned around, and eyed me.

I stood in the middle of the big blue room and felt shipwrecked. Stared back at him. Deep dark eyes, the long fringe of dark hair over them turned aggressive instead of angsty, his sleeves pushed up to reveal lean muscular forearms. Silence stretched like a big old rubber band.

I wet my lips with my tongue nervously. “Get to it. I mean, if you’re wanting to beat me up, too, you’ll have to stand in line. And it would waste all the work Dibs just did.”

As a joke, it was in pretty poor taste. It had seemed funnier inside my head.

“Please.” He rolled his eyes. “Graves would kill me. I’m just wondering if you’re, you know, concerned.”

Concerned? I’m full-fledged paranoiac at this point. “About Anna? Or about—”

“About someone taking the screen off your window. Who’s been visiting? Or have they not been visiting because someone else is sleeping in your room?” One dark eyebrow vanished into the fringe above his eyes. “I’d ask you which side of the fence you’re playing, but the more I hang around you the more I think you ain’t playing at all.”

The sigh that came out of me would have made Dylan proud. “I’m not—”

He held up both hands. “I got it, I know. You wanna take my advice, then, or are you going to snap my head off for even offering it?”

Choices, choices. “Shoot.”

“’Cause you know, you’re svetocha and I’m a lowly wulf fresh outta reform school. You shouldn’t even be talking to us, let alone acting like Dibs and me’s your best friends.”

“But you are my best friends. I can’t trust anyone else!” I actually pitched forward, throwing the words at him like a dodgeball.

“Like I said. But anyway . . . I don’t trust this. Something’s hinky. What with Red getting all aggro on you and someone scratching at your window, not to mention the fact that you shouldn’t’ve been sent to our backwoods Schola in the first place and more vampires than I’ve ever seen in my life chasing you down. And let’s not even talk about Reynard, okay?” He stopped, waited for my nod, and continued. “I’m saying it might not be so good an idea for you to sleep up here if someone you trust isn’t with you. So. Either we stash you someplace nobody knows about, or . . .” His face worked itself up a little, like he was sucking significantly on a lemon. Like I should know where he was going.

It took my poor busted brain a few seconds to figure out what he was suggesting. “Or you stay here. Um, I guess not, Shanks. I mean, I trust you and all, but I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

He looked almost green with relief. “Well, cool. Because Graves would have a fit. He’ll probably be back anytime now. He knows we can’t leave you alone. So—”

A lightbulb turned on inside my head. “I’ve got an idea,” I said, and I told him.

Like I expected, he didn’t think much of it. “You’ll end up with your guts for garters, Dru.”

I shook my head. “He hasn’t hurt me. Not yet. And can you think of a better place? Nobody would expect it.”

“Bad idea.” Shanks shook his head so hard his shoulders moved, too. “Jesus Christ. You’re nuts. Completely bazonko.”

“All you have to do is act like I’m in here.” I sounded perfectly reasonable, even to myself. “And for Christ’s sake, it’s not like I’m not down there every night anyway.”

“But . . . ” He stopped. “You know, it’s actually not such a bad idea. Completely crazy, but not such a bad idea.”

“Exactly.” I stuffed my hands gingerly in my hoodie pockets. The wrapping on my wrist helped. Once you get all bandaged up, the fight is really over. You can afford to relax a little bit.

Maybe. Until the next crisis comes along. And I was jumpy. Who wouldn’t be, after all this?

Shanks thought everything over. “But when Graves comes back . . .”

“He’s smart. He’ll figure out where I am.” He would, and he’d either be angry or . . . what? What would he be like when he came back?

I ran up against the wall of everything I didn’t know about him. The Council had never mentioned his file again, and I hadn’t even been tempted to ask. I figured he’d tell me what he wanted me to know, and—

Shanks made a restless motion, like a dog shaking away water. “If he can figure it out, someone else can too.”

Werwulfen function on consensus among themselves. Getting them to poop or get off the pot is pretty impossible sometimes. Don’t get me wrong—when you’ve got teeth and claws and superhuman reflexes, it’s a good thing to want everyone to agree without violence. I’ll be the first to admit that.

But sometimes it just drives me up the fricking wall. “Then they can all come down and we’ll have a coffee klatch.” I rolled my eyes. “He killed three suckers at the other Schola, Shanks. He’s good protection.”

“I’m not worried about suckers just yet. I’m worried about him going crazy and opening you up like a can of Pringles.”

I was getting to the point where that thought was losing its ability to scare me. “Well, then this will all be academic, won’t it? And everyone will be ever so much happier without the problem that is me hanging around.” I shuffled over to the side of the bed, picked up the sleeping bag and the pillow. “That’s what I’m doing. I’ll stash myself someplace nobody except Graves will think of to look for me. You just hang out by the door until Benjamin comes to check in on me, and pretend I’m in the room. And ta-da, tomorrow Graves should be back and calmed down enough to be reasonable and we’ll figure out . . . something else.”

Like getting the hell out of this place. Hey, you can even come along. The more the merrier. I sounded hopeless even inside my own head.

Shanks was looking at me weird.“He’ll be back tonight. I’ll stick around and wait for him, I guess. You really want to do this, Dru-girl?”

I’d had about all I could take of boys looking at me funny, but I gave him a smile that hurt my face. My split lip cracked a little, and the bruises all twinged. “Yeah. What’s the worst that could happen?”

As soon as I said it I wished I hadn’t. But Shanks just shook his dark head, opened the door, and peered outside, sniffing. “It’s clear,” he finally muttered. “Come on, then.”

“Thanks. I mean it. For everything.” I shifted the sleeping bag around and winced when my arm almost cramped, the way bruises do when they settle down to the painful business of healing.

As usual when I thanked him, he shook it off and snorted. “Always was too curious for my own good. Be careful, okay?”

“I will be.” And I set off down the hall before either of us could get any more embarrassed.