Jealousy

CHAPTER TWENTY

The metal shelf was hard, and I probably should have brought my sneakers down here with me. And an extra blanket. But I just unrolled the sleeping bag and made sure the key was in my pocket for the fiftieth time.

You know that feeling—you’ve got your bus ticket or something important in your pocket, and you have to keep checking just to make sure it’s there? Like that. It’s like a nervous tic or something when you’re traveling or really, really bushed. Or maybe I’m the only person who does it, I don’t know.

Ash’s breathing was steady. He lay curled up under the shelf-bed, and there was another sticky tray in the corner. I’d gotten close enough to it to smell the red copper of blood, and the image of a brown Jersey cow popped up big as life inside my head, the touch throbbing. I’d retreated to the other side of the room in a hurry. At least he was being fed. I would have a crazy well-fed werwulf to contend with instead of a crazy hungry one.

You take what you can get, I suppose.

I plopped the pillow down, fluffed it up, then stood and stared at the sleeping bag. It smelled like Graves. Healthy teenage boy, his deodorant, and the cold moonlight tang of loup-garou.

I eased myself down cautiously, my knees complaining when they hit cold concrete. My wrapped wrist twinged, too. I peeked under the shelf.

There was a faint orange gleam of eyes in the deeper shadow. His breathing hadn’t changed, but he was awake. Every inhale ended on a slight bubbling sound through his ruined mouth.

“I’m sorry about shooting you.” The words surprised me. Even more than that, I was surprised to find out I really was sorry. Even if Benjamin was right and the only thing keeping him from doing what Sergej wanted and killing me was a faceful of silver grain, I still felt bad about shooting him. “It must hurt, huh?”

The shadow didn’t move, but I could tell he was paying attention by the way the silence in the room changed. Ordinary people can hear that, too—what happens when someone is suddenly paying attention.

“Go figure.” The cold of the floor grabbed the bruises on my legs with bony fingers. “This is about the only place I feel safe. And you could bite my head off without even thinking about it. Do I smell weird to you, too? I guess I must.”

No answer. Just the soft burble of his breath. The tiny glimmers of his eyes winked out, and he settled farther back, against the wall.

I didn’t zip the sleeping bag up, but I did tuck it all around me. The metal was hard and uncomfortable, but no worse than a motel-room floor. I just couldn’t get easy, especially with the bruises and muscle aches playing pinball all through me. Every time I shifted my weight the bag’s zipper would rub a little bit against the metal bed, or a bruise would set up a yell of pain, or some damn thing. But I was exhausted, and pretty soon I started to feel drowsy.

I woke with a start, hearing the deathly stillness of everyone in the Schola gone to their early-morning rest. It took me a few sleepy seconds to realize it was before Ash usually began his regular 3:00 a.m. yowling, and he wasn’t making a sound. Instead, I blinked fuzzily a few times, and in the faint illumination through the barred aperture in the door I saw a long furred shape with orange eyes.

He lay across the threshold, narrow head on his paws, and watched me.

That should really creep me out. But I fell back asleep again. A long slow velvet time of dreamless darkness enfolded me.

And then . . .

The hall was long and narrow, and the door at the end of it glided open. I remembered this feeling—a buzzing cord tied around my waist, drawing me on. I should have been cold in my sock feet and T-shirt, and for a moment I wondered where my hoodie had gone. Then I realized I was dreaming, and the question fell away.

The buzzing started, vibrating through my fingers and toes. It was like static between channels in the back ends of America, the ancient televisions in fly-spotted, grease-carpeted motel rooms all tuned to blank snow. Some of those places advertise cable, but good luck coaxing the TV to home in on anything resembling a signal.

I remembered this feeling, like pins and needles crawling through numb flesh. I held up a hand and wasn’t surprised to see translucent copies of my nail-chewed fingers. They wiggled when I wiggled them, obediently, and I put my hand down. My feet just brushed the floor. I was moving slowly. Like waterskiing but only at about quarter-speed, leaning back against the pull.

Up the stairs, past the hall that held my room, and the pull intensified. The Schola’s stone walls wavered like seaweed. A soft thunder of wingbeats surrounded me, insulating me from the prickling buzz.

The Schola flickered, came back with the colors bled out. Everything was shifting, like really old movies where the grainy color has faded. Or like those painted photographs you see in antique stores—black-and-white portraits with weird blushes over the cheeks and eyes, caught in dusty frames and staring out past speckled, dirty glass.

The voices faded in through the static. I recognized one of them, and the walls of the Schola pulled away. I was outside, the trees shimmering—one moment fully-leafed, the next bare grasping branches.

The voices came back as the trees burst into full summer green again, their shadows turning everything around them to liquid even as color flooded my sight. Sound wavered, but then it was like finding the radio station you want, a chance bump in the road moving your finger on the dial just that perfect amount so the song comes in clear and loud.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It will get better.”

“She hates me.” There was a clack of wood hitting wood, and a short sharp sound of frustration. “I want to go home.”

“She can’t do anything to you. Not with me here. First form, Elizabeth.”

A heatless pang went through me.

It was a half-ruined chapel, vines growing up the stone walls. It was vaguely familiar, and I realized why in a dreamy sort of way. I’d been drawing it for weeks now. There was a wide grassy center and a stone altar, and she appeared between the veils of mist. Her achingly beautiful heart-shaped face, a few long ringlets escaping to bob against her cheeks. She wore black capris and a white button-down, her hair parted in the middle and pulled back. The cut of the clothes somehow said “old.” You could just tell she wanted to iron her hair flat and do some macramé.

She held malaika, the slightly curving wooden swords, with sweet natural grace. One of them made a half-circle, so sharp you could hear the air being cut. Perched atop the altar, her Keds shuffling as she stepped back and the swords made a complicated pattern, she was a deadly beautiful bird mantling its wings.

“Straighten your leg,” Christophe said from the shadow under the wall on the right. The sunlight was a physical weight, golden-grainy like old honey. His eyes burned blue, and he watched her critically, his eyebrows pulled together.

Each time I saw him, it was as if I’d forgotten how well his face worked together, every angle and line fitting just so. He was in jeans and a black T-shirt, his hair pure Liverpool mod touched with blond highlights. “Wrist,” he said mildly, and my mother stopped. She half-turned and gave him a Look.

Oh but I recognized that; it was the way she’d look at Dad when he was late for dinner, or when he said something joking about her washing dishes. It was the mock-glare of a pretty woman looking at a man she knows very well. Half-teasing, almost angry, and very aware of him looking at her.

The wingbeats of my pulse paused. The pins and needles stabbing static fuzzed through the scene, but I focused, just like holding the pendulum over Gran’s kitchen table and searching for the little internal tickle that would make it answer questions.

I couldn’t get enough of seeing her again. She was breathing easily, and she pushed away a stray curl with the back of her hand, the malaika held as easily as a butter knife. She was so graceful. I saw, as if I had a pair of binoculars, that her fingernails were bitten down, too.

Just like mine.

She looked so young. In the picture Dad carried in his wallet, the shadows in her eyes were darker, and she seemed older. Right now she looked, well, like a teenager.

Every little girl thinks her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world. But my mother was. She really was.

Her mock-glare turned into a set expression, mouth firm and eyebrows drawn together a little. “I feel like an idiot, stuck up on here. Why can’t we practice inside?”

Christophe’s face was unreadable, but he was tense. The tightness in his shoulders, the way his feet were placed just so, told me all about it. “The sunshine does you good. First form, again. Concentrate, Elizabeth.”

She rolled her eyes and turned away.“Wish you’d just call me Liz.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He sounded just the same—half-mocking, light and sarcastic. But something in his tone made me look at him, and just for an instant his face was naked. The aspect was on him, fangs touching his lip and his hair dark and slicked-down.

Christophe stared at my mother like he wanted to eat her.

But my mother had looked up at the destroyed roof of the chapel. Her tone had turned soft and distant, like she didn’t even remember he was there with her. “I mean it. I want to go home.”

“You are home.” He dismissed it with three words, and why was he looking at her like that? It was almost indecent.

“She hates me.” A quick, sideways grimace. “You don’t get it, Chris.”

He straightened. Stepped to the very edge of the wall’s shadow. Anger crackled around him. But his face didn’t change, and his tone was just the same. “Her hatred means less than nothing.”

“You train me out here so she won’t see it. Because you’re her steady.”

“I’m not her steady. It’s useful for her to think so, though. First form, Elizabeth.”

If he wanted her full attention, he’d gotten it. She actually frowned at him, and I remembered how she used to look when something wasn’t going right. When she smiled, the world lit up, but when she looked serious, almost grim, her beauty was more severe. She shifted her weight uneasily. “How can you be so cold?”

Christophe folded his arms. “First form, Elizabeth.”

“The girl’s crazy about you, youngblood.”

For once, Christophe actually looked puzzled. “Youngblood?”

“God, you’re such a goon. She thinks you’re a fox.” My mother laughed, and the sunlight got brighter. “But you are, right? Reynard.”

A long pause, while he watched her. She swung the malaika, but halfheartedly.

Finally, he stepped back into the shade. “This is serious business. You have a gift for these, and—”

“Forget it.” She dropped both of them with a wooden clatter and hopped down off the square block of stone in one coordinated movement. “Every day it’s the same thing. Why don’t you just go back and play with Anna instead? I’m sick of all these games.”

“It’s not a game. It’s deadly serious, and the sooner you—”

“Bye.” She waved her fingers over her shoulder as she stalked away toward me. My heart swelled to the size of a basketball inside my ribs, and a burst of that static went through the entire scene.

NO! I wanted to yell, but couldn’t make my lips work. The buzzing roared through me. I forced it away. I want to see!

Static flew like snow. It cleared enough for me to see Christophe, his hand around my mother’s wrist as she pulled away from him. She twisted for the thumb to break his grip; he caught her shoulder with his other hand. She tore away again, her hair flying and a pair of dainty fangs visible as her mouth opened, yelling something.

She slapped him. The sound was a rifle crack, buzzing and blurring at the edges. They faced each other, my mother’s chest heaving and her eyes full of tears as if he’d hit her.

Christophe smiled. It was a wide bright sunny grin, as if he’d just been kissed. A handprint showed on his pale cheek, vividly flushed. “Do that again,” he said quietly. “Go ahead, Beth. I’ll let you.”

Her lips moved, but I didn’t hear what she said. Because the static was worse, pouring down like a river of white feathers, and the buzzing had become a roar rattling through me, the pins and needles now knives and swords. The line holding me taut at the scene snapped, and I—

—fell with a thump as Ash howled and scrabbled at the door. He was making a noise like stones grinding together, the growl rising and falling as his narrow ribs flickered. He backed up, claws clicking, and flung himself at the door again.

I sat up, clipped a bruise on my shoulder on the shelf-bed. Rubbed at it. “Augh. Ow.” Blinked furiously.

Ash whirled. The growl spiraled up, and I froze.

He stared at me, his eyes orange lamps. Then he paced back two steps deliberately, crowding the corner behind the door. He lifted one paw.

My mouth was dry, my eyes sandy, and I suddenly wanted to pee like nobody’s business. I hadn’t thought of that when I’d had this bright idea, and peeing in the metal toilet in the corner just was so not going to happen.

Plus I hate sleeping in my clothes. It always pinches everywhere when you wake up.

Ash’s arm jabbed forward, and he pointed his claws at me. Then, very slowly, he pointed at the door. Still growling, his lip lifting and the gleam of ivory teeth under his nose.

I half-choked, grabbed the shelf-bed, and levered myself to my feet. I’d stiffened up but good. My internal clock was whacked up, but I thought it was before dawn.

Ash pointed at me, at the door. Under the growl, an inquisitive, pleading sound went up at the end. It was beyond me how he could make two sounds at once.

“Shut up!” I said sharply.

He did.

We stared at each other. He hunched down, his head cocked, and I tasted rotten, waxen oranges. They poured over my tongue, tickled the back of my throat, and I knew something bad was happening.

Ash whined softly in the back of his throat. Hunched down even more, the way a dog will when he needs to go out at night but thinks you’ll yell at him if he asks too loud. I considered spitting to clear my mouth, but I knew it wouldn’t get that taste away.

“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.” I dug for the key with clumsy fingers. Froze again when he moved.

The Broken werwulf went utterly silent and crouched, facing the door.

Footsteps I shouldn’t have been able to hear, up above in the silent mass of the Schola Prima. The touch quivered inside my head, each footfall distinct against the fabric of the night.

They were wrong—landing too heavily, or too lightly. I knew, in that soundless way the touch lays information inside my brain, that they were vampires.

And if they were here, they were up to no good.