Jealousy

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Four old djamphir standing to attention. The chair at the head of the table was empty. Alton, Ezra, Bruce, Hiro, all stood ranged in front of the table like a firing squad. There was no breakfast laid out this time.

Christophe closed the door. I folded my arms self-consciously, trying not to wonder if any of them had stolen a peek while my T-shirt was torn. My hair was behaving for once, but I was still glad I’d braided it back tightly and drenched it with conditioner to keep the frizzles down. Not that it was frizzing much lately, but habits die hard.

Bruce clasped his hands together. His face was set and white under his coloring, and it didn’t do him a lot of good. His eyes were burning coals. “Milady.”

Outside the sun was shining, and the birds were chirping. But in here there was no daylight. I shifted my weight uncomfortably. Kept my hands in fists so I wasn’t tempted to touch my mother’s locket. “What? I mean, what do you want?”

“I think this would go better if you sat down,” Hiro said gently. But I looked past him, and there was a dent of darkness on the table’s mellow polished shine.

My heart crawled up in my throat. “God.” I sounded half-strangled. “No. Oh, no.”

I shoved between Hiro and Alton and grabbed the black thing. It was a long black canvas trench coat. It would go all the way to my ankles, but it would hit him at midcalf. It smelled like cigarette smoke and healthy young male loup-garou.

It was torn all to pieces. Another piece of it was in my bag right now. I’d fished it out of my other jeans and stowed it carefully.

There was an envelope, too, heavy cream linen paper with a wax seal on it. The seal had already been broken. “We wanted to make sure—” Hiro began.

I dropped the coat and snatched the envelope. Ripped it apart.

“When?” Christophe was right behind me. “Exactly when? After he disappeared? And where?”

Alton’s face was set and ashen. “We don’t know. A box was delivered a half-hour ago, containing the coat and the envelope.”

One piece of that heavy expensive paper. Spidery but firm antique handwriting, good enough to be called calligraphy. You could almost see a fountain pen scratching at the paper, its nib scraping along like a busy little insect.

Since you have taken my Broken, I will break another.

“No.” My mouth kept saying it. “No. No.”

Christophe subtracted the letter from my nerveless fingers. Scanned it briefly. “Dear God.” He didn’t sound horrified. Only . . . thoughtful.

I was horrified enough for both of us.

I picked up the coat again. It was torn, one sleeve almost severed, and there was drying mud splashed all over it. Mud, and another darker fluid that had dried to a crust.

I didn’t want to think about it.

A scream was rising in my chest. I shoved it down as hard as I could. It didn’t want to go. Think, Dru. Think.

I looked up, my fingers turned into claws in the ruin of the coat. Met Christophe’s steady, icy gaze. “What are you going to do?”

Even though I already suspected the answer. He was just loup-garou . They wouldn’t care.

Not the way I did.

Come find me. Oh, God.

“There’s precious little we can do.” Bruce picked up the ripped envelope. A silent snarl drifted over his handsome face, his proud nose wrinkling. “The boy might have left school grounds; nobody saw them take him. It’s been long enough—he could be anywhere by now. Sergej hopes we will be drawn into a rescue attempt because of your attachment to—”

“Anna,” Christophe said flatly.

Hiro gave him a dark, eloquent glance. “We cannot lay every misfortune at her door.”

“Dru ‘stole’ me; Anna said as much. Why not ‘steal’ the one person Dru trusts absolutely? It has a certain symmetry, and it’s how the Red Queen operates. She knows no other way. We find Anna; she will help us find the loup-garou. And answer every question we have about her activities, from eleven years ago to today.” Christophe’s shoulder lifted, dropped. “Simple.”

“Now hold on,” Ezra piped up.

“We can’t risk—” Hiro, again.

“This is madness,” Alton weighed in.

“There’s no guarantee—” Bruce began, but I tipped my head back and let out a sound halfway between a strangled scream and a growl, and everyone shut up.

“You assholes.” This time the aspect didn’t feel like warm oil. It felt like a crackling cloak of lightning settling over me, and I had to work to pronounce the words the way I wanted them. “I’m out of here.”

I spun on my heel, my bag bumping my hip, and pushed past Christophe. Or tried to.

“Dru!” He grabbed my arm, and I seriously had to work to throttle the instinct to punch him. “Don’t. Please.”

“It’s Graves!” Tears blurred my eyes. “He’s got Graves! I have to find him!”

“We will. But you cannot help the loup-garou by running out of here without a clear idea of what to achieve. Sergej won’t kill him. Not yet.”

“Let go of me!” My voice broke like a little boy’s. “It’s Graves! He’s got Graves!”

It was like a nightmare. Something else kept happening. And I suppose that ever since I’d picked that piece of fabric off the thorns, this was what I’d been dreading. I just hadn’t said as much to myself.

Because I was turning out to be a coward. I’d rather accuse Graves of leaving me behind, even if it was inside my own head, than face the fact that I’d gotten him into this. And that he was probably paying for it right now.

I knew what they did to break werwulfen. I’d learned as much at the other Schola.

Sergej was going to do that to Graves.

Oh, God. I struggled against Christophe’s hands.

“He will have you too if you run out of here screaming.” His fingers bit in. “Listen to me, Dru. We’ll get your loup-garou back. I swear it on my blades and my bloodline. But there’s nothing you can do right this moment.”

I knew he was right, but it didn’t help. The numbness was over, and my entire chest was cracking open. Hot water slicked my cheeks. Was I ever going to stop crying? Jesus.

“I swear it.” Christophe stared me down like we were the only two people in the room. “The rest of the Council will swear, too. Won’t you?”

A long, tense-ticking quiet moment went by. I couldn’t look away from Christophe. He stared like he had X-ray vision and was checking out my brain folds.

“Because,” he continued inexorably, “they are offering me a seat on the Council, since two of their members are, to put it kindly, unfit. And they were about to tell you that you, dearest one, are the head of the Order now.”

“Screw their Order.” And I meant it. “They can put their Order where the sun doesn’t—”

He lifted his hand, and I subsided. It was just like having Dad give me the Meaningful Look. Bite your tongue, Dru.

“The Order is a massive organization, well-funded and—once we finish rooting out Anna’s holdouts—well-trained and loyal. You stand a much better chance of finding your friend and surviving with them on your side.” He paused, and the next thing he said held no shade of businesslike mockery. It was the gentle tone he’d never used around anyone but me before. “And if you do not trust them, skowroneczko moja, try to trust me.”

“I—” But the protest stopped before I could even find words. His blood was still tingling through my veins, whispering to me. I knew what it was like to have fangs in my wrist and to feel the awful, horrible, draining and ripping sensation. He’d done that for me while I lay dying on an operating table. Anna had been shooting with an assault rifle, for God’s sake, and Christophe had hunched over me. Protecting me with his own body.

He’d been there at every turn, watching out for me. And coming back for me, time and again.

There was just one question I could ask right now.

“If I stamped out of here right now, Christophe, what would you do?” For once, I didn’t care that everyone was watching.

“You wouldn’t be so foolish.” Amazingly he smiled. It was a slow, very private expression, and it lit up his eyes for a bare moment before it vanished. “If you did, skowroneczko moja, moja księżniczko, you would not go alone.”

“Now hold on just one moment—” Bruce began.

“Shut up.” There was no joy in snapping that and having someone shut his mouth so fast he almost lost part of his tongue. “Are you serious?”

As if I could even ask Christophe that with his blood burning in me and my mouth still tingling, not just from the aspect running through my teeth but also from the taste of him.

One corner of his mouth lifted fractionally. Then his entire face turned solemn. “Completely. Trust me, Dru. First we find Anna. Then we hunt Sergej down. With you fully trained and bloomed, the Order has a chance. You do not have to be helpless anymore.”

What do you do when someone says something like that? Something that jolts through you like a train skidding to an emergency stop. Something that turns everything upside down because it’s so true.

I clutched the coat to my chest. Managed to tear my eyes away from Christophe and look at the rest of them. Bruce looked worried, Ezra somber. Alton had folded his arms and was watching Christophe closely, a line between his eyebrows, his dark eyes snapping and intent.

Hiro looked steadily back at me, his mouth set and his hair stirring slightly as the aspect touched him. As if he was urging me to make the right decision.

I didn’t know if there was a right decision. But I had to make one. It counted, right now. I had to choose the right thing to do, because Graves was . . .

Oh, God. I didn’t even want to think about it. But I had to. Because I’d gotten him into this. It was my fault. All of it was my fault, and once I started laying blame I just would not stop. All of it, the whole huge mess, was my goddamn fault.

Time to start doing the right thing, Dru.

With Christophe to help, it might even be possible. It was all I could do.

I hugged the coat as I half-turned. I walked down to the end of the table, each step taking a lifetime.

I pulled the heavy carved chair at the head of the polished table out and dropped down into it.

The sighs of relief—Bruce and Hiro, at the same time, with Alton’s a fraction of a second behind—were audible. I tried to ignore it. Ezra folded his arms. Christophe stood still, but his eyes were burning. And fixed on me.

“All right,” I said, hugging Graves’s coat so hard my arms ached. “Where do we start?”