Jealousy

CHAPTER THREE

This is the Schola Prima, the biggest and oldest one in North America: shafts of sunlight falling between velvet curtains to gently brush mellow hardwood floors; priceless antique carpets; more velvet draperies in red, blue, hunter green; marble pedestals holding busts of good-looking teenagers—fighters and diplomats you won’t find in any history book because they’re djamphir. Which meant they fought and made diplomatic agreements with things the rest of the world didn’t think existed.

Beeswax, lemon polish, smell of old wood and dry stone. And the exhalation of a school—something halfway between janitorial cleansers and the oily aroma of lots of kids breathing the same air for a long time. There was an uneasy coexistence between the two—the age, and the youth. Any war was over long ago, and the only thing left was a truce where the parties only glared at each other out of habit.

Benjamin paced in front of me, Leon slightly behind and to my left. Graves, his face damp from a splashing of cold water, kept close by my right. It was like being the center of an amoeba. The other two were behind me, and if there’s anything guaranteed to unsettle a girl, it’s teenage djamphir drifting in her wake and staring at her back. Not that I ever caught them staring, but after being the new girl in a million schools across America, you get the sense of being looked at.

I’d call it having eyes in the back of your head. But I’ve seen that, and it’s disgusting. There was this one place in the Oklahoma panhandle—called Wail, if you can believe it—where the guy who ran the general store had an eye in the back of his shaved and tattooed skull. His front eyes were brown, and the behind eye was blue. It wept a thin red trickle on cold days.

He kept his cowboy hat on a lot.

People came from miles around to visit. They brought things to pay for what he could do, like providing hexes or potions. The thing he liked most as payment was the part of the body he had an extra of.

He fried them. Said they were crunchy and salty, good with mustard.

I shivered. I’d drawn eyes for weeks afterward, doodling them on margins and shading in the irises until Dad got that look that said I probably shouldn’t.

“You okay?” Graves muttered without his lips moving.

“Just thinking. About eyes.”

His shoulders hunched a little under the usual black coat. He wore that thing everywhere. It was kind of comforting. “I know what you mean.”

The familiar weight settled on me. I don’t think you do. Opened my mouth to tell him, shut it. He’d already been introduced to more than his fair share of the Real World. When Ash’s teeth had punctured his skin, they’d stolen his old life. Never mind that it was a life Graves hadn’t wanted. It was still my fault.

“I mean,” he continued a little louder, “could it be any more obvious that they’re watching you? And we can’t trust any of them.”

Benjamin inhaled sharply.

“The way I figure, about the only ones we can trust are wulfen.” Graves stuffed his hands in his pockets, striding alongside me with long grasshopper legs. “Until we know who the traitor is.”

Christophe knows. I pressed my lips together over the secret. I used to spend so much time alone while Dad was gone, and I’d wished to have other people around so hard. I’d hardly been alone since I got here. The chaos at the front door of the Schola had turned into a face-off between the wulfen boys with me and the djamphir boys trying to figure out what to do with me, until finally someone had sent someone somewhere with a message. Orders came back while I stood on the front steps in the weak sunshine, feeling cold, dirty, and very, very exposed.

Two minutes later Benjamin and his crew had shown up to take me to the room and hadn’t left me since. I could shut the door and be by myself, kind of, if I didn’t have the weird sense that the air itself was listening to me.

“Yap, yap, little dog,” someone said behind me, but so low I couldn’t tell who it was. And it wasn’t like many of them spoke up all that often.

Graves spun, an oddly graceful movement. I grabbed his arm. A pedestal next to him wobbled a little bit, dust puffing off the globe of luminescent stone perched atop it. “Stop it. All of you. Jesus Christ.”

They all froze. Even Graves, who gave me a sidelong little look, green eyes glinting.

I decided to try to be tactful for once. “You guys can go on. I’m sure Graves can show me.” And if he couldn’t, I bet I’d find it anyway. Someone would give me directions, or come to fetch me.

Benjamin inhaled again, like I’d just slapped him. “Milady. We can’t.”

That word again. Milady. What they called Anna. I wasn’t sure what to think about that.

“Sure you can.” I pulled on Graves’s arm, just a little. He visibly subsided. It was amazing. A crazy wulfen and a loup-garou, and I hauled them around like they were baggage. They were stronger and faster—at least until I “bloomed”—but they were boys.

I wasn’t sure if the word boys should mean dim or incomprehensible . I was hovering between the two, with a healthy dose of testosterone-poisoned.

“We can’t.” Benjamin just said it, flatly. Like that was that.

I bristled. “You just toddle off to your rooms, and Graves will take me down to the Council or whatever.”

“We’re your Guard.” Benjamin was really getting on the you are so stupid tone bandwagon here. I suppose it was only fair since I was snotty myself, but jeez.

“So you said a million times, but all you’ve done so far is—”

“We absolutely cannot do that.” Leon was the only one who spoke up. He had an amazingly deep voice for such a mousy, fade-into-the-woodwork kind of kid. Benjamin felt old, but so did he. “If the nosferat—or anything else—attack and get near you, we’re to fight them off. Or die in the attempt. We’re the last line of defense.”

“Bodyguards,” one of the blonds supplied in a clear tenor. “But why they chose us—”

“She doesn’t know enough to do the choosing yet, and they haven’t held Trials,” Benjamin said decisively. “Which leaves it up to us. Enough dawdling. Milady, the Council awaits.”

“Call me Dru.” I squeezed Graves’s arm, hoping he’d get the message. “But I’m not sure I need bodyguards.”

As soon as I said it, I knew it was a lie. Maybe it was tact that made Benjamin sigh. He didn’t roll his eyes or look pained, which was pretty damn magnanimous of him.

Of course I needed a bodyguard. Now that the suckers knew I was alive, now that we knew there was a traitor in the Order, I needed bodyguards more than ever.

I just wasn’t so sure I could trust anyone. Other than Graves, that is.

And Christophe, a little voice inside me whispered. I ignored it.

“Fine.” I eased up on Graves’s arm, figuring he wasn’t going to go postal and coldcock someone. He actually straightened, pulled on his sleeves like stopping had been his idea so he could adjust his coat, and gave me another one of those telling little glances. “Then I suppose we’d better get going. We’re probably already late.”

“Not late enough,” Leon muttered, and gave a queer little laugh. “But they’ll wait for a svetocha.”

I decided I didn’t like him much and pulled experimentally on Graves’s arm. He took a single step back, and as soon as I let go of him he whirled back to the front as if he was in a military parade. His chin was up, and a muscle in his cheek flickered.

Benjamin led us through more sunlight-striped halls, and it wasn’t just the lack of breakfast that was giving me a bad feeling.

“Through there.” Benjamin pointed at the huge double doors. They were massive oak affairs bound with iron, the wood deeply carved with slim lines. It took a moment for me to figure out the carvings formed a heavily stylized face with deep burning eyes. And a mouth open just far enough to show fangs. The tiny space between the doors ran down the bridge of the long hooked nose, and my temples throbbed for a moment. My mother’s locket was a warm reassuring weight against my breastbone.

That face looked hungry, and I was suddenly very sure I didn’t want to go in there.

But what do you do when there’s a bunch of boys looking expectantly at you? You can’t punk out. Graves had a faint line between his eyebrows, and I wished I had time to talk to him. Alone.

“What are they like?” I tried not to sound like a scaredy-cat and tucked some of my hair nervously behind one ear.

“Assholes,” Graves replied promptly. “They interrogated Bobby and Dibs together. Almost made Dibs cry. But they’re just assholes.”

Benjamin coughed. He’d flushed a little. “They’re the Council. The heads of the Order, each one a warrior against the darkness. They won’t hurt you, Milady. You’re the most hopeful thing we’ve seen in twenty years.”

Now there was an interesting statement. I opened my mouth, but he stepped back.

“We’ll wait here for you.” He gave Graves a narrow-eyed, meaningful look. “Him too, if he wants.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Graves folded his arms and leaned against the wall between two empty marble pedestals. The velvet hangings framing him just made him look scruffier and more unshaven. He was starting to get a definite bloom of dark stubble on his cheeks now. I didn’t think half-Asians ever got stubble. It made his cheeks less babyish, and the new faintly mocking expression helped.

Back in the Dakotas, he’d looked eager, or pained. With that edge of desperation that loners have—the black sheep, the ones cut out of the crowd. I think even normal people can smell that powdery bloom of not belonging. It’s all over the kids who get tripped, beat up, practical-joked, and just plain savaged all the time.

Now he just looked unpleasantly amused and unsurprised. A big change.

I swallowed hard. Approached the doors, one soft sneaker-clad step at a time.

“Dru.” Graves clicked his lighter, and I heard the inhale of another cigarette starting up. Boy was gonna get lung cancer in no time. Did loup-garou get cancer?

If I went to classes here, would I be able to ask?

“What?” I stopped, but I didn’t turn around, watching the door. I’d heard a little about the Council. Not enough to know anything except Anna was one of them. Would she be in there? Graves hadn’t said anything about seeing another svetocha. She was supposed to be a secret.

Anna. A shiver touched my back. She’d tried to make me believe Christophe killed my mother. I still couldn’t figure out why, unless she just plain hated him.

Christophe had made it sound like it was the Order against the suckers. It looked like it was the Order against itself, too. You’d think people would band together, but if there’s one thing I’ve seen all over America, it’s people shooting themselves in the foot like this over and over again.

Graves exhaled, hard. “I’ll be right here. You yell; I’ll be in there.”

“Thanks.” I bet he would, too. I tried not to let my face show how much I appreciated the thought. “Don’t worry.” I managed to sound like I wasn’t feeling a little light headed. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

I wondered how many times Dad used that phrase when he didn’t believe it, either. The thought was a pinch in a numb place under my heart, and when I stepped forward next, the line down the nose of the door-face widened. They swung inward soundlessly, and I saw a short red-carpeted hall with another, smaller door at the end.

I stuck my hands in my jean pockets, touched the switchblade in my right. I’d slid it in while getting dressed in the bathroom and checked to make sure the bulge wouldn’t tell under the hem of the long gray hoodie.

You never know. And after everything that had happened, I was damned if I was going anywhere unarmed.