Jealousy

CHAPTER FOUR

I wasn’t sure what I expected. But four teenage-looking guys and two guys apparently in their mid twenties lounging on couches—one of them smoking a cigar thicker than two of his fingers—was so not it.

The room was windowless, and a fire burned in the massive stone fireplace, crackling cheerily. Dark leather, shabby dark-red carpeting that looked Persian, crystal vases on the mantel holding white tulips. One of the djamphir looked twenty-five and Middle Eastern. He lowered the newspaper he was hiding behind and gave me a once-over with coal-black eyes. He wore jeans and a crisp blue dress shirt with creases that looked starched in.

I remembered Dad being big on spray starch until I refused to touch the stuff anymore and he had to iron his own jeans. He decided pretty quick that it was more trouble than it was worth. For a moment I was twelve again, ironing and smelling spray starch and fabric softener while Dad played Twenty Real-World Questions with me and loaded up clips of ammo. How do you disrupt roach spirits? What’re the five signs of a Real World gathering-place? What are the rules in a good occult shop?

I shoved the memory away with an almost physical shiver. You’d think that if I practiced long enough I could just stop thinking about painful things.

The second door—mahogany, uncarved, and giving the impression of being plenty heavy despite soundless hinges—closed with a whisper behind me.

“Dear God.” A redheaded djamphir with a flock of freckles that somehow avoided looking baked-on bolted to his feet. “Milady.”

There was a rustle, and all of them were standing. I swallowed hard and wished I wasn’t in jeans and a gray hoodie that had definitely seen better days. My hair was actually behaving for once, falling in sleek curls. But this was just the sort of situation it would pick to start frizzing out on me. I also felt grainy-eyed and puffy-faced.

“Milady,” two others echoed. I almost looked behind me to see who the hell they were talking to.

Another hard swallow. It felt like I had a rock in my throat. “I’m here for debriefing.” Great, Dru. You sound like Minnie Mouse. “If I’m, uh, late, it’s because—”

The one smoking a cigar swept me a bow I’d only seen before in midnight cable historical movies with really good costume budgets. “It is our pleasure to wait on you, not the other way around. Come in. Would you care for coffee? Have you had breakfast?”

Or more like dinner, since the Schola runs at night. What the hell? I blinked. “Um. This is the Council, right? Formal, right?”

“Dear child.” This from the Arabic-looking one; he sounded vaguely British. “In here we don’t stand on ceremony much. And what have you been told of us?”

“I thought . . .” The instinct of secrecy warred with curiosity, and curiosity won out just barely. “I thought the other svetocha—Anna—was on the Council?”

Silence filled the room. Even the fire hushed itself. The redhead glanced significantly at a skinny blond in a charcoal-gray suit that looked like it would never even think of wrinkling. The one who looked Japanese, not just half-Asian like Graves, smoothed the front of his high-collared shirt gray silk.

“Now, child.” The Arabic-looking one raised his eyebrows, and I had a sudden urge to punch him in the face if he called me child again. “Where did you hear of that?”

I had to work to unclench my fists and push my shoulders down. Dad said you didn’t hunch while you were at attention; that was what attention meant. “I saw her. At the other Schola, the reform school. And Dylan . . .” It hit me again, gulleywide sideways. “Dylan’s probably dead.” I said it like I’d just figured it out. “They attacked the Schola. They had a Burner. That’s what everyone called it. A sucker who could set things on fire.”

They were still silent, all staring at me. I kept my hands in my pockets, the switchblade’s hilt slippery from my sweating fingers. The empty place in the middle of my chest was where a ball of unsteady painful rage had been burning for weeks, ever since Dad hadn’t come home that night.

The last night anything was normal for me. Which has never been really what you’d call “normal.” But it was good enough for me, and right now I was missing it big-time.

Now that hole in my chest was suddenly just that—a hole. Nothing in it but numb darkness. Which was a relief. “She had red hair,” I offered awkwardly. “The sucker, I mean. The Burner. We only just got away.”

A ripple ran through them. It was the aspect, the vampire in them coming out. Fangs peeped out from under top lips, their hair ran with highlights or darkened, and I was suddenly uncomfortably reminded of how strong, fast, and dangerous these guys were.

And here I was with only a silver-loaded switchblade. But I’d come this far; I wasn’t about to let a bunch of half-vampires scare me.

Well, not much anyway.

Not so you could see it.

“Let me see if I understand you correctly,” the Arab said. His eyes now burned like live coals, and his hair rippled with a slight wave, inky black streaks slipping through the very dark brown. “You have seen the Lady Anna? At a . . . satellite Schola? Where you were until a very few days ago?”

I nodded. “Christophe meant for me to come here. I don’t know how I ended up there, but they seemed to have been expecting me. But then Dylan found out nobody knew I was there—he said something about a blackout node—and the . . . the . . .” I ran out of words. Regained them. “Haven’t you heard all this before?”

“Not precisely. The wulfen knew very little, and the Broken could not be questioned.” Arabian Boy glanced at the others. “And Reynard is, as is his custom, nowhere to be found when questions are asked. So. Come and be seated. Would you care for breakfast?”

My stomach growled at the notion. “No thanks. I’ll catch something in the caf later.” I figured that was polite enough.

“Are you certain?” The aspect retreated, turning him into a very handsome guy in his early twenties, but with very old eyes. I was suddenly very sure this guy was even older than Christophe. It shows somewhere back in the pupils, and all of them had that uncanny stillness I’d only seen in older djamphir.

And in Christophe. Jesus. I was trying not to think about him because each time I did it either sent a flood of heat or a bucket of ice through me. My internal thermostat was wiggy in a big way. And the marks on my wrist were scabbed over and healing, but they had some funny ideas of their own.

At least when I thought about Christophe, the hole in my chest seemed manageable. Not smaller, but easier to deal with. Like being with Graves made all this seem like something I could possibly handle, as long as he was standing there giving me that whatcha gonna do, Dru? look.

I caught the way they were all looking at me, and a childhood spent with Gran’s strict rules about “bein’ neighborlike” rose up inside me. When you dirt poor, manners is what you got, she would always say. So use ’em. “If you’re all eating, I wouldn’t mind a bite.” I almost cringed as soon as I said it. I mean, in a room with a bunch of half-vampires and I say bite?

But then again, I was part vampire, too, wasn’t I? A sixteenth, Christophe said. We were all sixteenths. Something about genetics.

God, Dad, why didn’t you tell me? But I could never ask him that even if he was still alive. A splinter of ice lodged itself in my throat. He’d never even said a single word about it. Nothing except warning me about suckers, and I picked up most of that listening around the corners, listening to other hunters. Like his friend Augustine, who’d turned out to be djamphir too, and part of the Order.

And who was missing as well. I was thinking an awful lot about Augie lately.

“We would be honored.” Arab Boy bowed again, a little less stiffly. “I’m Bruce. Provisional head of the Council.”

Bruce? No way. The mad urge to giggle rose up in my throat, met the rock sitting there, and died with a burning, acid like reflux. “Provisional?” It slipped out.

“Provisional, you see, when our head, the Lady Anna, is not with us.” He straightened, and the rest of them relaxed a little.

Well. That’s good to know. Come to think of it, Anna certainly did have the Head-Bitch-in-Charge vibe.

I didn’t let go of the switchblade.

“And especially since,” the redhead piped up, “the Lady Anna has been on vacation for two weeks.”

The other room opening off the windowless sort-of-study was a long one, with a mirror-polished table down the middle that would have looked right at home in Camelot, except it was a rectangle. Another table—no more than a shelf—ran along the left-hand side, full of steam dishes exhaling the smell of food. A silver urn and another massive silver thing sat at the end, and three wine bottles stood at attention, one in a silver container of crushed ice. The second massive silver thing on the table was a samovar, I was sure of it.

I wouldn’t even know what a samovar was, except for once Dad and I had come across this coven of Russian witches in Louisiana. No, really. They ran a patisserie in New Orleans. With a sideline in hexes, cures, potions, and fortune-telling with weird greasy playing cards decorated in gold leaf.

They’d wanted me to stay with them. To learn, they said. But Dad just shook his head, and I held onto his arm the entire time we were in there. I didn’t take the petits fours they kept offering me. Gran had taught me all about food being a trap sometimes.

It’s woman’s power, food is. You be sure you know where’n the hook is before swallerin’ it, Dru. You mind me, now.

You’d think I’d get used to hearing dead people’s voices in my head. Memory is like that sometimes—it takes you by surprise, leaps on you with a roach spirit’s scuttling speed, and then you’re left shaking your head and trying to figure out where you are here and now.

The chairs were all heavily carved wooden thrones with worn red horsehair cushions. Stone walls, hardwood floor, and a smell like a lot of late nights and cigar smoke fighting with the heavenly aromas of food and coffee. There were no dusty cobwebs in the corners, like at the other Schola. This whole building was spic-and-span in a way that made me a little nervous.

Check that. Everything about this place was hinky as hell. If this was where I was supposed to be sent when that helicopter lifted me out of the snowy hell of the Dakotas, I didn’t know if I should feel relieved.

Bruce pointed me toward the head of the table, like I was a visiting dignitary. “Please. Coffee? And what do you prefer for breakfast? Or dinner, given our schedule.”

They were all looking at me. New-girl-in-school time again, only I was here with the teachers. “Coffee, yeah. And, um, food. Look, I thought I was going to be—”

“All in good time.” Bruce was utterly imperturbable. “We don’t believe in hurrying.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that. I was stuck for weeks out in the back end of beyond with vampires attacking all the time.” I didn’t have to work to sound sarcastic. “I’m not so sure I’m safe anywhere, unless it’s on my own. So I’m wanting to get this over with.” And get back to Graves.

Because the emptiness inside me did get smaller when Graves was around. Still, I didn’t want to think about how safe I felt with Christophe. It wasn’t applicable, was it? Not when he kept disappearing on me.

I was getting to hate people disappearing on me.

The fang marks in my left wrist twinged again, but faintly. I was glad my sleeves were pulled down. The memory rose unbidden, of Christophe’s fangs in my flesh. He’d had to do it, to save us—but it hadn’t been comfortable. And I was damned if I’d tell any of these blow-dried boys about it.

My voice box had frozen up. Everything about me had frozen. One thought managed to escape the relentless, digging agony.

—please don’t please don’t not again please don’t don’t don’t—

But it came one more time, and this time was the worst because the digging, awful fingers weren’t pulling at anything physical. Instead they were scraping and burrowing and twisting into me. The part of me that wasn’t anything but me, the invisible core of what I was.

I’d call it the soul, but I don’t think the word fits. It’s as close as I can get.

Digging scraping pulling tearing ripping, invisible things inside me being pulled away, and something left me in a huge gush. My head tipped back, breath locked in my throat. Graves made another small horrified sound and tried to pull me away.

Christophe jerked his head back, fangs sliding free of my flesh, and something wrapped itself tightly around my wrist, below his bruising-hard grip on my forearm. He exhaled, shuddering, and Graves tried to pull me away again. My arm stretched like Silly Putty between them, my shoulder screaming, and I couldn’t make a sound.

The silence that fell wasn’t comfortable in the slightest. I yanked the chair at the head of the table out, dropped down into it, and glared at them all. The so-called cushion was hard as a rock and the back wasn’t much better. And I had to let go of the switchblade in my pocket to sit down.

It was a bad morning and getting worse.

One of the silent djamphir, the one with coal-black skin and shockingly white teeth, laughed. His dreadlocks moved as he stalked toward the buffet table. Of all of them, he was the only one in worn-out jeans and a T-shirt. “She’s certainly Elizabeth’s daughter.” He sounded very prep-school, enunciating crisply. But there were odd spaces between his words, just like in Christophe’s or Dylan’s. Like they were translating from another language inside their heads. It was like the ghost of an accent. I mean, other than the flat nasal Yankee everyone above the Mason-Dixon pretty much speaks.

I don’t have an accent. Northerners just talk funny.

“As if there was any doubt.” Bruce sounded sour for the first time. “Her face alone is enough to convince one of that.”

My hands tightened into fists under the table. Dad had never told me I looked like Mom, beyond saying something about my hair once in a while. “Did you all know my mother?”

“I did,” the Japanese one said softly. “Bruce did, and Alton too, I believe. Marcus?”

The skinny blond in the gray suit shook his head. “She was before my time in administration.”

The other blond spread his hands; he’d left his cigar in the other room. He had thick curly hair, and for a moment I felt lightheaded. Someone had stolen a lock of Christophe’s hair from my nightstand—don’t even ask how it got there, a keepsake, he’d said—and left a single long, curling blond hair behind. It could have been any number of teachers or students at the other Schola. Including shy, gentle Dibs.

I was suspecting everyone now. Except Graves. And Christophe.

“So, some of you knew her. Then you know someone inside the Order betrayed her.” My fingernails dug into my palms. “Anna showed me a transcript of the call.”

They all went utterly still again. Bruce finally turned away from the buffet table and stared at me, his dark eyes wide. “She what?”

The Japanese guy inhaled sharply, like I’d just taken off my clothes or made an embarrassing bodily noise.

I took a deep breath. Jesus, these guys didn’t know anything. Why had they waited for days before interrogating me? Although this was more like I was questioning them. My stomach rumbled again.“Showed me a transcript. Only Dylan said it wasn’t the original but a redacted one. He gave me a copy of the original. Christophe’s got it.”

Silence. They all kept giving each other little sideways glances. Telling glances, only I had no idea what they were saying. You could cut the silence with a cheap cafeteria spork.

“Reynard.” The blond in the gray suit finally spoke, and he said Christophe’s name like a curse. “Always thinking he knows best.”

“In this case, he very well may.” Bruce’s expression settled somewhere halfway between amused and worried. “Perhaps we should hear the entire tale. You are a mystery, Milady. Enlighten us.”

I struggled with the urge to tell him to call me Dru. On the one hand, this milady thing was like being trapped with a bunch of D&D nerds. I mean, they’re nice people, but sometimes you just want them to talk like human beings, you know?

On the other hand, these guys were probably old enough to be my father. Or older. It didn’t feel right to get all buddy-buddy with them.

A rock made of heavy panic lodged in my throat; I had to work twice to swallow it and winced inwardly. I was beginning to get that nothing about this was going to get any easier.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “You want the whole story? Fine. It started out with me shooting a zombie. But he wasn’t just an ordinary zombie. He was my dad.”

And to make everything even worse, my voice broke on the final word. How could I explain to a bunch of djamphir what it meant to shoot a zombie who had been your father, for Christ’s sake?

“I think this would go easier with some breakfast. By the way, I’m Alton.” The coal-skinned kid smiled kindly at me, those white teeth peeping out again. They all looked like a shampoo commercial, healthy and clear-skinned, perfectly proportioned, a group of handsome young men. Their clothes hung on them like they were glad to be gracing such supermodels. And here I was, jeans and a ratty old hoodie and my hair—I could almost feel it start frizzing. This was just the sort of situation where every loose thread and frizz will start poking out.

And every one of these guys could probably kill me without thinking twice about it, unless I had the jump on them and some firepower.

Brains were going to have to be my edge. But I was so, so tired.

“I’m Dru,” I said mechanically. Gran would be proud of my manners at least. “Dru Anderson.”

“Is that a nickname?” This from the Japanese kid. “I’m Hiro, by the way. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Charmed, I’m sure. “It’s going to take me awhile to tell you everything.” And I don’t know what I’m going to be leaving out yet. My palms were damp. I scrubbed them against my jeans and wished the chair wasn’t so hard. But if I got up now it would be weird.

Weirder. Maybe. I don’t know.

Hiro gave me a look that could only be described as kind. He deliberately pulled out the chair to my left and folded himself down into it. “We are Kouroi. Djamphir. We have, my dear, nothing but time.”

That brought up another question. “How . . . I mean, you guys are old. Older than a lot of djamphir I’ve seen. And Benjamin, he’s older than Christophe. How long do you . . . we?” I decided I couldn’t include myself with them. Or could I? Jesus, I had so many questions, it wasn’t even funny. “How long do you live?”

Bruce just kind of appeared out of thin air next to me. I strangled the urge to flinch and smelled cologne and fabric softener on a warm draft. None of them smelled like Christophe, either—the spiced-apple aroma that followed him around didn’t rub off on other djamphir. I wondered about that, too. How would I even begin to ask? Hey, you guys don’t smell like bakeries. What gives?

“We are Kouroi,” Bruce repeated and set a plate in front of me. Half a Belgian waffle, scrambled eggs, a small mountain of bacon, and a small glass dish that held melon balls and grapes as well as quartered strawberries like blood clots. “We live until the night hunts us down. Just like nosferatu, but without their . . . disabilities.”

“Except the hunger.” Alton played with the silver thing that wasn’t a coffeepot. “Always excepting the hunger.”

Hunger. Why don’t they call it thirst? The weird place at the back of my palate quivered. The place that liked warm, red, copper-salty fluid. The spot that pushed a button in my head and turned me into a clear-glass girl full of red liquid rage.

And that was another thing, too. Christ, now that I knew what it was like to want to drink someone else’s blood, I was having a hell of a time holding on to anything about myself. It was all a whirling mass of things changing before I could get a grip on them.

I stared at the food. Was there a hook hidden in it? I was too hungry to tell. I didn’t have Dad’s arm to hold onto.

“Try to eat.” Bruce laid down a fork and table knife. Unless I missed my guess, they were heavy silver, polished to a sharp gleam I saw through a haze.

My eyes were burning. The food turned into colored gleams.

“Oh, no.” The redhead sounded horrified. “Is she—”

“Kir, shut up.” Bruce handed me a cloth napkin. “I’ll get you some coffee, Milady. There is no hurry at all. You’re safe now.”

I didn’t bother to tell him I didn’t believe him. Instead I mopped at my stupid eyes, sniffed back the weight of crying in my nose, and picked up a piece of bacon. I should eat while I could. Even if there was a hook in it.