Lili St. Crow - Jealousy

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.

I wasn’t sure whatI 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 ?