Lili St. Crow: Jealousy

TO GATES:

Still holding the line.

Thanks to the usual suspects: Mel Stirling, Christa Hickey, Maddy and Nicky, Miriam Kriss and Jessica Rothenberg. This is getting to be a habit . . .

I am lying ina narrow single bed in a room no bigger than a closet, in a tiny apartment. The pad of paper I’ve been drawing on this trip is a collection of hard edges against my chest; I hug it harder. Outside the window, Brooklyn rumbles like a big sleeping beast. It’s the traffic in the distance, speaking in its own tongueless grumble. They’ve come back from cleaning out a rat spirit infestation, and they’re bushed. Outside the cracked-open door I hear the clink of glasses, liquid being poured, and my father speaks again.

“You have to, August. I can’t leave her anywhere else, and I’ve gotta—”

Augustine interrupts. “Jesus Christ, Dwight, you know how dangerous this is. And she’s just a kid. Why leave her with me?”

I snuggle into the pillow. It’s Augie’s pillow. He had made the bed up fresh for me, in the only bedroom in this crackerbox place. He and Dad thought I was asleep. I took a deep breath. It smelled like a place only a man cleans, frowsty and tainted with a breath of cigarette smoke.

The slam of a shot glass on the kitchen table. Dad was drinking Jim Beam, and if he was doing it in shots instead of sipping, it was going to be a long night. Augie stuck to vodka. “She’s safer here than anywhere else. I’ve got to do this. For . . . for reasons.”

“Elizabeth wouldn’t—”

My ears perked up a little, drowsily. Dad never talked about Mom much. And apparently he wasn’t going to tonight either.

“Don’t.” Glass clinked again—a bottle mouth against the shot glass. “Don’t you tell me what she would and wouldn’t do. She’s dead , Dobroslaw. My little girl is all what’s left. And she’s gonna be here. I think that bastard’s up Canada way, and when I come back—”

“What if you don’t, Dwight? What if I’m left with all this to deal with?”

“Then,” Dad said softly, “she’ll be the least of your worries. And you’ve got friends who know what to do.”

“Not any I can trust.” August sounded morose. “You have no idea what you’re up against. I suppose it would take tying you up and sitting on you to stop you.”

“You’d have to kill me, Augie. Let’s not push it, not with my little girl in there.” Raw bald anger under the edges of the words. If I’d been out there, I would have made myself scarce. When Dad sounded like that, it was best to just leave him alone. He never got violent, but the cold scaly quality of his silence when he was this pissed was never comfortable. “Besides, this could be another wild-goose chase. The bastard’s slippery.”

“Don’t we know it,” August muttered. It wasn’t a question. “A month. That’s as long as I can hold off telling anyone, Anderson. And I’m not doing it for you. That girl deserves to be with her own kind.”

Another silence, and I could almost see Dad’s eyes turn pale. All the depth would drain out of the blue and he’d look like he’d been bleached. “I’m her own kind. I’m her kin. I know what’s best for her.”

I wanted to get up, rub my eyes, and walk out into the kitchen. To demand to be told what they were talking around. But I was only a kid. What kid can get up and march out and demand to be told something? Besides, I didn’t know half of what I know now.

I still don’t know enough.

When I woke up in the morning, August greeted me with almost-burnt scrambled eggs, and by the look on his face I knew Dad was already gone. The kid I was just shrugged, knew he’d be back, and decided that I was going to be doing the cooking from now on. The kid I was then knew everything would be okay.

The kid I am now knows better.

A long despairing howlsplit the night.

It could have been mistaken for a siren in the distance, I suppose, if you ignored the way it burrowed in past your ears and pulled on the meat inside your head with glass-splinter fingers. The cry was full of blood and hot meat and cold air. I sat bolt-upright, pushing the heavy velvet covers aside. My left wrist ached, but I shook it out and hopped out of bed.

I grabbed my sweater from the floor and yanked it over my head, glad I hadn’t worn earrings in a dog’s age. The floor was hardwood and cold against bare feet; I was across the room and almost ran into the door. Threw the locks with fumbling fingers. A blue-glass night-light gave just enough illumination to allow me to avoid stubbing my toes on unfamiliar furniture. I hadn’t been here long enough to memorize anything.

I wasn’t sure I would be, either. Not with the way everyone keeps trying to kill me.

Thin blue lines of warding sparked at the corner of my vision. I’d warded the walls my first night here, and the hair-thin lines of crackling blue light ran together in complex knots, flashing just on the edge of visibility. I woke the rest of the way and cursed roundly at the door, the howl still ringing inside my skull.

Gran would be proud. I was warding without her rowan wand or a candle, and it was getting easier. Of course, the practice of doing it over and over again was probably responsible. I wasn’t going to sleep anywhere without warding now. Hell, I probably wouldn’t even sit down without warding a chair, if I could.

I wrenched the door open just as another bloodcurdling howl split the air and shook the hallway outside. Hinges groaned—the door was solid steel, four locks and a chain, two of the locks with no outside keyhole. There was a bar, too, but I hadn’t dropped it in its brackets.

I’d kind of guessed I wasn’t going to be sleeping through the night without a fuss.

Light seared my eyes. I ran straight into Graves, who was fisting at his eyes as he stood in my door. We almost went down in a tangle of arms and legs. But his fingers closed around my right biceps, and he kept me upright, pointed me the right way down the hall, and gave me a push that got me going. His hair stuck up wildly, dyed-black curls with dark brown roots.

He was supposed to be down in the werwulfen dorms. His eyes flashed green, startling against the even caramel of his skin. He really rocked the ethnic look nowadays. Or maybe I was just seeing what had been there all along under his Goth Boy front.

We ran down the hall in weird tandem. My mother’s locket bounced against my breastbone. I hit the fire door at the end. It banged against the wall, and we spilled down the uncarpeted stairs.

That’s the thing about the Schola Prima dorms, even the cushy wing where svetocha are supposed to sleep. Behind the scenes it’s concrete industrial, just like every other school. Just because I had my own room didn’t make it any less, well, school-like.

And just because there was a whole wing for svetocha didn’t mean that there were any more. Just me. And one other, but I hadn’t seen her since the other Schola—the reform school someone had stashed me at—went down in flames.

Down two flights, a hard right, my shoulder banged into a door frame, but I just kept going. This hall wasn’t even carpeted, so everything echoed, and the doors on either side had barred observation slits.

There wasn’t a guard at his door. The whole hall shook as he threw himself against the walls and howled again.