Lili St Crow - Betrayals

Tap. Taptap. Tap. I turned over restlessly. Sleep retreated like a cat, on soft little feet. I didn’t want it to go, clutched at it with dreaming fingers. I had been dreaming of something important, a warning, owl wings brushing the air around me.

The bed was wide and deep and soft, a maple four-poster with filmy, dusty blue curtains drawn back. The whole room was blue, from the indigo velvet quilt cover to the pale-sky wallpaper figured with gold crosses, to the tinted varnish on the seven bookcases and the heavy cobalt velvet drapes. The rug was sapphire, and thick enough to lose dimes in even though it was older than me.

The window behind it didn’t have iron bars, because it opened onto a little private garden completely enclosed by high, blank walls, three stories down, with a barred door I could reach only by going out my door, making three turns, and going down two flights of stairs.

A lot of effort to spend if I wanted to walk outside into a raw, blustery little plot of ground with gravel paths and leafless, pinched-looking things that might have been rosebushes, in spring, that is.

If I really, truly wanted to wander around thorny stabbing vines under a gray sky.

Instead of bars, there were heavy iron shutters, with little hearts and crosses punched out in even rows marching down their lengths.

I left those open. When they were closed, the entire room got still and, well, dead.

My eyes opened slowly. The warning retreated. Had it been Gran? Whoever it was was trying to tell me something very important.

Taptaptap. Tap. Taptap.

A cool bath of dread started at my scalp and slid down the rest of me. The sound was familiar, fingers drumming impatiently on glass. Memory mixed with dreaming, conspired to pull me under as the pillow turned hard and hot against my cheek.

There was a zombie at my back door. Its eyes swung up, and they were blue, the whites already clouding with the egg-rot of death. Its jaw was a mess of meat and frozen blood; something had eaten half its face. Its fingertips, already worn down to bony nubs, scraped against the window.

Flesh hung in strips from its hand, and my stomach turned over hard . Black mist rose at the corners of my vision, and the funny rushing sound in my head sounded like a jet plane taking off.

I’d know that zombie anywhere. Even if he was dead and mangled, his eyes were the same.

Blue as winter ice, fringed with pale lashes.

The zombie’s gaze locked with mine. It cocked its head like it had just heard a faraway noise.

I let out a dry barking sound and my back hit the wall next to the hallway, smacking my hip against a stack of boxes.

Dad bunched up his rotting fist, the meat chewed away from finger bones by something I didn’t want to imagine or even think about, and punched his way through the window.

I sat straight up, gasping for air, fighting free of the heavy blankets. Threadbare sateen sheets slid sweat-slick against my skin, turned into wet fingers clutching me at hip and ankle. My fists balled up and I hit nothing but air, the scream dying in my throat. The soft brush of feather-muffled wings filled the room for a moment, but Gran’s owl, the bird that had sat on her windowsill while she died, the bird that had warned me of danger and led me to Dad’s truck a week and a half ago, didn’t show up.

Something is very wrong here, Dru. You should beware. But the voice receded as soon as I lunged into wakefulness, and I found I was clutching my mother’s locket in one damp hand.

I blinked again, trying to separate dream from reality.

Tap. Taptap. The sound was real. And it was coming from my bedroom window.

I rolled out of the bed, hit the floor hard. Teeth clicking together, lucky I didn’t have my tongue between them. My hands were too clumsy and slow, patting the top of the nightstand for a weapon.

At home I’d have a gun. But here, there was nothing but the silver-loaded stiletto, all the weapons were signed into the sparring chapel or the armory, including the gun I’d had when they rescued me.

Except for the switchblade that had been forgotten in my pocket, the one I didn’t tell anyone about.

It just seemed like a good idea not to, that’s all.

I pressed the button for the suicide spring. The blade snicked free and the tapping stopped.

I blinked, fisted sleep-crusties away with my free hand. Thin swords of pale winter daylight shifted position as whatever was outside my window moved.

Daytime. Of course it was, that’s when the Schola sleeps, because that’s when it’s safe. Or at least, safe from nosferatu. Some of the older werwulfen students haunt the grounds during the day, running patrols in human and not-so-human form. I thought maybe a few of the djamphir teachers did too, but I hadn’t bothered to ask. It had seemed enough just to sleep during the day and be up all night, even when my body clock had a little trouble adjusting.

My breath turned stale in my throat. I crouched beside my bed, weighing my options.

Click. The window catch snicked up. The stiletto turned itself in my hand, blade flat against my wrist and forearm. Silver loaded along the blade would hurt just about anything evil, and I would at least give a good lick or two in any fight. I took in a deep lungful of still, dusty air, my heart crawling up into my throat but a strange sense of calm descending on me.

Everything else in this place left me at sea. But something weird threatening to crawl into my bedroom window?

I knew how to deal with this. It was familiar. Once in Louisiana we’d tangled with a voodoo king, and we’d had a hex climb in through the window carrying roach spirits. But I’d seen Gran’s owl before and told Dad, so when the window had broken with a silvery tinkling sound and the first huge roaches spilled through, we were ready.

When whatever-it-was came through the window, I was going to be ready.

This was what I’d been waiting for, without even realizing it. Everything else was just treading water. This, with my heart in my throat and my entire body suddenly awake and tingling with fear, was real.

And I didn’t have to think about being alone or lonely when I was afraid.

I was still crouching there, my tank top twisted and the boxers I’d been sleeping in crawling up my crack, when I realized the thin blue lines of energy running through the walls weren’t sparking and crackling. It had been a job to do the warding without Gran’s rowan wand, but I’d managed.

The wand was, after all, only a symbol, as Gran had endlessly reminded me. Ain’t nearly as good as the will behind it, Dru. You just remember that.

She was always saying something like that. You just remember, Dru. Just remember.

That was the trouble. I was starting to get stuff I’d rather forget stuck in my head on repeat. Stuff like a zombie at my kitchen door, or a small dark space full of stuffed animals and the smell of drowsy little-girl fear.

What would wards not react to? There was a short list of things. I began running through them frantically.

The window opened. A breath of chill, rain-laden air puffed past the curtains, and they separated just enough for him to shimmy through. His boots landed on the carpet, the window closed with a slight squeak, and he turned around. Weak gray daylight touched his sleek dark hair, the blond highlights slipping through and retreating like fingers combing the silk-heavy strands.

His eyes swept the room once, then settled on me. Burning winter-blue eyes, glowing in the half-dark. He was in a hip-length, rock-star leather jacket, and he passed one hand back through his hair, shaking it down as water flung itself free. That cold blue gaze came to rest on me, and I suddenly smelled apple pies baking.