Jealousy

CHAPTER FIVE

By the time I was finished, I’d taken down enough coffee and orange juice to float a small battleship, and my throat was scraped raw from talking. I wanted a bathroom and a long, long nap.

Of all of them, the redheaded Kir reacted the most. His face went through incredulousness, puzzlement, comprehension, and finally anger. It stayed at “anger” for awhile, a thundercloud over his forehead and his aspect on, filling his hair with a wild golden curl and sliding his fangs out from under his upper lip.

I kept half an eye on him.

The blonds—Ezra and Marcus—did most of the questioning, with Bruce interjecting every now and again. Mostly they just let me talk and explain and digress and get nervous, and every once in awhile Hiro would reassure me. “It’s all right,” he’d say. “We know you’re telling the truth.”

Which kind of made me wonder. It’s not the sort of thing you say to someone you believe. And so I instinctively stuck to my decision to leave out little things—like the flushes and cold spells that went through me when I thought of Christophe. And not so little things, like the fact that he’d bitten me. The marks pulsed erratically on my wrist when I got nervous. I kept my sleeves pulled down as if I was cold.

It was unlike any other visit to the principal’s office I’d ever had. I mean, you’d think being called into a room with a bunch of older guys who ran a huge vampire-fighting organization would be like the principal’s office, right? But instead it was . . . weird. It was like they just wanted to listen to me.

They looked at me funny, too. As if I was a mythological creature they couldn’t quite place. I would glance up from my food, away from Kir or away from whoever had asked me a question, and see one of them frankly staring at me. Which made the food kind of turn to a wad of chewable cardboard in my mouth and made me wonder if I had something on my face. It would be just like me to have a bit of egg stuck on my chin while talking to a bunch of bigwigs.

“Then we got here,” I finished lamely. “And after a little bit of confusion, Benjamin and his crew showed up and took me to the room. They say they’re my bodyguards.”

“Calstead and his protégés,” Bruce said. “He’s one of our finest youngbloods. Until you know enough to choose your own Guard, it’s probably best. And the loup-garou, too—Graves?”

“Edgar Hideaki Graves.” Hiro set his fork down with a precise little click. “A finer juvenile delinquent I’m sure we cannot find.”

I half-choked on a mouthful of very cold orange juice. I almost gave myself a nasal with it, too. Whoa, wait a sec. “Edgar?” I all but squeaked.

“So his file says.” Bruce nodded. “He was bitten by the Silver-head?”

“Yeah, Ash bit him.” They hadn’t said anything about Ash. They had to know he was bottled up in the room downstairs. But I wasn’t going to bring it up and maybe have them decide he was better off locked up somewhere I couldn’t get to him.

I felt . . . responsible.

“The loup-garou has a Record.” You could just hear the capital letter in Hiro’s tone. “Normally he would be at a . . . satellite Schola, even with the happy accident of half-imprinting.”

“All the benefits, few of the drawbacks. And less hair.” Marcus leaned back in his chair. I didn’t see how he could lounge in something so hard and uncomfortable, but he managed it. “He’s a fortunate one.”

There it is again. Something crystallized inside my head.

There were no wulfen in this room. Here I was full of breakfast, and Graves was waiting outside, probably hungry. These were the heads of the Order, and there wasn’t a single wulfen in here. It was always djamphir in control and snarky comments about the wulfen. Talking about how lucky Graves was because he didn’t get all furry.

Gran raised me in Appalachia, and Dad and I stayed below the Mason-Dixon most of the time. I know the word for behavior like this, and I’ve seen it all over. It’s never pretty. Maybe I’m lucky, since moving around so much showed me people are the same everywhere. Still, there’s something ugly down South. When you aren’t sure you’re at the top of the food chain, it doesn’t make sense to make everyone below you on that chain suffer—but people do it anyway, and they do it all the time. Because it makes them feel bigger, more secure.

I was just about to say something—I don’t even know what, maybe something like, He’s a person too, you know—when the mahogany doors swung open. A flash of crimson silk, a long fall of curly reddish hair, and high-heeled boots with buttons marching up their front all came to a halt. Just like a cat will see you looking at it and stop dead, one paw in the air.

Did I just imagine it? I was exhausted and running on nerves, but I swear to God I saw a flash of something nasty far back in the other svetocha’s eyes.

Sometimes you meet a girl and it’s like matter and antimatter. You just hate each other for no damn reason. I already knew I didn’t like her. Besides, she hated Christophe.

Why did I care so much about that?

Anna lifted her pointed chin, and her blue eyes widened just the tiniest bit. She was in a different red silk dress than the one I’d seen last time, something with a full skirt and a bodice that was just short of indecent. A cameo on a thin gold chain rested in the hollow of her slim white throat, and long delicate golden teardrop earrings trembled as she halted. And, God help me, she actually chirped at the roomful of boy djamphir. “Well! Late again, but I see you’ve started without me.”

“You’re safe.” Bruce didn’t sound surprised. “We worried needlessly.”

A taffy-stretching silence ticked by. Kir’s chair scraped against the floor as he stood slowly, and the rest of them followed suit. I stayed where I was.

I stayed because my knees had gone mooshy, and the muffled beat of feathered wings filled my ears like a heartbeat. Cold little prickling fingers skittered over my skin, and I was suddenly very sure something was Not Right. A draft of warm perfume dipped in spice marched down the table toward me.

Why did she smell like that? And Christophe, why did he smell like a warm apple pie?

The scalding flush that poured through me at the thought of Christophe being here met the icy consciousness of danger, and they both fought over me. I began to wish I hadn’t drunk so much coffee. Why is it that the only thing you can think of when you’re terrified is how much you need to pee?

Maybe that’s just me, though.

“I was en vacances; you know how I lose track of time. Perfectly safe, with my boys watching over me. And it’s Dru!” She sounded oh-so-happy to see me, a candy-coated voice and a wide dimpled smile. “When did you come in? I’m glad they didn’t keep you at that second-rate Schola for very long.”

They? Who was she talking about, they? The guys in this room, who didn’t seem to have any clue about where I’d been or what I’d been doing?

The standing djamphir were completely motionless, but I could feel the tension running through them. Hiro’s fingertips rested on the tabletop, half an inch away from his silver fork. I had a sudden Technicolor vision of him picking up the fork and launching himself at Anna. Blood spurting, screaming, the fork making a popping sound as it buried itself in one pretty blue eye.

I sucked in a small breath. Hiro’s head moved the slightest fraction, and I was suddenly very sure he was keeping track of me in his peripheral vision.

Maybe it’s me he wants to stick a fork in. My mouth started working again. When in doubt, say something flip. “I got in a couple days ago. It was fun.”

“Fun?” She raised one exquisitely arched eyebrow, the open door yawning behind her. The fire in the study room popped once. She looked like a storybook illustration, and I wished I could sink back into the chair. My face felt greasy and I could still taste bacon.

It was official. I disliked her. She probably felt the same way. But she was older, right? She wouldn’t act like a teenager, would she?

But I couldn’t stop myself.

“Yeah, fun. A real blast.” My right hand rested on my knee under the table. I stopped it from creeping up to touch the reassuring bulge of the switchblade with an effort of will that threatened to make me sweat. “I almost got burned alive. There was a car chase, too. If it wasn’t for Christophe I’d’ve been dead.”

“Christophe? Reynard?” Her candy-pink-glossed mouth turned down a little. To give her credit, she didn’t look in the least surprised. “Really.”

“Really.” Flat and unapologetic, as if she’d just insulted me.

“I’ll expect your debriefing, then.” A sparkle in those narrowed baby blues. Like a cheerleader taunting a nerd.

Even if she was older, she was cut from the same cloth. There’s only one reason someone like that is even civil to someone like me.

It’s either because they’re setting you up for something, or they want something.

A nasty supposition rose like bad gas in a mine shaft, up from the very bottom of my mind. I stared at her, wishing I could shut out all the tension and awkwardness in the room and just think for a bit.

But one thing was for damn sure—I wasn’t going to tell the whole story again. Not to this lacquered, pretty cheerleader. “I’ve already given it.” I made my hands come up and flatten on the tabletop. It was hard, with the muffled wingbeats in my ears trying to drown everything out. I hoped Gran’s owl wasn’t about to make an appearance. That was the last thing I needed right now.

Of course, if nobody else could see the owl, I was worrying about nothing. They probably wouldn’t think I was crazy. But I wasn’t gonna take any chances.

Not anymore. I figured I’d better stop taking chances, starting yesterday.

I pushed myself up slowly. My eyes refused to move away from Anna’s face. I stared at her liked she was a rattler I wanted to keep in view while I reached for the shovel to behead it. It made me think of Gran, actually. Which was a painful comfort. Move nice an’ slow, and don’t you give that snake a reason to strike at you. Just slow an’ easy, honey.

“And very charmingly, too.” Marcus glanced significantly at Hiro. “I think we may excuse Milady Anderson; she’s very tired.”

Bruce stiffened, Kir’s eyebrows went up, and Ezra smirked. He smirked so loudly, in fact, that I could almost hear it through the noise in my head.

“Milady.” How Hiro managed to make it clear he was talking to me without taking his eyes from Anna I don’t know. “I shall escort you to your Guard.”

Well, wasn’t that nice of him. I got the feeling there were two different groups here. One of them was maybe on my side, but the other was definitely on hers. And if it came down to it, she was the queen of the school, right? You bet she’d have her group of adoring boys. Girls who look like that always do.

Anna’s face hardened, but her tone didn’t change. “I suppose a transcript will be made available to me?”

Good God, if she put any more syrup over that she’d drown in it. I swallowed hard. The stone in my throat had gone away, replaced with a faint tang of waxen, rotting citrus. Gran called it an arrah—an aura, like migraine sufferers get right before their heads cave in.

Me, I get it right before someone tries to kill me, when an old friend is going to show up, or when the serious weird is about to happen. If I weren’t so busy trying to stand up straight and look a little less scruffy, I might have been laying odds with myself over which one I was looking at now.

“Of course.” Bruce said it the way adults do when they really mean, No, are you stupid?

Now that was interesting. It was tug-of-war in here, and I was the rope. How long had she been here, the only girl in a school full of boys? And looking like that, she probably had a really great time with it. Things were probably so easy for her.

It was enough to make you want to hate someone. As if I didn’t already feel like she was fingernails on chalkboard.

Hiro’s chair scraped against the floor as he pushed it further back. I took that as my cue to get moving, and the taste of wax-rotted oranges flooded my tongue as I stepped away from the chair at the head of the table.

I stopped just once, my gaze still locking with Anna’s. Her cheeks had turned pink. A spark of crimson fired in the back of her pupils and snuffed itself out just as quickly.

I got going again.

Walking down the side of the table was uncomfortable, to say the least. I hate being stared at. And by the time I got down to the end, Anna had folded her arms and was standing right in the doorway, framed by the shabby, plush textures of the study.

Which presented an interesting choice. Did I slide right past her, hunching my shoulders and being the good little nerd, or did I say fuck it and call her on this cheerleader bullshit? I seriously had to pee, and she was top of the heap here at the Schola.

But Anna hadn’t told anyone here about me. What kind of secret was I, for her? Was she “protecting” me? Even though the vampires had found me after all?

She wanted me to hate Christophe, too. Why?

More questions. And I had half a second to decide what I was going to do.

I squared my shoulders, tilted my chin up, suppressed a bacon-smelling burp, and walked straight for her. Hiro made a graceful, blurring movement, and before I knew it he was somehow in front of me. Anna stepped aside, smart as you please, and I sailed past her like I was on a parade float.

“Dru.”

I looked over my shoulder. The thought—I turned my back on her—made my skin tingle with awareness. Like waiting for the slap of a paper sign taped to the back. Or the prick of a knife blade sliding through cloth.

Anna leaned against the open door, just like an illustration in a fashion magazine. Perfect, poreless, and with a sweetly poisonous smile. Another nasty, tiny little thought struggled in the back of my head, then drowned in the need to find a bathroom really, really quick.

“What?” As in, What do you want now?

“Welcome to the Schola Prima, sister.” Her glossy mouth quirked up at one corner, a half-smile that held no warmth. “We’re going to be great friends.”

If she was aiming for sarcasm, she was doing a pisspoor job of it. “Yeah. Great to be here.” I didn’t have to work to sound snide. “I wonder who’s going to try to kill me next.”

I followed Hiro’s narrow back through the hall, and the uncarved door shut behind us with a dry little click.

“That was unwise.” He avoided the chairs with an ease that spoke of long habit and led me through the mahogany door, and I had the sudden sense that I was in an air lock. No windows in here, no sunlight coming in. Just the fire and electric lights, and when the study closed itself up behind me, there was no air moving.

You’d think djamphir would want all the daylight they could get.

“What?” I really, really wanted to find a toilet. Next time I drank coffee, it wasn’t going to be by the gallon. And good luck getting any sleep for awhile. My heart was pounding, both from caffeine and from the persistent idea that I was somehow in some kind of danger.

It was ridiculous. Here was where I should have been safest, with a bunch of djamphir and werwulfen trained or training to fight the suckers off. And the Council were the bosses of the Order, right? And the Order wanted me alive because I was girl djamphir. Rare enough that there were only Anna and me, and Christophe telling me I was precious.

“Anna is . . . difficult. She is the head of the Council, head of the Order, the only svetocha we’ve managed to save for years upon years. She’s used to a certain amount of deference.” One shoulder lifted and dropped, a shrug. “You have friends here. But still . . . be careful.”

Be careful about what? “I’m always careful,” I mumbled. The soft wingbeats receded, and the taste of breakfast fought with wax oranges over my tongue. “Well, nearly always.”

“Be more than careful, then, Milady Anderson.” The huge iron-bound door ghosted open as soon as Hiro got near it. “Be vigilant.”

I could have asked him what he meant, but my bladder was about to explode. And I had a funny feeling I wouldn’t get anything but cryptic Christophe-style answers out of him anyway. So I nodded, tried not to notice how relieved Benjamin looked or the thundercloud on Graves’s face, and got the hell out of there.

“Standing out in the goddamn hall with half-vampires. Jesus.” Graves stalked to my window. It was a bright sunny day, early enough in the morning for birds to be singing, and in the garden my room overlooked, everything was green with springtime. “Supercilious bastards. What took you so long?”

“I had to tell the whole story.” I headed straight for the bathroom. Tiled in deep blue with brass fixtures and a tub deep enough to drown a werwulf in, it was acres of uneasy space. I almost wanted to turn on the faucet to drown out the Grand Canyon echo of a severely abused bladder.

A few minutes later and several pounds lighter, I dug in my battered black messenger bag for a comb and came out to find him lying across my bed, fingers laced behind his head and the curtains mostly drawn.

The room was twice as big as the one at the other Schola, and in blue as well. Carpet you could lose quarters in, empty bookshelves with a few antique brass knickknacks—one of them was a small brass tortoise heavy enough to chuck at an intruder if you didn’t mind killing someone by tchotchke—but no marble busts, thank God. The bed was king-size, princess-and-pea deep, and in a weird frame swathed with blue gauze. It looked like a fairy was going to choke to death in there at any second.

There was a high-end computer I hadn’t bothered to turn on yet and three credit cards lying in paper sleeves on the rosewood desk next to the keyboard, all registered to Sunrise Ltd. A typed sheet with the address and a mail-stop number, as if I was living in an apartment or something. A walk-in closet the size of the Titanic, completely empty. All the clothes I’d gotten at the other Schola were gone, and if there hadn’t been a small stackable washer and dryer tucked in a separate closet here I don’t know what I’d’ve done. As it was, wearing the same jeans and T-shirt was getting old.

“I think we should get a couple sleeping bags.” I dropped down on the bed next to him. “Have you seen Shanks yet?”

“I can find him. If you want him. What do you want sleeping bags for? Got a nice bed right here.” He stared up at the ceiling, green eyes half-closed and his expression halfway between angry and constipated. “What happened? Who was that girl?”

Which answered one question. Anna had walked right by him. Where was her set of bodyguards? “That’s Anna. Another svetocha.” I almost tacked an Edgar onto the end of the sentence, decided at the last second not to. It probably wasn’t wise to tease him right now. Though I wouldn’t have minded a laugh or two, he didn’t look in the mood to chuckle.

He glared at the ceiling, anger winning out. “I thought you were the only one.”

What could I say? So did I, and then I couldn’t tell you. “They kind of keep her a secret so the vampires don’t attack, I guess.”

Graves snorted. “Yeah, the same way they keep you a secret? Don’t tell me you fell for that.”

Now that I was lying down, the bed seemed really, really comfortable. My nerves were twitching and jumping from the caffeine. “I think some of them were trying to keep me a secret. But maybe not in a good way.”

Because the more I thought about it, the more the Council’s reactions didn’t make sense. Neither did Anna’s. It was like she was trying for damage control. Why? Because here I was at the Schola Prima, her stomping ground, instead of stuck out in the back of beyond at a reform school? She was probably way, way used to being the only girl in town.

I couldn’t really think clearly about it, could I? Because she just grated on me. She wasn’t just your garden variety teenager, either. If she was old enough to know Christophe she was an adult, even if she looked like a cheerleader. And why had she come all the way out to the other Schola? Trying to trap Christophe, for some reason? Did she really think he’d betrayed my mother? It seemed like a lot of people thought so.

Except Dylan, maybe. And me.

Don’t hesitate, Christophe had said, holding the knifepoint against his chest. Pulled hard, as if he was going to stab himself. He swore he hadn’t betrayed my mother. And he’d been there, in that dark room at the werwulfen compound.

If I need a reason now, Dru, it will have to be you.

I trusted him, didn’t I? But he’d left me here. Alone. Again.

Or maybe not alone because Graves was right beside me, thinking. Absorbing what I’d said. That was one thing I liked about him—you didn’t have to spell anything out for him. He got there on his own with only a hint or two. But where he ended up this time surprised me. “You don’t seem too surprised to see another one of you wandering around.”

“She’s not like me.” It came out all in one breath, immediate and insistent. Thin blades of light slid between the heavy velvet drapes. The windows had steel shutters on the inside, too, just like the ones at the old Schola. Only these looked more durable, and had a pattern of hearts stamped into them—and another iron bar I could brace them with, with its brackets sunk into the stone wall. “Look, Graves . . .” I decided to just keep the Edgar thing to myself for right now. If he’d wanted me to call him Eddie, he would’ve told me.

“What?” Now he sounded annoyed.

I saw her at the old Schola. She wants me to hate Christophe, and you know . . . I can’t even say what I’m thinking to myself. “I don’t know what to do.” Admitting it out loud was probably the scariest thing I’d done in the last week, and that was saying something.

When Dad was alive, I knew what to do. He told me, and he never let me flounder. When he showed up all zombified, things started spinning hard, but Graves had been there. And as long as I was focusing on keeping Goth Boy out of trouble, the not-knowing had seemed more manageable. Plus, I’d been the one with the books and the guns and some knowledge of the Real World. He’d been a civilian. Now we were both in the same leaky boat, and I didn’t want him to know I had no idea where we were going.

Graves let out a long breath, closing his eyes. A thin line of dark-brown hair showed at his temples. Roots. The black-dyed bits were growing out. “Right now we catch some sleep. Then I go find Bobby and Dibs and see what they say. Then we find out how to work that computer and those credit cards and get you some clothes.” He paused, added an afterthought, glancing at me like he expected me to disagree. “And me, too.”

It was a pretty good plan, one I should’ve come up with. “But what if . . .” I stopped. The vampires probably hadn’t found me through the Internet, for Christ’s sake. No, they’d been told where to find me. Christophe had as much as said so, and so had Dylan. “Then what do we do?”

“Watch and wait.” He yawned hugely. I could almost see his tonsils. “Tell Shanks and Dibs the score so they can watch you when I can’t. I don’t trust those djamphir.”

“I don’t either.” But what choice do we have? And here he was, thinking he was going to be protecting me now. I wasn’t sure I liked that. If I wasn’t taking care of him, well, what did he need me for? “Graves?”

“What?” Now he sounded truly aggravated. He flung his arm over his eyes, almost hitting me with his elbow. I didn’t even move—he could have cracked me a good one and I’m not sure I would’ve moved.

“I’m glad you’re here.” A flush was working its way up my throat, staining my cheeks. I had another thing or two I wanted to talk to him about, but the time never seemed right.

It never does. And how do you tell a half-werwulf Goth Boy that you really like him, especially when he seems pretty determined not to hear? I mean, he knew, right? I’d as much as told him. And here he was.

“Yeah.” Another jaw-cracking yawn. “Now be a good girl and don’t get into trouble for a bit, okay? I’m bushed.”

Irritation flashed through me; I swallowed it. It tasted bitter, and I decided to go brush my teeth. He didn’t say anything else when I slid off the bed, and by the time I reached the bathroom door again he was snoring.

I didn’t blame him. Sleeping in hallways was probably not good for him.

I stood in the middle of the thin swords of sunlight spearing toward the carpet, my arms loosely crossed like I was hugging myself. Looking at him. With his arm over his face and his mouth agape, all you could see was part of his nose and the stubble. He sprawled across the bed, a black blot on all the blue. Chapped hands and tangled hair, and his jeans were developing holes in the knees. His T-shirt rucked up, showing a slice of belly ridged lightly with muscle, a line of light furring marching down from his belly button and vanishing under the edge of a pair of black boxer-briefs.

I looked away, toward the door. My cheeks burned. All the locks were turned, and I’d dropped the bar into its brackets. I was alone in here with him. The flush spread all over me, from my toes up into my hair. My internal thermostat was shorted out in a big way.

Well, I wasn’t going to be sleeping. So I should probably do something useful, like brush my teeth and get some clothes ordered for Graves.

It looked like I was going to be here for awhile.

I was in the little box of a kitchen when Augustine came back. Two weeks and I’d just gotten him to buy some bread. I once tried for flour so I could make it, but he’d hustled me out of the grocery store like I’d made some sort of strange bodily sound. I was just putting the pan from my dinner—beans and biscuits, since he’d finally brought back some flour last night—in the hot soapy water when I heard the scratching at the door.

I froze and looked at the end of the counter where the snub-nosed .38 sat. If you are in here, sweetheart, and you think it may not be me coming back, you use one of these.

I’d asked him what the hell would happen if I shot him by mistake, and he grinned at me and told me not to be silly. It was kind of like Dad.

Not really.

Brooklyn breathed outside the window. The kitchen looked out onto a blank brick wall. But there was a ledge outside, and August had made me look out at the handholds going up to the roof or down to another window in a hall two floors below. No sunlight ever got in here, but the bedroom window sometimes had some. It was like living in a hole. And he never let me go outside for very long, and never alone.

The touch told me it was August. And that something was wrong.

The door scraped open. He must have been fumbling with his keys. That wasn’t like him.

I bolted for the door. There was a gun on the spindly little table right beside it, tucked behind a dusty vase of artificial flowers. He was a hunter, like Dad, so he was always prepared. And he’d taken me through where all the weapons were, just in case.

August spilled through the door, shoving it shut behind him and almost overbalancing. I caught him, and I smelled something coppery.

I knew blood when I smelled it, even at this age. “Jesus Christ.” I found out I was saying it over and over again, found something different to say. “What happened?”

He shook his head, blond hair moving oddly, as if it was wet. Was it raining out there? I didn’t know. August was tall, muscle-heavy, and almost tipped both of us over as his legs gave out. He was muttering in Polish. At least, I guessed it was Polish. As if he was drunk. But he wasn’t drunk.

He was hurt bad, and there was nobody here to help him except me.

“What?” I had to know if he’d been followed, or what. Dad had never come home this beat-up. August’s familiar white tank top was torn and dirty, dyed bright red. His jeans were a mess of ribbons, and he held his blue plaid shirt over his chest with one arm. His boots were soaked and dark. I started dragging him toward the bathroom. “August, dammit, what happened?”

He shook free of me and scrambled for the bathroom. I ran through all the first aid I know—I can handle pretty much anything short of a gunshot wound, really. First I had to find the damage, then stop the bleeding, check him for shock—

“It’s all right.” He made it to the bathroom door, a slice of white tile behind him. The entire apartment was suddenly too small. I mean, it was a cracker box anyway: one bedroom, the kitchen and dining room the size of a postage stamp and papered with movie posters, the tiny bathroom with its claw-foot tub. “Looks worse than it is. Bring vodka.” His accent—half Brooklyn, half Bronx, all Bugs Bunny—cut every vowel short. But something else was rubbing through the words, too. The song of a different tongue.

I made it back into the kitchen on shaking legs. If we had to blow this place, he wouldn’t have asked for vodka. Relief burst through me.

After all, he’d come back. He went out almost every night to hunt. I guessed New York was pretty dangerous, all those people crammed together and the things that go bump in the night hiding in all the corners. I wished I knew a bit more about the things that inhabited here—rat spirits, certainly. Hexes and voodoo, certainly. Sorcery, you bet. Other predators. There were probably werwulfen too, but Dad never messed with those. And August wasn’t like Dad; he didn’t tell me anything about what he did. I wasn’t his helper.

Missing Dad rose like a stone in my throat. I grabbed the Stoli bottle from the freezer, sloshed it, and decided to put a fresh one in. Before I carried it into the bathroom, I uncapped it and took a healthy swallow. It burned the back of my throat, cold fire.

I knocked on the bathroom door. “Augie?”

No sound for a long moment. I had a vivid mental image of him standing in front of the sink, bent over halfway, his lips pulled back from his teeth and a haze of red spreading out from—

He jerked the door open. “Brought the vodka?”

His hair was dry, springing up in soft golden spikes. I didn’t think about it. I was more concerned with him bleeding, so I pushed into the tiny bathroom and grabbed the Medikit in its green nylon bag. “Where’s the worst of it?”

He screwed the cap off the vodka and took a long pull. If he found out I was sneaking gulps he might have gotten mad. But then, I didn’t think he’d notice. Dad never noticed I’d been sneaking Jim Beam. It tasted foul, but it did steady you. Gran always said a bit of hooch was good for the nerves. Her people had been rumrunners back in the day.

I pushed the flannel shirt aside. He winced. There were claw marks, but the blood didn’t look to be all his. He was only scratched, the scratches flushed and angry, diagonally across his chest. One of them jagged down like something had tried to eviscerate him, but it petered out. He was lucky.

“Jesus. What did this?” My hands moved all on their own, opening the Medikit and sitting it in the dry sink. I grabbed his shoulder. He sank down on the toilet. Thank God the lid was down. We had a running battle going on over that. He was male, after all.

“Nasty things. Nothing a nice girl needs to know about, eh Dru?”

I rolled my eyes, opened up the cabinet, and got the peroxide down. He took another shot of vodka. “Is it raining out there?”

He shook his head, still swallowing. His throat moved. He closed his eyes, but not before I got a flash of color—yellow, like sunshine.

But August’s eyes were dark. I didn’t know then that he was djamphir . Whenever I thought about it, it made sense. He’d been struggling to keep the aspect down so I wouldn’t ask him questions, and I’d been oblivious.

Hey, I was young. And I didn’t even know djamphir existed. I’d heard of suckers, of course—everyone who interacts with the Real World knows about them. But Dad never said a word about half-sucker vampire hunters. I never had a clue.

I had the scissors and was cutting his tank top before he realized it. “Settle down,” I told him, slapping his left hand away. “Let me look. I patch up Dad all the time.” When I glanced up, he was looking at me, and his eyes were dark again.

“It’s no problem, Dru. I heal quick.”

He did. They were already fading, the claw swipes on his chest. “Jesus.” I ripped open a packet of gauze. “I’m going to clean them anyway. You never know.”

“If it makes you happy.” He shrugged, wincing, and lifted the vodka bottle again.

He stayed long enough to change into fresh clothes and smoke one of his weird foreign cigarettes while I fixed an omelet. He lived on eggs and vodka. Said it kept him young. I mean, he was what, twenty-five? At least, he looked twenty-five. God knows how old he is. If I ever see him again, maybe I’ll ask.

Then he told me to stay inside, stocked up on ammo again, and was gone inside twenty minutes. Leaving me staring at a pile of bloody clothes, the ashtray with a still-smoking butt, two spent clips that needed to be refilled, and his plate on the table.

At least he’d promised to bring home some bread. Maybe just to shut me up, I dunno.

I bolted for the window in the bedroom. Sometimes if I was quick enough I could catch a glimpse of him on the street, moving with his head up and a spring in his step. Sometimes he might as well have vanished as soon as the apartment door locked.

Outside, streetlights fought with the darkness. It wasn’t raining. It was foggy, a wet cotton-wool fog, and the Hefty bags of trash stacked on the sidewalk were just like they always were. The trucks came around twice a week, but the amount of trash never seemed to go down. It was filthy here, and cold. I wouldn’t have minded if I could get out and see some things—I’d’ve loved to go to the Met, or even just walked around downtown and seen stuff.

But August said no. And he was gone every night.

I sighed, resting my forehead on the cold glass. Every time he left I wasn’t sure he’d come back.

Story of my life.

I finally slid off the bed and plodded out into the living room. At least I could clean things up while he was gone. So that if—when—he came back, he’d see I wasn’t any trouble. I was pulling my own weight.

Besides, it was something to do until Dad came back.

If . . . when he came back.