I swallowed hard. “Christophe . . .” He’d come in the window of my room in the other Schola. Did Shanks really suspect him?
“You were out in the hall? Pretending Dru was in here?”
I finally found something to say. “That was my idea.”
Christophe turned on his heel, leveled a stare across the room. “And a good idea it was, too. We can lose a wulfen more easily than a svetocha.”
I hadn’t quite thought of it that way, and it made me even sicker. “Oh, God.”
Shanks shrugged. “Don’t worry ’bout it, Dru-girl. Price a wulf pays for being in the Order.” But he was glaring right back at Christophe, and I had the uneasy feeling that the two of them were drawing lines in the sand.
I cleared my throat. If I didn’t distract them both, something might happen. And I really wasn’t looking for any more excitement right now. I was plumb tuckered. “Will both of you quit it? We’re supposed to be figuring out where Graves is.”
“Last place I saw him was stamping away from the locker room after gym.” Shanks had a good poker face; he didn’t mention the rest of it. “He looked pretty pissed. He didn’t show up in the dorms or Dibs would’ve known. It’s not like him not to come back for you.”
Hearing someone else say that made me feel a little better. I blew out a long breath. “So where would you go, if you were so pissed off?”
He shrugged, but at least he was looking at me now. Some of the hurtful tension leaked out of the damaged room. “I’d run for awhile. Get it worked off.”
“So, outside?”
“He was heading that way. For the east exit.”
“Okay.” I gathered myself up. “Let’s go.”
The east exit wasn’t locked. The door had been thrown open so hard it had dented the concrete wall outside, and the thingie on the top that kept it from slamming shut or opening too quick was busted. I didn’t have any difficulty imagining Graves stamping through and breaking it. The gym would have been deserted, too, thanks to Anna. Nobody to see him but Shanks, no reason for him to slow down.
A cool late-afternoon breeze touched my cheeks as I pushed it open. Shanks whistled a little. “Boy don’t know his own strength.”
“Does anyone, really?” Christophe reached over my shoulder, bracing the door. “But yes, quite impressive. Still don’t feel like talking, Dru?”
“It’s none of your business, Christophe.” God, he could irritate me even when I was happy he was here.
“It could be my business. So many things happened yesterday, you see. Only a fool wouldn’t believe them connected—”
“Djamphir don’t take no for an answer,” Shanks muttered. He slid past us and stepped out into the westering sunlight. It gilded his dark hair and touched his hollow, shaven cheeks while he grabbed the door and pulled it wide, out of Christophe’s grasp.
A concrete path dipped away, down toward a copse of ornamental trees, bisecting strips of manicured lawns. Another path peeled off toward a baseball diamond that looked major-league ready, its chalked lines startlingly white and the dugouts freshly painted. The bleachers even looked clean.
Christophe stiffened, but he shut up. I stepped out onto the path and realized it had been far too long since I’d gone outside. The last time I’d felt the wind all over me was weeks ago, hurried little gulps of air while Benjamin had taken us out clothes shopping.
After a long thirty seconds or so, Christophe spoke up again. “Dru. It’s near dusk.”
I closed my eyes. A pendulum would only tell me what I wanted to hear, so it was useless. Tarot cards might’ve been a bit better, but still . . . they wouldn’t say anything useful. I was too shook up and wanted too much, too badly.
But there were other ways of finding out what you needed to know. If I could just clear my head a little bit.
“Dru—” Christophe again.
“Be quiet.” I heard my own voice, a queer faraway murmur. “It’s not dusk yet.” The whisper of feathered wings filled my ears, brushed my face. It was like a big fluffy powder brush, just touching the skin.
I went to a makeup counter in a high-end department store in Boca Raton once, while Dad was doing an ammo run six blocks away. The lady there had brushed some expensive powder all over my face just like this, her fingertip just lightly under my chin, and she smelled like warm perfume and hairspray. Without the hairspray it was almost like my mother, and after a little bit I’d started fidgeting and in the end made some half-embarrassed excuse and got away while she was trying to sell me eye shadow. This reminded me of that.
Shanks drew in a soft breath. Christophe was utterly silent behind me, but warm tendrils of apple-pie scent curled across the cold rain-washed breeze.
I smelled wet earth waking up after winter, the river sending up a flat tang of oily water, the city all around the Schola Prima’s grounds in a tide of concrete and exhaust, the classrooms full of chalk dust and the war of young and old. Sap rising in the trees, the hardy green smell of grass’s first spring growth mowed in the morning.
The wingbeats crested, like a little feathered thing in my hand, its heart beating frantically. Gran said it was no trick to charm sparrows out of the sky; you had to charm them and return them safely, that was the trick.
No use doing what you dunno to undo—or even if’n you kin undo. You mind me now, Dru.
My hand jabbed out, index finger pointing. I opened my eyes and the world rushed in so hard I had to squint against it. Darts of sun speared my eyes, and I had to blink to focus. Hot tears swelled up, trickling down my cheeks.
The lump in my throat wasn’t mine. It was Graves’s. I could see him, a shadowy ghost in the gathering dusk, like powder on a moth’s wings. He left a scorch on the air, like a hot kettle set on a counter. It was helpless anger, a ball of rage I would never have suspected him of feeling. He was always so . . .
You don’t know anything about this kid, Dru.
He stamped away toward the baseball diamond, coat flapping silently. Phantom pins and needles slid through my fingers and toes. I leaned forward, saw him veer away from the baseball field. He crouched and sprang, his hands jetting out, grabbed the top railing of the bleachers, and cleared it in a swoop of graceful authority no human body would have been able to pull off.
He’d taken to being loup-garou like a duck to water.
He stood up on the bleachers, irresolute, his head tipped back as if he was watching the sky. It would have been dark and cold—the middle of the Schola’s “day.” Shanks would have been inside, trying to calm me down and get me to my room.
The ghost of Graves hunched down, a supple movement. His attention focused outward now, alert. His hair stood up in long curling spikes, vital and powdery black at this distance. You couldn’t see his roots.
He leapt forward. A burst of static boiled inside my head. My face jerked aside as if I’d been slapped. I pitched forward, Christophe grabbed at my arm but I evaded him, and I was halfway down the path before I realized I was moving. The pins and needles should have made me clumsy, but they didn’t. I ran past the bleachers, was just in time to see the ghost of Graves streaking toward another small stand of oaks.
He ran like the running was joy to him. Wulfen move fast and fluid, and he did it without getting hairy. His coat snapped behind him, a faraway sound, and he plunged into the stand of trees just seconds before I did.
The trees crowded close around a small clearing, and the grass here wasn’t mowed. Shade and light whirled together, there was a snap! inside my head, and everything . . . stopped.
Darkness dilated in the evening air. The oaks drew close, whispering with their fresh new green leaves, and I caught a confused jumble of activity before Shanks bolted into the clearing and nearly collided with me.