Have you ever heard a cornfield on a breezy afternoon? Or been out on the Great Plains and seen waist-high grass when the wind moves over it, brushing it like hair? Watching the aspect in a crowd is vaguely like both. I hunched my shoulders. But Christophe was right in front of me, leaning on the barrier, and every once in awhile a stray breath of apple-pie scent would brush me.
I won’t lie. It was comforting. But my roving gaze kept getting snagged on the chair hung with red fabric.
“Wulfen.” Leon was leaning forward, his arms crossed on the back of my pew. “They’re watching closely, too. Want to bet why?”
“It’s insulting.” Benjamin’s jaw set like concrete, and the emo-boy swoop over his eyes ran with auburn highlights.
“It’s not personal.” Leon actually snorted a little, laughing. “They don’t trust anyone. I don’t blame them.”
I saw Zeke in a sapphire silk button-down, his blue eyes dark with worry. I actually lifted a hand and waved at him a little and instantly regretted it. He actually blushed, dropping his eyes, and a couple of his friends elbowed him. Someone laughed, and my cheeks were hot.
There went my Sunday coffee date. It wasn’t like I was really counting on it, but damn.
Leon laughed again, a weird choked chuckle, and I considered turning around and punching him in the face.
“Who’s that?” Christophe wanted to know, but I just slumped down in the pew and rolled my eyes.
“Nobody. He’s from my history class.” I wish Graves was here, dammit. No matter how this ended up, the first thing I was going to do when I got out of here was go looking for him. I was going to slip out of here somehow, anyhow, and follow the touch until it led me to him. I was going to find him and make everyone leave us alone long enough for me to tell him . . .
. . . what? What could possibly make this sort of thing better?
I didn’t know, but I’d find it. I’d say anything I had to, to make him understand.
The crowd went still again, but differently than before. When I looked up I saw why. The Council had arrived.
From left to right they stood in front of their chairs: Kir with his red hair echoing the flaming sky filling the glass, Marcus in another gray suit, and Bruce placed precisely one step out in front, halfway between his chair and the big red throne. On the other side, Alton looked somber as he folded his arms and looked out across the crowd, Hiro stared steadily down at me with something I think was supposed to be an encouraging expression, and Ezra pulled his sweater sleeves down and settled into watchful immobility.
I’d forgotten to breathe. I inhaled.
Bruce tilted his head a little. He didn’t have to yell; the words cut the silence like hot knife through butter. “The Kouroi are assembled. The Trial will begin.” His mouth turned down for a moment, like he was tasting something bitter. “Christophe Reynard, you stand accused of treason. Present yourself.”
Half of Christophe’s mouth quirked up. He stayed where he was for a few moments, looking intently at me, then straightened. Turned on his heel and paced toward the dais, where the crowd had magically melted away.
He moved out into that space like he owned every inch of it. “Isn’t the head of the Order supposed to be here?” It could have been possible to put a little more fuck you into his tone, but some of it might’ve slopped out the sides.
Kir stiffened. Hiro looked bored, but his eyes glittered. I knew that look, having seen it in a few bars where Dad took me, looking for information on the Real World while I sipped a Coke and ignored pretty much everything except whomever he was talking to.
“You’d think he’d learn to be tactful.” Leon’s whisper drifted to my right ear. “Breathe, Milady.”
“You will be judged by your peers, Reynard.” Hiro’s weight was all on the balls of his feet, and the aspect actually crackled around him. His hair stood up, short black spikes rubbing against each other.
I began to feel sick. Way deep-down sick.
“And who among you is my peer? My ancestry is ancient, and my deeds are taught in your classrooms. I’ve saved a svetocha, which is more than any of you have done in the last sixty years. I’ve kept one step ahead of the nosferatu and those sent to kill me—the Kouroi sent to kill me. I’m here because I choose to be, because Milady requests it.” He tipped his head slightly toward me, and I wondered how he made it so effing clear just who he was talking about. Of course, I was the only girl in the room. But I was looking around for Anna. She had to be here somewhere.
“No Kouroi have been sent to—” Alton began.
“They have.” Kir had turned green under his paleness. “I signed the orders. At the Head’s request.”
Nobody moved; nobody even blinked. Bruce’s fangs slid out from under his top lip. He stood, rigid, and I got a very bad feeling about all this. Nausea and terror all rolled together, roiled in the pit of my stomach.
Christophe stood, very straight and slim, his boots placed military-precise against the stone floor. “Set against each other. Divide and conquer. At least she learned well.”
“An extermination order on another Kouroi?” Hiro shook his head. “That is against the Codes.”
“Milady . . . ” Kir shrank into himself. “The Head said it was a matter of necessity. She . . . she showed me a transcript. Of a call made to betray the position of Elizabeth Lefevre. She died eleven years ago, and the transcript was proof that Reynard had betrayed her to the nosferat.”
Leon’s hand came down on my shoulder. He pushed me back down in the pew. “But—” I began. Lefevre? That had to be her maiden name. Funny, I’d never thought about it before. It was like Mom’s life had only begun with Dad, and with me.
“Be quiet,” he hissed in my ear. “Please, Dru!”
I subsided.
“Lies!” someone yelled from far back in the crowd. “Lies, and I can prove it!”
Wait a second. I knew that voice, and if Leon hadn’t been holding onto me I would have been up out of that pew like a rocket.
Bruce didn’t look surprised, but he did lift his head and stare in the general direction the voice had come from. “Approach,” was all he said.
“Oh, Christ,” Kir moaned. “What have I done?”
“She promised you the Princeps, didn’t she?” Christophe’s hands curled into fists. “I wondered who’d signed the orders. Did you also sign the directive to send wulfen teams after me in the Dakotas?”
Kir actually stumbled back and collapsed in his chair. “I did. I swear to God, Reynard, she told me we had to protect the—”
“What about Dru?” Christophe was pitiless. “Did you sign the directives to keep her in a reform Schola, unprotected and vulnerable? Did you?”
“No.” Marcus stood straight and defiant. “I signed those. The Head told me they were for a troublesome new Kouroi, not a svetocha . And when I went back later to check them, after Milady Dru told us her tale, I found they had vanished.”
Oh. Well, that answered that question. It wasn’t like I was surprised, but I was happy to know. Kind of.
Now if I could just keep my stomach from unloading itself all over the floor, I’d be peachy.
An avenue had opened in the crowd. I let out a breathless little cry. It was a djamphir I knew, his blond hair mussed and his eyes blazing. He was crusted with dried blood. His standard uniform of white tank top, red flannel shirt, and jeans was tattered and torn. Bruising marched up his familiar face on one side, and he held—of all things—a red collapsible file folder. “I can prove it!” he yelled again. And he held himself ramrod-straight, the same shoulder holster under his arm and the familiar gun butt peeking out as he moved.