And who was missing as well. I was thinking an awful lot about Augie lately.
“We would be honored.” Arab Boy bowed again, a little less stiffly. “I’m Bruce. Provisional head of the Council.”
Bruce? No way. The mad urge to giggle rose up in my throat, met the rock sitting there, and died with a burning, acid like reflux. “Provisional?” It slipped out.
“Provisional, you see, when our head, the Lady Anna, is not with us.” He straightened, and the rest of them relaxed a little.
Well. That’s good to know. Come to think of it, Anna certainly did have the Head-Bitch-in-Charge vibe.
I didn’t let go of the switchblade.
“And especially since,” the redhead piped up, “the Lady Anna has been on vacation for two weeks.”
The other room opening off the windowless sort-of-study was a long one, with a mirror-polished table down the middle that would have looked right at home in Camelot, except it was a rectangle. Another table—no more than a shelf—ran along the left-hand side, full of steam dishes exhaling the smell of food. A silver urn and another massive silver thing sat at the end, and three wine bottles stood at attention, one in a silver container of crushed ice. The second massive silver thing on the table was a samovar, I was sure of it.
I wouldn’t even know what a samovar was, except for once Dad and I had come across this coven of Russian witches in Louisiana. No, really. They ran a patisserie in New Orleans. With a sideline in hexes, cures, potions, and fortune-telling with weird greasy playing cards decorated in gold leaf.
They’d wanted me to stay with them. To learn, they said. But Dad just shook his head, and I held onto his arm the entire time we were in there. I didn’t take the petits fours they kept offering me. Gran had taught me all about food being a trap sometimes.
It’s woman’s power, food is. You be sure you know where’n the hook is before swallerin’ it, Dru. You mind me, now.
You’d think I’d get used to hearing dead people’s voices in my head. Memory is like that sometimes—it takes you by surprise, leaps on you with a roach spirit’s scuttling speed, and then you’re left shaking your head and trying to figure out where you are here and now.
The chairs were all heavily carved wooden thrones with worn red horsehair cushions. Stone walls, hardwood floor, and a smell like a lot of late nights and cigar smoke fighting with the heavenly aromas of food and coffee. There were no dusty cobwebs in the corners, like at the other Schola. This whole building was spic-and-span in a way that made me a little nervous.
Check that. Everything about this place was hinky as hell. If this was where I was supposed to be sent when that helicopter lifted me out of the snowy hell of the Dakotas, I didn’t know if I should feel relieved.
Bruce pointed me toward the head of the table, like I was a visiting dignitary. “Please. Coffee? And what do you prefer for breakfast? Or dinner, given our schedule.”
They were all looking at me. New-girl-in-school time again, only I was here with the teachers. “Coffee, yeah. And, um, food. Look, I thought I was going to be—”
“All in good time.” Bruce was utterly imperturbable. “We don’t believe in hurrying.”
“Yeah, I kind of got that. I was stuck for weeks out in the back end of beyond with vampires attacking all the time.” I didn’t have to work to sound sarcastic. “I’m not so sure I’m safe anywhere, unless it’s on my own. So I’m wanting to get this over with.” And get back to Graves.
Because the emptiness inside me did get smaller when Graves was around. Still, I didn’t want to think about how safe I felt with Christophe. It wasn’t applicable, was it? Not when he kept disappearing on me.
I was getting to hate people disappearing on me.
The fang marks in my left wrist twinged again, but faintly. I was glad my sleeves were pulled down. The memory rose unbidden, of Christophe’s fangs in my flesh. He’d had to do it, to save us—but it hadn’t been comfortable. And I was damned if I’d tell any of these blow-dried boys about it.
My voice box had frozen up. Everything about me had frozen. One thought managed to escape the relentless, digging agony.
—please don’t please don’t not again please don’t don’t don’t—
But it came one more time, and this time was the worst because the digging, awful fingers weren’t pulling at anything physical. Instead they were scraping and burrowing and twisting into me. The part of me that wasn’t anything but me, the invisible core of what I was.
I’d call it the soul, but I don’t think the word fits. It’s as close as I can get.
Digging scraping pulling tearing ripping, invisible things inside me being pulled away, and something left me in a huge gush. My head tipped back, breath locked in my throat. Graves made another small horrified sound and tried to pull me away.
Christophe jerked his head back, fangs sliding free of my flesh, and something wrapped itself tightly around my wrist, below his bruising-hard grip on my forearm. He exhaled, shuddering, and Graves tried to pull me away again. My arm stretched like Silly Putty between them, my shoulder screaming, and I couldn’t make a sound.
The silence that fell wasn’t comfortable in the slightest. I yanked the chair at the head of the table out, dropped down into it, and glared at them all. The so-called cushion was hard as a rock and the back wasn’t much better. And I had to let go of the switchblade in my pocket to sit down.
It was a bad morning and getting worse.
One of the silent djamphir, the one with coal-black skin and shockingly white teeth, laughed. His dreadlocks moved as he stalked toward the buffet table. Of all of them, he was the only one in worn-out jeans and a T-shirt. “She’s certainly Elizabeth’s daughter.” He sounded very prep-school, enunciating crisply. But there were odd spaces between his words, just like in Christophe’s or Dylan’s. Like they were translating from another language inside their heads. It was like the ghost of an accent. I mean, other than the flat nasal Yankee everyone above the Mason-Dixon pretty much speaks.
I don’t have an accent. Northerners just talk funny.
“As if there was any doubt.” Bruce sounded sour for the first time. “Her face alone is enough to convince one of that.”
My hands tightened into fists under the table. Dad had never told me I looked like Mom, beyond saying something about my hair once in a while. “Did you all know my mother?”
“I did,” the Japanese one said softly. “Bruce did, and Alton too, I believe. Marcus?”
The skinny blond in the gray suit shook his head. “She was before my time in administration.”
The other blond spread his hands; he’d left his cigar in the other room. He had thick curly hair, and for a moment I felt lightheaded. Someone had stolen a lock of Christophe’s hair from my nightstand—don’t even ask how it got there, a keepsake, he’d said—and left a single long, curling blond hair behind. It could have been any number of teachers or students at the other Schola. Including shy, gentle Dibs.
I was suspecting everyone now. Except Graves. And Christophe.
“So, some of you knew her. Then you know someone inside the Order betrayed her.” My fingernails dug into my palms. “Anna showed me a transcript of the call.”