chapter THREE
The key was still under the north side of that granite boulder, the one Gran poured milk over every new moon. The walls were still solid, thank God. The place smelled mildewy, and Gran would’ve got on me to clean every damn corner before turning in.
First things first, though. I hiked out to the corner of the meadow with a flashlight and found the connection box; when I flipped the switch, the tiny light came on, a sweet green flash. I could’ve sobbed with relief. Gran didn’t believe in “payin’ for the fool ’lectricity,” and this tapline had been here for decades. It was a pure miracle it was still working. If it hadn’t been, well, I’d brought a can or two of gas for the genny, but that wouldn’t take us far.
I hiked back to the house and found Graves and Ash taking the dustcovers off of stuff. They were shaking them off the front porch, too, which meant Graves was thinking. “Nice place,” he said over his shoulder as he passed me with an armful of canvas sheeting, his torn coat flapping around his knees. His eyes gleamed green in the dimness; the Coleman lamp I’d set on the kitchen table was feeble to say the least. “Good vibes.”
“Bang!” Ash nodded enthusiastically, bounding after him, pale bare feet slapping the polished floorboards. I found the moldering wooden-and-cardboard box of lightbulbs on its familiar shelf, right where Dad’d left it. Screwed the first one into the hanging cord over the kitchen table, and voila! The pleased exclamations from the boys made me feel like Edison himself.
The next step was priming the pump in the kitchen with a bottle of distilled water. When I worked the handle it made a gawdawful screeching, but I’d thought to bring some WD-40 and that made it just groan and shower rust flakes. After a few more pumps, though, things eased out. I worked it until a gush of rust-colored water came out, kept on until it turned clear and cold. Mineral-smelling well water, and plenty of it.
“Thank you, sonny Jesus,” I muttered. It was just what Gran would’ve said. “God willing and the well ain’t dry.”
Next thing—a fire in the potbellied iron stove. I worked the damper, hoped the chimney wasn’t blocked—fortunately there was a bit of a breeze, and I could feel the air moving past my fingertips. The stove was cleaned out, a neat fire laid among spiderwebs, so I just had to grab the matches and light her up. The draw was fine, and in a little bit I had a merry crackling blaze. Night would get cold around here even in spring, and all we had were sleeping bags. I wasn’t sure if moths would’ve gotten into Gran’s quilts too.
I’d solve that problem when I hit it, but even moth-eaten quilts would be better than none.
The boys had finished carrying everything in from the Subaru by then, and Ash let out a little cry of joy and wandered up to the stove, stretching his hands out like the fire was his personal friend.
The plates and skillets were dusty, but I just rinsed them off. Gran would’ve had my hide, but by this time I was yawning and working through mental mud. I locked the front door, told the boys to arrange the sleeping bags upstairs, and put together something easy—bacon, pancakes from mix, eggs. I could’ve made this in my sleep, and I pretty much did. When the boys tromped downstairs I was already coaxing the balky old electric stovetop and thanking God that I didn’t have to cook on the potbelly. I can do it, sure, but it’s no fun.
“More food?” Graves stretched, yawning hugely. Ash galumphed over to the stove and crouched, staring in through the grate at the fire’s orange and yellow crackle. His eyes ran with orange sparks, and his expression was such serene contentment it was hard to believe he was the same creature who’d been almost-eight feet of unstoppable Broken werwulf.
Now there was a thought I didn’t want. Could he change into his wulf form now? And once he did, could he come back?
Don’t borrow trouble, Dru.
“I’m not complaining,” Graves added hurriedly. “Can I help?”
“You can check the icebox.” I pointed with one of Gran’s old wooden turners. “If it’s working, load the stuff from the cooler in there and put the cooler on the porch. And don’t bitch if you don’t like scrambled eggs; that’s all I’m making.”
“Won’t bitch. Scout’s honor.” He gave me a fey grin, green eyes lighting up. “Well, I was never a scout. Couldn’t afford it. But still.”
Well, ain’t we cozy. I was beginning to get whiplash, he was going back and forth so fast between hating me and actually seeming to think I was okay. “I kind of wanted to be one too, but they don’t take girls.”
“What about Girl Scouts?” He opened up the ancient, tiny fridge and stuck his hand in. “Looks like it’s working. This is really cool.”
“Girl Scouts have great cookies. But too many girls. I don’t get along with girls.” Except Nat, and she probably hates me now. I poured pancake batter, heard a satisfying sizzle, and poked at the bacon. Considered cracking some eggs, decided to leave them for last. “I guess I never will.”
“There’s time. I don’t get along with chicks either. Well, except you. You’re, like, the only girl I’ve ever met who isn’t . . .”
Maddeningly, he stopped. I was too tired to even wonder what I wasn’t. There was a long list of things I wasn’t, starting with cute and probably finishing up somewhere near lovable.
I brushed my hair back, wishing my ponytail would hold. Tomorrow I’d find some string and braid it up.
Braiding made me think of Nathalie at the Schola Prima again. I’d gotten along with her just fine, until I’d been a total bitch. Granted, I’d been getting ready to go rescue Graves . . . but still.
The longing to see Nat, her sleek head tilted to the side and her wide cat-tilted blue eyes considering an outfit or the mess my hair had become, shook me right down to my bones. I sniffed, wiped at my nose with the back of my hand, and turned the pancakes. Graves busied himself loading up the fridge. Ash rocked back and forth in front of the stove, humming tunelessly. Graves carried the cooler out on the front porch, and when he didn’t come back, I figured he was lighting another cigarette.
The way things were going, I might almost take up smoking myself. Dad would’ve killed me for even thinking about it.
But he was dead. He’d never take me up about anything ever again. My throat was sore, something stuck in it, but I just cleared it a few times and concentrated on cooking.
The ancient Folgers can for coffee grounds, eggshells, and vegetable scraps to go in the compost heap was rusted but still sound. I tossed the eggshells in and had a plate together in a trice. “Ash! Come on. Take this to the table. Graves, get him a plastic fork, and one for you too.” I felt like Gran, hollering from the kitchen.
“You gonna eat?” Graves ambled back in, his chin set stubbornly and his eyes dark. Almost black.
I looked back down at the skillets, the pop and fizzle of bacon filling my head for a moment.
“Yeah,” I lied. “But there’s work to be done first. Come on, you two. Tuck in.”
The wide loft held Gran’s big four-poster and my smaller corn crib, and the mattresses reeked of mildew even though we’d wrapped them in plastic. But the quilts, packed in mothballs and plastic, were still good. The moths hadn’t gotten at them at all.
I meant to carry my brand-new sleeping bag downstairs after a while. I thought if I sent the boys up to get settled and gave them enough time, they’d be out cold and I’d be able to sneak my bag downstairs and stretch it in front of the door.
Plus, there were things to do to close the house up for the night. I finished by warding the walls again, watching the faint blue lines running through the wood take on fresh life. They didn’t need to be redone so much as refreshed, and it was amazingly easy. I just had to remember to think up high enough to get the second story involved. I could almost hear Gran muttering to herself while she followed me around the open room that was the entire first floor, checking my work.
I was hungry, but my stomach had closed up tighter than a fist. The effort of warding made my head swim, and every bone in my body ached down deep. I sat down on the loveseat to rest, just for a second. It was an old horsehair thing, meant for company—Gran always sat in her rocking chair and I used the old hassock, or I sat at her feet while she knitted. The bare bulb in the kitchen gave off a mellow glow, and if I shut my eyes and inhaled, I could almost smell her.
Tobacco juice, a faint astringent old-lady smell, baby powder, and the musky yeasty scent of cooking good things and working hard all day. Her spinning wheel sat under a drop cloth I’d told the boys not to touch, but I could almost hear its hissthumpwhirr and her occasional soft mutters as she spoke to God or told me things.
I loved to listen to Gran talk. She was always rambling, said it was a product of living alone. Dad was never the chatty type, but days with Gran were a constant stream of information, admonition, attention. Do it this way, hold that end up, good girl . . . I could tell him, now what’s the price of cotton, but he wouldn’t listen . . . Yes, you look like your daddy, that’s a look like a mule, fetch me my scissors and go check the coop for eggs. My, you’re good at findin’ eggs, it’s a true talent, Dru-baby. Come now, no use wastin’ sunshine.
She taught by example, but the talking was something else. A lifeline, maybe.
I folded over and pulled my feet up, lying on the dusty loveseat. It felt good, even if the thing was harder than the floor and slippery too. The fire glowed through the stove’s grate, and the good scent of seasoned wood burning—I’d banked it just before I warded everything—was like a warm blanket.
Blanket. I didn’t have one; I’d left them all upstairs. I was going to get cold if I settled here for long.
I didn’t care.
My eyes drifted shut. I was so, so tired. The wards in the walls hummed to themselves, and that was something new, too. I’d never heard wards before, singing in high crystal voices that turned into harmonies where the knots laid over doors and windows twisted.
Well, Dru. You got here, and you got both of them here. Tomorrow you start figuring out a longer-term plan. But you did what you set out to do, and there hasn’t been a vampire attack. Yet.
I told myself not to borrow trouble. Curled up even tighter on the love seat. It just felt so damn good to stop moving, to stop concentrating so fiercely on the next thing, and the next, and the next . . .
That was the first night I slept, really slept, since rescuing Graves. Every muscle in my body eased its useless tension, relaxing all at once. I went down into darkness, and there were no dreams.
Except one.
INTERMEZZO
He crouched, easily, on the edge of the rooftop, blue eyes burning and his sharply handsome face haggard. Lines etched themselves onto teenage flesh, and for a moment you could see just how old Christophe really was.
The city spread out below him, jewels of light and concrete canyons, the exhaust-laden wind ruffling his slicked-back, darkened hair. The aspect flickered through him, his fangs sliding free and retreating as dull hopeless rage flitted over his features.
He’d never looked like this before.
“We need you,” someone said behind him. Bruce moved in the shadow of an HVAC vent, restlessly. The crisp British accent made every word a precise little bullet. “Don’t throw your life away, Reynard. It’s no way to honor her memory.”
Christophe actually flinched. Something I’d never seen him do before, something that seemed utterly alien to the maddeningly calm djamphir I knew. “She’s alive.”
“How could she have survived that? We found traces—you saw the blood. She wasn’t even half-trained, despite our best efforts. Sergej”—The name sent a glass spike of pain through my dreaming head, and both of them tensed—“took her because Leon betrayed her, and Anna probably helped.”
“So now you’re willing to impute blame to Milady.” Christophe’s shoulders straightened. He lifted his right hand. Something gleamed slightly in his palm, and my dreaming self’s gaze was riveted to it. “Really, ibn Allas. You never used to be this quick to call Anna’s behavior what it is.”
“Anna is a spoiled child. She’s never grown up.” Amazingly, Bruce almost snarled, his lip lifting and white fangs flashing for just a moment, the aspect curling through his hair. “But speaking of that doesn’t help this situation. We didn’t find her body, or Anna’s, but we’re still looking. The whole place is a mess.” He took a deep breath, shoving the aspect down. “If he had both of them, we would know. He would be walking in daylight and we would be under siege.” Bruce’s dark eyes glittered. He looked like a wreck, too—his clothes were singed and torn, one half of his face deeply bruised, and he slumped wearily. “Please, Reynard. The Order needs you.”
“My little bird needs me more. I told you, keep her safe and you have my allegiance. This? This is not safe.” Christophe straightened, and now I could see his clothes were in rags too. Vampire blood smoked on him, the steam rising hard to see because of the fume of rage covering him.
“We don’t even know—” Bruce began, helplessly, his hands spread. Trying to smooth the waters, like he always did.
Christophe rose with slow, dangerous grace, balanced on the very edge of the roof. “I know. If she was dead, ibn Allas, I would be, too. I would kill them all until they dragged me down. My heart is still beating, therefore, she is still alive.” The lines on his face smoothed out. The gleam closed itself up in his fist, fingers clenching, his face settling into chill certainty.
If he’d ever looked at me this way, I would’ve never let him touch me. I would have been too busy backpedaling and getting out of his way.
“Give us time. We’ll help, we’ll bargain with the Maharaj—”
“Don’t mention the djinni-children to me; they don’t care for our troubles.” Christophe laughed, a bitter little chuckle. “And your help gave Leontus the chance to betray her. I took you at your word, Bruce. I believed you when you said he would guard her all the more carefully because of Eleanor’s death. I believed him.”
“I believed him too!” Bruce yelled, but it was too late. Christophe had already leapt, straight off the ledge, plummeting into the screaming wind—