He tilted his head, slightly. Under the mud and water, blond highlights slipped through his hair. His fangs had retreated. “Milady.” Quietly. He took another drag, twisted the wheel savagely as we bumped through a shallow stream. He looked like he knew where we were going.
I was glad someone did.
How did you find me? What’s going on? Where’s the rest of the Order? Are you still mad at me? First things first. “I’m sorry.”
He gave me one very blue, almost-startled glance. “For what, milna?”
Oh, Jesus Christ. “For . . . for telling you I hated you. For accusing you. For—”
“It is—” He swore again, breathlessly, and hit the gas. We bumped through a screen of underbrush and hit what looked like another overgrown rumrunner’s road, and immediately the car settled down. I had a deathgrip on the door, though, and didn’t loosen up. Tears still leaked down my cheeks. Wiping them did no good. My head ached, pounding dully, and my eyes burned. The aspect had settled into soothing warmth, spreading over my skin and working in layer by layer.
He paused, continued. “It is of no consequence.” He relaxed slightly. “You don’t smell like blood. Are you hurt?”
I told you I wasn’t. But I took stock, looked down at myself. I was covered in filth. The upholstery in here was never going to recover. Safety glass jolted free from my window, tinkling, as we hit a series of washboard ruts. “I’m okay. How did you find—”
“You can hide from the Order, moj maly ptaszku. You can even hide from my father, God willing. But me? No. Not from me.” Amazingly, he grinned. It was a fey expression, eyes glittering and lips pulled back; it was like he was sparring again. And enjoying himself. “Just glad I reached you in time.”
I tried loosening up on the door. No dice, my fingers didn’t want to let go. “The Order—”
“Would you like to call in? They will be overjoyed to hear from you.” Why did he sound so goddamn amused?
Everything I wanted to say rose up inside me, got tangled up, and settled in my throat like an acid-coated rock. Christophe gave me another glance. With the cigarette, he looked a little older, nineteen-twenty instead of a youngish eighteen. Djamphir are mostly too graceful and pretty to be believable. Even smeared with mud and guck, his clothes torn up and the rage burning in him, he looked great. He looked completely in control of the situation.
Thank God. Relief made every tight-strung nerve in me go loose, all at once. “What, so someone there can hand one of us over to the vampires again? No thanks.”
On the other hand, the Order was good protection. Mostly.
He shrugged, mud crackling as it dried on him. His hair dripped on his shoulders, the blond highlights slipping back through it as his aspect slowly retreated. “I shouldn’t have trusted Leontus. The fault is mine.”
Well, I wasn’t about to start throwing stones. “I trusted him too.” My voice caught. I decided to leave it at that.
“Where are we going?” Graves piped up.
Christophe shrugged. “To clean up and rest. Milady needs food, and—”
“Don’t call me that.” The words bolted out of me. I hung onto the door as if I was drowning. “Jesus, Christophe. Please.”
“What, no taste for formality?” We jolted over more washboard ruts, but the road was much drier. Of course, here on this side of the ridge the storm hadn’t fallen so hard. “As you like, moja ksiezniczko. There’s a decent-sized town not too far. We’ll acquire transport and supplies; this car won’t last long.”
Great. “All our supplies were in the house.” I sounded numb. The words wouldn’t go together quite right. “Gran’s house. They just . . . it’s burning. There was so much rain; why was it burning?”
“Either they thought you were still inside, or it was fired to deny you shelter.” His expression turned grim, no amusement remaining. He kept pulling at the cigarette, too, like it personally offended him. “Your loup-garou perhaps thought to hold them off by himself. Foolish.”
Graves took the bait. “Fuck off.” The command under the words—a loup-garou’s mental dominance—made all the space in the car shrink, hot and tight. I craned my neck, looking over my shoulder. He was sitting right behind Christophe, his cigarette held to his mouth and his other hand a fist against his tattered, mud-coated knee. “How do we know you didn’t lead them here, Reynard?”
Christophe was silent, but his hand tightened on the wheel.
“Quit it. Both of you.” I swallowed again. The tingling in my fangs was going down, thank God. I didn’t have to hold my tongue carefully or try to talk with my lips kept stiffly over my teeth. “Let’s just all get along, all right? And not do the vampires’ work for them.”
“Anything for you, Dru,” Christophe said, level and cold. “And I mean that. Now be quiet and let me concentrate.”
Graves stared at me, his eyes gone dark. He and Christophe were running neck and neck in the mad sweepstakes, it looked like. I’d never seen Goth Boy look so blackly furious.
“Hey.” I worked my left hand free, reached into the backseat. “Graves. Graves.”
He was shaking, I realized. His long black coat was gone—had it been inside the house? He looked odd without it, kind of. But the skull-and-crossbones earring glittered in his ear. It gave me a funny feeling, seeing that gleam.