“Just relax, kiddo,” Graves muttered. His arm was tense over my shoulder, pulling me closer to his warmth. The food around here was bulking him up big-time. Or maybe I just felt so small, the way I hardly ever do. “Christ.”
Yeah, I felt small. And vulnerable. And very, very terrified.
Dylan shook his head like I hadn’t even said anything. “Why did you leave the Schola, Dru?”
Because something was coming to kill me, duh. When Gran’s owl shows up, I follow. It’s that simple. I was too tired to even begin explaining.
A running mass of shapes clustered at the top of the hill. Some had thought to bring flashlights, and golden beams scoured the darkness. It was useless, djamphir and wulfen could both see way better than the average human after sunset. But those swords of light were a welcome sight, because they weren’t greasefog or moonlight on a crazy wulfen’s pelt, and I let out a half-sob. Graves’ arm tightened again over my shoulders. “It’s okay,” he called. “We found her!”
Dylan cursed. They started down, a mass of boyshapes. The wulfen leapt ahead, some of them blurring between fur and skin in that clay-under-water way they do, and I swallowed another harsh sound. It’s always weird to see them change and to hear the crackle of bone shifting, flesh running, and fur sprouting….
Yeah. It about makes your lunch want to escape, even if you haven’t had any. And even if you were used to Bigtime Weird.
“Goddammit.” Dylan made a short, sharp movement, and his voice dropped into a hurt-angry whisper. “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me, Dru.”
Yeah, I don’t think you could help me even if I did talk to you. There’s just not enough words in the world. My brain hurt, and the rest of me was clumsy and cold.
I couldn’t stop coughing. Or laughing, little hitching noises that spilled out of my throat between the harsh rasping. Graves just pulled me along, and the wulfen reached us in a tide of fur and bright eyes. They flowed around me, some of them clapping Graves on the shoulder, most of them sliding between human form and furry, loping kind-of-quadruped. The sudden babble, after the silence and terror of the woods, broke over us both.
“Is she okay?”
“She all right?”
“Dru?” Dibs stepped close, was pushed aside, but not before his fingers brushed my wrist, a fleeting, warm touch. I let out another choking sound.
“Is she all right?”
Behind them, the djamphir came crowding. Irving was pale, his curls springing as his aspect slid over him and retreated. They started asking if I was okay, too, but Graves just dragged me through, the wulfen moving with him and somehow everyone getting out of his way, until we got to the doors on the east side of the Schola.
The doors were blown outward, shards of wood lying over the steps, and I blinked. I didn’t do that.
But maybe something behind me had. Once more, Gran’s owl had led me out of danger. Or into it, depending.
And oh God but another memory was rising up, the owl on my window ledge the last morning I ever saw Dad alive. I started coughing in earnest.
I didn’t want to think about that. I’d rather cough my lungs out.
The hall I’d run down was a mess, splattered with smoking black sucker blood, the carpet torn up and the waist-high paneling gouged. Paler wood in the deep furrows glared at me. “J-j-j-j—” I was trying to express my dismay, but Graves just kept going at a good clip, his arm a steel bar over my shoulders. My feet dragged uselessly most of the time. He actually shouldered a few kids out of the way, a snarl running just under the surface of the babble of voices.
I gathered there had been two teams of suckers, one that had burst in near the sparring chapel and made a lot of ruckus, and a trio of “hunters” who had quietly infiltrated the west wing of the Schola, the one I’d had my first class of the evening in. I must have just escaped them.
That was an uncomfortable thought. My feet dragged along the floor. I left dirty clumps wherever I tried to step, but Graves was doing all the work of moving us along. As long as he was doing such a handy job of it, I didn’t care.
The sparring chapel was a long way away, and it seemed awful cold. My teeth were still chattering, and everything seemed very far away, even the noise as some kind of scuffle and yelling started.
We reached the deserted chapel, every footfall echoing. Graves palmed open the door on the girls’ side, and a gasp went up behind us. He just kept going, dragging me through, and the door whooshed shut. Thick, silky steam billowed, and I coughed again.
“Goddammit,” he said quietly, and hauled me across the tiled floor. The word bounced back at us through the vapor in the air. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I d-d-d—” I was about to say I didn’t know, gave up. He looked down at me, his face sallow in the steam-filled light, and his jaw set. When he looked like that, serious and determined, you could see where he would be handsome. The girls would go for him big-time, especially in any urban place where they don’t value cookie-cutter looks as much. A bolt of shameful, nameless heat went through me at the thought.
“You want me to help with your clothes?” The blanket fell with a sodden plop, and he shucked his coat, almost tearing the sleeve because he couldn’t get out of it and hold me upright at the same time very well. “Or, um, I can just stay at the door. In case.”
“H-h-h-help. M-me.” The shivers were making it hard to think or breathe. I grabbed at the hem of my sweater with clumsy-cold swollen fingers. Graves pulled it up as he braced me; I got lost in it for a second and finally struggled out of the heavy, wet wool. It landed with a splutching sound, and I wondered how much water I’d been lying in out in the woods, and why it wasn’t more frozen when ice was everywhere.