But Mom had only smelled of fresh perfume and goodness.
Mom.
Too many questions. Not enough time to answer any of them.
“I know,” Christophe said into the phone. “Just send a pickup; I’ll get her to the rendezvous. Don’t worry about that.” A long pause while someone yakked on the other end. It sounded dire, especially with the way the wind was moaning a counterpoint; he’d been on the phone for ten minutes while I finished the last boxes and Graves carried them out to the truck.
He laughed, a sound twice as bitter as Graves’s little unamused bark. “Do you have to repeat yourself? She’s no good to us dead, and I’m the one who found her.” Another pause. “They can court-martial me later. Right now I need a pickup. I don’t care what the weather report—All right. Fine. Ciao.” He hung up, stared at the phone for a few moments, and turned sharply on his heel.
I was still on my knees, a roll of packing tape in my hands, watching him.
He took two steps to the sink, peered out the window. Eerie yellow-gray light slid through, touched his hair, and made the highlights livid. “Daylight’s going to fail before we’re out of town.”
I could only see a slice of sky through the window, cut off by an overhang and icicle-festooned gutters. It looked like the thunderstorm weather I’d seen a million times, only without the gasping-thick humidity you get below the Mason-Dixon. “It’s only—”
“Do you think this is natural weather, even for here?” He shrugged. “I should have made contact earlier. I was banking on being able to distract him. And I was banking on Sergej being certain your father wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring you here.”
You just shut up about my father. “Dad wasn’t stupid.” It came out a lot wearier and less sharp than I thought it would. “He had reasons for everything.”
“I don’t suppose you’d know how good those reasons were, would you? Never mind.” He waved his hand as if brushing away a fly. “We’ve got to get you out of here. I’ve got an extraction point. They’ll dock me for it later.” A tight, feral smile pulled up the corners of his lips, his blue eyes burning, and I watched an ink stain of sleek darkness slide through his hair and vanish, the highlights popping out like shafts of sun on a faraway horizon. “But bringing in a svetocha might balance that out.” He shrugged. “I’ll drive.”
Oh you will, will you? “Do you have your license?” I don’t know if I like the idea of you driving Dad’s truck. Or if I like how I’m suddenly some sort of good grade for you.
“What are you, a cop?” He held out his hand, and I automatically went to give him the packing tape.
Instead, Christophe’s fingers closed around my wrist, warm and hard. His eyes met mine, and I didn’t know what to think about what I saw burning in their depths. His smell shifted, somehow. Like the wind veering and bringing you a breath of honeysuckle on a summer’s day.
I stared up at him.
The garage door opened and Graves hopped in. “It’s getting colder,” he announced. “And I’ve got the last boxes in. Have to hand it to you, Dru, it’s packed tighter than Bletch’s . . .” The words died.
Christophe pulled. I came up in a rush—he was strong. Not regular wiry-strong, or even as thoughtlessly twitchy-strong as Graves had been with the werwulf imprint burning in him. He pulled me up as if I was a piece of paper, and the only thing scarier than the strength was the sense of restraint, like he could crush my wrist if he chose to. I ended up too close to him, and he pulled again, as if he wanted me even closer.
I stepped away and twisted my hand, breaking toward his thumb. That’s the weakest part of any grip. My shoulder protested, and so did my back. I was going to have to find some aspirin or something.
He did let me go—but I wasn’t sure, suddenly, that I could have pulled away if he hadn’t let me.
He wasn’t that strong before. Or was he, and just not showing it?
Graves stood stock-still, watching us both.
“Keys, Dru.” Christophe’s teeth gleamed in the weird stormlight, one of his wide feral smiles. “The sun’s fading, and if I can feel it, we can bet Sergej can too.”
I struggled with this, briefly. I drove when Dad got tired, so I knew the truck better than anyone else right now. I knew how it shimmied when it hit a certain number of miles per hour and how to tap the brakes in snow; I knew how it was likely to wriggle its butt when it was packed to the gills and a whole host of other little things. I also really didn’t like the idea of handing over my keys to this kid, no matter how much August vouched for him.
But August had. And I’d wanted someone to take care of me, hadn’t I?
I just hadn’t thought it would be some kid my own age, no matter how mature he seemed. If this was the “best” the Order had . . .
And I didn’t trust him enough. He was just too . . . dangerous. “Where are we going?” I finally said.
“The extraction point’s in the southeast section of town. Burke and 72nd. If you’d have come down there when I invited you, before Sergej knew for certain you even existed, I could have gotten you out of town and safe in the Schola in a trice.” Another easy shrug. “But we have to work with what we’ve got, now. Give me the keys, Dru.”
My bag lay on the counter. I dug in it for a moment, and my keychain jangled as I finally fished it out. “It handles weird when it’s loaded. I should drive.”
“Dru.” Christophe’s tone was icy. “If you want to get out of this alive, you’d best do as I say.”
Well, gee, when you put it like that . . .
“Wait a second.” Graves took two long swinging steps forward. His hair all but snapped and crackled with electricity. “She’s driven the thing before, all the way across town in a whiteout. And it’s her truck.”
“I didn’t ask you to yap, dog-boy.” Christophe made a sudden swift movement, but I saw him coming and yanked the keys back.
It was a close thing—his fingers grazed mine and I skipped nervously to the side, clearing the breakfast bar and dragging my bag with me. It fell, the strap fetching up against my free hand, and everything inside it shifted. That put me between the two of them, and right in the cold draft from the garage.
Get the situation under control, Dru. “Let’s get this straight.” I had to clear my throat, because the look on Christophe’s face—eyebrows drawn together a fraction, eyes burning, mouth in a tight line with no hint of a smile—made him look twice as dangerous.
And, I had to admit, very pretty, especially with his hair shifting back and forth. That smell of his should have been ludicrous, but it just made me hungry.
I wet my lips with my tongue, a quick nervous flick. “It’s my truck, I’ll drive. You’ll stop making nasty comments to my friend. We’ll all get along until we get out of town, and when we do that you can go back to your Order and Graves and I will be on our way.” The wind shifted again outside, its moan veering toward a crescendo. The yellow-green light made everything look bruised, and a queer ringing under the sound of the wind threatened to fill my ears.
I tasted wax oranges, and my vision wavered for a bare half-second.
Not now, dammit. This is important. I pushed it aside and kept my gaze locked with Christophe’s, daring him.
Once, in this little podunk outside St. Petersburg, we’d run across a huge beast of a dog guarding a place we really needed to get into. Dad didn’t have the touch, but he showed me something else that day. He called it “starin’ down, before the throwin’ down, honey.” It meant just looking at the thing in your way as if it was no bigger than a pea, making up your mind that it wasn’t going to scare you or move you.