He was gone. I stood there, clinging to the stupid sink, every inch of me hurting and hot tears slicking my cheeks. I folded down, rested my hot forehead against the cool smoothness, and that’s how

Benjamin and Shanks found me ten minutes later.

Jealousy

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Shanks leaned against the door, his arms folded. “I guess Graves wanted to surprise you.”

“He didn’t go to class.” Dibs’s fingers were gentle. The blond wulfen smoothed some goop over my

bruised cheek. He’d bandaged and gooped up the rest of me and was now working on my face with

butterfly-light touches. “Hold still. I wish someone would have come and gotten me sooner. I can’t

do much once it starts to get this dark.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. My split lip hurt. All of me hurt. I seemed to have only gotten to the morningafter part of healing—the part where you’re stiff and wish you’d never been born, let alone in a

fight. I didn’t even have the adrenaline rush or the part where you feel like you’ve kicked the

world’s ass.

No, I just felt damaged all over.

“He saw you like that?” Shanks kept repeating it. He pulled the sleeves of his blue cable-knit

sweater up, his large bony wrists exposed. “Man, oh man. Oh, man.”

“I didn’t have a chance to even talk. He got too mad.” I flinched as Dibs started smearing the stuff

on my eyelid. Arnica, he called it. Good for the bruises. I’d’ve preferred Gran’s mugwort and a

bunch of aspirin. “I, uh. You know.” I couldn’t even begin to explain it.

“I don’t wanna be the wulf in his way when something happens to you.” Dibs’s wide blue eyes were

dark and worried. His black medical bag lay open on the bed next to me. He kept wiping the arnica

stuff on his gray T-shirt absently whenever he needed his fingers cleaned. “He’s crazy-mad.”

I could even feel Benjamin outside the door, waiting and worrying. It was Shanks who had argued

him into getting Dibs out of class, and it was Shanks who had shoved him out the door when I got

all girlie and started crying some more. A pile of tissues scattered over the blue carpet, and the particular darkness of 1:00 a.m. filled the window.

I was beginning to wish I’d never gotten out of bed. If I hadn’t, Graves would probably still be here.

It would’ve been nice.

Dibs dabbed at my eye. I hissed in a short sharp breath, and he gave me a quick look of apology.

“You did pretty good,” Shanks said suddenly. “I mean, she’s older. And fully trained. You still

kicked her ass.”

“She’s rusty.” And weedy. I suppressed the urge to shake Dibs’s hands away from my smarting eye.