Dibs gathered himself. He started cleaning up the detritus of used first-aid supplies on the bed.

“When they’re, you know, fertile. They start smelling good. Glutters smell, too, like candy. Something about metabolizing the hemo. You can’t tell if a girl djamphir is a glutter, but you can tell if a

boy is.”

“Oh.” I checked the wrist wrapping. If I blushed any harder, my skin would probably combust. And

now I was wondering why Christophe smelled like apple pies baking, but none of the other djamphir boys did. Was he . . . did he actually . . . “I didn’t know about that.”

“I thought Graves’d be back by now. He had a lot of mad to run off, but still.” Shanks had apparently decided it was time to move on from Teaching Dru About Stuff She Should Know Anyway. “If

he’s still off-campus by dawn it’ll be bad for him. But, still, he’s your problem. Or so they think.

They might overlook it.”

“He was really mad,” I offered inadequately. “You said something about ibuprofen, Dibs?”

“Have you eaten anything?” He had a huge double handful of Band-Aid wrappers, cotton balls, and

an empty tube of arnica ointment. “Because if you haven’t—”

“Give her the goddamn Advil, Dibs. Jesus.” Shanks leaned out, testing the wind, and I had a sudden, vivid mental image of him falling. The windowsill hit him right in the middle of his quads, and

all it would take was a good shove. There wasn’t even any screen to hold him back. “She looks like

she needs it.”

Dibs shrugged and headed for the bathroom to toss everything. The water turned on in there. He

was fanatical about washing his hands after bandaging. I thought about offering him a T-shirt, since

his was all smeared with arnica.

I watched Shanks nervously.

A few weeks ago I didn’t even know these guys, and now here I was worried one of them would fall

out a window and hurt himself. I didn’t even know if that drop would injure a wulf. They can do

some amazing things. “Be careful there, okay? There’s no screen on the window.”

“I was just noticing that. Seems weird, though. The other ones all have screens.” He bent over,

braced his hands on the sill. Even so, he looked poised instead of hunched. “Looks like this one had

one until recently. There’s scratch marks here, too.”

It hasn’t had a screen since I moved in. My throat was dry. I hurt all over, and suddenly I just wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over my head. “Do you think he’ll come back?” My

voice sounded very small. The bed was soft, and to hell with climbing into it—I decided I wouldn’t

mind climbing under it and hiding for awhile.