“Milady,” two others echoed. I almost looked behind me to see who the hell they were talking to.

Another hard swallow. It felt like I had a rock in my throat. “I’m here for debriefing.” Great, Dru.

You sound like Minnie Mouse. “If I’m, uh, late, it’s because—”

The one smoking a cigar swept me a bow I’d only seen before in midnight cable historical movies

with really good costume budgets. “It is our pleasure to wait on you, not the other way around.

Come in. Would you care for coffee? Have you had breakfast?”

Or more like dinner, since the Schola runs at night. What the hell? I blinked. “Um. This is the Council, right? Formal, right?”

“Dear child.” This from the Arabic-looking one; he sounded vaguely British. “In here we don’t

stand on ceremony much. And what have you been told of us?”

“I thought . . .” The instinct of secrecy warred with curiosity, and curiosity won out just barely. “I

thought the other svetocha—Anna—was on the Council?”

Silence filled the room. Even the fire hushed itself. The redhead glanced significantly at a skinny

blond in a charcoal-gray suit that looked like it would never even think of wrinkling. The one who

looked Japanese, not just half-Asian like Graves, smoothed the front of his high-collared shirt gray

silk.

“Now, child.” The Arabic-looking one raised his eyebrows, and I had a sudden urge to punch him in

the face if he called me child again. “Where did you hear of that?”

I had to work to unclench my fists and push my shoulders down. Dad said you didn’t hunch while

you were at attention; that was what attention meant. “I saw her. At the other Schola, the reform

school. And Dylan . . .” It hit me again, gulleywide sideways. “Dylan’s probably dead.” I said it like

I’d just figured it out. “They attacked the Schola. They had a Burner. That’s what everyone called it.

A sucker who could set things on fire.”

They were still silent, all staring at me. I kept my hands in my pockets, the switchblade’s hilt slippery from my sweating fingers. The empty place in the middle of my chest was where a ball of unsteady painful rage had been burning for weeks, ever since Dad hadn’t come home that night.

The last night anything was normal for me. Which has never been really what you’d call “normal.”

But it was good enough for me, and right now I was missing it big-time.

Now that hole in my chest was suddenly just that—a hole. Nothing in it but numb darkness. Which

was a relief. “She had red hair,” I offered awkwardly. “The sucker, I mean. The Burner. We only

just got away.”

A ripple ran through them. It was the aspect, the vampire in them coming out. Fangs peeped out