from under top lips, their hair ran with highlights or darkened, and I was suddenly uncomfortably

reminded of how strong, fast, and dangerous these guys were.

And here I was with only a silver-loaded switchblade. But I’d come this far; I wasn’t about to let a

bunch of half-vampires scare me.

Well, not much anyway.

Not so you could see it.

“Let me see if I understand you correctly,” the Arab said. His eyes now burned like live coals, and

his hair rippled with a slight wave, inky black streaks slipping through the very dark brown. “You

have seen the Lady Anna? At a . . . satellite Schola? Where you were until a very few days ago?”

I nodded. “Christophe meant for me to come here. I don’t know how I ended up there, but they

seemed to have been expecting me. But then Dylan found out nobody knew I was there—he said

something about a blackout node—and the . . . the . . .” I ran out of words. Regained them. “Haven’t

you heard all this before?”

“Not precisely. The wulfen knew very little, and the Broken could not be questioned.” Arabian Boy

glanced at the others. “And Reynard is, as is his custom, nowhere to be found when questions are

asked. So. Come and be seated. Would you care for breakfast?”

My stomach growled at the notion. “No thanks. I’ll catch something in the caf later.” I figured that

was polite enough.

“Are you certain?” The aspect retreated, turning him into a very handsome guy in his early twenties,

but with very old eyes. I was suddenly very sure this guy was even older than Christophe. It shows

somewhere back in the pupils, and all of them had that uncanny stillness I’d only seen in older

djamphir.

And in Christophe. Jesus. I was trying not to think about him because each time I did it either sent a

flood of heat or a bucket of ice through me. My internal thermostat was wiggy in a big way. And the

marks on my wrist were scabbed over and healing, but they had some funny ideas of their own.

At least when I thought about Christophe, the hole in my chest seemed manageable. Not smaller,

but easier to deal with. Like being with Graves made all this seem like something I could possibly

handle, as long as he was standing there giving me that whatcha gonna do, Dru? look.

I caught the way they were all looking at me, and a childhood spent with Gran’s strict rules about

“bein’ neighborlike” rose up inside me. When you dirt poor, manners is what you got, she would always say. So use ’em. “If you’re all eating, I wouldn’t mind a bite.” I almost cringed as soon as I

said it. I mean, in a room with a bunch of half-vampires and I say bite?