It was ridiculous. Here was where I should have been safest, with a bunch of djamphir and werwulfen trained or training to fight the suckers off. And the Council were the bosses of the Order,

right? And the Order wanted me alive because I was girl djamphir. Rare enough that there were only Anna and me, and Christophe telling me I was precious.

“Anna is . . . difficult. She is the head of the Council, head of the Order, the only svetocha we’ve

managed to save for years upon years. She’s used to a certain amount of deference.” One shoulder

lifted and dropped, a shrug. “You have friends here. But still . . . be careful.”

Be careful about what? “I’m always careful,” I mumbled. The soft wingbeats receded, and the taste

of breakfast fought with wax oranges over my tongue. “Well, nearly always.”

“Be more than careful, then, Milady Anderson.” The huge iron-bound door ghosted open as soon as

Hiro got near it. “Be vigilant.”

I could have asked him what he meant, but my bladder was about to explode. And I had a funny

feeling I wouldn’t get anything but cryptic Christophe-style answers out of him anyway. So I nodded, tried not to notice how relieved Benjamin looked or the thundercloud on Graves’s face, and got

the hell out of there.

“Standing out in the goddamn hall with half-vampires. Jesus.” Graves stalked to my window. It was

a bright sunny day, early enough in the morning for birds to be singing, and in the garden my room

overlooked, everything was green with springtime. “Supercilious bastards. What took you so long?”

“I had to tell the whole story.” I headed straight for the bathroom. Tiled in deep blue with brass fixtures and a tub deep enough to drown a werwulf in, it was acres of uneasy space. I almost wanted to

turn on the faucet to drown out the Grand Canyon echo of a severely abused bladder.

A few minutes later and several pounds lighter, I dug in my battered black messenger bag for a

comb and came out to find him lying across my bed, fingers laced behind his head and the curtains

mostly drawn.

The room was twice as big as the one at the other Schola, and in blue as well. Carpet you could lose

quarters in, empty bookshelves with a few antique brass knickknacks—one of them was a small

brass tortoise heavy enough to chuck at an intruder if you didn’t mind killing someone by tchotchke

—but no marble busts, thank God. The bed was king-size, princess-and-pea deep, and in a weird

frame swathed with blue gauze. It looked like a fairy was going to choke to death in there at any

second.

There was a high-end computer I hadn’t bothered to turn on yet and three credit cards lying in paper

sleeves on the rosewood desk next to the keyboard, all registered to Sunrise Ltd. A typed sheet with