was going to stab himself. He swore he hadn’t betrayed my mother. And he’d been there, in that

dark room at the werwulfen compound.

If I need a reason now, Dru, it will have to be you.

I trusted him, didn’t I? But he’d left me here. Alone. Again.

Or maybe not alone because Graves was right beside me, thinking. Absorbing what I’d said. That

was one thing I liked about him—you didn’t have to spell anything out for him. He got there on his

own with only a hint or two. But where he ended up this time surprised me. “You don’t seem too

surprised to see another one of you wandering around.”

“She’s not like me.” It came out all in one breath, immediate and insistent. Thin blades of light slid

between the heavy velvet drapes. The windows had steel shutters on the inside, too, just like the

ones at the old Schola. Only these looked more durable, and had a pattern of hearts stamped into

them—and another iron bar I could brace them with, with its brackets sunk into the stone wall.

“Look, Graves . . .” I decided to just keep the Edgar thing to myself for right now. If he’d wanted

me to call him Eddie, he would’ve told me.

“What?” Now he sounded annoyed.

I saw her at the old Schola. She wants me to hate Christophe, and you know . . . I can’t even say

what I’m thinking to myself. “I don’t know what to do.” Admitting it out loud was probably the

scariest thing I’d done in the last week, and that was saying something.

When Dad was alive, I knew what to do. He told me, and he never let me flounder. When he

showed up all zombified, things started spinning hard, but Graves had been there. And as long as I

was focusing on keeping Goth Boy out of trouble, the not-knowing had seemed more manageable.

Plus, I’d been the one with the books and the guns and some knowledge of the Real World. He’d

been a civilian. Now we were both in the same leaky boat, and I didn’t want him to know I had no

idea where we were going.

Graves let out a long breath, closing his eyes. A thin line of dark-brown hair showed at his temples.

Roots. The black-dyed bits were growing out. “Right now we catch some sleep. Then I go find Bobby and Dibs and see what they say. Then we find out how to work that computer and those credit

cards and get you some clothes.” He paused, added an afterthought, glancing at me like he expected

me to disagree. “And me, too.”

It was a pretty good plan, one I should’ve come up with. “But what if . . .” I stopped. The vampires