has a lightsaber! screaming across it. It made me laugh into my cupped hand, trying to keep it muffled because Graves was muttering a little bit and stirring in the bed. Plus a few plain black ones,

large-size athletic fit, not medium, in case he kept bulking up the way he had been. Becoming loupgarou had made him way broader in the shoulders.

I knew his sizes from shopping at the other Schola. Before he went out with the wulfen and got kitted out, that was. Maybe they’d do it for him here, but just in case I got him socks and more boxerbriefs, too. He seemed like a tighty-whitey kind of kid when I met him, but I guess that had

changed.

I was just sitting there, wondering whether or not to get him an athletic cup—you know, for sparring and stuff, but I had to weigh the embarrassment factor in—when there was a knock at the door.

A nice polite three raps, a pause, two more taps.

What now?

My mother’s locket cooled abruptly, icy metal against my skin. I pushed myself up from the office

chair. It squeaked a little bit, sliding across one of those hard plastic pads they put down to save carpets from the rollers. Then it hit me, and I froze, hunched halfway over.

Oranges and wax. Sliding across my tongue, reaching and touching that place at the back of my

throat where the bloodhunger lived, right next to the place ordinary people don’t have. The little

spot that warns me when danger or weirdness is right around the corner.

I glanced at the bed. Graves lay on his side, curled up as if I was still there, hugging my pillow. I

swallowed hard, though I didn’t want to with that taste in my mouth. Hooked my fingers around the

switchblade and straightened.

I felt ridiculous. It was probably a teacher or something. Or Shanks, or even Benjamin.

You know it’s not, Dru. Don’t you dare open that door.

The warding’s thin blue lines came into view inside my head, seen with the queer non-sight I didn’t

realize other people didn’t have until I was about ten years old. I can remember the moment, too.

I’d come home crying from the valley school because the kids had been picking on me, and Gran’s

mouth had clamped together like a vise. Her disapproval hit me like a wave, and I’d had to admit

that if I wanted the kids to tolerate me I shouldn’t have been listening to their little secrets with that

muscle inside my head even if I thought everyone could do the same thing and just didn’t let on.

The problem wasn’t actually knowing. It was letting them know I knew.

People hate that. They hate it because they fear it. There are places in America where . . . but never