If my experience of him is any indication, he’s up to no good. He likes impressionable young girls.

A lot of djamphir do. Human women, you know. Svetocha are supposed to be infinitely more attractive, but there are so few of us.” A quiet little laugh. “Just you and me. Don’t you feel special?”

Something curdled in my chest. If I need a reason now, Dru, it will have to be you. But here she was

telling me . . . telling me what?

God, I sure could pick ’em. After a long run of no dating at all, here I was learning all sorts of

things about the boys I liked.

Except I didn’t like Christophe that way, did I? I’d told Graves flat out that I didn’t. That he scared

me in some weird deep-down way.

A change of subject would be a great idea, I decided. It was stuffy in here, and I was sweating. My

ears were beginning to ring. “Why did you come all the way out to that reform Schola to see me?

You could have brought me here.” There was a whole Schola burned down, wulfen and djamphir

dead, and here she was, pretty as a picture and pulling all sorts of strings.

She eyed me like I’d made an embarrassing bodily noise. “I thought the Council was going to bring

you here.” It sounded flat and unconvincing. “We’re still trying to find out how you ended up out in

the boondocks.”

It had the brassy bitter taste of a lie the liar doesn’t really expect you to swallow. Christophe had

tried to send me here to the Prima. Dylan himself had tried to get word out that I was upstate and in

danger.

I stared at her, she stared at me, and I had just opened my mouth to inform her she was lying, when

the outside door flew open hard enough to bang on the walls on either side.

I leapt up, my bag spilling off the couch. Anna laughed. It was a high breathless titter.

Hiro stalked into the room, his aspect on and his fangs out. His gaze made one brief pitiless arc over

everything in sight—Anna lounging, me with crimson cheeks, breathing hard, and probably looking

guilty as hell—and he checked, coming to a complete stop.

Kir trailed behind him. Bruce followed, looking thoughtful. And, once he saw me, palpably relieved.

“Milady.” Again, Hiro made it clear—I wasn’t sure quite how—that he was talking to me. “Forgive

the intrusion.”

I swallowed what felt like a good chunk of my heart. The sense of danger returned, the reek of

waxed oranges bursting on the back of my palate. “Yeah. I, um. There’s a Council meeting?”

“No.” Bruce’s relief turned to perplexity. “But . . . did you want to call one?”

Call one? What the hell for? I shook my head. “No, I . . . wait, there’s no meeting?”