Not to mention I wanted a chance to sit down and think about this. He could just be shining me on, true. But . . .

Yeah, but. The most horrible little word in the English language. I hate that word. It just means something else is going to go wrong, or the shit is going to get deeper.

And it was deep enough already.

“You don’t listen very well. You’re in danger, Dru. Whatever you’ve seen up to now is a cakewalk compared to what’s just around the bend. Word is out that Anderson’s dead, and Sergej’s looking for anyone he left behind—which means they’re starting to suspect there was someone left behind. A secret your mother kept.” His knuckles were still white around the bloody washcloth, and he was staring somewhere over my left shoulder so intently I almost looked to see what was looming behind me. “And here you are, running around with a loup-garou and ignoring all kinds of good advice.”

Loup-garou, another word for werwulf. I stored the term away. I could find something out about that; it was time to hit the books like it was going out of style. “So this Sergej guy. He’s a sucker, and he killed my father?” It was kind of hard to talk through all the rushing noise in my head.

The same noise I heard when I woke up a few mornings ago and found the world had twisted off its course and deposited me in a nightmare. The noise that was behind the word gone. Another little word I hate.

“I don’t know if killed is the precise term. He likes to break them before he sends them into the afterlife. Your father might even be alive, for all we know.” A millimeter’s worth of change went through his face, those perfectly carved lips compressing slightly, and I was suddenly, instinctively aware he didn’t even believe it himself.

So you don’t know. You’re guessing just as much as I am. It was a relief to start thinking logically again. I blinked hard, twice, trying to put everything together inside my head. “So what the hell are you doing here?”

“I suppose you could say I represent those who think you’re precious. I told you, I’m your new guardian angel. Aren’t you glad?” A wide, sunny smile broke out over his face. It would have been attractive if it hadn’t been so downright freakish. Like a Halloween mask.

Some angel. Yeah, I’m just warm all the way through. “Precious? For what?”

“Djamphir are always male. If they breed with human women, they rarely have female offspring. When they do, those females are svetocha. The svetocha are fertile sometimes; their sons are strong, but their daughters—doubly rare as they are—are stronger. They always breed true when they throw a female.” He paused, cocked his head, and took a good deep sniff. I wondered if he could smell pies too. “I’m good, yes. I’m strong by virtue of my blood. But with the proper training, Dru, you can become toxic to nosferat. You can become capable of killing them just by breathing in their vicinity. Once you bloom.”

Yeah, and I’ll put on a cape and spandex, and fly to the moon, too. “Wait. Hold on just one cotton-pickin’ minute. You’re telling me I’m part sucker?” I shook my head hard, my hair actually flying. “Sure. Tell me another fairy tale.” My mom was my mom. She wasn’t a sucker, goddamn you. I know she wasn’t.

“You know better than most how true some fairy tales are.” He scanned the kitchen slowly. His eyes were so blue, and they roved over every surface like he owned the place. “Can I have a glass of water? Rolling in the snow with a new loup-garou is thirsty work.”

Yeah, it’s water you want? I saw your fangs, buddy boy. I pointed with my free hand, kept the gun trained on him. “Glasses are up there. How do I know you’re what you say you are?” Or that anything you’re telling me is anything close to the truth?

See, that was the thing. None of this could be true.

So why was I still listening to him?

He half-shrugged, a single graceful lift of one shoulder. “I’m out during the day. You shot me the other night—that hurt, by the way—and I bleed red, as you verified not ten minutes ago. I can smell the difference on you and on your pet upstairs—and I saved your life. Aren’t those enough reasons, or do you need more?” He got a glass down, moving silently except for the squeak of the cupboard. “I could have killed you both, you know. You’re laughably untrained.”

I’ve been doing this all my life. Still, it might be worth it to find out how he did a few things. Like standing on snow without leaving footprints. That would be a good skill to have.

What if his spiel about djamphir was true? I strained my memory, but couldn’t drag up anything. Nothing but the movies, and while they might be better training than you’d think, they’re also not as specific or thorough as a good book.

But what really happened to Mom?—I shut that thought down in a hurry. I didn’t want to think it.

I didn’t want to think about it at all. There was too much else to get out of the way before I could even begin.

It sounded like this Christophe knew more about the Real World than I did. His number had been in Dad’s book—but without the mark that meant he was safe. He was still a contact, and—here was the magic thing—he might actually be useful.

I hated thinking about it that way. Just like I hated thinking about how useless Graves was, though to give him credit, he’d tried.

What did I want? Was it worth keeping this guy around?

Did I even have a choice? I had the gun now, but I had the sneaking suspicion Christophe was letting me keep it. I had another suspicion, too—if he could smell something on Graves, or something on me, he could probably smell the zombie stain in the living room. Why wasn’t he saying anything about that, friends and neighbors?

The rushing in my head was really bad. It covered up other sounds I didn’t want to hear—tapping on a window, the soft wump! of flames sprouting along a broad hairy back, or the terrible howls of a streak-headed werwulf. This was getting to be too much for me.

I was pretty much at the mercy of whatever this guy decided to do anyway. Wasn’t it just this morning I’d been resigning myself to him killing me?

“So what’s it going to be?” Christophe asked, as if he could read my mind. The spaces between his words were odd, as if he had some sort of weird American accent. I’ve heard just about everything on the continent, but I couldn’t place it. “You’re going to have to trust someone, Dru.”

I’m thinking I trust Graves, even if he is seriously wigging me out with this growling and leaping around thing. I’m thinking you’re lying about my mother.

Why bring her up at all, though? Dad didn’t talk about her, even to August. He just never mentioned it. How could this guy know anything about her?

I had other things to worry about. I’m thinking I don’t trust you until I know why you want to be so helpful.

But it was, I had to admit it, comforting. He was a professional. He’d taken care of the streak-headed werwulf and chased it off, and could obviously handle himself. Having someone else in my corner, someone more experienced who knew more than I did, wasn’t something to be sneezed at.

Wasn’t that what I’d been wishing for? And now here he was in my kitchen. Smelling like apple pies and looking at me with a direct seriousness that made him even cuter. The bruising spreading up the side of his face had halted, and under it he was very pretty. Not jock-pretty, or the hurtful kind of pretty that tells you a guy is too busy taking care of his royal self to think about you.

No, his face just worked. Everything in proportion, the artist in me noted. Except the sharpness of his chin and that shadow in his eyes. Like he knew more than he was telling.