“Other than hexing my teacher and having the world stop like a movie on pause?” I shrugged. “I’ve always been weird. My grandmother called it “the touch”. It’s gotten stronger. But all of this is weird, even for me.”

“That’s saying something.” Graves took a huge slurp, made a low half-swallowed belching sound, and I was surprised into laughing. He gave his own peculiar painful laugh, too, and I felt a lot better.

Christophe studied us, his face shut like a book. “Then you’re close to blooming, Dru. Becoming a full svetocha.” He blew across the top of his mug. “I wish I knew. . . .”

Blooming? I let Mom’s quilt slip down a little. My hands were warmer now. “You wish you knew what? We’re in a sharing space right now; you might as well ask.” Graves bumped me back with his thin shoulder, and the urge to laugh hit me again. You know how it can just suddenly bubble up at the most inappropriate times? Like you’re just sitting there, and a thought hits you sideways, or the absurdity of the world just smacks you out of nowhere and you have to swallow a giggle?

Yeah. Like that. I swallowed the sound; it stuck in my throat and threatened to turn into a belch. My shoulder burned dully, and my back was stiff. Getting knocked around and having someone lying on top of you doesn’t do much for back pain.

“I wish I knew how your father thought he was going to train you or hide you long enough for you to survive into adulthood. Among other things.” Christophe sighed, and set down his mug with a click. “I’ll be in the living room.”

And just like that, he walked away. He moved down the hall like he knew the house better than I did, and a few seconds later the formless mutter of the television blurred through the hiss of snow.

“I don’t like him,” Graves half-whispered.

“You already said that.” I took another scalding gulp of hot milk and sugar. There isn’t even any real cocoa in this. It’s all just artificial flavor. For a moment I thought about Gran’s hot chocolate and I wished, suddenly and fiercely, that I was five years old and safe again. And then I thought of Gran always washing the floors with herb mixes meant to keep evil away, and I wondered how safe I’d really been. “I’ll call August tomorrow.”

“Then what?”

How the hell should I know? But I did. I finished swallowing and leaned against the counter, watching the pattern of whirling white outside the window. “Then I’m going to find out everything I can about this Sergej guy. If Chris is right, and he killed my dad . . .” I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat.

Graves didn’t think much of the notion, even half-formed and unstated. “Then what? If he’s right and they’ve been chasing him for so long, what the hell are we going to do?”

We? But I suppose it never occurred to Graves that he might want to sit out whatever was going to happen next.

No. Of course it hadn’t occurred to him. I’d thought of ditching him more times than I could count, and I suddenly felt like a complete asshole for it.

My chest felt funny, tight and warm at the same time. “My dad wasn’t a dumbass. He taught me a lot. Maybe he taught me something these guys don’t know.” Dru, you’re lying.

But what else could I do? If Christophe was telling the truth, this Sergej guy—those cold insect feet walked up my back again—turned my dad into a zombie. You don’t just forgive something like that, do you?

But I was just a kid, and I was seriously out of my depth here. I’d shot a werwulf, yeah, and done a lot of running away. And I’d found the truck, but that was more Gran’s owl than me.

If this was a game, I was losing pretty badly. I should probably get the hell out of the stadium while I was still alive.

“Oh.” Graves’s shoulder bumped mine again, hot milk slopping inside my cup. Warmth stole back into my fingers and toes, finally.

Still . . . “But maybe these Order guys could teach me something too. And you. There’s got to be something good in being stuck on superhero, right?”

He sighed heavily. “If it makes me fall asleep and then wake up craving two whole greasy pepperoni pizzas, man, I don’t know.”

I actually laughed, cupping my mouth in my hand to keep it down.

“I noticed something, too.” Graves didn’t even crack a smile, and motioned toward the living room. “He’s not answering your questions, really. I mean, not completely. Not like he doesn’t have something to hide, you dig?”

I guess not. “If he is who he says he is, he’s got reasons not to.” But I met Graves’s eyes, and we stared at each other for ten seconds or so, the meaningful type of stare that can happen when you know someone and eye-talk is more efficient than spending a half-hour stumbling with words. Snow slid against the window, and a thread of cool draft touched my cheek. I was going to have to put a real back door on soon, even with the almost-enclosed porch out there.

Graves shrugged. “If you say so.” I still don’t trust him, his green eyes said. There was hardly any hazel left, and the contrast was startling against caramel skin. Seen in profile, his nose looked proud instead of just too damn big for his face. When he shivered a little and hunched his shoulders, I had the sudden urge to put my arm and Mom’s quilt around him, and just stay there for a while.

The thought made me feel warmer, but I didn’t do it. Instead, I finished my hot chocolate. It was still too hot, but it didn’t feel like liquid lava going down. “I’m going back to bed.”

“Why don’t you call this August guy now?” Graves hunched his shoulders even further.

“Because it’s nighttime in New York, and if it’s night, he’s out hunting.” I shuffled around the breakfast bar and put my mug in the sink. “Hey, Graves?”

“What?” Cautious, his shoulders still hunched.

He must be used to people trying to get rid of him, I thought, and the sharp jab of pain that ran through me twisted all the way down. “Thanks. You got that thing off me, right?”

He stared into his hot chocolate like it held the secret to the universe. “Yeah, well, the window was open and it was really cold.”

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? But then I realized what he meant. It even called a creaking, half-painful smile to my face, and the last of the cold and goose bumps flushed away on a wave of welcome heat.

No problem, Dru. First one’s free.

As soon as I woke up the next morning, grainy-eyed and feeling like I’d been beaten with a lead pipe, I stumbled downstairs and ate some cereal standing up. Graves got up while I was doing that, took one long look at me, and headed for the living room. I heard him say something to Christophe, and they both went out the front door.

The smell of apple pies didn’t quite fill the house, but it was there, a thread under everything else. It was kind of hard to take Christophe seriously when he smelled like baked goods. I wondered if other djamphir smelled like Hostess Twinkies and sniggered to myself.

Then I remembered Christophe kneeling in the snow with a shotgun to his shoulder, facing down a streak-headed wulf and all but laughing, and the sniggers dried up.

I yawned and padded to the chipped yellow plastic phone attached to the wall. There was one number, at least, that I had memorized, because it was so easy. And, well, you don’t forget a guy who can snap a flame off his fingers while other guys could only flick boogers. Especially not when you spend a month in his apartment while he’s out with your dad, dealing with a demonic rat infestation.

And another month while your dad is off doing who-knows-what, coming back all beat-up and scary looking. August liked my omelets, and I must’ve cooked hundreds of them for him.