“If I find him I could maybe get him to answer some questions. Good luck with that, though.” It was weird to have someone else bandaging me up. I usually did the first aid for Dad. I remembered patching up August, too, more than once. My shoulders sagged. “Do you have any aspirin, Dibs?”

“Ibuprofen’s probably better. We should ice this.” He still looked troubled, beginning to wrap my wrist. “Shanks doesn’t mean djamphir are bad.”

He was always like that, looking to smooth over everyone’s feelings. Said it was part of being a “sub”—submissive and born that way. The only time I ever saw him with his back up was when he was bandaging someone.

“She knows what I mean, Dibsie.” A cold breeze touched the dark wulf’s hair, mouthed at his sweater. “I never thought I’d miss reform school.” He played with the curtains, his fingers flicking at the velvet. Took a deep lungful of night air, rolling it around in his mouth like champagne. “Huh.”

Dibs glanced up. His hands paused, the Ace bandage half-wrapped. His eyes widened, and he sniffed, too.

Tension threaded through my aching muscles. I couldn’t smell anything but my own snot, since I’d been crying so hard. “What?”

Shanks cocked his head. It reminded me of the RCA dog on some of Gran’s ancient record sleeves when he did that. “Dunno. Just . . . smells unsettled. Could be you, though. Whenever you get upset, the spice comes out.”

“Spice?” This conversation was getting better and better.

“You smell like cinnamon rolls,” Dibs volunteered helpfully. “All svetocha are supposed to smell different—some flowery, some spicy. It’s pretty strong on you. They smell that way whether or not they’ve fed.”

“Whoa. Back up. I smell?” Heat rose up from my throat, touched my bruised cheeks. Blushing again. At least I wasn’t sobbing like a baby.

All things considered, I was doing pretty well. I might earn my tough-girl card back if this kept up. But ouch. I didn’t want to earn it this way.

“It’s not an insult!” Dibs sounded half-panicked. “He’s not saying you’re a—”

“Just chill.” Shanks stood in the window. “I’m not saying you’re a glutter.”

“A what? You know about me, Shanks. Give me a vowel or something.” I mean, I was learning by leaps and bounds, and I’d known about the Real World pretty much all my life, but what Dad and I had been able to piece together was nothing compared to everything the Order had. Things even a baby werwulf would take for granted were news to me.

The blond werwulf finished wrapping my wrist, with prissy exactitude. “A glutter’s a djamphir who drinks like the vampires do. It makes them stronger. But they’re not supposed to do it. And we can smell them, glutters.”

I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this. “But I’ve never—”

“Svetocha smell because they’re, um, when they get to puberty, they . . . ” Dibs looked over his shoulder. Shanks said nothing, but his shoulders quivered slightly.

Was he laughing?

Dibs gathered himself. He started cleaning up the detritus of used first-aid supplies on the bed. “When they’re, you know, fertile. They start smelling good. Glutters smell, too, like candy. Something about metabolizing the hemo. You can’t tell if a girl djamphir is a glutter, but you can tell if a boy is.”

“Oh.” I checked the wrist wrapping. If I blushed any harder, my skin would probably combust. And now I was wondering why Christophe smelled like apple pies baking, but none of the other djamphir boys did. Was he . . . did he actually . . . “I didn’t know about that.”

“I thought Graves’d be back by now. He had a lot of mad to run off, but still.” Shanks had apparently decided it was time to move on from Teaching Dru About Stuff She Should Know Anyway. “If he’s still off-campus by dawn it’ll be bad for him. But, still, he’s your problem. Or so they think. They might overlook it.”

“He was really mad,” I offered inadequately. “You said something about ibuprofen, Dibs?”

“Have you eaten anything?” He had a huge double handful of Band-Aid wrappers, cotton balls, and an empty tube of arnica ointment. “Because if you haven’t—”

“Give her the goddamn Advil, Dibs. Jesus.” Shanks leaned out, testing the wind, and I had a sudden, vivid mental image of him falling. The windowsill hit him right in the middle of his quads, and all it would take was a good shove. There wasn’t even any screen to hold him back. “She looks like she needs it.”

Dibs shrugged and headed for the bathroom to toss everything. The water turned on in there. He was fanatical about washing his hands after bandaging. I thought about offering him a T-shirt, since his was all smeared with arnica.

I watched Shanks nervously.

A few weeks ago I didn’t even know these guys, and now here I was worried one of them would fall out a window and hurt himself. I didn’t even know if that drop would injure a wulf. They can do some amazing things. “Be careful there, okay? There’s no screen on the window.”

“I was just noticing that. Seems weird, though. The other ones all have screens.” He bent over, braced his hands on the sill. Even so, he looked poised instead of hunched. “Looks like this one had one until recently. There’s scratch marks here, too.”

It hasn’t had a screen since I moved in. My throat was dry. I hurt all over, and suddenly I just wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over my head. “Do you think he’ll come back?” My voice sounded very small. The bed was soft, and to hell with climbing into it—I decided I wouldn’t mind climbing under it and hiding for awhile.

“Graves? Yeah. He just needs to run off the rage.” Shanks shrugged. “He’d come back to a burning house for you. Did it once already.” He turned on his sneaker heel and stalked for the bathroom.

“What do you mean, he came back?” I remembered the Schola burning, and I remembered Christophe dragging me out. But Graves—

“He was the one who made us go back to pick you and Christophe up. We would have been hell and gone if not for him.” The bathroom door shut, and Shanks said something I couldn’t hear over the plashing of water.

Every inch of me ached. My heart hurt worst of all. I was beginning to think it was normal to feel like it was being pulled out of your chest all the time. The toilet flushed after a little while, but at least the wulfen were tactful. Whatever they were arguing about, they were doing it quietly. Dibs sounded worried, Shanks determined.

I pushed myself off the edge of the bed, made my legs straighten. Got my hoodie on, zipped it up. Stood swaying for a few moments. The sleeping bag was neatly rolled up and pushed against the night table on this side, and his pillow was tossed back up on the bed. Graves’s T-shirts, including the “velociraptor with a light saber” one—which he’d looked pleased over—were still hanging up in the closet, half of the drawers in the huge antique dresser holding them as well. I’d gotten used to the sound of his breathing in the room with mine. Ever since Dad had shown up dead but still walking, Graves had been the one person I could depend on.

What exactly was I afraid of?

The same thing I was always afraid of, I guess. That I’d be left behind somewhere—like in the hospital corridor after Gran died, just repeating over and over again that Dad was coming, that he would know what to do, that he was on his way, and hoping like hell it was true.

Dad had shown back up and taken care of everything, but I was always afraid one day he wouldn’t. And one day . . . he hadn’t quite come back. Shambling into your kitchen as a zombie and trying to kill your daughter doesn’t really qualify as a grand return.

And Graves . . . he was thinking I was like his mother, or something? Had he just decided I was too much trouble to deal with? Or what? Shanks said he’d come back once he got rid of the anger. That’s what wulfen do—they run it off.