Reckoning Page 0,72
open behind him, and did a strange thing.
Graves crouched, right inside the door. He laid his hands flat on the floor and looked at me, and his eyes were back to green. My heart hammered. He even smelled right—a stray breath from the hall brought me a tang of moonsilver wildness and strawberry incense over the dry-fur nastiness of vampires. The bone buttons on his shirt glowed a little, and he looked . . . feral.
Dangerous.
Heat prickled in my eyes. I watched him, braced against the wall, heart thundering.
“He’s asleep,” Graves finally whispered. “Thinks he has me down. Like a good little dog.”
The rock in my throat moved. I made a sound.
“Dru.” He stared at me. A muscle in his cheek flicked. It hit me again, how different he was from the gawky, bird-thin, almost-ugly Goth Boy who’d bought me a cheeseburger and saved my life in a hundred ways ever since. Maybe they weren’t overt, like Christophe’s, but they were just as real. “Say something.”
Yeah, sure. Like I had a whole list of things just lying around to say. My mouth opened. “Ash? Shanks? Dibs?”
He flinched as if I’d hit him. “Dibs is here. The others . . . I don’t know.”
I let out a shaky breath and settled for the obvious. “How do we get out of here?” I even sounded halfway normal, instead of scared out of my mind.
He twitched a little, and the green glow in his irises dimmed for a moment. His whole body tensed, shoulders hunching and the clarity of the change blooming around him. The Other shone out for a brief moment, and sweat sprang up on his caramel skin. Under his coloring, he was pale. A shudder wracked him, and he dug his fingers into the stone like he was going to start kneading bread.
“Dru.” As if reminding himself who I was. “You gotta trust me.”
I don’t have a whole hell of a lot of options. I nodded. Curls fell in my face. “Okay.”
That brought up a ghost of a smile. It wasn’t anything close to my Goth Boy, but it made me feel a hell of a lot better. Relieved, even. My arms and legs actually went weak for a second, and I sagged against the wall.
He stared at me for another long moment. “They’ve got him. Reynard. Christophe.”
I actually gulped. “Is he—”
“Alive. Thought I’d warn you. It’s pretty bad. But you gotta trust me, Dru. I’m Broken, but . . . please.”
“I already said okay.” The urge to roll my eyes was incredibly strong. “Graves—”
“Never figured out why you did.” He hunched even further. “Tell me. Now, while I can hear you. Why did you even . . . why me?”
For a second I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Then it hit me.
If I had a chance to tell him something, this was it. And it couldn’t be like all the other times, when everything I ever wanted to say to him jammed up in my chest like a ball of snarled yarn and I ended up spitting out something so stupid it made me cringe for days afterward to even think about it.
Make it count, Dru. I searched for the words. And, wonder of wonders, they came.
“Because you’re brave,” I told him. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. Because you didn’t walk off when it looked like I was in trouble. Because you stuck around even though the Real World’s scary and Ash bit you. Because you made everyone come back to that first Schola while it was burning, to get me out. Because you came back the last time we tangoed with him.” With Sergej, I meant, and Graves shuddered. Hurry up. The words tumbled out over each other, faster and faster. “Because I get you. I like your jokes and I like you and I feel like I can handle anything when you’re around. Because . . .” I took a deep breath and took the plunge. “Because you’re beautiful and I love you. Even if you drive me up the goddamn wall with the back-and-forth and not wanting to be my boyfriend or anything. Okay? That’s why. Because you’re a rock, Graves. You’re a total . . . rock.”
Oh, crap. I started out good and ended up lame. Story of my life.
Graves crouched there, looking at me. His face worked like the gears behind it had gotten snarled. His eyes flamed green, and the high-voltage humming going through him was so