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and she was so damn organized she could have given any Marine sergeant a run for their money. And I had to admit, it was nice to have a girl around.
    One who wasn’t trying to kill me, that is. I’ve never had close girlfriends. Why bother, with Dad and me moving so much?
    Christophe had actually argued me into having someone else around. I would not choose one who couldn’t be trusted. You’ll enjoy it. It will help me worry less.
    That was the big argument, trotted out whenever he wanted to mushroom-cloud me into something. I let out another long heave of a sigh and felt the night’s tension slip away from me. It was in the long dead stretch between three and four a.m., quiet time. Just like the shoal between three and six in the afternoon, when everyone in the hot part of the world is taking a siesta.
    The Schola is oddly reversed. Nights were our days, because sunlight is safer to sleep in. My body clock was adjusting slowly. Sixteen and a half years of being diurnal is a hard habit to shake.
    “You have such beautiful hair.” Nathalie lifted a handful of it. “These highlights. My God. You’d look great with a shorter, layered cut . . .”
    I glanced up at the pair of maliaka hanging in a leather harness next to the vanity. They’d been my mother’s, and they were beautiful. I didn’t know where the ones Shanks had handed me had come from. “No way.” Gran would kill me. It was a habitual, instinctive thought. I hadn’t had more than a trim in years . “If it’s short, it ends up in my face all the time. Eating hair is so not cool.”
    She rolled her cat-tilted, beautifully expressive eyes. “That’s what product is for. You kill me, you really kill me. Hey, I think we should paint your nails. Not pink, though. I’m thinking a dark red, because your skin tone—”
    I shivered. “Not red. Besides, I don’t have time.” I glanced at the mirror. Her skin was perfect, poreless, and her sleek dark hair, parted on the side, looked like she’d just stepped out of the salon.
    I, on the other hand, was a mess of reddish-purple bruising, scrapes, tumbled tangled hair, and red spots high on my cheeks as if I had a fever. My eyes were shadowed, darker than their usual blue, as if I was thinking of something serious. And that line between my eyebrows was back. Gran would’ve called it an I-want line.
    I tried to make my face look like I wasn’t Thinking About Unpleasant Things.
    Her nose wrinkled. “You make time for self-care, Mil—ah, Dru. Jeez.” The brush worked through my hair, slipping through the curls as if they always behaved. They did for her. It was like my hair was a traitor. She’d worked all the way up to the roots, and now started on another section.
    I had to admit it was kind of nice. Like Gran brushing before she braided me up at night. Soothing.
    I held up my hand. The pavement had erased skin all the way up my forearm. I was lucky I’d stopped bleeding by the time the boy djamphir showed up to bundle me in an SUV and get me out of the way. I’d been scabbed over good by then, thank God. Once I bloomed, I’d heal like they do—on fast-forward, shaking off damage like a duck’s back sheds rainwater.
    Right now, though, I was stuck with sucky human healing times.
    “Ouch.” Nathalie was all sympathy. “Good thing you’re not going to scar.”
    Christophe has scars. Heat rose in my cheeks again. “Yeah, that’d be a bitch,” I mumbled.
    “It must burn them that the wulfen got there first. I hear the teams who managed to get inside the club were swarmed. Fifteen nosferat . Thank God the one after you was . . .”
    “Young and sloppy?” Fifteen of them? Christ. I shivered. I’d only seen six. “Christophe was too tactful to say it.”
    “It’d be the first time he’s been that.” She grinned. Flash of white teeth. “I heard it was a young one you got, but plenty vicious.”
    “How do you hear these things?” But I knew. Shanks liked her. He got all weird when she was