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around.
    Her face scrunched up. “The air itself brings me messages.” A low sepulchral moan. “Ooooooo-OOOO-oooh!”
    I snorted, laughing into my cupped hand. She kept brushing my hair, the strokes turning long once she had all the tangles out.
    “Now, a braid in this, and we’ll settle you down. I’ve sent for some hot milk. Just the thing to soothe the nerves.” Soft and pleasant, her fingers slipping through the curls just as the brush did. The brush was an antique. Silver-backed, probably Victorian. I wondered if it had been my mother’s too, like the malaika .
    After dawn there would be a golden flood of sun through the skylights, spilling over the shelves and the mellow glow of the wood floor. The books were hers, and the bed had been hers, too.
    I didn’t mind. Sometimes I would take the books off the shelves and flip through them. Some had notations in the margins, faded schoolgirl’s handwriting in blue ink. They were textbooks and studies of Real World things, and all of them were mine now.
    After so many years of having nothing of Mom’s but a photograph in Dad’s wallet and a Holstein cow cookie jar, it was a little overwhelming. I was missing all Dad’s and my old stuff, but having my mother’s things . . . it was nice, and not so nice, all at the same time. Because it was like with all her things around me, I wasn’t the same girl who had traveled around with Dad. I was someone else. Maybe who I could have been if she hadn’t died.
    If she hadn’t been killed.
    Nathalie’s fingers were quick and deft. She had the whole mess braided in a minute and a half, and her braids didn’t come out the way mine did. No, when she did it, it stayed . Just one of her many talents. I could almost hate her for it, if she wasn’t so cool otherwise.
    There was a knock at the door. Nathalie let the braid fall. On the way across the room she drew her nice little baby Glock, keeping it low and ready. She sniffed, too, audibly, as she glided on soft bare feet.
    Even when she opened the door, her shoulders didn’t relax.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    “Room service,” Christophe said pleasantly. “You take good care of her, Skyrunner.”
    “It’s what I’m here for.” Nathalie slid the gun back in its holster and took the tray. “Do you seek admittance to the lady’s presence, Reynard?”
    “Do I dare?” He grinned, rueful, and I touched the vanity’s painted surface. Ran my fingers over the heavy silver comb, the wooden box holding tissues. It felt like sacrilege to set any of my stuff on here. “If the lady is so disposed, mademoiselle .”
    “That’s right, you mind your manners.” Nathalie turned smartly on her heel and marched away. “Lock the door, will you? Here, Dru. Your hot milk. And look, sugar cookies. The kitchen thinks you deserve a treat.”
    “Sugar cookies?” That perked me right up. Milk and cookies, like I was five years old again. I didn’t mind, tonight. It was actually . . . soothing. To think I was safe here, finally. At last.
    “I think chocolate chip might’ve been a better choice, but the kitchen apparently had other ideas.” Nat grinned, a flash of white teeth.
    “I’m not even going to ask who does the cooking.” I always wondered, though. What was behind that mask of billowing steam that hid the kitchen’s interior?
    “You don’t want to know.” Christophe slid the door shut. “The Broken is bedded down for the night. He’s amazingly amenable. All Robert has to do is invoke your name, and he follows like a lamb.”
    Shanks had been slowly getting to know Ash, and they seemed to get along. Kind of. Dibs still refused to go anywhere near Ash if he wasn’t wounded, and a lot of the other wulfen seemed to feel pretty much the same way.
    Everyone was waiting for him to go mad and start killing people. Or run back to Sergej.
    Nathalie actually shivered. The vanity had plenty of room, so she slid the tray onto it, bumping aside the brush and comb and silver-backed mirror.