I had barely touched my door handle when it was pulled open and Aphrodite grabbed my wrist. "Would you get your butt in here? Shit, you are slow as a fat kid on crutches, Zoey." She pulled me into the room and slammed the door firmly behind us.
"I'm not slow, and you have a whole hell of a lot of explaining to do," I said. "How did you get in here? Where is Stevie Rae? When did your Mark come back? What --?" My tirade of questions was cut off by a loud, insistent tapping that was coming from my window.
"First of all, you're a moron. It's the House of Night not Tulsa Public Schools. No one locks their doors, so I walked right in your room. Second, Stevie Rae is over there." Aphrodite breezed past me as she hurried to the window. I just stood there staring at her while she pulled back the thick drapes and started unlatching the heavy leaded-glass windowpane. She gave me an irritated look over her shoulder. "Hello! A little help would be nice."
Utterly confused, I joined her at the window. It took both of us to wrench it open. I gazed out from the top floor of the old raw stone building that looked more like a castle than like a dorm. The late December night was still cold and dreary, and it was now making a halfhearted attempt at rain. I could just see the east wall through the darkness and the shrouding trees. I shivered, but fledglings rarely feel cold, and it wasn't the weather giving me the chills. It was a glimpse of the east wall--a place of power and mayhem. Beside me, Aphrodite sighed and leaned forward so she could peek out the window and down the wall. "Stop messing around and get in here. You're going to get caught, and more importantly, the humidity is going to frizz my hair."
When Stevie Rae's head bobbed up into view, I almost peed on myself.
"Hi, Z!" she said cheerfully. "Check out my new ultracool climbing abilities."
"Ohmygod. Get. In. Here." Aphrodite reached through the open window, grabbed one of Stevie Rae's hands, and yanked. Like she was a balloon, Stevie Rae popped into the room. Aphrodite quickly closed the window and pulled shut the drapes.
I closed my flapping open mouth, but continued to stare as Stevie Rae stood up, brushing off her Roper jeans and retucking her long-sleeved shirt into them.
"Stevie Rae," I finally managed. "Did you just crawl up the side of the dorm?"
"Yep!" She grinned at me, nodding her head so that her short blond curls bounced around like a crazed cheerleader's. "Cool, huh? It's like I'm a part of the stones that the building's made of, and I get all weightless, and, well, here I am." She held out her hands.
"Like Dracula," I said, and knew I'd spoken my thought out loud only when Stevie Rae frowned and said, "What's like Dracula?" I sat down heavily on the end of my bed. "In the book, Dracula, the old one by Bram Stoker," I explained, "Jonathan Harker says he sees Dracula crawling down the side of his castle."
"Oh, yeah, I can do that. When you said 'like Dracula,' I thought you meant I looked like Dracula--all kinda creepy and pale with bad hair and those long, nasty fingernails. That's not what you meant, was it?"
"No, you look great, actually." I was definitely telling her the truth. Stevie Rae did look great, especially compared to how she'd been looking (and acting and smelling) the past month. She looked like Stevie Rae again, before my best friend's body had rejected the Change and she'd died almost exactly one month ago, and then, somehow, come back from the dead. But she'd been different--broken. Her humanity had been almost completely lost, and she wasn't the only kid it had happened to. There was a pack of nasty undead dead kids lurking around the old Prohibition tunnels beneath Tulsa's downtown abandoned depot. Stevie Rae had almost become one of them--mean, hateful, and dangerous. Her Goddess-given affinity with the element earth was all that had helped her retain any bit of herself, but it hadn't been enough. She'd been slipping away. So, with the help of Aphrodite (who had also been given an affinity for the element earth), I'd cast a circle and asked Nyx to heal Stevie Rae.
And the Goddess had, but during that healing process, it seemed like Aphrodite had had to die to save Stevie Rae's humanity. Thankfully, that hadn't been true. Instead of dying, Aphrodite's Mark had disappeared as Stevie Rae's Mark had miraculously been colored in and expanded, showing that she had completed her Change into vampyre. Except to add to the general confusion, Stevie Rae's tattoo hadn't appeared in the traditional color of sapphire, as all adult vampyre Marks are colored. Stevie Rae's Mark was bright scarlet--the color of new blood.
"Uh, hello. Earth to Zoey. Anybody home in there?" Aphrodite's smart-alecky voice cut through my mental babble. "Better check your BFF. She's kinda losing it."
I blinked. Even though I'd been gawking at Stevie Rae, I hadn't been seeing her. She was standing in the middle of the room--what used to be our room up until a month ago, when her death had completely and utterly changed everything forever--staring around her with big tear-filled eyes.
"Oh, honey, I'm sorry." I hurried to her and gave Stevie Rae a hug. "It must be hard for you to be back here." She felt stiff and odd in my arms, and I pulled away a little so that I could look at her.
The expression on her face chilled my blood. The teary-eyed shock had been replaced by anger. I wondered for an instant why her anger looked familiar--Stevie Rae rarely got pissed. And then I realized what I was recognizing. Stevie Rae looked like she had before I'd cast the circle and she'd been given back her humanity. I took a step away from her.
"Stevie Rae? What's wrong?"
"Where's my stuff?" Her voice, like her face, was just plain mean.
"Honey," I said gently. "The vamps take a fledgling's stuff away when she, uh, dies."
Stevie Rae turned narrowed eyes on me. "I'm not dead."
Aphrodite moved so that she was standing beside me. "Hey, don't get all mental on us. The vamps think you're dead, remember?" "But don't worry," I said quickly. "I made them give me back a bunch of your things. And I know where the rest of your stuff is. I can get it all back if you want it."
And just like that, the meanness vanished and I was looking at my best friend again. "Even my lamp made outta a cowboy boot?"
"Even that," I said, smiling at her. Hell, I'd be pissed, too, if someone had taken all my stuff.
Aphrodite said, "You'd think if someone died, at least their shitty non-fashion fashion sense would change. But no. Your bad taste is fucking immortal."
"Aphrodite," Stevie Rae told her firmly, "you really should be nicer."
"And I say whatever to you and your countrified Mary Poppins outlook on life," Aphrodite said.
"Mary Poppins was British. Which means she wasn't countrified," Stevie Rae said smugly.
Stevie Rae sounded so much like her old self that I gave a little happy shout and threw my arms around her again. "I'm so darn glad to see you! You're really okay now, aren't you?"
"Kinda different, but okay," Stevie Rae said, hugging me back.
I felt an amazing wash of relief that drowned out the kinda different part of what she'd said. I guess I was just so glad to see her, whole and herself again, that I had to hold that knowledge safe and special inside myself for a while, and that need didn't let me consider that there could be any leftover problems with Stevie Rae. Plus, I remembered something else. "Hang on," I said suddenly. "How did you guys get back on campus without the warriors going crazy?"
"Zoey, you really gotta start paying attention to the stuff that's going on around you," Aphrodite said. "I walked through the front gate. The alarm's down, which I imagine makes sense. I mean, I got the same school notification call on my cell about winter break being over I bet everyone else who was away from campus got. Neferet had to unzap this place or she'd go insane dealing with all the alarms the returning students would set off, not to mention the zillions of delicious Sons of Erebus who are descending on this place like yummy presents for us students."
"Don't you mean all the alarms would make Neferet go more insane than she already is?"
"Yes, Neferet is definitely batshit crazy," Aphrodite said, for an instant in complete agreement with Stevie Rae. "Anyway, the alarm's gone, even for humans."
"Huh? Even for humans? How do you know that?" I asked.
Aphrodite sighed, and with a weirdly slow motion?like movement, she brought the back of her hand up and wiped it across her forehead, causing the outline of the crescent moon to smear and partially rub off.
I gasped. "Oh, god, Aphrodite! You're . . ." My words sputtered out as my mouth refused to say it.
"Human," Aphrodite supplied for me in a flat, cold voice.
"How? I mean, are you sure?"
"I'm sure. Damn sure," she said.
"Uh, Aphrodite, even though you're human, you're definitely not a normal human," Stevie Rae said.
"What does that mean?" I asked. Aphrodite shrugged. "Doesn't mean shit to me."
Stevie Rae sighed. "You know, you're lucky you turned into a human and not a wooden boy, 'cause with all the lying you're doin', your nose would be like a mile long."
Aphrodite shook her head in disgust. "Again with the bad G-rated movie analogy. I don't know why I couldn't have just died and gone to hell. At least I wouldn't be bombarded with Disney there."
"Would you just tell me what the hell's going on?" I said.
"Better explain it to her. She's almost cussing," Aphrodite said snidely.
"You're so hateful. I should have eaten you when I was dead," Stevie Rae said.
"You should have eaten your countrified mom when you were dead," Aphrodite said, bowing up like she thought she was black. "No wonder Zoey needs a new BFF. You're totally a Pollyanna pain in the ass."
"Zoey does not need a new BFF!" Stevie Rae yelled, turning on Aphrodite and taking a step toward her. For an instant, I thought I saw her blue eyes start to flash the ugly red that illuminated them when she was undead and out of control.
Feeling like my head was going to explode, I stepped between them. "Aphrodite, stop messing with Stevie Rae!"
"Then you better check your friend." Aphrodite walked to the mirror that was over my sink, grabbed a Kleenex, and started to wipe what was left of the smeared crescent from her forehead. I noticed that for all her nonchalant tone, her hands were shaking.
I turned back to Stevie Rae, whose eyes were once again a familiar blue.
"Sorry, Z," she said, smiling like a guilty kid. "I guess two days with Aphrodite has gotten on my nerves."
Aphrodite snorted and I looked over at her. "Just don't start again," I said.
"Fine, whatever." Our eyes met in the mirror, and I was almost sure I saw fear in Aphrodite's gaze. Then she went back to work fixing her face.
Feeling utterly confused, I tried to pick up where the conversation had gotten way weird. "So, what's the deal with you saying Aphrodite isn't normal? And I don't mean her abnormally bad attitude," I hastily added.
"Easy-peasy," Stevie Rae said. "Aphrodite still has visions, and visions aren't normal for humans." She gave Aphrodite a so there look. "Go ahead. Tell Zoey."
Aphrodite turned from the mirror and sat on the little stool I kept close by. She ignored Stevie Rae and said, "Yeah, I still have my visions. Whoop-tee-fucking-do. The only thing I didn't like about being a fledgling is the only thing I get to keep now that I'm a stupid human again."
I looked more closely at Aphrodite, seeing through the I'm all that fa?ade she liked to throw up. She was pale, and there were dark circles beneath the cover-up she had slathered under here yes. Yes, she definitely looked like a girl who had just gone through a bunch of crap, and some of it could be one of her draining, life-changing visions. No wonder she was being such a bitch; I was a moron not to have noticed it before then.
"What did you see in the vision?" I asked her.
Aphrodite met my gaze with a steady one of her own and for a moment let down the steel wall of arrogance she liked to keep around her like a shield. A terrible, haunted shadow crossed her beautiful face, and her hand shook as she raised it to brush a strand of blond hair behind her ear. "I saw vampyres slaughtering humans and humans killing vampyres right back. I saw a world filled with violence and hatred and darkness. And in the darkness I saw creatures that were so horrible, I couldn't tell what they were. I--I couldn't even keep looking at them. I saw the end of everything." Aphrodite's voice was as haunted as her face.
"Tell her the rest of it," Stevie Rae prompted her when Aphrodite paused, and I was surprised by the sudden gentleness in her voice. "Tell her why all of that was happening."
When Aphrodite spoke, I felt her words as if they had been shards of glass she'd smashed into my heart.
"I saw all of it happening because you were dead, Zoey. Your death made it happen."