by P. C. Cast
The hope that flashed in Stevie Rae’s red eyes was almost painful to look at. “You really believe Nyx hasn’t given up on me?”
“Nyx hasn’t and I haven’t.” I ignored her smell and gave her a firm hug, which she didn’t return, but she also didn’t jerk away from me or take a bite out of my neck, so I figured we were making progress. “Come on. The place I found for you to stay is just down the street.”
I started walking, believing she would follow me, which she did after only a slight hesitation. We cut around the grounds of the museum and came out on Rockford, the street that runs in front of it. Twenty-seventh, the street Aphrodite’s mansion (well, it’s really her crazy parents’ mansion) sits off of runs right into Rockford. Feeling more than a little dreamlike, I walked down the middle of the road in the darkness, concentrating on shrouding us in silence and invisibility, with Stevie Rae following only a couple of feet behind me. It was dark and seemed preternaturally silent. I glanced up through the winter branches of the huge old trees that lined the street. I should have been able to see an almost full moon, but clouds had rolled in, obscuring all but an indistinct glow of white where the moon should be. It had turned cold, and I was glad that my changing metabolism protected me from the whipping wind. I wondered if weather changes bothered Stevie Rae, and I was going to ask her about it when she suddenly spoke.
“Neferet won’t like this.”
“This?”
“Me being with you instead of with the others.” Stevie Rae seemed really agitated and was plucking nervously at one hand with the other.
“Relax, Neferet won’t know you’re with me, at least not until we’re ready for her to know,” I said.
“She’ll know as soon as she gets back and sees that I’m not with the rest of them.”
“No, she’ll just know you’re gone. Anything could have happened to you.” Then a thought hit me that was so incredible I stopped like I’d run into a tree. “Stevie Rae! You don’t have to be around adult vamps to be okay!”
“Huh?”
“It proves you’ve Changed! You’re not coughing and dying!”
“Zoey, I’ve already done that.”
“No no no! That’s not what I mean.” I grabbed her arm, ignoring the fact that she immediately pulled it from my grasp and took a step away from me. “You can exist without the vamps. Only another adult vampyre can do that. So it is just like I said. You have Changed, it’s just a different kind of Change!”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Yep!” I wasn’t as sure as I sounded, but I was determined to keep a positive front for Stevie Rae. Plus, she was looking not-so-good. I mean, even more not-so-good than her usual yucky look. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I need blood!” She wiped a shaky hand across her dirty face. “That little bag wasn’t enough. You stopped me from feeding yesterday, so I haven’t fed since the day before. It—it’s bad when I don’t feed.” She tilted her head weirdly, like she was listening to a voice in the wind. “I can hear the blood whispering through their veins.”
“Whose veins?” I was as intrigued as I was grossed out.
She made a sweeping gesture with her arm that was feral and graceful. “The humans sleeping around us.” Her voice had dropped to a husky murmur. There was something in the tone of it that made me want to move closer to her, even though her eyes had flushed a bright scarlet again and she smelled so bad it made me want to gag. “One of them is awake.” She pointed to the huge mansion to the right of where we’d stopped. “It’s a girl . . . a teenager . . . she’s by herself in her room . . .”
Stevie Rae’s voice was an alluring singsong. My heart had started to beat hard against my chest. “How do you know that?” I whispered.
She turned her burning eyes on me. “There’s so much I know. I know about your bloodlust. I can smell it. There’s no reason you shouldn’t give in to it. We could enter the house. Go to the girl’s room and take her together. I’d share her with you, Zoey.”
For a moment I was lost in the obsession that heated Stevie Rae’s eyes, and in my own need. I hadn’t had human blood since the taste Heath had given me more than a month ago. The memory of that one exquisite drink lingered in my body like a tantalizing secret. Completely mesmerized, I listened to Stevie Rae spin a web of darkness that was catching me in its beautiful, sticky depths.
“I can show you how to get in the house. I can sense secret ways. You could get the girl to invite me in—I can’t go into a person’s home now unless they invite me first. But once I’m in . . .” Stevie Rae laughed.
It was her laugh that snapped me out of it. Stevie Rae used to have the best laugh ever. It was happy and young and innocently in love with life. Now what came out of her mouth was a mean, twisted echo of that old joy.
“The apartment is two houses down. There’s blood in the fridge.” I turned and started walking quickly down the street.
“It’s not warm and it’s not fresh.” She sounded pissed, but she was following me again.
“It’s fresh enough, and there’s a microwave. You can nuke it.”
She didn’t say anything else, and we came to the mansion in just a few minutes. I led her around to the garage apartment, opened the outside door, and stepped in. I was halfway up the stairs when I realized Stevie Rae wasn’t behind me. Hurrying back down to the door I saw her standing outside in the darkness. All that was clearly visible of her was the red of her eyes.
“You have to invite me in,” she said.
“Oh, sorry.” What she’d said before hadn’t really registered with me, and now I felt a jolt of shock at this further proof of Stevie Rae’s soul-deep difference. “Uh, come on in,” I said quickly.
Stevie Rae stepped forward and ran smack into an invisible barrier. She gave a painful yelp, which turned into a snarl. Her eyes glowed up at me. “Guess your plan won’t work. I can’t get in there.”
“I thought you said you just had to be invited in.”
“By someone who lives at the house. You don’t live here.”
Above me, Aphrodite’s coldly polite voice (sounding uncomfortably like her mother) called out. “I live here. Come in.”
Stevie Rae stepped over the threshold with no problem at all. She started up the stairs and had almost reached me when Aphrodite’s voice must have registered on her. I saw her face change from expressionless to slit-eyed and dangerous.
“You brought me to her house!” Stevie Rae was talking to me, but staring at Aphrodite.
“Yes, and why is actually easy to explain.” I considered grabbing her in case she started to bolt, and then I remembered how weirdly strong she’d become, so I started to center myself instead, wondering if my affinity with wind could be used to have a breeze slam the door shut before she could escape.
“How could you explain it! You know I hate Aphrodite.” Then she did look at me. “I die and now she’s your friend?”
I was opening my mouth to assure Stevie Rae that Aphrodite and I hadn’t exactly buddied up when Aphrodite’s haughty voice interrupted me.
“Get real. Zoey and I are not friends. Your little nerd herd is still intact. The only reason I’m involved at all is because Nyx has a totally bizarre sense of humor. So come in or go the hell away. Like I care . . .” Her voice trailed off as she stomped back into the apartment.
“Do you trust me?” I asked Stevie Rae.
She looked at me for what seemed like a long time before she answered. “Yes.”
“Then come on.” I continued up the stairs with Stevie Rae following reluctantly behind.
Aphrodite was lounging on the couch pretending to watch MTV. When we entered the room she wrinkled up her nose and said, “What is that disgusting smell? It’s like something died and—” She looked up and caught sight of Stevie Rae. Her eyes widened. “Never mind.” She pointed to the rear of the apartment. “Bathroom’s back there.”
I handed Stevie Rae my bag. “Here ya go. We’ll talk when you come out.”
<
br /> “Blood first,” Stevie Rae said.
“Go on back and I’ll bring a bag to you.”
Stevie Rae was glaring at Aphrodite, who was staring at the TV. “Bring two,” she practically hissed.
“Fine. I’ll bring two.”
Without another word, Stevie Rae left the room. I watched her move down the short hall with a weird, feral stride.
“Hello! Gross, nasty, and totally disturbing,” Aphrodite whispered. “Like you couldn’t have warned me?”
“I tried. You thought you knew everything. Remember?” I whispered back. Then I hurried into the little kitchen and got the bags of blood. “You also said you’d be nice.”
I knocked on the closed bathroom door. Stevie Rae didn’t say anything, so I opened it slowly and peeked in. She was holding her jeans, T-shirt, and boots, and was just standing there, in the middle of the very nice bathroom, staring at the clothes. She was partially turned away from me, so I couldn’t be sure, but I thought she might have been crying.
“I brought the blood,” I said softly.
Stevie Rae shook herself, rubbed a hand across her face, and then tossed the clothes and boots onto the top of the marble counter by the sink. She held out her hand for the bags. I gave them to her, along with the pair of scissors I’d grabbed from the kitchen.
“Do you need help finding anything?” I asked.
Stevie Rae shook her head. Without looking at me she said, “Are you waiting around because you’re curious about how I look naked or because you want a sip of the blood?”
“Neither.” I kept my voice perfectly normal, refusing to get pissed at her when she was so clearly baiting me. “I’ll be out in the living room. You can pitch your old clothes out in the hall and I’ll throw them away for you.” I shut the bathroom door firmly behind me.
Aphrodite was shaking her head at me when I rejoined her. “You think you can fix that?
“Keep your voice down!” I whispered. Then I sat heavily on the opposite end of the couch. “And, no, I don’t think I can fix her. I think you and Nyx and I can fix her.”
Aphrodite shuddered. “She smells as bad as she looks.”
“I’m as aware of that as she is.”
“I’m just sayin’, ugh.”
“Say whatever, just don’t say it to Stevie Rae.”
“Then for the record I just want to say that the girl doesn’t feel safe to me,” Aphrodite said, holding up her hand like she was taking an oath. “I have two words for her: time bomb. I think she’d even freak out your nerd herd.”
“I really wish you’d stop calling them that,” I said. God, I was exhausted.
“You have geek-ends,” she said.
“Huh?” I had no clue what she was talking about.
“There are weekends where your whole gang gets together to watch marathons of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies.”
“Yeah, so?”
Aphrodite gave a melodramatic eye roll. “You not getting how geeky that is proves my point. You guys are definitely a nerd herd.”
I heard the bathroom door open and close, so I didn’t bother to tell Aphrodite that, yes, indeed, I knew exactly how geeky those movies were but that geeky could also be fun, especially when you’re dorking out with all your friends and eating popcorn and talking about how totally hot Anakin and Aragorn are (I kinda like Legolas, too, but the Twins say he’s way too gay. Damien, of course, adores him.). I grabbed a garbage bag from under the sink in the kitchen and crammed Stevie Rae’s disgusting clothes in it, tying it up and then opening the apartment door and tossing it down the stairs.
“Vile,” Aphrodite said.
I plopped down on the couch, ignored her and stared, unseeing, at the TV screen.
“Are we not going to talk about it.” Aphrodite jerked her chin in the direction of the bathroom.
“Stevie Rae is a her, not an it.”
“She smells like an it.”
“And no. We’re not going to talk about her until she joins us,” I said firmly.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Refusing to gossip with Aphrodite about Stevie Rae, I went back to staring at the TV, but after a while I could not sit still, so I got up and went from window to window closing the shutters and the thick drapes. That didn’t take long, so I headed into the kitchen and started to dig though the cupboards. I’d already noticed that the fridge had a six-pack of Perrier, a couple of bottles of white wine, and a few bricks of that expensive imported cheese that smells like feet. There were some packages of butcher-paper-wrapped meat and fish in the freezer and ice cubes, but that was it. The cupboards had a bunch of stuff in them, but it was all rich-people food. You know, imported tins of fish that still have their heads on, smoked oysters (eesh), other strange meat and pickled stuff, and long boxes of something called water crackers. There was not one can of decent pop.
“We’re gonna have to go to the grocery store,” I said.
“If you can keep Stinky locked back in the bedroom, all you have to do is get into my parents’ on-line account with Petty’s Foods. Click what you want from the store. They’ll deliver and charge it to my parents.”
“Won’t they freak when they see the bill?”
“They won’t even notice,” she said. “The bank pays it directly. It’s no big deal.”
“Really?” I was amazed people actually lived like that. “You guys are rich.”
Aphrodite shrugged. “Yeah. Whatever.”
Stevie Rae cleared her throat and Aphrodite and I jumped. The sight of her made my heart squeeze hard. Her short blond hair was wet, and it hung around her face in familiar curls. Her eyes were still tinted red and her face was thin and pale, but it was clean. Her cloths were baggy, but she looked like Stevie Rae again.
“Hi,” I said softly. “Feel Better?”
She looked uncomfortable, but nodded.
“You smell better,” Aphrodite said.
I glared at her.
“What? That was nice.”
I sighed and shot her an obvious you’re not helping look. “Okay, how about we talk about coming up with a plan?” I meant it to be a rhetorical question, but Aphrodite spoke up right away.
“What exactly are we planning about? I mean, I know Stevie Rae has, uh, unique issues, but I’m not sure what you think can be done about them. She’s dead. Or undead dead.” She glanced a Stevie Rae. “Okay, I’m not actually trying to be mean, but—”
“It’s not mean. It’s just the truth.” Stevie Rae interrupted her. “But don’t pretend that you care about my feelings now any more than you did before I died.”
“I was trying to be nice,” Aphrodite snapped, sounding the opposite of nice.
“Try harder,” I said. Then, “Sit down Stevie Rae.” She sat in the puffy leather chair beside the couch. I ignored my headache and sat on the couch. “Okay, here’s what I know.” I ticked the points off on my fingers. “First, Stevie Rae doesn’t have to live around adult vamps anymore, so that means that she has completed a Change.” Aphrodite started to open her mouth and I hurried on. “Second, she has to have blood, even more often than normal adult vamps.” I looked from Stevie Rae to Aphrodite. “Do either of the two of you know if adult vamps go crazy if they don’t drink blood regularly?”
“In Advanced Vampyre Soc we’ve learned that adults need to drink blood regularly to stay healthy. That’s mind and body.” Aphrodite shrugged. “Neferet is the prof for the class, and she’s never said anything about vamps going crazy if they don’t drink. But that might be one of the things they tell us only after we’ve made the Change.”
“I didn’t know anything about it till I died,” Stevie Rae said.
“Can it be blood from any mammal, or does it have to be human blood?”
“Human.”
I’d asked Stevie Rae, but she and Aphrodite answered at the same time.
“Okay, well, besides having to drink blood and not having to be around adult vamps, Stevie Rae can’t come in someone’s house unless she�
��s invited.”
“By someone who lives there,” Stevie Rae added. “But that’s not such a big deal.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Stevie Rae turned her red-tinged gaze on me. “I can get humans to do things they don’t want to do.”
With an effort, I didn’t shiver.
“That’s not a shocker,” Aphrodite said. “Lots of adult vamps have such strong personalities that they can be very persuasive to humans. That’s one of the reasons they’re so damn scared of us. You should know about that, Zoey.”
“Huh?”
Aphrodite raised an eyebrow. “You’ve Imprinted with your human boyfriend. How tough was it for you to persuade him to let you have a little suck.” She paused, smiling wickedly. “Of his blood, I mean.”
I ignored her stankness. “Okay, Stevie Rae has that in common with Changed vamps, too. But vamps don’t have to be invited in to someone’s house, do they?”
“Never heard of anything like that,” Aphrodite said.
“It’s because I’m soulless,” Stevie Rae said in a voice totally washed of all emotion.
“You are not soulless,” I said automatically.
“You’re wrong. I died and Neferet figured out a way to bring my body back, but she didn’t bring my humanity back, too. My soul’s still dead.”
I couldn’t even stand to think that what she was saying might be possible, and I opened my mouth to argue with her, but Aphrodite was quicker.
“That makes sense. It’s why you can’t come inside a living person’s home without being invited. It’s also probably why you’ll burn up if the sun hits you. No soul—no standing against the light.”
“How did you know about that?” Stevie Rae asked.
“I’m vision girl, remember?”
“Thought Nyx abandoned you and took the visions away, too,” Stevie Rae said cruelly.
“That’s what Neferet wants people to believe because Aphrodite had visions about her—and about you,” I said pointedly. “But Nyx has no more abandoned her than she’s abandoned you.”
“So why are you helping Zoey?” Stevie Rae shot the question at Aphrodite. “And don’t give me that crap about Nyx having a sense of humor. What’s the real reason?”
