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  "Want me to be gone before you get back with her?"

  I'd already thought about this. It was tempting, but the truth was that it was looking more and more like Aphrodite and I were going to have to work together on fixing Stevie Rae. So my undead best friend was just going to have to get used to having Aphrodite around. Plus, I was already having to do too much sneaking. I just couldn't deal with sneaking around the kid I was sneaking around everyone else for. If that makes any sense.

  "No. Stevie Rae's gonna have to learn to deal with you." I glanced at Aphrodite as I came to a stop sign and added cheerfully, "Or maybe she'll do us all a favor and eat you."

  "It's so nice that you always look on the positive side of things," Aphrodite said sarcastically. "Okay, turn right here. Then when you get to Peoria, take a left and go down a few blocks until you see that big brick sign that points to the turnoff to the Philbrook."

  I did as she said. We didn't make small talk, but it didn't feel all awkward and uncomfortable between us. It was weird how easy it actually was to be around Aphrodite. I mean, not that she wasn't still a bitch, but I was kinda liking her. Or maybe this was just another sign that I needed to give some serious consideration to therapy, and I wondered abstractly if Prozac or Lexapro or some other lovely antidepressant worked on fledglings.

  At the Philbrook sign I turned left and Aphrodite said, "Okay, we're almost there. It's the fifth house on the right. Don't take the first driveway, take the second one. That one goes around behind the house to the garage apartment."

  We came to it and all I could do was shake my head. "This is where you live?"

  "Used to live," she said.

  "It's an f-ing mansion!" And I meant a cool one. It looked like something I'd imagine rich folks in Italy would live in.

  "It was a fucking prison. It still is." I was going to say something semi-profound about her being free now that she'd been Marked and was a legally emancipated minor and that she could actually tell her 'rentals to get lost (kinda like I had), but her next smart-alecky comment made me forget the kinda nice thing I meant to say. "And it's really annoying that you're too damn pure to cuss. Saying fuck won't kill you. It won't even mean you're not all virginal."

  "I cuss. I say hell and crap and even damn. A lot." And why did I feel the sudden need to defend my non-cussing preference?

  "Whatever," she said, clearly laughing at me.

  "And there's nothing wrong with being a virgin. It's better than being a skank."

  Aphrodite was still laughing. "You have a lot to learn, Z." She pointed at a building that looked like a miniature version of the mansion. "Go around behind there. There's a back way into the apartment and your car will be blocked from the street."

  I pulled up behind the totally cool garage and we got out of my Bug. Aphrodite used her key to unlock the door, which opened to a stairway. I followed her up to the apartment.

  "Jeesh, servants must have lived pretty well back in the day," I mumbled, looking around at the dark, shiny wood floors, the leather furniture, and the gleaming kitchen. There weren't a bunch of cheesy knickknacks polluting the decor, but there were candles and some vases that looked totally expensive. I could see that the bedroom and bathroom were at the other end of the apartment, and could just peek in to see a big bed with puffy down comforters and pillows. My guess was the bathroom was nicer than my parents' master bathroom.

  "Do you think it'll work?" Aphrodite asked.

  I went to one of the windows. "Thick curtains—that's good."

  "Shutters, too. See, we can close them from in here." Aphrodite demonstrated.

  I nodded at the flat-screen TV. "Cable?"

  "Of course," she said. "There's a bunch of DVDs around here somewhere, too."

  "Perfect," I said, moving to the kitchen. "I'll just stick all but one of the blood packs in here, and then go get Stevie Rae."

  "Fine. I'll watch Real World reruns," Aphrodite said.

  "Fine," I said. But instead of leaving, I cleared my throat uneasily. Aphrodite looked up from messing with the TV. "What?"

  "Stevie Rae doesn't look or act like she used to."

  "Really? I wouldn't have had a clue about that if you hadn't enlightened me. I mean, most people who die and then come back to life as bloodsucking monsters look and act totally the same."

  "I'm serious."

  "Zoey, I saw Stevie Rae and some of the other creatures in my visions. They're gross. Period, the end."

  "It's worse when you see them in person."

  "No big surprise there," she said.

  "I don't want you to say anything to Stevie Rae," I said.

  "You mean about her being dead and all? Or about her being gross?"

  "Either. I don't want her scared off. I also don't particularly want her to jump on you and rip out your throat. I mean, I think I could probably stop her but I'm not one hundred percent sure. And besides the fact that it would be disgusting and hard to explain, I really hate thinking about what all that blood would do to this cool apartment."

  "How sweet of you."

  "Hey, Aphrodite, how about you try something new. Try being nice," I said.

  "How about I just don't say anything."

  "That would work, too." I headed for the door. "I'll try to get her here soon."

  "Hey," Aphrodite called after me. "Could she really rip out my throat?"

  "Absolutely," I said, and closed the door behind me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I knew Stevie Rae had gotten to the gazebo before me. I couldn't see her, but I could smell her. Eesh. Seriously, eesh. I hoped a bath and some shampoo would help that stench, but I kinda doubted it. After all, she was, well, dead.

  "Stevie Rae, I know you're here somewhere." I called as quietly as I could. Okay, vamps have the ability to move silently and to create a kind of bubble of invisibility around them. Fledglings also have this ability. It's just not as complete. Being as I'm a weirdly gifted fledgling, I can move around fairly well and not be seen by anyone who might be gawking out a window at 3:00 a.m., like a museum security guard. So I was pretty confident about my ability to be unseen in the semi-dark, fairyland grounds of the museum, but I had no idea if I could extend that ability to covering Stevie Rae. In other words, I needed to get her, and get out of there. "Come on out. I have your clothes and some blood and the latest Kenny Chesney CD." I added that last part as a blatant bribe. Stevie Rae had been ridiculously in lurve with Kenny Chesney. No, I don't understand it either.

  "The blood!" A voice that might have been Stevie Rae's if she had a really bad cold and had lost every last bit of her mind hissed from the bushes at the rear of the gazebo's base.

  I walked around behind the gazebo peeking into the thick (yet well-trimmed) foliage. "Stevie Rae?"

  Eyes glowing a horrible rust red, she stumbled out of the bushes and lurched toward me. "Give me the blood!"

  Ohmygod, she looked like an absolutely crazy person. Hurriedly I reached into my bag, jerked out the bag of blood, and handed it to her. "Hang on a sec, I have a pair of scissors in here somewhere and I'll—"

  With a really disgusting snarl, Stevie Rae tore open the little lip of the bag with her teeth (uh, fangs is more like it), upended the bag, and gulped down the blood. When she'd squeezed the bag dry she dropped it on the ground. She was breathing like she'd just run a race when she finally looked up at me.

  "Ain't pretty, is it?"

  I smiled and tried my best to ignore how horrified I really was. "Well, my grandma always says that correct grammar and good manners make one more attractive, so you might want to drop the 'ain't' and try saying 'please' next time."

  "I need more blood."

  "I got you four more packets. They're in the refrigerator at the place you're going to be staying. Do you want to change your clothes here, or wait till we get there and take a shower? It's just down the street."

  "What are you talking about? Just give me my clothes and the blood."

  Her eyes weren't such a bright red,
but she still looked mean and mad. She was even thinner and paler than she had been the night before. I drew a deep breath. "This has to stop, Stevie Rae."

  "This is how it is with me now. This isn't going to change. I'm not going to change." She pointed to the outline of the crescent moon on her forehead. "It'll never be filled in and I'll always be dead."

  I stared at the outline of her crescent moon. Was it fading? I thought it definitely looked lighter, or at least less distinct, which couldn't be good. That did shake me up. "You're not dead" was all I could think to say.

  "I feel dead."

  "Okay, well, you kinda look dead. I know when I look like crap I usually feel like crap, too. Maybe that's part of why you feel so bad." I reached into my bag and pulled out one of her cowboy boots. "Check out what I brought you."

  "Shoes cannot fix the world." This was a subject Stevie Rae and the Twins had argued about before, and her voice held a hint of the old exasperation.

  "That's not what the Twins would say."

  The familiar tone in her voice flattened out to expressionless and cold. "What would the Twins say if they could see me now?"

  I met Stevie Rae's red eyes. "They'd say you need a bath and an attitude check, but they'd also be unbelievably happy that you're alive."

  "I'm not alive. That's what I keep trying to get you to understand."

  "Stevie Rae, I am not going to understand that because you're walking and talking. I don't think you're anything like dead—I think you're changed. Not like I'm Changing, as in becoming what we're used to recognizing as an adult vampyre. You've made a different kind of Change, and I think it's harder than the one that's happening to me. That's why you're going through all of this. Would you please give me a chance to help you? Can't you just try to believe everything might turn out okay?"

  "I don't know how you can be so sure about that," she said.

  I gave her the answer I felt deep in my soul, and knew the moment I'd said it that it was the right thing to say. "I'm sure about you being okay because I'm sure that Nyx still loves you and she let this happen for a reason."

  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."

  "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.