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  "Did you kill them?" His voice sounded all wrong, scared and accusing.

  I frowned at him. "No. All I did was get them away from us. The truck did the rest. And anyway, they might not be dead." I glanced back at the road. The truck had come to a skidding, tire-squealing halt. Other cars had stopped, too, and I could hear people shouting. "And Saint John's Hospital is like less than a mile down the street." Sirens started wailing not far away. "See, the ambulance is coming already. They'll probably be okay."

  Heath pushed me off his lap and scooted away from me, pressing the sleeve of his sweater against the cut on his neck. "You have to leave. There will be cops all over here pretty soon. They shouldn't find you here."

  "Heath?" I lifted my hand toward him, but dropped it when he flinched away from me. The numbness was fading and I had started to shake. My god, what had I just done? "Are you afraid of me?"

  Slowly, he reached out, taking my hand and pulling me to him so he could wrap his arm around me. "I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid for you. If people find out all the stuff you can do, I—I don't know what might happen." He leaned back a little, not taking his arm from around me, but looking into my eyes. "You're changing, Zoey. And I'm not sure what you're changing into."

  My eyes filled with tears. "I'm becoming a vampyre, Heath. That's what I'm Changing into."

  He touched my cheek, and then he used his thumb to wipe away the rest of the concealer so that my Mark was completely visible. Heath bent to kiss the crescent moon in the middle of my forehead. "I'm okay with you being a vampyre, Zo. But I want you to remember that you're still Zoey, too. My Zoey. And my Zoey isn't mean."

  "I couldn't let them hurt you," I whispered, really shaking now as I realized how cold and horrible I'd just been. I might have just caused the deaths of two men.

  "Hey, look at me Zo." Heath took my chin in his hand and forced me to meet his eyes. "I'm almost six one. I'm a kick-ass starting quarterback for a 6A school. OU is offering me a full-ride football scholarship. Would you please remember that I can take care of myself?" He let loose of my chin and touched my cheek again. His voice was so serious and grown-up that he suddenly reminded me weirdly of his dad. "When I was away with my parents, I did some reading up on your vampyre goddess, Nyx. Zo, there's a lot of stuff written about vampyres, but I didn't find anything that said your goddess is mean. I think you should keep that in mind. Nyx has given you a bunch of powers, and I don't think she'd like it if you used them in the wrong way." His eyes glanced over my shoulder to the distant road and the awful scene that was playing out there. "You shouldn't be mean, Zo. No matter what."

  "When did you get so old?"

  He smiled. "Two months ago." Heath kissed my lips softly, and then stood up, pulling me to my feet. "You gotta get out of here. I'm gonna go back the way we came. You should probably cut through the rose gardens and get back to school. If those guys aren't dead they're gonna talk, and that's not gonna be good for the House of Night."

  I nodded. "Okay, yeah. I'll get back to the school." Then I sighed. "I was supposed to break up with you."

  His smile turned into a full grin. "Not happening, Zo. It's you and me, baby!" He kissed me good and hard, and gave me a little shove in the direction of the Tulsa Rose Garden, which bordered Woodward Park. "Call me and we'll meet next week. 'Kay?"

  " 'Kay," I mumbled.

  He started to back away so that he could watch me leave. I turned and walked toward the rose garden. Automatically, like I'd been doing it for decades, I called mist and night, magic and darkness, to cover me.

  "Wow! Cool, Zo!" I heard him yell from behind me. "I love you, baby!"

  "I love you, too, Heath." I didn't turn around, but whispered into the wind and willed it to carry my voice to him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Yep, I was seriously messed up. Not only had I not broken up with Heath, but I had probably made our Imprint even stronger. Plus, I may have caused two men to be killed. I shivered, feeling more than a little sick. What in the hell had happened to me? I'd been drinking Heath's blood and having a horny old good time (jeesh, I was becoming such a ho-bag), and then those men had started messing with us and it was like something inside of me freaked and changed from Regular Zoey to Psycho Killer Vampyre Zoey. Was that what happened? Did vamps freak when the human they'd Imprinted was threatened?

  I remembered in the tunnels how pissed I'd been when Stevie Rae's "friends" (not that she was actually buddies with those disgusting undead dead kids) had attacked Heath. Okay, I'd even gotten violent, but I hadn't felt such a powerful urge to wipe them off the face of the earth! Just remembering the anger that had rushed through me as the two men had started toward us (Heath) to give us (Heath) a hard time was enough to make my hands start to shake again.

  Clearly there was just too much vampyre stuff that I didn't know about. Hell, I'd even taken notes and memorized some of the chapter on Imprinting and bloodlust, but I was starting to see that there was lots of stuff the oh-so-educational textbook had left out. What I needed was an adult vamp. Fortunately, I knew one I was sure would be very happy to volunteer to be my teacher.

  I'm sure there were lots of things he'd be ever so pleased to teach me.

  I thought about those things, which was easy to do when I was filled with Heath's delicious, sexy blood. My body still tingled with heat and power and sensations I knew I didn't have a clue about, but I craved more of. A lot more of.

  There was no denying that Loren and I had a thing. It was different than the thing Heath and I had, and even different than the thing Erik and I had. Crap. I had too many things going on in my life.

  Basically, I floated to Aphrodite's parent's garage apartment in a kind of horny, power-filled, yet confused haze and was so distracted by, well, sex that I didn't think about the fact that I appeared to be nothing more than mist and darkness until I was actually standing in the living room of the apartment watching Stevie Rae stare with wet, red-tinged eyes at the TV screen and sniffle. I glanced at the TV and realized she was watching a Lifetime Movie of the Week. It looked like the one about the mom who knew she was dying of some horrid disease and she had to race against time (and commercial breaks) to find a new family for her zillions of overly perky children.

  "Talk about depressing," I said.

  Stevie Rae's head whipped around as she crouched in a feral, defensive pose after leaping behind the couch where she hissed and snarled at me.

  "Ah, crap!" I instantly shooed away darkness and whatnot, so that I was solid, visible me again. "Sorry, Stevie Rae. I forgot I'd gone all Bram Stoker."

  She peered over the couch at me, eyes glowing and fangs bared, but she'd stopped hissing.

  "Uh, relax. It's just me." I lifted the canvas bag and shook it so the blood sloshed nastily. "Your meals on wheels."

  She stood up and narrowed her eyes. "You shouldn't do that."

  I raised my eyebrows at her. "Shouldn't do what? Bring you blood or turn into mist and darkness."

  Stevie Rae snatched the canvas bag I was dangling in her direction. "Sneak up on me. It could be dangerous."

  I sighed and sat on the couch, trying to ignore the fact that she was already gulping down the first bag of blood. "If you ate me the way my life sucks right now, you'd be doing me a favor."

  "Yeah, I'll bet. I remember how tough it was to be alive. All filled with dating drama and ohmygoodness, what should I wear to school. Real awful, unlike the stress of being dead and then undead but still feeling mostly dead." Stevie Rae spoke in the cold, sarcastic voice that was totally different from the way she used to sound, which suddenly annoyed the crap right outta me. Like I didn't have stress in my life just because I wasn't dead? Or undead? Or whatever.

  "Professor Nola was killed last night. It looks like some of the People of Faith crucified her and chopped her head off and left her out by the trapdoor on the east wall with a lovely note about not suffering a witch to live. I think that my step-loser might be involved, but I can't say anything about it beca
use my mom is covering for him, and if I rat him out she'll probably go to jail forever. I just sucked Heath's blood and got interrupted by some gang wannabes who I think I might have kinda sorta accidentally killed, and Loren Blake and I have been making out. So, how was your day?"

  The old Stevie Rae flickered inside this one's red eyes. "Ohmygoodness," she said.

  "Yeah."

  "You've been making out with Loren Blake?" As usual, Stevie Rae got to the heart of the juiciest gossip. "What was it like?"

  I sighed and watched her start on her second bag of blood. "It was amazing. I know this is going to sound totally ridiculous, but I think we might really have something together."

  "Just like Romeo and Juliet," she said between swallows.

  "Uh, Stevie Rae, let's use a different analogy, shall we? R&J didn't end so well."

  "I'll bet he tastes good," she said.

  "Huh?"

  "I mean his blood."

  "I wouldn't know."

  "Yet," she said, and reached for another bag o' blood.

  "Speaking of. You'd better slow down on the blood drinking. Neferet called in the Vamp's Sons of Erebus warriors and it's pretty hard to sneak out of school right now. I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back here with more tasty bloody goodness."

  A shiver passed through Stevie Rae's body. She had been looking almost normal, but at my words her expression flattened out and her eyes reddened.

  "I can't stand it much longer."

  She'd spoken in such a low, strained voice that I almost didn't hear her.

  "Is it that big of a deal, Stevie Rae? I mean, can't you just ration yourself or something?"

  "It's not like that! I can feel it slipping away… more and more each day… each hour."

  "What's slipping away?"

  "My humanity!" she practically sobbed.

  "But, honey," I scooted over and put my arm around her, ignoring the weird way she smelled and the fact that her body was so rocklike. "You're better. I'm here now. We'll figure this out."

  Stevie Rae looked into my eyes. "Right now, I can feel your pulse. I know every time your heart beats. There's something inside of me that is screaming at me to rip your throat open and drink your blood. And that something is growing stronger." She pulled away from me, moving to press herself against the end of the couch. "I can put on the old Stevie Rae's face, but it's only part of the monster in me. I just do it so that I can hunt you."

  I took a deep breath and refused to look away from her. "Okay, I know some of that is true. But I don't believe all of it, and I don't want you to believe all of it either. Your humanity is still there, inside you. Yeah, it might be getting buried, but it's still there. And that means we're still best friends. Plus, think about it. You don't have to hunt me. Hello—I'm right here. Not exactly hiding."

  "I think you might be in danger from me," she whispered.

  I smiled. "I'm tougher than you think, Stevie Rae." Moving slowly so I didn't startle her, I reached out and put my hand over hers. "Draw on the power of earth. I believe you're different than the rest of the, uh—" I paused, trying to figure out what to call them.

  "Gross undead dead kids?" Stevie Rae supplied.

  "Yeah. You're different from the rest of the gross undead dead kids because of your affinity with the earth. Draw on that and it will help you fight whatever is going on inside you."

  "Darkness…it's all darkness inside me," she said.

  "It's not all darkness. The earth is in there, too."

  "Okay … okay…" she panted. "The earth. I'll remember. I'll really try."

  "You can beat this, Stevie Rae. We can beat this."

  "Help me," she said, suddenly squeezing my hand so hard I almost cried out. "Please, Zoey, help me."

  "I will. I promise."

  "Soon. It has to be soon."

  "It will be. I promise," I repeated, not having a clue how I was going to keep my promise.

  "What are you going to do?" Stevie Rae asked, eyes desperately locked with mine.

  I blurted the only thing that came into my brain. "I'm going to cast a circle and ask for Nyx's help."

  Stevie Rae blinked. "That's it?"

  "Well, our circle is powerful and Nyx is a goddess. What more do we need?" I sounded way surer than I felt.

  "You want me to represent earth again?" Her voice quivered.

  "No. Yes." I paused guiltily, wondering what I was supposed to do about Aphrodite. It had been clear when she manifested earth that she was supposed to join our circle. But would it freak Stevie Rae out to see her place filled by someone she definitely considered an enemy? Plus, no one except Aphrodite knew about Stevie Rae, which is how I needed to keep it until I was ready for Neferet to know I knew about her. Issues. I definitely had issues. "Uh, I'm not sure. Let me think about it, okay?"

  Stevie Rae's expression shifted again. Now she looked broken, utterly defeated. "You don't want me to be part of your circle anymore."

  "It's not that! It's just that you're the one who needs to be healed, so it might be best if you're in the center of the circle with me instead of standing in your normal place." I sighed and shook my head. "I need to do some more research."

  "Do it fast, okay?"

  "I will. And you have to promise me that you'll go easy on the blood and stay here and focus on your connection with earth," I said.

  "Okay. I'll try."

  I squeezed her hand and then pried mine from her grip. "I'm sorry, but I gotta go. Neferet is having a special ritual for Professor Nolan, and then I have to do the Full Moon Ritual thing." And I was going to have to hit the library again and come up with some kind of ritual that might help Stevie Rae. And I didn't have a clue what to do about Loren. And Erik was probably going to be mad at me for taking off. And I hadn't broken up with Heath. Jeesh, my head hurt. Again.

  "It's been a month."

  "Huh?" I was standing, and already distracted with thinking about all the ands I had to deal with.

  "I died during the last full moon, and that was one month ago.

  That got all of my attention. "That's right. It has been a month. I wonder …"

  "If that might mean something? If tonight might be the right time to try to fix whatever happened with me?"

  I almost flinched at the sound of her hope-filled voice. "I don't know. Maybe."

  "Should I try to get on campus tonight?"

  "No! The place is crawling with warriors. They'd grab you for sure."

  "Maybe they should," she said slowly. "Maybe everyone should know about me."

  I rubbed my head, trying to understand what my gut was telling me. It'd been shouting to keep Stevie Rae a secret for so long that I couldn't tell if I was still supposed to keep her hidden, or whether what I was feeling were just echoes and confusion (and probably some desperation and depression thrown in there, too).

  "I don't know about that. I—I need a little more time, okay?"

  Stevie Rae's shoulders slumped. "Okay. But I don't think there's enough of me left to last another month."

  "I know. I'll hurry," I said inanely. I bent and hugged her quickly. "Bye. Don't worry. I'll be back soon. Promise."

  "If you figure it out, just text me or something and I'll come. Okay?"

  "Okay." I turned at the door. "I love you, Stevie Rae. Don't forget that. We're still best friends."

  She didn't say anything, but nodded, looking bleak. I called night and mist and magic to me and hurried out into the darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Naturally, I got caught sneaking back on campus. I'd already floated back over the wall. (Yes, I literally floated, which was too cool for words.) I was making my way back to the dorm with what I considered excellent speed and stealth when I practically ran into them—a group of vamps and upperclassmen ringed by at least a dozen of the warrior mountains (I did see the Twins and Damien in the group, so Aphrodite had been right, Neferet was including my Prefect Council). I froze, stepped back into the shadow of a big oak, and held my breat
h, hoping that my newfound cool power of invisibility (or maybe mist-ability was a better way of describing it) would let me remain unseen. Unfortunately, as I watched, Neferet paused, which caused the entire dang group to pause. She cocked her head and I swear she sniffed the breeze like a bloodhound. Then her eyes went to my tree—my hidey place—and seemed to bore into me. And just like that I lost concentration. My skin shivered and I knew I was completely visible again.

  "Oh, Zoey! There you are. I was just asking your friends"—she paused long enough to give the Twins, Damien, and (eek!) Erik one of her amazing one-hundred-twenty-five-watt smiles— "where you could have gotten off to." She dimmed the smile and exchanged it for a perfect look of motherly concern. "Now is not the time to wander about by yourself."

  "Sorry. I, uh, I needed …" I trailed off, majorly aware that all eyes were on me.

  "She needed to be alone before the rituals," Shaunee said, stepping up to put an arm through mine.

  "Yeah, she always needs to be alone before rituals. It's a Zoey thing," Erin said, moving to my other side and taking my other arm.

  "Yep, we call it Z.A.T.—Zoey Alone Time," Damien said, joining the three of us.

  "It's kinda annoying, but what can you do?" Erik said, moving around behind me to rest his warm hands on my shoulders. "That's our Z."

  I had to struggle not to burst into tears. My friends were the best. Of course, Neferet probably knew they were lying, but they'd done it in a way that made it look like I was probably only up to little teenage mischief (i.e., sneaking out to break up with a boyfriend) versus big, scary mischief (i.e., hiding my undead dead best friend).

  "Well, I want you to be sure you limit your alone time in the near future," Neferet told me in a mildly chastising tone.

  "I will. Sorry," I mumbled.

  "And now, on to the ritual." Regally, Neferet strode out from the group, causing the warriors to scramble to keep up with her and leaving me and my little cluster of friends in the figurative dust.