by P. C. Cast
I stared at her.
“Okay, maybe more than a little.”
“Whatever. My point is, you need the money and the power and the protection of the school behind you.”
Stevie Rae met my eyes steadily, and all of a sudden she looked way older and more mature than I’d ever seen her look before. “The money and the power and the protection of the school didn’t help Professor Nolan or Loren Blake or even that Stark kid.”
I didn’t know what to say. She was right, but I still felt deep in my gut that people—specifically vampyre people—needed to know she and the red fledglings existed. I sighed. “Okay, I know it’s not a one hundred percent good plan, but I honestly believe everyone needs to know about you guys.”
“Honestly, as in Nyx is giving you one of those you need to do it feelings?”
“Yep,” I said.
Her sigh was much deeper and filled with more worry and stress than mine. (Jeesh, who knew that could happen?) “All right, then. I’ll be there tomorrow. I’m countin’ on you to make this all turn out okay, Zoey.”
“I will.” Silently I sent a short prayer up to Nyx: I’m counting on you like she’s counting on me . . .
Stevie Rae and I had finished the seemingly unending cat-toy inventory about the time I glanced up at the clock and realized we were going to be late getting back to school if we didn’t hurry like crazy. And of course, Stevie Rae had to get back to her group of fledglings before they committed more than petty pizza theft. So we said a quick bye, and I repeated that I’d see her the next day for her outing. She looked a little pale, but gave me a hug and promised to be there. Then I stuck my head in Sister Mary Angela’s office.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” I wasn’t sure exactly what to call a nun when one was being ultra-respectful and needed to get her attention while she was definitely engrossed in what looked like instant messaging on her laptop.
The ma’am seemed to work just fine, because she looked up at me with her warm smile. “All done with the inventory, Zoey?”
“Yes, and we have to get back to school.”
Sister Mary Angela glanced up at the clock, and her eyes widened in surprise. “My goodness! I had no idea it was so late. And I forget that your days are rather upside down.”
I nodded. “It must seem like we keep weird hours to you.”
“I’ll just think of you as nocturnal—much like our lovely felines. You know they prefer the night, too. Which reminds me, how would you like it if we extend our hours on Saturday nights so that can be your volunteer day?”
“That sounds great. I’ll run it by our priestess to make sure, though, and call you. Oh, and do you want me to go ahead with the flea market idea?”
“Yes. I put in a call to our Board of Church Directors, and after a slight discussion, they agreed the idea was a good one.”
I noticed the hardening in her voice and the way her already straight spine seemed to grow even straighter. “Not everyone is okay with fledglings, huh?” I said.
Her hard look warmed. “That is not for you to worry about, Zoey. I’ve often forged my own path and am used to taking a machete to weeds and other bothersome barriers.”
I felt my eyes get big and didn’t doubt for a minute that this tough nun’s meaning might not be only figurative. And then part of what she’d said made me ask, “When you said that you had to check with your Board of Church Directors, did you mean they were from your church, or others?”
“They aren’t from our abbey, which isn’t exactly a church, because our only congregation is made of Benedictine sisters. The Church Board of which I was speaking is made of several of the leaders of local churches.”
“Like the People of Faith?”
She frowned. “Yes. The People of Faith have a rather large representation on the Board, which reflects their congregation size.”
“Bet they were the weeds you had to chop down,” I muttered.
“Pardon me, Zoey. I didn’t quite catch that,” she said, eyes squinting impishly with the smile she was trying (unsuccessfully) to hide.
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”
“A terrible habit, and one that can get you in much trouble if you’re not careful,” she said, smiling fully.
“Don’t I know it,” I said. “So you’re sure the flea market will be okay? You know, if it’s too much hassle, we can figure out some other way to—”
Sister Mary Angela’s raised hand shut me right up. She simply said, “Get with your High Priestess and see what day next month would be good for your school for the flea market. We shall accommodate ourselves to your schedule.”
“Okay, good,” I said, feeling proud of myself for how well my community service idea was working out. “I better get Aphrodite and go now, though. We were excused from only the first part of our classes today, and we gotta get back.”
“I believe your friends have been finished for a while now, but they have been rather—” She paused, eyes twinkling again. “—distracted.”
“Huh?” I was feeling kinda shocked. It was cool that Sister Mary Angela wasn’t freaked about fledglings and vampyres in general, but to have her be oh-so-amused by Aphrodite’s gross flirtation with Darius was totally too liberal—even for me.
Obviously the nun must have been able to guess what I was thinking by the look on my face, because she laughed, turned me around by my shoulders, and gave me a gentle push out of her office and toward the cat kennel. “Go on—you’ll see what I mean,” she said.
Totally confused, I walked down the short hallway to the room that held cats available for adoption. There were no nuns around, but (sure enough) Aphrodite and Darius were sitting over in the “playground for cats” corner, snuggled together like lovers with their backs turned to me. They were doing something (ugh) with their hands. Actually, it looked like they were doing a lot of something with their hands (double ugh). I cleared my throat dramatically. Instead of jumping apart guiltily as they should have, Darius glanced over his shoulder at me and grinned—Aphrodite (the ho) didn’t even turn to look to see who had just walked in on them. Jeesh, I could have been a nun or someone’s mom.
“Uh, I really hate to interrupt this cozy little scene, but we gotta go,” I said sarcastically.
With a big sigh, Aphrodite finally turned around, saying, “Fine. Let’s go. But I’m taking her with us.” And I saw what it was that she and Darius had been doing with their hands.
“It’s a cat!” I said.
Aphrodite rolled her eyes. “No shit? Imagine that—there’s a cat at Street Cats.”
“It’s an ugly cat,” I continued.
“Don’t call her that.” Aphrodite was instantly defensive as she struggled to stand up while clutching the ginormic white cat in her arms. Taking her elbow, Darius made sure Aphrodite didn’t fall back on her butt. “She’s not ugly. She’s unique, and I’m sure quite expensive.”
“She’s a Street Cats cat,” I said. “She only costs an adoption fee, same as all the rest of them.”
Aphrodite stroked the cat absently, and it closed the beady eyes that sat in its totally smushed face and started to purr, skipping beats every now and then, like a missing engine, which probably meant she was full of hairballs. Aphrodite ignored the messed-up purring and smiled lovingly down into the cat’s flat face. “Maleficent is clearly a purebred Persian who ended up in these dire circumstances because she is the sole survivor of an awful tragedy.” Aphrodite wrinkled up her perfect nose, and her haughty gaze took in the neat cages that were filled with all different sizes and shapes of cats. “She definitely doesn’t belong in such an ordinary place.”
“Did you say her name is Maleficent? Isn’t that the name of the evil witch in Sleeping Beauty?”
“Yes, and Maleficent was way more interesting than that sickeningly sweet, goody-goody Princess Aurora. Plus I like her name. It’s powerful.”
I reached out hesitantly to pet the huge cat ball of white fur. Maleficent opened her eyes to slit
s and growled menacingly at me. “Maleficent’s root word is malevolence,” I said, pulling my hand quickly out of her paw range.
“Yes, and malevolence is a powerful word,” Aphrodite said, making kissing noises at the beast.
“Is she declawed?” I asked.
“Nope,” Aphrodite said happily. “She could put an eye out with those big paws of hers.”
“Lovely,” I said.
“I think she’s as unique and beautiful as her new mistress,” Darius said. I noticed that when he petted Maleficent, the cat narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t growl.
“And I think your judgment is impaired. But whatever. Let’s go. I’m starving. I didn’t get any breakfast, and we’ve already missed lunch, so we’re gonna have to grab something quick on the way back to school.”
“I’ll get Maleficent’s things,” Darius said, striding to the side of the room to pick up a neat little bag that had For Your New Kitty written in lovely cursive script on the side of it.
“Did you already pay for her?” I asked.
“She absolutely did,” said Sister Mary Angela from the doorway. I noticed she walked carefully around Aphrodite and Maleficent, staying well out of paw range. “It’s just wonderful that the two of them have found each other like this.”
“You mean no one else could touch the cat?” I asked.
“Not one single person,” Sister Mary Angela said with a big grin. “At least not until lovely Aphrodite stepped through the doors of the kennel. Sister Bianca and Sister Fatima said it was nothing short of a miracle how Maleficent took to Aphrodite immediately.”
Aphrodite’s smile was one hundred percent authentic, and it made her look young and heartbreakingly gorgeous. “She was waiting for me,” she said.
“Yes,” the nun agreed. “She was, indeed. You two are a good match.” Then she looked at me and Darius, including all of us in her next words. “I think Street Cats and the House of Night is a good match, too. I feel great things for us in the future.” Then she raised her right hand over us and said, “Go forth under the watchful eye of our Blessed Mother.”
We mumbled our thanks to Sister Mary Angela. I had the weird urge to give her a hug, but her outfit—the whole wimple and black robe/dress thing—didn’t seem conducive to hugs. So instead I did a lot of what felt like overexuberant grinning and waving as we left the building.
“You were grinning and waving like a fool,” Aphrodite said as she waited for Darius to open her door and help her and the tail-twitching, flat-faced Maleficent into the front seat of the Lexus.
“I was being polite. Plus, I like her,” I said, opening my own door. I slid into the backseat and after strapping on my seat belt looked up into the glaring eyes of Maleficent, who was stretched out across Aphrodite’s chest and over her shoulder so that she could hang halfway over the seat and stare at me. “Uh, Aphrodite, shouldn’t you put her in a cat carrier or something?”
“Oh my god! Are you mean and hateful or what? Of course she doesn’t ride in a cat carrier.” Aphrodite stroked the beast, causing white fur to float all around us like a disgusting cat hair shower.
“Jeesh, never mind. I was just thinking of the cat’s safety,” I lied. Actually, I was thinking of my safety. Maleficent looked like she’d love to have a big bite of Zoey for dinner. Which reminded me. “Hey, I’m starved,” I told Darius as he started the car. “We gotta stop somewhere quick so I can eat something.”
“Fine with me. What do you want?” he said.
I glanced at the time on the car dash. Unbelievably, it was after 11 P.M. “Well, the time is definitely going to limit what’s open.” I heard Aphrodite whisper something about “stupid going-to-bed-early humans” to Maleficent, which I ignored. I looked around, trying to remember what decent fast food places (that is, Taco Bueno and Arby’s versus McDonald’s and Wendy’s) were close by. And then a lovely and familiar aroma drifted through the cracked windows of the Lexus to me. My mouth had already started to water when I spotted the big yellow-and-red sign next door. “Oh, yum! Let’s go to Charlie’s Chicken!”
“It’s awful greasy,” Aphrodite said.
“That’s part of its deliciousness. Heath and I used to eat there all the time. It fulfills all the basic food groups: grease, mashed potatoes, and brown pop.”
“You’re disgusting,” Aphrodite said.
“I’ll pay,” I said.
“Done deal,” she said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Darius volunteered to stay in the car and babysit Maleficent while Aphrodite and I got something to eat, which I thought was above and beyond the call of duty.
“He’s way too good for you,” I told Aphrodite. For as late as it was, Charlie’s was really busy, and sheeplike, we jostled around with the rest of the herd animals, finally getting in line behind an obese woman who had really bad teeth and a balding guy who smelled like feet.
“Of course he’s too good for me,” Aphrodite said.
I blinked in surprise at her and said, “Excuse me? I couldn’t have heard you right.”
Aphrodite snorted. “You think I don’t know I’m awful to my boyfriends? Please—I’m selfish, not stupid. Darius will probably get sick of my crap within a couple months. I’ll dump him right before he dumps me, but at least it’ll be a fun ride till then.”
“Did you ever think about being nice and not putting him through your usual crap?”
Aphrodite met my eyes. “Actually, I have been thinking about it and may consider changing things up with Darius.” She paused and added. “She chose me.”
“She who?”
“Maleficent.”
“Well, yeah, she chose you. She’s your cat. Just like Nala chose me and Darius’s cat, whatever her name is . . . uh . . .”
“Nefertiti,” Aphrodite said.
“Yeah, Nefertiti, she chose him. So what’s the big deal? Happens all the time. Cats choose their fledglings, or sometimes their vamps. Most every vamp eventually gets one and—”
And I suddenly realized why the cat choosing her had made such an impact on Aphrodite.
“It makes me belong,” she said quietly. “Somehow I’m still a part of the whole”—she paused, talking so low, I had to lean into her to hear her—“I’m still part of the whole vamp thing. It means I’m not totally an outsider.”
“You couldn’t be an outsider,” I whispered back. “You’re part of the Dark Daughters. You’re part of the school. And most important, you’re part of Nyx.”
“But since this happened”—she brushed her hand across her forehead where she hadn’t needed any makeup to cover the Mark that no longer was there—“since this happened, I haven’t really felt like I was a part of anything. But Maleficent changed that.”
“Huh,” I said, more than a little taken back by Aphrodite’s sincerity.
Then she shook herself, shrugged, and—looking much more like the Aphrodite we all knew and couldn’t stand—said, “Whatever, though. My life still sucks. And after I eat this cheap, greasy crap with you, I’ll probably break out.”
“Hey, a little grease is good for your hair and nails. Kinda like vitamin E.” I bumped her shoulder. “I’ll even order for you.”
“Could I have something diet?”
“Please. There’s nothing diet about Charlie’s.”
“They have diet pop,” she said.
I sneered down at her size 6 perfectness. “Not for you.”
Since it really was fast food, it didn’t take long to fill our order, and Aphrodite and I found a semi-clean table and started shoving greasy fried chicken and catsup-slathered fries into our faces. Now, don’t get me wrong. Even though I was shoveling in the chicken and fries ’cause we needed to get back to school and it was rude to lounge around while Darius babysat Aphrodite’s cat from hell, I savored every bite. I mean, after a couple months of really nutritious, excellent food from the House of Night cafeteria, my taste buds needed a dose of disgustingly delicious and utterly not-good-for-me food. Yum. Seri
ously.
“So,” I said between bites, “Stevie Rae and I talked.”
“Yeah, I thought I heard her twang out there in the other room.” Aphrodite picked delicately at a drumstick and wrinkled her nose at me when I added salt to the already totally salty fries. “You’re going to bloat like a dead fish.”
“If I do, I’ll just wear sweats until I pee it out.” I grinned around a big bite of chicken.
She shuddered. “You’re so gross. I cannot believe we’re friends, which proves I’m in the middle of a personal crisis. Anyway—what’s up with Stevie Rae and the zoo animals?”
“Well, we didn’t really talk about her or the other kids very much,” I said, not willing to tell Aphrodite that Stevie Rae admitted to not being herself.
“So since you didn’t talk about the crazies much, my guess is Stark was who you did talk about.”
“Yeah. It’s not good.”
“Well, no. The kid’s dead. Or possibly undead. Either isn’t very good. What did Stevie Rae say about the time frame for him coming back? Or do we just wait till he starts to stink and figure he’s not going to wake up.”
“Don’t talk about him like that!”
“Sorry, I forget that you had a thing with him. What did Stevie Rae say?”
“Sadly, she couldn’t give me many specifics. Her memory of everything before she Changed is pretty sketchy. Her best advice was to steal his body and see if he wakes up. And if he does wake up, he’ll need to be fed right away.”
“Fed? As in a burger and some fries, or fed as in opening a vein?”
“Your second guess is the right one.”
“Oh, ugh. I know you’ve gotten all into the bloodsucking-back-and-forth stuff, but it still squees me out.”
“It squees me out, too, but there’s no denying the power of it,” I admitted uncomfortably.
She gave me a long contemplative look. “The Sociology book says it’s a lot like sex. Maybe even better.”
I shrugged.
“You’re going to have to do better than that. I want details.”
“Okay. Yeah. It’s a lot like sex.”