by P. C. Cast
The little red fledgling raised her chin and looked super stubborn. “I came with them because I wanted to ask you about my gift. And they agreed.” Shaylin paused, glanced at Aphrodite and added, “Well, two of the three agreed.”
“What gift has Nyx given you, fledgling?”
“True Sight. I think.” She glanced nervously from Stevie Rae to me. “Right?”
“We think so,” I said.
“Yep. At least that’s what Damien’s research tells us, and he’s almost always right about anythin’ he’s researched,” Stevie Rae said.
“She said Neferet was the color of dead fish eyes. That makes me think she might have something more than simple mental illness or mild retardation going on,” Aphrodite surprised me by saying.
“You see auras?” Thanatos asked while she studied Shaylin like she was peering down a microscope and the fledgling was pressed against a glass slide.
“I see colors,” Shaylin said. “I don’t know what to call it. I—I was blind before the night I was Marked. I had been since I was five. Then, zap! I get a red crescent moon in the middle of my forehead, my vision back, and with it I get colors. Lots of colors. Because of them I know things about people. Like I knew Neferet was rotten inside the second I saw her. Even though on the outside she was beautiful.” I watched her clench her hands together behind her, and hold still under the High Priestess’s scrutiny. “It’s the same way I know Erik Night is basically an okay guy, but he’s weak. He’s always taken the easy road. Your color is black, but not like flat black. It’s deep and rich and I can see little lightning bolts of golden light zapping through it.” She sighed. “I think that means you’re really old and smart and powerful, but you also have a serious temper, which you keep under control. Most of the time.”
Thanatos’s lips tilted up. “Go on.”
Shaylin looked quickly at Stevie Rae and then back at Thanatos. “Stevie Rae’s colors are like fireworks. That makes me think that she’s the kindest, happiest person I’ve ever met.”
“That’s only ’cause you never knew Jack,” Stevie Rae said, smiling a little sadly at Shaylin. “But thanks. That’s a real nice thing to say about me.”
“I’m not meaning to be nice. I’m just trying to tell the truth.” Her eyes went to Aphrodite. “Well, most of the time I’m trying to tell the truth.”
Aphrodite snorted.
I waited for her to get to me—to tell Thanatos that my colors had gotten darker because I was super worried—but she didn’t say anything about me at all. She just gave a little nod of her head, like she’d decided something inside herself, and finished by saying, “That’s why I’m here. I need your advice about how to use my gift and to know the truth about it.”
I think it was then that I started to respect her. Thanatos wasn’t just any High Priestess. She was a member of the High Council and her affinity was for death. Okay, Thanatos was scary. Seriously. Yet here was Shaylin, all less than a hundred pounds of her, less than a month old as a fledgling, standing up to Thanatos, without giving away anything too private about me. She hadn’t even said the stuff about Aphrodite’s flickery nice spot color. That took guts. Lots of them.
I glanced down at Shaylin’s clenched hands and saw that her fingers had gone white. I knew how she felt. I’d had to stand up to a powerful High Priestess shortly after I’d been Marked, too.
I moved closer to Shaylin. “Whatever you want to call what she sees, Shaylin has a gift. I agree with Damien. I think it’s True Sight.”
“We all do,” Stevie Rae said.
“Can you help me?” Shaylin asked.
Thanatos surprised me then. She didn’t say anything. She turned and walked over to her desk, gazing down at it as if the answer to Shaylin’s question were written on the big daily calendar she used as a desk pad. She just stood there like that, with her head bowed, for what seemed like a super ridiculously long time. I’d decided that I needed to clench my hands behind me to keep from fidgeting, too, when the High Priestess finally turned around and faced the four of us.
“Shaylin, the answer I have for you is the same as the answer I have for Zoey and Stevie Rae and Aphrodite.” I heard Aphrodite mutter something about not remembering asking her a damn question, but Thanatos spoke over her. “Each of you has been unusually gifted by our Goddess, and that is fortuitous for us because we will need all of the powers Light can gift us with if we are to battle Darkness.”
“You mean beat Darkness, don’t ya,” Stevie Rae said.
I knew Thanatos’s answer before she spoke it. “Darkness can never truly be beaten. It can only be battled and exposed by love and Light and truth.”
“Losing side. Again,” Aphrodite said under her breath.
“I am going to give each of you a task so that you may exercise your gifts. Prophetess, I give the first to you,” Thanatos spoke to Aphrodite.
Aphrodite sighed heavily.
“You have been gifted by Nyx with visions that are warnings of dire things to come. Did you have a vision before Neferet’s press conference?”
“No.” Aphrodite looked surprised by Thanatos’s question. “I haven’t had a vision for about a week now.”
“Then what good are you, Prophetess?” Her words were hard, cold. Thanatos almost sounded cruel.
Aphrodite’s face got real pale, and then blazed with pink. “Who are you to question me? You’re not Nyx. I don’t answer to you. I answer to her!”
“Exactly.” Thanatos’s expression relaxed. “Then answer to her. Listen to her. Watch for her signs and signals. Your visions have become increasingly painful and difficult, have they not?”
Aphrodite nodded in a quick tight movement.
“Perhaps that is because our Goddess wishes for you to exercise your gift in other ways. You did so, briefly, before the High Council. Remember?”
“Of course I remember. It’s how I knew Kalona and Zoey’s souls had left their bodies.”
“But you didn’t need a vision to tell you that.”
“No.”
“My point has been made,” Thanatos said. She turned to Stevie Rae. “You are the youngest High Priestess I have ever met, and I have lived a very long time. You are the first red vampyre High Priestess in the history of our people. You have a powerful affinity for earth.”
“Yeaaah.” Stevie Rae drew the word out as if she was waiting for Thanatos’s punch line.
“It is your task to practice leadership. You defer to Zoey far too often. You are a High Priestess. Draw strength from the earth and begin behaving as a High Priestess should.” Thanatos didn’t give Stevie Rae a chance to respond. Her dark gaze skewered Shaylin. “If you have True Sight your gift is only as good as you are. Do not squander it on pettiness and jealousies.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Shaylin spoke quickly. “I want to learn how to use it the right way.”
“That, young fledgling, is something you must grow up and teach yourself. Your task is to study those around you. Come to your High Priestess with your results. Stevie Rae will use the power of her element, as well as her growing leadership power, to guide you.”
“But I don’t know—” Stevie Rae began and Thanatos cut her off. “And you never will know. Anything. Anything important at all. Unless you take on the responsibility of being a High Priestess. Learn to rely on yourself so that others may feel secure in relying on you.”
Stevie Rae closed her mouth and nodded, looking like she was about twelve and the exact opposite of a High Priestess. But I didn’t have time to say anything to her because Thanatos had finally turned her torpedo eyes on me.
“Use your Seer Stone.”
“Huh?”
“It frightens you,” she spoke as if I hadn’t said anything. “The truth is the world should frighten you, should frighten all of you, right now. Fear is not a reason to avoid your responsibilities. You have a piece of old magick that responds to you. Use it.”
“How? For what?” I blurted.
“A Seer
Stone, a True Color gift, a Prophetess, a High Priestess—all of those powerful things are useless unless you all begin to answer those questions for yourself. You say you are not bickering children? Prove it. You are dismissed.” She turned her back to us and strode to her desk.
My friends and I obviously had the same impulse at the same time. As one we began scurrying for the exit door.
“I will light Dragon Lankford’s pyre at midnight. Be present for the ceremony. Immediately afterward I need you and the rest of your circle in the school lobby. I have called my own press conference.”
Her words hit us like an invisible wall. We all stopped, turned, and gawked at her. I swallowed past the lump of dryness in my throat and said, “But you said we can’t stand up to Neferet in the human community. So, what are we press conferencing about?”
“We are continuing in goodwill what Neferet began only to create chaos and conflict. She opened this school to human employees. We are going to announce in the conference that, though we are sad to see Neferet leave our school’s employ, we are happy to take job applications from the community for more positions at the House of Night. We will smile. We will be warm and open. James Stark will be present and will be charming and handsome and harmless.”
“You’re going to make Neferet look like nothing more than a disgruntled employee?” Aphrodite said. “That’s brilliant!”
“And normal,” I said.
“Something humans will totally understand,” Shaylin said.
“Hey, if ya really want to be normal and human-like, we need to have an open house job fair thingie.” We stared at Stevie Rae.
“Go on,” Thanatos said. “What is your idea, High Priestess?”
“Well, my high school used to have a job fair for seniors at the end of the school year. It was kinda like a regular open house at school, what with the bad punch and the baked goods and all. But businesses from Tulsa and Oklahoma City, and even from Dallas would come and take job applications and set up interviews for the seniors while the rest of us hung around and wished we were graduating.” Stevie Rae smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “Guess I thought of it ’cause I missed my chance, gettin’ Marked and all.”
“Actually that is an interesting idea,” Thanatos shocked me by saying. “We will mention our willingness to open our school to a job fair”—she spoke the words as if they were in a foreign language—“during the press conference later tonight.”
“If you’re gonna have a real open house we need a bunch of folks here. How ’bout we invite Street Cats and do a whole fund-raising cat adoption thing? That’d be something Tulsa could get behind,” Stevie Rae added.
“And it would be normal,” Aphrodite said. “Charity events are normal, and they bring out the people with the big bucks, and that’s a good thing.”
“An excellent point,” Thanatos said.
“My grandma can help coordinate with Street Cats. She and Sister Mary Angela, the nun who’s their director, are friends,” I said.
Thanatos nodded. “Then I will call Sylvia, and ask her if she feels up to coordinating what we shall call an open house evening and job fair for Tulsa. The presence of your grandmother, as well as the nuns, will have a normalizing, calming affect.”
“My momma can bake like a ton of chocolate chip cookies and come, too,” Stevie Rae said.
“Then invite her. I have faith in you, as does Nyx. Do not disappoint either of us. And now, you are truly dismissed.”
We left Thanatos’s classroom talking about the press conference and the open house and how it felt good that we had a Plan. It was only later that I realized I hadn’t said one single word about the Aurox/Heath situation …
CHAPTER TEN
Shaunee
The Sons of Erebus Warriors went grimly about the job of stacking timber and building Dragon’s pyre. Shaunee tried to do what she could to help them. She could tell how well wood would burn just by touching it, so she pointed out all of the particularly dry logs, or planks, and guided the Warriors into placing them just right, so that the fire would burn cleanly and quickly.
Shaunee tried to be encouraging. She told them they were doing a good job, and that Dragon would be proud of them, but that only seemed to make them quieter, grimmer. Darius was even silent and almost felt like a stranger. It was only after Aphrodite breezed up, tossing her hair and talking with her usual take-no-prisoners attitude that things started to get better.
“So, handsome, do you remember the lecture Dragon gave you when you and I first started going out?” Aphrodite winked at several of the other Warriors. “I’ll bet Stephen and Conner and Westin remember it, don’t ya? Wasn’t it the three of you who had to pull extra training with Darius after Dragon found out he was fraternizing with a fledgling?” Aphrodite had lowered her voice and affected a tone that sounded weirdly like the Sword Master.
The Warriors had actually smiled. “Three days in a row Dragon made each of us have a go at your boy there.”
Darius snorted. “Watch yourself, Conner. I have not been a boy for decades.”
Conner laughed. “I think that’s what Dragon was having a problem with.”
Aphrodite smiled flirtatiously and ran a hand down Darius’s thick bicep. “He was trying to tire you out so that you wouldn’t be energetic enough to fraternize with me.”
“That would have taken an army of vampyres,” Darius said.
It was Stephen’s turn to snort. “Really? Is that why Anastasia had to intervene?”
Aphrodite’s blond brows went up. “Intervene? Anastasia? You didn’t tell me that, handsome.”
“It must have slipped my mind, as I was too busy fraternizing with you, my beauty.”
“Ha!” Westin scoffed. “There is no way any one of us could forget Anastasia, hair flying, descending upon our Sword Master, calling him to task for picking on poor, young Darius.”
Shaunee had to join the laughter. “She seriously said Dragon was picking on Darius?”
Conner, who was tall and blond and almost as hot as Shaunee’s element, said, “She absolutely did. She even called him Bryan and reminded him that had she not fraternized with a fledgling a century ago, his life would be much less interesting.”
“I’d known Dragon Lankford for fifty years,” Stephen said. “I’d never seen him bested by any other Warrior, but Anastasia could stop him with a single look.”
“It is good that they are together,” Darius said.
“He lost himself without her,” Westin said.
“Something I can well understand.” Darius lifted Aphrodite’s hand, kissing it gently.
“You truly did see them reunite?”
“Yes.” Darius, Aphrodite, and Shaunee spoke together.
“He’s happy again,” Shaunee said.
“She died first, but she waited for him,” Aphrodite said. She was smiling at Darius, but Shaunee could see tears in her eyes.
“She died a Warrior’s death,” Westin said.
“As did Dragon,” Darius said.
“We need to remember this tonight,” Shaunee said. “Remember their joy and their oath and that they still have love.”
“Always love,” Darius said softly, touching Aphrodite’s cheek.
“Always love,” she echoed. Then she raised a blond brow. “If you’re not too tired, that is.”
“Ha! So Anastasia was right! We were picking on poor, young Darius.” Stephen and the other Warriors laughed and Darius sputtered while Aphrodite teased.
Shaunee backed away from the growing pyre and the group that surrounded it. Fire, warm this small spark of joy that Aphrodite managed to ignite within them. Help the Warriors to remember that Dragon and Anastasia are together and happy. She felt the warmth of her element rush from around her and circle the group, invisible to the eye, and almost undetectable to anyone who didn’t have an affinity for fire. But it helped. She had helped. Shaunee really believed it.
Feeling slightly less awful, she wandered away. Shaunee knew she needed to g
o to the stables, but that didn’t mean she was eager to face the destruction that her element had caused. I wasn’t wielding it, though, she reminded herself. Still, she meandered, taking a circuitous route and heading toward the courtyard that had the pretty fountain in it. From there she’d walk the back way, by the parking lot, that led more directly to the field house than to the stables.
Shaunee heard water before she heard Erin’s voice.
She hadn’t meant to be all creeper-like and lurky. She’d only moved quietly into the shadows around the courtyard because she hadn’t wanted a scene with Erin—not because she was spying on her.
Then she heard the other voice. Shaunee didn’t recognize who it was at first. He wasn’t talking loud enough. She only recognized Erin’s flirty giggle. Shaunee was trying to decide if curiosity was the same as nosiness when his voice got louder and she realized the guy Erin was aiming her flirty giggle at was Dallas!
Feeling sick to her stomach, Shaunee moved closer.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m sayin’. I can’t get you off my mind, girl. You know what water and electricity make when they come together, don’t you?”
Shaunee stayed completely still, waiting for Erin to call him a douche bag and tell him to run back to nasty Nicole where he belonged; instead her stomach dropped as she heard Erin’s flirty answer, “Lightning—that’s what electricity and water make. Sounds hot to me.”
“That’s because it is hot. You are hot. You’re like a sauna, girl—or a steam bath I’d like to soak in.”
Shaunee had to press her lips together in a tight line to keep from yelling eew and calling Dallas a douche herself. Erin would. No way would she want anything to do with Dallas. He was a total asshole. He hated Stevie Rae and Zoey! Stevie Rae had said he’d tried to kill her! Erin was just setting him up to smack him down and put him in his place.
Shaunee waited for it. Nothing. She heard nothing. Walking quietly, Shaunee moved even closer. Erin was probably gone. She’d probably rolled her eyes and walked away and not even bothered with telling Dallas to get lost.