by P. C. Cast
Aphrodite sneered. “Why I’m helping is my own damn business.”
Stevie Rae sprang to her feet and moved across the room so fast that her movements were one big blur. Before I could blink she had her hands around Aphrodite’s throat and her face pressed close to hers. “You’re wrong. It’s my business, too, because I’m here. Remember, you invited me in?”
“Stevie Rae, let her go.” I kept my voice calm, but my pulse was pounding like crazy. Stevie Rae looked and sounded dangerous and more than a little crazy.
“I’ve never liked her, Zoey. You know that. I told you a zillion times she was no damn good and you should stay far away from her. I don’t know why I shouldn’t snap her neck.”
I was beginning to worry about how bugged Aphrodite’s eyes looked and how bright red her face was turning. She struggled against Stevie Rae, but it was like a little kid trying to break the hold of a big, mean adult. Help me to get through to Stevie Rae. I sent up a silent prayer to the Goddess as I began to center myself so I could call the power of the elements to me. Then words whispered into my mind and I quickly repeated them.
“You shouldn’t snap her neck because you’re not a monster.”
She didn’t let go of Aphrodite, but Stevie Rae turned her head so she could look at me. “How do you know that?”
I didn’t hesitate, “Because I believe in our Goddess, and because I believe in the part of you that is still my best friend.”
Stevie Rae released Aphrodite, who started coughing and rubbing her neck.
“Say you’re sorry,” I told Stevie Rae. Her red eyes pierced me, but I lifted my chin and stared right back at her. “Say you’re sorry to Aphrodite,” I repeated.
“I’m not sorry,” Stevie Rae said as she walked (at a normal speed) back to the chair.
“Nyx has given Aphrodite an affinity for earth,” I said abruptly. Stevie Rae’s body jerked like I’d slapped her. “So by attacking her you’re really attacking Nyx.”
“Nyx is letting her take my place!”
“No. Nyx is letting her help you. I cannot figure this out on my own, Stevie Rae. I can’t tell any of our friends about you because if I do it’s only a matter of time before Neferet knows everything they know, and even though I’m not sure about much, I do absolutely believe Neferet has gone bad. So basically it’s us against a powerful High Priestess. Aphrodite is the only fledgling besides me who Neferet can’t read. We need her help.”
Stevie Rae narrowed her eyes at Aphrodite, who was still rubbing her neck and sucking air. “I still want to know why she’d bother to help us. She’s never liked any of us. She’s a liar and a user and a total bitch.”
“Atonement,” Aphrodite managed to gasp.
“What?” Stevie Rae said.
Aphrodite glared at her. Her voice was raspy, but she was definitely regaining her breath and had gone from being scared to being pissed. “What’s wrong? Is the word too big for you? A-T-O-N-E-M-E-N-T.” She spelled it. “It means I have to make up for something I’ve done. A lot of somethings, actually. So I have to do what I didn’t do before—which is to follow Nyx’s will.” She paused and cleared her throat, grimacing in pain. “No, I don’t like it any better than you do. And, just by the by, you still smell bad and your country-ass clothes are stupid.”
“Aphrodite answered your question,” I told Stevie Rae. “She could have been nicer about it, but you did just try to choke her to death. Now apologize to her.” I stared hard at Stevie Rae while I silently called spirit energy to me. I saw Stevie Rae flinch, and she finally looked away.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“I can’t hear her,” Aphrodite said.
“And I can’t deal with the two of you acting like big ol’ babies!” I snapped. “Stevie Rae, apologize to her like a normal person instead of spoiled brat.”
“I’m sorry,” Stevie Rae said, frowning at Aphrodite.
“Okay, look,” I said. “We need to have some kind of truce between the three of us. I cannot be afraid if I turn my head the two of you are going to be trying to kill each other.”
“She couldn’t kill me,” Stevie Rae said, curling her lip unattractively.
“Because you’re already dead or because I don’t want to get close enough to your stinkiness to kick your bony ass?” Aphrodite asked in a sickeningly sweet voice.
“This is exactly what I mean!” I shouted. “Stop it! If we can’t get along, how in the hell can we expect to figure out a way to stand up to Neferet and fix what’s happened to Stevie Rae?”
“We have to stand up to Neferet?” Aphrodite said.
“Why do we have to stand up to her?” Stevie Rae said.
“Because she’s fucking evil!” I yelled.
“You said fuck,” Stevie Rae said.
“Yeah, and you didn’t get struck by lightning or melt or anyfuckingthing like that,” Aphrodite said gleefully.
“That didn’t even look right coming out of your mouth, Z,” Stevie Rae said.
I couldn’t help smiling at Stevie Rae. She suddenly looked and sounded so much like herself that I felt a huge rush of hope. She was still in there. I just had to figure out a way to get her to be in touch with—
“That’s it!” I sat forward excitedly.
“You cussing is it? I don’t think so, Z. It’s really just not you,” Stevie Rae said.
“I think you were right when you said your soul was missing, Stevie Rae. Or at least part of it’s missing.”
“You’re sounding like that’s a good thing, which I totally don’t get,” Aphrodite said.
“I hate to agree with her, but yeah, why is my missing soul a good thing?” Stevie Rae said.
“Because that’s how we fix you!” They just stared at me with blank, dopey looks. I rolled my eyes. “All we have to do is figure out how to get your soul back into you all in one piece and you’ll be whole. You might not be exactly like you used to be. Clearly, you’ve completed a Change that’s not exactly normal.”
“Clearly,” Aphrodite mumbled.
“But with a healed soul you get your humanity back—you get yourself back. And that’s really what’s most important. All this other stuff,” I made an abstract gesture at her. “You know, your weird eyes and the whole drink-blood-or-you-go-crazy issue, all that stuff can be dealt with if you’re really you again.”
“Is this more of that what’s-inside-is-more-important-than-what’s-outside shit?” Aphrodite said.
“It is, and Aphrodite you are getting on my last nerve with your negative attitude,” I said.
“I think your group needs a pessimist,” she said, looking kinda pouty.
“You aren’t part of her group,” Stevie Rae said.
“Neither are you right now, Stinky,” Aphrodite shot back.
“Hateful hag! Don’t you ever—”
“Enough!” I flung my hands out at both of them while I concentrated on the fact that both of them needed a good spanking. Wind obeyed me and they were knocked back in their seats as a small, concentrated gale surged around them. “Okay, stop now,” I said quickly. The wind instantly died. “Uh, sorry. Lost my temper.”
Aphrodite immediately began to run her fingers through her completely messed up hair. “I think you lost your damn mind,” Aphrodite grumbled.
Personally, I thought that she might have been right, but I didn’t want to say so. I glanced at the clock and was shocked to see that it was seven o’clock. No wonder I was exhausted. “Look, you two. We’re all tired. Let’s get some sleep and meet back here after the Full Moon Ritual. I’ll do some more research and see if I can come up with anything about missing or broken souls and how to fix them.” At least I had something I could focus on now, versus flailing around aimlessly in the library. Well, that is when I wasn’t making out with Loren. Ah, hell. I’d forgotten about him.
“Sounds like a plan to me. I’m ready to get out of here.” Aphrodite stood up. “My parents are going to be gone for three weeks, so you don’t need to worry about th
em coming home. There’s yard boys who come twice a week, but that’s during the day and—oh, yeah—you’ll burst into flames if you go out during the day, so them seeing you shouldn’t be a problem, either. The maid service usually comes once a week when my parents are gone, to keep the house all perfect, but they only come out here when my grandma’s visiting, so no problem with them, either.”
“Wow, she’s really rich,” Stevie Rae said to me.
“Apparently,” I said.
“Do you have cable?” Stevie Rae asked Aphrodite.
“Of course,” she said.
“Cool,” Stevie Rae said, looking happier than she had since she died.
“Okay, so, we’re out of here,” I said, joining Aphrodite at the door. “Oh, Stevie Rae, I got you one of those GoPhones. It’s in my bag. If you need anything, just call my cell. I’ll remember to keep it with me and actually turned on.” I paused, feeling weirdly uncertain about leaving her.
“Go on. I’ll see you later,” Stevie Rae said. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m already dead. What more can go wrong?”
“She has a point,” Aphrodite said.
“Okay, well. See ya,” I said. I didn’t want to say I thought she had a point, too. That seemed to be asking for trouble. I mean, she was undead, and that was pretty awful. But there were other things that could go wrong, too. The thought made a creepy chill go up my spine, which, sadly, I ignored and kept blundering on into my future. Too bad I didn’t have any idea of the horror I was blundering blindly into.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Drop me back by the trapdoor in the wall. I still don’t think it’s a good idea if people think we’re hanging out,” Aphrodite said.
I turned right on Peoria Street and headed back to the school. “I’m surprised you care so much what other people think.”
“I don’t. I care what Neferet finds out. If she thinks the two of us are friends, or even just not enemies, she’s going to figure that we’ve shared info about her.”
“And that would be majorly bad,” I finished for her.
“Definitely,” she said.
“But she’s going to see us together once in a while because you’re going to be evoking earth in my circles.”
Aphrodite gave me a startled look. “No, I’m not.”
“Of course you are.”
“No, I am not.”
“Aphrodite, Nyx has given you an affinity for earth. You belong in the circle. Unless you want to ignore Nyx’s will.” I didn’t add the word “again,” but it seemed to hang in the air between us.
“I already said I’d do Nyx’s will,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Which means you’re going to be part of the Full Moon Ritual tonight,” I said.
“That’s going to be a little difficult, seeing as I’m not a member of the Dark Daughters anymore.”
Crap. I’d forgotten about that.
“Well, then, you’ll just have to rejoin the Dark Daughters.” She started to say something. I raised my voice and talked over the top of her. “Which means you’re going to have to swear to uphold the new rules.”
“Lame,” she muttered.
“You’re doing that attitude thing again,” I said. “So, will you swear to it?”
I could see her chewing her lip. I waited without saying anything else and just kept driving. This was something Aphrodite was going to have to decide for herself. She said she wanted to atone for her screw-ups and wanted to do the Goddess’s will. But wanting something and actually doing it was totally not the same thing. Aphrodite had been selfish and mean for a really long time. Sometimes I could see a spark of a change in her, but mostly I just saw the girl the Twins called the Hag from Hell.
“Yeah, whatever.”
“What was that?”
“I said, yeah. I’ll swear to your new lame-ass rules.”
“Aphrodite, part of the swearing means that you don’t believe the rules are lame.”
“No, there’s nothing in the swearing that says I can’t think they’re lame. I just have to say that I’ll be authentic for air, faithful for fire, wise for water, empathetic for earth, and sincere for spirit. So I’m authentically saying I think your new rules are lame.”
“If that’s what you think, then why did you memorize them?”
“Know thy enemy,” she quoted.
“Who said that, anyway?”
She shrugged. “Someone back in the day. The ‘thy’ gives it away as from the olden back in the day.”
I thought she was full of poopy, but didn’t want to say anything (especially since she’d make fun of me saying “poopy” instead of the s word).
“Okay, here you go.” I pulled over to the side of the road. Thankfully, the clouds that had rolled in during the late night hours had multiplied, and the morning was dark and gloomy. All Aphrodite would have to do was cross the little grassy area that sat between the road and the wall that surrounded the school, go through the trapdoor, and then follow the sidewalk a short way to the dorm. As the Twins would say, easy-peasy. I squinted up at the sky, considering whether I should try asking the wind to blow in more clouds to make it even darker, but a glance at Aphrodite’s sullen face made me decide, nah, she could deal with the sunlight. “So, you’ll be at the ritual tonight, right?” I prompted, wondering why it was taking her so long to get out of my car.
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
She sounded distracted. Whatever. The girl was just plain weird some times.
“Okay, see ya,” I said.
“Yeah, see ya,” she mumbled, opening the door and (finally) getting out of the car. But before she closed it, she bent down and said, “Something feels wrong. Do you feel it, too?”
I thought about it. “I dunno. I’m feeling kinda restless and stressed, but that could be because my best friend’s dead—I mean undead.” Then I looked more closely at her. “Are you getting ready to have a vision?”
“I don’t know. I can never tell when one will come on. I do get feelings about things sometimes and don’t have a full-blown vision, though.”
She looked really pale and even a little sweaty (which was definitely out of the norm for Aphrodite). “Maybe you should get back in the car. There’s probably no one awake to see us come in together anyway.” Aphrodite was a pain in the ass, but I’d seen how visions made her helpless and sick and I really didn’t like the thought of her getting stuck outside in the daylight alone when one hit her.
She shook herself, reminding me of a cat coming in out of the rain. “I’ll be okay. I’m probably just imaging things. See you tonight.”
I watched her hurry toward the thick brick and stone wall that ringed the school grounds. Huge ancient oaks lined the wall, throwing it into shadow so that suddenly it looked unusually sinister. Jeesh, now who was imagining things? I had my hand on the gear and was just shifting into first so I could pull away when Aphrodite screamed.
Sometimes I don’t think. My body takes over and I just act. This was one of those times. I was out of my car and running toward Aphrodite before I even thought about it. When I got to her, I knew two things at once. One was that something smelled wonderful, kinda familiar, yet not. Whatever it was, the scent had settled in the area like a delicious fog and I automatically inhaled deeply. The second thing I saw was Aphrodite bent over at the waist, puking her guts out and crying at the same time, which is not a very pleasant to do or to watch. I was too busy looking at her and trying to figure out what was going on and too distracted by the lovely smell to notice it. At first.
“Zoey!” Aphrodite sobbed, still retching. “Get someone! Fast!”
“What is it—a vision? What’s wrong?” I grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to steady her while she continued to puke her guts up.
“No! Behind me! Against the wall . . .” She gagged, but didn’t have anything else to puke up. “It’s so awful.”
I didn’t want to, but my eyes automatically looked up and behind her to the school’s
shadowy wall.
It was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen. At first my mind wouldn’t even register what it was. Later I thought that must have been some kind of instant defense mechanism. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. I blinked and peered into the darkness. Something looked slick and wet and—
And I knew what the sweet, seductive smell was. I fought against falling to my knees and puking my guts up beside Aphrodite. I smelled blood. Not ordinary human blood, which is delicious enough. What I was smelling was a lethal shedding of a full-grown vampyre’s lifeblood.
Her body was nailed grotesquely to a crude wooden cross that was resting against the wall. They’d not just nailed her wrists and ankles. They’d also driven a thick wooden stake through her heart. There was some kind of paper over her heart, held in place by the grotesque stake. I could see that it had something written on it, but my eyes wouldn’t focus well enough to read the words.
They’d also cut off her head. Professor Nolan’s head. I knew it was her because they’d mounted her head on a wooden stake next to her body. Her long dark hair lifted softly in the breeze, looking obscenely graceful. Her mouth was open in a terrible grimace, but her eyes were closed.
I grabbed Aphrodite’s elbow and hauled her to her feet. “Come on! We have to get help.”
Leaning on each other, we stumbled to my car. I don’t know how I managed to start the Bug and pull away from the curb.
“I—I—I think I’m gonna be sick again.” Aphrodite’s teeth were chattering so bad she could hardly talk.
“No, you’re not.” I couldn’t believe how calm I sounded. “Breathe. Center yourself. Draw strength from the earth.” I realized I was automatically doing what I was telling her to do, only in my case I was drawing strength from the five elements. “You’re okay,” I told her as I channeled energy from wind, fire, water, earth, and spirit to keep back the hysterics and shock I wanted to give in to. “We’re okay.”
“We’re okay . . . we’re okay . . . ,” Aphrodite kept repeating. She was shivering so hard that I reached behind me and grabbed the hoodie I kept in my backseat. “Wrap this around you. We’re almost there.”