Revealed

CHAPTER FOUR

Zoey

“I never thought I’d wish school wouldn’t have been canceled,” I said, while I paced restlessly back and forth across the dorm room floor. “I don’t know what the hell Thanatos was thinking. Going to class today would at least give us something to do. And tomorrow is Saturday. We do not need a long weekend.”

Stark rolled over in bed, looking tousled and only half awake. He smiled his cute, cocky grin at me and did look totally cute and cocky, which wasn’t a bad thing. “If you come back to bed I’ll give you something to do.”

Still, I was too worried to be in the mood, so I batted my eyes innocently and in a clueless voice asked, “You’ll give me and the entire school something to do? That’s ambitious, even for you, Stark.”

“You know that’s not what I meant! Way to kill a mood, Z.”

I paused in my pacing long enough to laugh and give him a quick kiss. “Sorry, I slept crappily. I kept having nightmares about Dallas and his disgusting friends planting pieces of the mayor’s bloody clothing in Thanatos’s desk, and Lenobia’s barn, and even Erik’s drama classroom. Then after the cops arrested all of them, Neferet swooped back here and said she’d be happy to do her old job again, and bring in a bunch of new teachers. In my dream Neferet was a big, black leech, and our new teachers were all giant spiders.” I shivered. “Eesh, I hate leeches. And spiders.”

“Come here.” Stark patted the bed beside him.

I sighed, but I sat. When he started kneading my shoulders I felt some of my tension begin to fade. “You always know how to make me feel better.”

“Yep, and I always will. Just sit here for a little while and let me work on those knots in your shoulders, and try not to overthink everything for a few minutes.”

“I don’t overthink. I prepare.” I meant to sound tough and High Priestess-like, but there was no way on earth I could sound like that when he was giving me a seriously excellent shoulder rub.

“You overthink. And we are going to have plenty to do today. We’re going to go to the cafeteria and eat breakfast with our friends, and then we have to be sure all of our fledglings have rooms—especially our red fledglings. Z, we gotta be careful about where those kids spend the daylight hours. I’m with you in thinking Dallas is up to some shit, and I don’t want any of us hurt because he’s a mean little asshole.”

“He seriously has anger control issues,” I said. I tried to pull away from Stark so that I could think better, but he tugged me back down beside him and kept working on my shoulders.

“No, you sit here. We need to talk about stressful stuff, but you gotta learn to relax. The best way I can keep you from stressing totally out is to keep rubbing your shoulders.”

“You may have to keep doing that for the next several days.”

“That’s cool with me,” he said, and kissed my neck, making me shiver—this time in pleasure.

“Well, good. That makes me almost look forward to the next several days,” I said.

“Glad to hear it. And since I’ve got you in a receptive mood, I want you to promise me something.”

“What?” I instantly began to tense up again.

“Stop it.” He kneaded my shoulders harder, causing me to melt under his strong hands. “You know I’d never ask you to promise me anything awful. All I want is for you to keep our circle out of Erin’s funeral.”

“Why? I figured it would be a nice thing to do—maybe even a way Shaunee can have closure. Shaylin’s already shown an affinity for water, so it’s not like there would be a big empty space where Erin used to be.”

“Yeah, well, that was my first thought, too. But that was canceled out by all the hateful crap Dallas said to us last night.”

“You think he’d cause a fight at Erin’s funeral? That’s low, even for him.”

“He wants to fight, that’s for sure, but causing one at the funeral would only get him and his friends in big trouble with Thanatos, and I don’t think he’s ready to be in that much trouble yet. But here’s what I was thinking about—you heard him talking about how Erin didn’t want anything to do with you or your circle, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Z, think about it, even when Erin joined the circle it didn’t look to me like she was doing it because she was feeling sorry she’d been such a bitch. What I heard her say was that she didn’t want Aphrodite standing in for her.”

“Yeah, that’s what she said,” I admitted.

“Did her attitude change after I got Dallas out of there? Did she apologize to you, or Shaunee, for the shitty way she’d been treating you guys?”

“No. When she saw the spiders she agreed with me that they’re disgusting and said disgusting things have to go.”

“Z, I don’t like talking bad about a dead kid, and that’s not what I’m meaning to do, but I think it is important to remember that Erin had changed sides before she died, even though she knew that Neferet and Dallas had chosen Darkness over Light.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But it feels wrong to hold that against her now. I mean, Thanatos saw Nyx welcome her to the Otherworld. If the Goddess can forgive her, can’t we?”

“I think there’s a big difference between forgiving her and making her into something she wasn’t just because she’s dead. I might be wrong, but it doesn’t seem healthy to have our group, especially Shaunee, idolizing her.”

“Yeah, I get what you’re saying, and my gut’s telling me you’re right.”

“See what I mean about not wanting your circle to make a big show at her funeral?”

“I do. Okay, I’m going to talk to Shaunee and be sure her closure comes from knowing Erin is in the Otherworld and at peace with Nyx. I don’t see why Thanatos wouldn’t be cool with leading her funeral.”

“We need to focus on moving forward—not on looking back,” he said.

“Good point. Which reminds me, I better check on Aphrodite and make sure she’s okay, too. The mayor was a crappy dad, but he was her dad. She’s gonna be messed up by this death.”

“Z, Aphrodite was messed up before his death.”

I smacked his leg. “She can be hateful, but she’s still my friend.”

“And why she is, is a mystery to me.”

“Hey, Aphrodite is one of us, and we’re going to need to stand together and be strong for whatever nastiness Neferet is cooking up.”

“I know. I was just mostly kidding. Aphrodite’s a bitch, but she’s our bitch,” he said.

I laughed. “Exactly.”

“Okay, I think you’re noodle-like enough.” Stark squeezed my shoulders one last time, and then kissed me on my neck. “I’m starving. Let’s go get some breakfast and then deal with whatever crazy the day brings.”

“This was the first thing that really made me heart the House of Night,” I said happily as I ladled a gihugic pile of spaghetti onto my plate. “Psaghetti! For breakfast! I love our cafeteria.”

“When you say psaghetti you sound like you’re six years old,” Stark said, bumping my shoulder before he asked the cook to give him the other breakfast choice, the traditional (and boring) scrambled eggs and bacon.

I went to the drink bar and filled up my glass with brown pop—fully leaded—with caffeine—calling back to him, “Not six—nine. That’s when I made up the psaghetti madness song.” I cleared my throat and launched into “Pa-sghe-ti, pa-sghe-ti!” and even did the psaghetti dance on my way to our booth. I was just thinking that maybe the day wouldn’t be so bad. After all, it had started with a shoulder rub and psaghetti! But just as Stark was sliding in next to me I heard a deep, masculine voice echoing my psaghetti madness song.

I didn’t need to look at the cafeteria line to know who was singing. All I needed to do was look at Stark’s face. He’d been grinning at my psaghetti celebration, but that happiness had disappeared from his face, leaving instead a tense, serious expression that made him look frustrated and pissed.

“How old were you when you met Heath?” Stark asked.

“Nine,” I said. It made me feel miserable and helpless, but my gaze wouldn’t stay on Stark’s face. It was drawn to the guy who was still singing my song while he heaped psaghetti on his plate.

I wondered if it would have helped if Aurox hadn’t been so cute. He did a dorky guy version of the dance I’d just done as he headed over to the drink bar.

Nope, I decided, feeling my stomach do the weird butterfly thing it used to do when Heath would walk into a room. Aurox could have looked like a troll and he’d still make my stomach do flip-flops because he shared Heath’s soul.

“Good morning!” Damien came in with Shaunee, Stevie Rae, and Rephaim, who waved and said hi to Stark and me as they hurried to get in line and fill their plates.

They didn’t seem to notice that Stark and I didn’t say anything in return.

“Hey there, Aurox. Wanna sit with us?” I heard Damien give him a cheery invite.

“Sure, that would be great,” Aurox said.

“Awesome—Z and Stark are already at the table. It’s that one over there.” Damien pointed at us, which is when his happy-schmappy expression slid away, and was replaced by an uh-oh look. “Um, that is if there’s enough room and it’s okay with Z and Stark, and, um…” Damien trailed off uncomfortably, his cheeks getting pink.

“Fuck!” Stark said under his breath so that I was the only one who heard him. Then he sat up a little straighter and called, “Yeah, no problem. We got room for Aurox.”

When Aurox sat down directly across from me I focused on shoveling psaghetti into my face.

“So, where’d you learn that song?” Stark shocked the bejezzus out of me by asking Aurox.

“What song?” Aurox answered around a mouthful of noodles.

“Never mind,” Stark muttered.

The long, uncomfortable silence wasn’t broken until Damien and the rest of our group smooshed into the booth.

“Have y’all seen Aphrodite today?” Stevie Rae asked.

I looked up then to see everyone shaking their heads.

“Or Darius?” she added.

More head shaking.

“Crap,” I said. “I need to go check on her. It’s not like her to hermit in her room.”

“Yeah,” Stevie Rae agreed. “She calls breakfast the beginning of the day’s fashion parade. You know she actually told me once that she could predict which girls were going to turn into their fat, flabby mammas by how much makeup they wore to breakfast?”

“That girl is super crazy,” Shaunee said.

“Is wearing a lot of makeup to breakfast good or bad?” Damien asked.

“I have no clue,” Stevie Rae said. “I try to quit listenin’ if Aphrodite talks too long. She kinda hurts my ears.”

“Is her prediction about the girls part of her prophetic gift?” Aurox asked.

I couldn’t help laughing with everyone else. Well, everyone except Stark. Instead of laughing he was stabbing his scrambled eggs like he was trying to kill them.

“No,” Stevie Rae answered Aurox. “It’s part of her hateful gift, which we’re pretty sure wasn’t given to her by Nyx.”

“Oh, sorry,” Aurox said, looking sheepish. “That was probably a stupid thing to ask.”

“Hey, no worries, roomie,” Damien said, smiling kindly at him. “Aphrodite baffles all of us.”

“Roomie?” I heard myself asking. “You guys are sharing a dorm room?”

“Yes,” Aurox said, meeting my gaze for the first time. “Damien offered, and I did not want to be alone, nor did I wish to share a room with a stranger. The others, well, I often find them staring at me oddly.”

“That would be because you can change into a bull.” Stark’s voice was emotionless.

“I suppose you are correct,” Aurox said. He dropped his gaze from mine and went back to eating.

“Yeah, well, that brings up a subject Stark and I were talking about earlier,” I began.

“Yeah, we were talking when we woke up. Together. In the same bed. Right, roomie?” Stark put special emphasis on the word.

My friends threw worried looks from Stark to Aurox. I frowned. “Stark, everyone knows you and I are sleeping together.”

“Just wanted to be sure,” Stark said, attacking his eggs again.

“Anyway,” I went on, feeling my cheeks getting warm. “Stark and I were saying that it’s important to be sure our red fledglings and vampyres”—I managed to smile at Stevie Rae—“have someplace super safe to sleep until we can get back to our tunnels.”

“Rephaim and I were talkin’ ’bout that when he came back to me and Shaunee’s room after dusk,” Stevie Rae said. “I’m thinkin’ the same thing y’all are—we need to explore the school and find somewhere less aboveground for the kids.”

“And you, too, right?” I asked.

Stevie Rae shared a look with Rephaim before she said, “Well, no. I’m gonna keep roomin’ with Shaunee.”

“Even though I tried to talk her out of it,” Rephaim said.

“Hey, you know I’ll be okay by myself, don’t you?” Shaunee said quickly. “Last night was tough, but I’m better today. I’ll miss her, but I know my Twin’s in a wonderful place. She even said it before she died—her feelings were finally unfrozen. In a weird way I’m glad for her.” Shaunee blinked back tears, but she also smiled.

“I know, but unless we can find a basement-like place here that has an easy exit and entrance for, well, a bird, you’ve got me as a roomie until we go home to the depot tunnels,” Stevie Rae said.

“I remember Dragon saying something about there being storage for old shields and swords in the school’s basement,” Damien said. “So, there has to be something down there that’s at least watertight enough to house Dragon’s precious old weapons. You know he wouldn’t let that stuff be put anywhere it would rust out and get messed up.”

“Well, at least that’s good news. I’ll feel better with all the red fledglings and vamps underground during the day. It just seems that you guys are so exposed otherwise,” I said. Uneasily, I remembered Stevie Rae’s close calls with sunlight and how fried even a small bit of it could make her and Stark and the rest of them. There were new powers that came with being a new type of vampyre, but there was also a pretty intimidating list of new stuff that could kill them.

“I understand what you’re saying, Z, but there is another way to look at the red fledgling housing issue,” Damien said. “I know they rest better if they’re underground, and safe from the sunlight, and a basement would be good for that, but they’d also all be together in a place that most likely only has one entrance and exit. That may not be such a good thing.”

Stark’s brows lifted. “Damn, Damien, you’ve got a point. At the depot we can’t get trapped because there are so many ways to get in and out of those tunnels. Z, if those kids are going to spend the time from sun up to sun down in a basement, I think you and I and Stevie Rae need to sleep somewhere away from that group.”

“Sounds like there’s more than one way to be exposed. You guys are right. We can’t all be someplace we can be trapped, and I’m thinking that the two of you, especially,” I nodded to Stevie Rae and Stark, “need to be separated from the main group of fledglings. If something happens we’re going to need the power of fully Changed red vampyres to help your fledglings.” I sighed. “But I also don’t like the idea of all those fledglings being unprotected down there while they sleep. Wonder if we could talk Darius and Aphrodite into moving down there with them?”

Shaunee snorted. “Aphrodite in a basement? Not unless you get a designer in there to fancy it up for her.”

“I know you’re her High Priestess and all, but she’s gonna throw a major hissy fit if you try to get her to move down there,” Stevie Rae said.

As much as it annoyed me to think about Aphrodite throwing a fit, I knew Stevie Rae was right. I was trying to weigh whether it would be worth the fight or not when Aurox spoke up.

“I’ll stay with the fledglings,” he said.

I blinked in surprise at him. “But you just said you wanted to room with Damien because the other kids looked at you in a weird way.”

“That doesn’t mean I want them to be without protection. I rarely sleep, so I could easily watch over them. And I like being able to help you.” He hesitated, and then added, “Your grandmother helped me. It’s only right that I, in turn, help you.”

His moonstone-colored eyes held my gaze until Stark’s voice intruded. “Sounds good. And you’re right. You do need to help us out.”

“How about this—I’ll go with you, so we’ll still be roomies,” Damien told Aurox. “I seem to have a way of smoothing over awkward situations.”

“He does,” Rephaim agreed. “Damien helped the kids accept me. I’ll bet he can do the same for you.”

“That’s a lovely thing for you to say!” Damien’s grin lit him up from within, and I thought how nice it was to see him happy.

“So that’s settled,” Stark said. “Okay, Z, are you almost done eating? You said you wanted to check on Aphrodite, and I need to see Darius—he’ll probably know where Dragon’s storage room is. We can kill two birds and all.”

I gave the rest of my psaghetti a longing look, but it didn’t seem all that appetizing anymore—not with Stark glowering at Aurox, Aurox sending me little looks, and everyone else watching the three of us. I gulped my brown pop and put on my best fake smile. “I’m done! Let’s go!”

“The rest of us can round up our red fledglings,” Stevie Rae said. “Since Dragon used it to store weapons, it would figure that the basement is close to the field house. How ’bout we meet in there in an hour or so?”

“Sounds good,” I said. Stark put his arm possessively around me and spider monkeyed me from our booth. When we got to the cafeteria door he paused and, in full sight of everyone, pulled me into his arm and kissed me. I mean, really kissed me—with his tongue and everything.

Okay, I absolutely like kissing Stark, but I’m not into PDA. I mean, I like to hold Stark’s hand in public. I even usually like it when he puts his arm around me (which he usually does in a nice way, and not a clingy, spider monkey way), but we don’t make out in public. Ever. So my face felt really hot with mortification when he unlocked his lips from mine, put his arm back around me, and practically dragged me out of the cafeteria—while shooting a look over his shoulder at the table and, of course, at Aurox.

I wanted to smack him in the face.

Instead, as soon as we were outside, I untangled myself from him and held his hand. Like normal.

He didn’t say anything. He just gave me his cute, cocky smile.

I stifled a shriek of irritation and ignored the hot anger building inside me. If I told him how annoying and stupid he was being, it would just cause a fight between us, and we had way more important issues to deal with than Stark acting like a jealous jerk.

Plus, I wasn’t interested in Aurox. Stark would figure that out pretty soon and, hopefully, stop with his possessiveness.

But you are interested in Heath, a terrible little voice whispered inside me. And Heath’s soul is shared with Aurox.

I reminded the whispering voice that Stark was my Warrior, my Guardian, my lover, and my friend.

And what is Heath?

Dead! I told myself sternly. But even though I tried to shut my heart and mind to it, the echo of our psaghetti song sang within me.