It seemed ridiculous because I’d only known him for what was really only an instant in time, but I felt Stark’s absence like it was a hole in my heart. How could that be? How could I miss him so much when I hadn’t really known him? Or maybe I had known him—maybe there’s something that happens between some people at a level that goes beyond time measurements and what society thinks is proper. Maybe what had happened between Stark and me in those few minutes in the field house had been enough to have our souls recognize each other.
Soul mates? Was that even possible?
When my head ached from crying and my tears finally ran out, I got wearily out of the shower. Aphrodite had a big white bathrobe hung up on the bathroom door, which I slipped on before I went out into her ritzy room. Not surprisingly, the Twins had left.
“Here, drink this.” Aphrodite handed me a glass of red wine.
I shook my head. “Thanks, but I don’t really like alcohol.”
“Just drink it. It’s more than just wine.”
“Oh . . .” I took it and sipped gingerly, like I thought it might explode. And it did—all inside my body. “There’s blood in it.” I didn’t sound accusing. She knew that I’d already known what the “more than wine” comment meant.
“It’ll help you feel better,” Aphrodite said. “So will this.” On the end table beside the chaise longue she pointed me to was a Styrofoam to-go box opened up to show a big greasy Goldie’s cheeseburger and a larger order of fries with a bottle of brown pop—fully caffeinated and sugared, waiting next to it.
I gulped the last of the blood spiked wine and, surprising myself with how starving I felt, started wolfing down the burger. “How did you know I love Goldie’s?”
“Everyone loves Goldie’s burgers. They’re terrible for you, so I figured you needed one.”
“Thanks,” I said through a full mouth.
Aphrodite grimaced at me, delicately plucked a fry off my plate, and then plopped down on her bed. She let me eat for a while and then, in a voice that was uncharacteristically hesitant, she asked, “So, you kissed him before he died?”
I couldn’t look at her, and the burger suddenly tasted like cardboard. “Yeah, I kissed him.”
“Are you okay?”
“No,” I said softly. “Something happened between us and . . .” My voice trailed away as I couldn’t find the words.
“What are you going to do about him?”
I did look up at her then. “He’s dead. There’s nothing—” I stopped. How could I have forgotten? Of course Stark’s being dead wasn’t necessarily the end of things, not at this House of Night, not lately. And then I remembered the rest of it. “I told him,” I said.
“About?”
“That it might not be the end for him. Before he was gone, I told him that lately fledglings have been dying and then coming back from the dead to go through a different kind of Change.”
“Which means if he does come back, one of his first thoughts will be of you, and the fact that you told him that death might not be the end for him. Let’s hope Neferet isn’t there to hear him.”
My stomach clenched, partially with hope and partially with fear. “Well, what would you have done? Let him die in your arms without saying anything to him?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Probably not. You care about him, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do. I’m not sure why. I mean, sure he is, uh I mean
was
a hot guy. But he told me stuff before he died and we kinda connected.” I tried to remember exactly what all Stark had told me, but it was all jumbled up with kissing him and watching him bleed to death in my arms. I shivered and took a long drink of brown pop.
“So, what are you going to do about him?” she persisted.
“Aphrodite, I don’t know! Am I supposed to march down to the morgue and ask the Sons of Erebus to let me in so I can sit with Stark until he maybe comes back alive?” As I said it, I realized that’s exactly what I wished I could do.
“That’s probably not a good idea,” she said.
“We don’t know what happens, how fast, or if it will at all.” I paused, thinking. “Wait, you said you saw Stark in one of my death visions, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So what was on his face? A blue crescent, a red crescent, or full red tattoos?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“How can you not know? You said you recognized him from your vision.”
“I did. I remember his eyes and that sinfully hot mouth of his.”
“Don’t talk about him like that,” I snapped.
She actually looked guilty. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything. He really got to you, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He got to me. So try to remember what he looked like in your vision.”
She chewed he lip. “I don’t remember hardly anything. I just got a quick glimpse of him.”
My heart was beating hard, and my head was dizzy from the sudden rush of hope that washed over me. “But that means he’s not really dead. Or at least not all the way dead. You saw him in a vision of the future, so he has to be around in the future. He’s coming back!”
“Not necessarily,” she said gently. “Zoey, the future is fluid—it’s always changing. I mean, I saw you die twice. Once alone because you were isolated from your friends. Well, they’re back to being your moronic Three Musketeers.” She paused and added, “Sorry. I know you’ve been through a bunch of shit tonight. I didn’t mean to sound so hateful. But here’s the deal. Because the nerd—I mean because you’re not isolated anymore, the Zoey-being-killed-alone vision is probably null and void. See, the future changed. When I had the vision that Stark was in at that time he might have been going to live. That could be all changed now.”
“But not necessarily?”
“Not necessarily,” she agreed reluctantly. “But don’t get your hopes up. I’m just Vision Girl, not an expert on stuff like fledglings coming back alive.”
“Then what we need is an expert on this whole dead/undead thing.” I tried not to sound too hopeful, but I could tell by the sad way Aphrodite looked at me that I wasn’t hiding much from her.
“Yeah, well, I hate to say it, but you’re right. You need to talk to Stevie Rae.”
“I’ll go back to my room and call her and have her meet us at Street Cats tomorrow. You think you can keep Darius busy while I talk to her?”
“Oh, please. I’ll do more than keep him busy. I’ll keep him
totally occupied
.” She purred the words.
“Ugh. Whatever. I just don’t want to hear it or see it.” Moving on a tide of optimism, I grabbed my brown pop.
“Not a problem there. I’ll be happy to keep it private.”
“Again I say
ugh
.” I headed to the door. “Hey, how did you get rid of the Twins tonight? Am I going to have to do damage control tomorrow?”
“Simple. I told them if they stayed that we’d be giving each other spa pedicures, and that I was first in line.”
“Yeah, I see why they bolted.”
Suddenly Aphrodite turned serious. “Zoey, I mean it. Don’t get your hopes up about Stark. You know that even if he comes back, he might not be the same. Stevie Rae says the red fledglings are better now, and they are, but they’re not
normal,
and neither is she.”
“I know all of that, Aphrodite, but I still say Stevie Rae is fine.”
“And I still say we’re going to have to agree to disagree about her. I just want you to be careful. Stark’s not—”
“Don’t!” I put up my hand to cut off her words. “Let me have a little bit of hope. I want to believe there might be a chance for him.”
Aphrodite nodded slowly. “I know you do, and that’s what worries me.”
“I’m too tired to talk about this anymore,” I said.
“Okay, I understand. Just think about what I’ve said.” I started to open the door, and she added, “Do you want to stay here tonight? You wouldn’t be alone.”
“Nah, but thanks. And I’m not really alone in a dorm full of fledglings.” With my hand on the knob, I looked over my shoulder at Aphrodite. “Thanks for taking care of me. I do feel better. A lot better.”
She waved away my thanks and looked embarrassed. Then sounding more like herself she said, “Don’t worry about it. Just figure once you’re queen, you’ll owe me.”
Stevie Rae didn’t answer her phone. It went straight to her perky, countrified voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. What could I say, “Hi, Stevie Rae. It’s Zoey. Hey, a fledgling just bled to death in my arms tonight, and I want to know what happens now. Is he going to come back as an undead dead bloodsucking monster, or is he going to be just kinda odd like you say your fledglings are, or is he gonna stay dead? I’d like to know ‘cause even though I just met him, I really care about him. Okay, so call me back!” Uh, no. That wouldn’t work.
I sat heavily on my bed and had just begun to wish Nala would show up when my kitty door opened, and my grumpy girl
“meeuf-owed”
her way across the room, jumped up on my bed, and curled up on my chest, pressing her face against my neck and purring like crazy.
“I’m really, really glad to see you.” I petted her ears and kissed the white spot over her nose. “How’s Duchess?” She blinked at me, sneezed, and then pressed her head against me and purred some more. I took that to mean the dog was being well taken care of by Jack and Damien.
Feeling better now that Nala was working her purr magic on me, I tried to lose myself in the book I was reading,
Ink Exchange
by my current favorite vamp author, Melissa Marr, but not even her hot fairies could keep my attention from wandering.
What was I thinking about? Stark, of course. I touched my lips, still feeling his kiss there. What was wrong with me? Why was I letting Stark affect me so much? Okay, yes. He’d died in my arms and that had been awful, truly awful. But there was more than that going on between us, or at least I thought there might be. I closed my eyes and sighed. I didn’t need to care about another guy. I wasn’t over Erik
or
Heath.
Okay, the truth was I wasn’t over Loren.
No, I wasn’t in love with Loren. What I wasn’t over was the pain he’d caused me. My heart still hurt, and it wasn’t ready to let another guy in.
I remembered Stark taking my hand and weaving his fingers through mine and the way his lips had felt against my skin.
“Crap. I guess no one told my heart it wasn’t ready for another guy,” I whispered.
What if Stark did come back?
Worse—what if he didn’t?
I was tired of losing people. A tear leaked out from under my closed eyelid and I brushed it away. I curled up on my side and pressed my face against Nala’s softness. I was just tired. It had been a terrible day. Tomorrow wouldn’t look so bad. Tomorrow I’d talk to Stevie Rae, and she’d help me make sense out of what to do about Stark.
But I couldn’t sleep. My mind kept whirring around and around, focusing on the mistakes I’d made and the people I’d hurt. Had Stark died as some kind of penalty for how badly I’d hurt Erik and Heath?
No!
My rational mind told me.
That’s ridiculous! Nyx doesn’t work like that
. But my guilty conscience whispered darker things.
You can’t hurt people as badly as you hurt Erik and Heath without a payback
.
Stop it!
I told myself.
Plus, Erik didn’t look so devastated today. Actually he looked like a jerk, and not like someone whose heart was broken
.
No, that wasn’t right either. Erik and I had been falling in love when I messed up with Loren. What did I expect Erik to do—walk around crying and begging me to come back to him? Hell no. I’d hurt him, and he really wasn’t being a jerk—he was trying to protect his heart from me.
I didn’t have to see Heath to know that I’d broken his heart, too. I knew him well enough to know exactly how badly I’d hurt him. He’d been a part of my life since we’d had our first crushes on each other in grade school. He’d always been there—from the puppy love stuff to the boyfriend/girlfriend middle school phase, to the “going out” stage in high school and, finally and more recently, the I’ve-Imprinted-him-and-want-to-suck-his-blood-and-whatnot stage. The whatnot is a nice way of saying that Imprinting and drinking a human’s blood triggers sex receptors in the fledgling and the human’s brains, so I had been thinking of doing more with Heath than just sucking his blood. Yes, I know that sounds skanky, but at least I’m being honest with myself.
So, Heath and I had Imprinted, but then I’d had sex with Loren and Imprinted with
him
during the Act (it’s still weird to think that I’m not a virgin anymore—weird as in disturbing and kinda scary), which broke my Imprint with Heath. Painfully and horribly, if what Loren had told me was true. And I haven’t talked to Heath since.
And Stark thought he was a coward for wanting to avoid pain? Compared to me, I’d definitely say not hardly. I wondered if the connection Stark and I had felt would have lasted through him finding out about all the stuff in my past. I mean, he’d come pretty clean with me, but I hadn’t told him crap about myself.
And there was a lot of crap to tell. Not to mention a lot of loose ends I hadn’t tied up.
I’d been avoiding Heath because I knew I’d hurt him. And, since I was being honest with myself, I had to admit that another part of why I’d been avoiding Heath had a lot to do with being afraid of his reaction to me.
Heath was nothing if he wasn’t dependable. I could depend on the fact that he was crazy about me. I could depend on the fact that he’d been my boyfriend (sometimes whether I wanted him to be or not) since third grade. I could depend on the fact that he’d always been there for me.
Suddenly I realized that I needed Heath. Tonight I felt bruised and battered and confused, and I needed to know that I hadn’t lost all of them . . . that one of them really loved me, even if I didn’t deserve it.
My cell phone was charging on my nightstand. I flipped it open and quickly text-messaged him before I could chicken out.
How r u?
I’d start simple, just a little message. When he answered,
if
he answered, I’d go from there.
I curled back up with Nala and tried to sleep.
After what seemed like forever, I checked the time. It was almost 8:30
A.M
. Okay, so, Heath was asleep. He was still on winter break, and if the kid didn’t have to get up and go to school, he slept until noon. Literally.
So he’s asleep
, I repeated stubbornly to myself.