Everyone filed out and headed to the professors’ dining hall, and Kevin hurried to catch up with Aphrodite.
“Hey, uh, while you eat, I’m gonna grab some of my stuff from the room and move it to the dorm,” he said.
She stopped and faced him. “This is really nice of you.”
“Well, I know that one of the things you and my girl have in common is a definite disdain for ‘roughing it,’ ” he air-quoted.
“To say the least,” muttered James as he walked by with Kacie, who covered her laugh with a cough.
Aphrodite narrowed her eyes and glared after them. “Different world—same pain-in-the-ass Bow Boy.”
“Huh?” said Stark as he passed by with Z.
“Oh, nothing. Z, save me a spot. I’ll be there in a sec,” Aphrodite said.
“No, go ahead. You don’t have to come with me to the room.” Kevin put his hands in his jeans pockets. “And you’ll be able to find it easily. It’s the same one you have in your world.”
“That’s a massive coincidence,” she said.
“Yeah, well, wait ’til you see it. I think you’ll like the décor.”
Aphrodite laughed, “And the shoes, no doubt.”
“No doubt,” Kevin agreed. He was glad that it had stopped being painful to talk to Aphrodite and, weirdly enough, he felt like he had his Aphrodite to thank for that.
“Okay, well, how about I save you a spot in the dining room? Want me to order anything for you?”
“Nah, I’m not sure what I want, but I’ll see you soon.”
Impulsively, Aphrodite stepped forward and hugged him. “You’re a really good guy, Kevin Redbird. I know why your girl fell for you.”
He felt his cheeks get hot, but no tears threatened, and it was easy for him to hug her and then let her go without feeling like his heart was shattering into little pieces. Then she swept her hair back and twitched after Zoey, calling, “Hey! Slow down. You know how I feel about jogging!”
Kevin took his time making his way to the room he’d shared with Aphrodite. As he collected his things, he realized that he wasn’t going to move back in after Zoey and her group returned to their world. The room was more of a ghost than Aphrodite, and it haunted him with a sadness that wasn’t good for him—not if he wanted to move forward with his life, and at the edge of Nyx’s Realm, Kevin had decided that he did want to move forward.
Everything important to him fit into a duffel bag, and he slung it over his shoulder as he headed out of the arched doorway to follow the sidewalk along the rear of the school that led to the dorms. As he passed the tall marble statue of Nyx, he automatically glanced at the goddess. Someone was standing before the statue. At the moment Kevin looked, she struck a match to light the tea light she’d placed at the goddess’s feet. Flame exploded from the match with a whooshing sound that Kevin heard from the sidewalk.
The fledgling made a little squeaking noise and dropped the match, but as she tried to stomp on it, the thing refused to extinguish. Kevin left the sidewalk and jogged to her as he took a bottle of water from his duffel bag and unscrewed the lid.
“Oh, shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” she was saying when he hurried up to her.
“It’s okay, I got it.” He poured the water on the flaming match and it finally extinguished.
“That was crazy as hell. I—I don’t know what happened,” she said. Then she really looked at him and her confused expression cleared. “Oh, hey! It’s you.”
He blinked in surprise. “Hi, Shaunee. Good to see you again.” Kevin made a show of looking around the statue. “No twin in sight?” he teased.
Instead of the grin he’d been hoping for, Shaunee’s shoulders slumped. “No. No twin.”
“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I was just kidding around. I didn’t mean anything.”
She sighed. “It’s okay.”
“Are you okay?”
He watched her begin to say yeah and brush him off, and then her expression changed, and he saw tears fill her beautiful brown eyes. She shook her head. “No. Not really.”
He gestured at the bench. “Wanta talk about it?” When she hesitated he added, “My grandma, Sylvia Redbird, you’ve seen her around, right?”
She nodded. “Hard to miss a human hanging out at a House of Night, so yeah. I’ve seen her.”
“She says I’m a good listener. And I don’t really have anywhere to be—at least not until dawn in sixty-three minutes.”
“It’s weird that you red vamps always know when sunrise and sunset are, but I do like a boy who quotes his grandma. So, yeah. I think I do wanta talk.”
They went to the bench and sat, and Kevin offered her a drink from the half-empty water bottle, which she took with a smile of thanks. He hadn’t made up that G-ma thought he was a good listener, and Kev knew that a big part of listening was really hearing what was being said, which took patience. Kevin clasped his hands in his lap and waited patiently for Shaunee to speak.
It didn’t take long. She sipped the water again and said, “So, you do remember Erin, my twin, right?”
He thought about the last time he’d seen Erin and the show she’d put on with Dallas at the dorm with a vodka luge and wet T-shirt contest. “Uh, yeah. She’s pretty hard to forget.”
Shaunee glanced at him sharply. “Don’t look like that. Most of that slutty Barbie thing she does is an act. She’s insecure and thinks the only way people will like her is if she’s a party girl. Under all of that, she’s really funny and smart.”
“Okay, sorry. You’re right. I don’t know her, and it’s not my business to judge her. So, what’s up?”
“I’m not sure. You remember last time we talked I said I was trying to get her to understand that we can still be besties, even if we’re not together all the time and we don’t agree about
