she had been the night before. I drew a deep breath. 'This has to stop, Stevie Rae.'
I stared at the outline of her crescent moon. Was it fading? I thought it definitely looked lighter, or at least less distinct, which couldn't be good. That did shake me up. 'You're not dead' was all I could think to say.
'I feel dead.'
'Okay, well, you kinda look dead. I know when I look like crap I usually feel like crap, too. Maybe that's part of why you feel so bad.' I reached into my bag and pulled out one of her cowboy boots. 'Check out what I brought you.'
'Shoes cannot fix the world.' This was a subject Stevie Rae and the Twins had argued about before, and her voice held a hint of the old exasperation.
'That's not what the Twins would say.'
The familiar tone in her voice flattened out to expressionless and cold. 'What would the Twins say if they could see me now?'
I met Stevie Rae's red eyes. 'They'd say you need a bath and an attitude check, but they'd also be unbelievably happy that you're alive.'
'I'm not alive. That's what I keep trying to get you to understand.'
'Stevie Rae, I am not going to understand that because you're walking and talking. I don't think you're anything like dead—I think you're changed. Not like I'm Changing, as in becoming what we're used to recognizing as an adult vampyre. You've made a different kind of Change, and I think it's harder than the one that's happening to me. That's why you're going through all of this. Would you please give me a chance to help you? Can't you just try to believe everything might turn out okay?'
'I don't know how you can be so sure about that,' she said.
I gave her the answer I felt deep in my soul, and knew the moment I'd said it that it was the right thing to say. 'I'm sure about you being okay because I'm sure that Nyx still loves you and she let this happen for a reason.'
The hope that flashed in Stevie Rae's red eyes was almost painful to look at. 'You really believe Nyx hasn't given up on me?'
'Nyx hasn't and I haven't.' I ignored her smell and gave her a firm hug, which she didn't return, but she also didn't jerk away from me or take a bite out of my neck, so I figured we were making progress. 'Come on. The place I found for you to stay is just down the street.'
I started walking, believing she would follow me, which she did after only a slight hesitation. We cut around the grounds of the museum and came out on Rockford, the street that runs in front of it. Twenty-seventh, the street Aphrodite's mansion (well, it's really her crazy parents' mansion) sits off of runs right into Rockford. Feeling more than a little dreamlike, I walked down the middle of the road in the darkness, concentrating on shrouding us in silence and invisibility, with Stevie Rae following only a couple of feet behind me. It was dark and seemed preternaturally silent. I glanced up through the winter branches of the huge old trees that lined the street. I should have been able to see an almost full moon, but clouds had rolled in, obscuring all but an indistinct glow of white where the moon should be. It had turned cold, and I was glad that my changing metabolism protected me from the whipping wind. I wondered if weather changes bothered Stevie Rae, and I was going to ask her about it when she suddenly spoke.
'Neferet won't like this.'
'This?'
'Me being with you instead of with the others.' Stevie Rae seemed really agitated and was plucking nervously at one hand with the other.
'Relax, Neferet won't know you're with me, at least not until we're ready for her to know,' I said.
'She'll know as soon as she gets back and sees that I'm not with the rest of them.'
'No, she'll just know you're gone. Anything could have happened to you.' Then a thought hit me that was so incredible I stopped like I'd run into a tree. 'Stevie Rae! You don't have to be around adult vamps to be okay!'
'Huh?'
'It proves you've Changed! You're not coughing and dying!'
'Zoey, I've already done that.'
'No no no! That's not what I mean.' I grabbed her arm, ignoring the fact that she immediately pulled it from my grasp and took a step away from me. 'You can exist without the vamps. Only another adult vampyre can do that. So it is just like I said. You have Changed, it's just a different kind of Change!'
'And that's a good thing?'
'Yep!' I wasn't as sure as I sounded, but I was determined to keep a positive front for Stevie Rae. Plus, she was looking not-so-good. I mean, even more not-so-good than her usual yucky look. 'What's wrong with you?'
'I need blood!' She wiped a shaky hand across her dirty face. 'That little bag wasn't enough. You stopped me from feeding yesterday, so I haven't fed since the day before. It—it's
'Whose veins?' I was as intrigued as I was grossed out.
She made a sweeping gesture with her arm that was feral and graceful. 'The humans sleeping around us.' Her voice had dropped to a husky murmur. There was something in the tone of it that made me want to move closer to her, even though her eyes had flushed a bright scarlet again and she smelled so bad it made me want to gag. 'One of them is awake.' She pointed to the huge mansion to the right of where we'd stopped. 'It's a girl… a teenager … she's by herself in her room …'
Stevie Rae's voice was an alluring singsong. My heart had started to beat hard against my chest. 'How do you know that?' I whispered.
She turned her burning eyes on me. 'There's so much I know. I know about your bloodlust. I can smell it. There's no reason you shouldn't give in to it. We could enter the house. Go to the girl's room and take her together. I'd share her with you, Zoey.'
For a moment I was lost in the obsession that heated Stevie Rae's eyes, and in my own need. I hadn't had human blood since the taste Heath had given me more than a month ago. The memory of that one exquisite drink lingered in my body like a tantalizing secret. Completely mesmerized, I listened to Stevie Rae spin a web of darkness that was catching me in its beautiful, sticky depths.
'I can show you how to get in the house. I can sense secret ways. You could get the girl to invite me in—I can't go into a person's home now unless they invite me first. But once I'm in …' Stevie Rae laughed.
It was her laugh that snapped me out of it. Stevie Rae used to have the best laugh ever. It was happy and young and innocently in love with life. Now what came out of her mouth was a mean, twisted echo of that old joy.
'The apartment is two houses down. There's blood in the fridge.' I turned and started walking quickly down the street.
'It's not warm and it's not fresh.' She sounded pissed, but she was following me again.
'It's fresh enough, and there's a microwave. You can nuke it.'
She didn't say anything else, and we came to the mansion in just a few minutes. I led her around to the garage apartment, opened the outside door, and stepped in. I was halfway up the stairs when I realized Stevie Rae wasn't behind me. Hurrying back down to the door I saw her standing outside in the darkness. All that was clearly visible of her was the red of her eyes.
'You have to invite me in,' she said.
'Oh, sorry.' What she'd said before hadn't really registered with me, and now I felt a jolt of shock at this further proof of Stevie Rae's soul-deep difference. 'Uh, come on in,' I said quickly.
Stevie Rae stepped forward and ran smack into an invisible barrier. She gave a painful yelp, which turned into a snarl. Her eyes glowed up at me. 'Guess your plan won't work. I can't get in there.'
'I thought you said you just had to be invited in.'
'By someone who lives at the house. You don't live here.'
Above me, Aphrodite's coldly polite voice (sounding uncomfortably like her mother) called out. 'I live here.
