Chosen

Suddenly Stevie Rae hissed a nasty, feral sound, and her eyes blazed blood red. 'Do I look like your best friend?'

I ignored the way my heart was beating around inside my chest. She was right. What she had become was absolutely not like the Stevie Rae I'd known. But I wouldn't believe that she was all the way gone. I'd seen glimpses of my best friend in the tunnels and that meant I couldn't give up on her. I felt like crying, but instead I pulled myself together and forced my voice to sound normal.

'Well, hell no, you don't look like Stevie Rae. How long has it been since you've washed your hair? And what are you wearing?' I pointed at the sweat pants and oversized shirt that were covered by a long, nastily stained black trench coat like the ones those freaky goth kids like to wear even when it's a hundred degrees outside. 'I wouldn't look like me if I was dressed like that either.' I sighed and took a couple steps closer to her. 'Why don't you just come with me? I'll sneak you back into the dorm. It'll be easy— practically no one's there. Neferet's not there,' I added, and then hurried on (I doubted if either of us wanted to talk about Neferet just then—hell, if ever). 'Most the teachers are on winter break and the kids are taking short trips to see their families. Absolutely nothing is going on. We won't even be bothered by Damien and the Twins and Erik 'cause they're pissed at me. So you can take a long, soapy shower, and I'll get you some real clothes, then we can talk.' I was looking into her eyes, so I saw the longing that filled them. It lasted only an instant, but I knew it had been there. Then she looked quickly away.

'I can't come with you. I have to feed.'

'That's no problem. I'll get you something to eat from the dorm kitchen. Hey, I'll bet I can find a bowl of Lucky Charms,' I smiled. 'Remember, they're magically delicious—and have absolutely no nutritional value at all.'

'Like Count Chocula does?'

My smiled widened into a relieved grin as Stevie Rae took up the thread of our old argument about which of our personal favorite breakfast cereals was the best. 'Count Chocula has coco-flavored goodness. Coco is a plant. It's healthy.'

Stevie Rae's eyes met mine. Hers weren't glowing red anymore, and she also wasn't trying to hide the tears that were filling them and flowing down her cheeks. I automatically moved to hug her, but she stepped back.

'No! I don't want you to touch me, Zoey. I'm not who I was. I'm dirty and disgusting.'

'Then come back to the school with me and wash up!' I pleaded. 'We'll figure this out—I promise.'

Stevie Rae shook her head sadly and wiped at her eyes. 'There's no figuring this out. When I said that I'm dirty and disgusting I didn't mean on the outside. What you see on the outside of me isn't half as nasty as what I'm really like on the inside. Zoey, I have to feed. That's not eating cereal or sandwiches and drinking brown pop. I have to have blood. Human blood. If I don't—' She paused and I saw a terrible shudder move through her body. 'If I don't, the pain is a gnawing, burning hunger that I can't stand. And you need to understand that I want to feed. I want to tear open human throats and drink that warm blood so filled with terror and anger and pain that it makes me dizzy.' She paused again, this time breathing heavily.

'You can't really want to kill people, Stevie Rae.'

'You're wrong. I do.'

'You say that, but I know there are still parts of my best friend inside you, and Stevie Rae wouldn't be comfortable spanking a puppy, let alone killing someone.' I hurried on when she opened her mouth to disagree with me. 'What if I can get you human blood so that you don't have to kill anyone?'

In that horrid emotionless tone she said, 'I like the kill.'

'Do you also like to be filthy and smelly and disgusting-looking?' I snapped.

'I don't care about how I look anymore.'

'Really? What if I said I could get you a pair of Roper jeans, cowboy boots, and a nice long-sleeved, tuck-in shirt that is very crisply ironed?' I saw the flicker in her eyes and knew I'd managed to touch the old Stevie Rae. My mind rushed around, trying to come up with the right thing to say while I still had some piece of her listening. 'So here's the deal. Meet me tomorrow at midnight—no, wait. Tomorrow's Saturday. No way things will be settled down enough by midnight for me to sneak out. So make it three a.m. at the gazebo on the Philbrook grounds.' I paused for a second to grin at her. 'You remember the place, right?' Of course I knew she definitely remembered where I meant. She'd been there with me before, only that night she'd been trying to save me, and not the other way around.

'Yes. I remember.' She clipped the word in that same cold, flat voice.

'Okay, so meet me there. I'll have your outfit with me and I'll also have blood. You can eat, or drink, or whatever, and change your clothes. Then we can start to figure this out.' I added to myself that I'd also have soap and shampoo and do some conjuring of water so the girl could wash up. Eesh, she smelled as terrible as she looked. 'Okay?'

'There's really no point.'

'Can you please let me decide that for myself? Plus, I haven't told you the horrors of my birthday yet. Grandma and I had a nightmare scene with my mom and step-loser. Grandma called the step-loser a turd monkey.'

A laugh burst out of Stevie Rae that sounded so much like her old self that my vision got all blurry with the tears I had to frantically blink away.

'Please come,' I said, my voice rough with emotions. 'I've missed you so much.'

'I'll come,' Stevie Rae said. 'But you'll be sorry.'

CHAPTER 5

On that not-so-positive note, Stevie Rae whirled around and then dashed down the alley, disappearing into its dark stinkyness. Much more slowly, I got in my Bug. I was sad and restless and had way too much thinking to do to head straight back to the school, so instead I drove to the twenty-four-hour IHOP that was in south Tulsa on Seventy-first Street, ordered a big chocolate milk shake and a stack of chocolate-chip pancakes, and did my thinking while I did some serious stress eating.

I guess it had gone okay with Stevie Rae. I mean, she had agreed to meet me tomorrow. And she hadn't tried to bite me, which was a plus. Of course, the whole trying-to-eat-the-street-person was highly disturbing, as was the totally gross way she looked and smelled. But underneath all of that hateful crazy undead girl exterior I swear I could still sense my Stevie Rae, my best friend. I was going to hold tight to that and see if I could coax her back into the light. Figuratively speaking anyway. I think the actual light bothers her even more than it bothers me or adult vamps. Which figured. The gross undead dead kids were definitely vamp stereotypes. I wondered if she'd burst into flame if sunlight touched her. Crap. That would definitely be bad, especially since we're meeting at 3:00 a.m., which was only a couple hours before dawn. Crap again.

As if worrying about sunlight and whatnot wasn't enough, I had to start thinking about what I was going to do when all the profs (Neferet in particular) came back to school in the too-near future, and the fact that I had to keep the knowledge that Stevie Rae was undead versus dead dead from everyone. No. I'd worry about that after I got Stevie Rae cleaned up and someplace safe. I'd just take it one little tiny baby step at a time and hope that Nyx, who had clearly led me to Stevie Rae, was going to give me some help figuring things out.

By the time I got back to school it was almost dawn. The parking lot of the school was mostly deserted, and I didn't meet anyone as I walked slowly around the side of the castle-like cluster of buildings that made up the House of Night. The girls' dorm was at the opposite end of the campus, but I still wasn't in any hurry. Plus, I had something I needed to do before I went to the dorm and more than likely ran into at least a couple of my disgruntled friends. (Ugh, I really really hate my birthday.)

The building that sat across from the main House of Night structure was made of the same odd mixture of old bricks and jutting rocks as the rest of the school, but this one was smaller and rounder, and in front of it was a marble statue of our goddess, Nyx, with her arms upraised as if her hands were cupping a full moon. I stood gazing at the goddess. The old-fashioned gaslights that illuminated the campus weren't just easy on our changing eyesight. They created a soft, warm light that flickered like a caress, breathing life into Nyx's statue.

Feeling more than a little in awe of the goddess, I put down my lavender plant and Dracula (gently), and then I searched around in the winter grass at the base of Nyx's statue until I found the