Untamed

'Please. There's nothing diet about Charlie's.'

'They have diet pop,' she said.

I sneered down at her size 6 perfectness. 'Not for you.'

Since it really was fast food, it didn't take long to fill our order, and Aphrodite and I found a semi-clean table and started shoving greasy fried chicken and catsup-slathered fries into our faces. Now, don't get me wrong. Even though I was shoveling in the chicken and fries 'cause we needed to get back to school and it was rude to lounge around while Darius babysat Aphrodite's cat from hell, I savored every bite. I mean, after a couple months of really nutritious, excellent food from the House of Night cafeteria, my taste buds needed a dose of disgustingly delicious and utterly not-good-for-me food. Yum. Seriously.

'So,' I said between bites, 'Stevie Rae and I talked.'

'Yeah, I thought I heard her twang out there in the other room.' Aphrodite picked delicately at a drumstick and wrinkled her nose at me when I added salt to the already totally salty fries. 'You're going to bloat like a dead fish.'

'If I do, I'll just wear sweats until I pee it out.' I grinned around a big bite of chicken.

She shuddered. 'You're so gross. I cannot believe we're friends, which proves I'm in the middle of a personal crisis. Anyway—what's up with Stevie Rae and the zoo animals?'

'Well, we didn't really talk about her or the other kids very much,' I said, not willing to tell Aphrodite that Stevie Rae admitted to not being herself.

'So since you didn't talk about the crazies much, my guess is Stark was who you did talk about.'

'Yeah. It's not good.'

'Well, no. The kid's dead. Or possibly undead. Either isn't very good. What did Stevie Rae say about the time frame for him coming back? Or do we just wait till he starts to stink and figure he's not going to wake up.'

'Don't talk about him like that!'

'Sorry, I forget that you had a thing with him. What did Stevie Rae say?'

'Sadly, she couldn't give me many specifics. Her memory of everything before she Changed is pretty sketchy. Her best advice was to steal his body and see if he wakes up. And if he does wake up, he'll need to be fed right away.'

'Fed? As in a burger and some fries, or fed as in opening a vein?'

'Your second guess is the right one.'

'Oh, ugh. I know you've gotten all into the bloodsucking-back-and-forth stuff, but it still squees me out.'

'It squees me out, too, but there's no denying the power of it,' I admitted uncomfortably.

She gave me a long contemplative look. 'The Sociology book says it's a lot like sex. Maybe even better.'

I shrugged.

'You're going to have to do better than that. I want details.'

'Okay. Yeah. It's a lot like sex.'

Her eyes widened. 'And it's good?'

'Yes. But what happens because of it isn't always good.' I thought about Heath and decided it was definitely time to change the subject. 'Anyway, I'm supposed to figure out a way to get Stark's maybe-temporarily-dead body and hide it somewhere we can, in theory, watch it to see if he wakes up. Then we feed him—'

'Uh, don't you mean you feed him? I say a big No Way about having anything to do with that kid biting me.'

'Yes, I mean I have to feed him.' A fact that was more than a little appealing to me, even though I definitely wasn't going to discuss that with Aphrodite. 'I'm clueless about how I can steal him or hide him.'

'Well, he's going to be hard to move, especially since I'm assuming Neferet is keeping her beady eyes on him.'

'You assume right—at least that's what Stevie Rae says.' I took a long drink of my brown pop.

'Sounds like you need a nanny cam,' she said.

'Huh?'

'You know, one of those hidden cameras rich mommies use to watch their precious babies while they're at the country club drinking martinis at eleven o'clock in the morning.'

'Aphrodite, you're from a whole different world.'

'Thank you,' she said. 'Seriously, a nanny cam would work. I could pick one up at RadioShack. Isn't that Jack kid good with electronics?'

'Yeah,' I said.

'He could install it in the morgue, and you could keep the monitor in your room. Hell, I could probably even buy the kind that comes with a portable monitor, so you could carry it around with you.'

'Really?'

'Totally.'

'Excellent! It was freaking me more than I can say to think about putting Stark in my closet.'

'Uh, puke.' We chewed happily for a while, and then Aphrodite said, 'So what else did the bumpkin have to say?'

'Actually, we talked about you,' I said smugly.

'Me?' Aphrodite narrowed her eyes.

'Well, honestly, only a little. Mostly we talked about her stepping into the earth position during the cleansing ritual tomorrow.'

'You mean like hiding behind me and trying to make it look like I'm invoking earth, but she'll really be doing it?'

'Uh, no. Not exactly. I mean like you stepping aside and letting Stevie Rae take her old place in the circle.'

'In front of everybody?'

'Yep.'

'You're kidding, right?'

'Nope.'

'And she's going to do it?'

'Yep,' I said with way more confidence than I actually felt.

Aphrodite chewed quietly for a while, and then she nodded slowly. 'Okay, I get it. You're counting on Shekinah saving your ass.'

'Our asses, actually. Which includes you, me, Stevie Rae, the red fledglings, and Stark—if he undeads. I figure if everyone knows about them, it'll be harder for Neferet to use them for her own evil means.'

'Sounds very B movie.'

'It might sound cheesy like that, but it's not. I'm dead serious about it. We all better be. Neferet is scary. She tried to start a war with humans, and I don't think she's done trying. Plus,' I added hesitantly, 'I have a bad feeling.'

'Shit. What kind of bad feeling?'

'Well, honestly, I've been trying to ignore it, but I've had a bad feeling about Neferet ever since Nyx appeared to us.'

'Zoey, get serious. You've had a bad feeling about Neferet for months.'

I shook my head. 'Not like this. This is something different. Something worse. And Stevie Rae feels it, too.' I hesitated again, and then added, 'And after whatever it was jumped me yesterday, the night has been scaring me.'

'The night?'

'The night,' I repeated.

'Zoey, we are creatures of the night. How can the night scare you?'

'I don't know! All I know is that it feels like there's something out there watching me. What do you feel?'

Aphrodite sighed. 'About?'

'About the night or Neferet or whatever! Just tell me if you've noticed any new negative vibes.'

'I don't know. I haven't been thinking about vibes and such. I've been kinda busy with my own issues.'