Untamed

'Crap, you're right. While I'm doing all of that, what are you gonna be doing?'

'I am going to be resting so I can be refreshed and ready to put the scarily awesome powers of my brain to work on the poem puzzle.'

'So you're gonna take a nap?'

'Basically. Hey, cheer up. We managed to skip out on a whole day of school,' she said.

'You managed to skip out on a whole day of school. I managed to make the one class my ex-boyfriend is teaching just in time to do a really uncomfortable and more than slightly embarrassing improvisation scene with him in front of the entire class.'

'Ooooh! I want to hear all about that!'

'Don't hold your breath,' I said over my shoulder as I went out the door.

Damien and the Twins weren't hard to find. They were downstairs in the main room of the dorm, snarfing down bags of pretzels and baked chips. (Ugh! It was such a pain in the butt that the vamps made us eat healthy stuff.) It was obvious when everyone shut up at first sight of me and then all began to babble at once that they were also gossiping about me.

'Oh, honey. We just heard about Erik and Drama class,' Damien said, giving me a little sympathetic pat on my arm.

'Yeah, but we haven't heard enough about it,' Shaunee said.

'We definitely need details from the horse's mouth,' Erin said.

'And you're the horse,' Shaunee finished.

I sighed. 'We did an improv scene. He kissed me. The class went nuts. Everyone left when the bell rang. I stayed. He ignored me. The end.'

'Oh, nuh-uh. You're not getting away with just those little details,' Erin said.

'Yeah, we got better dirt from Becca. You know, Twin, I do believe that girl has a crush on our Erik,' Shaunee said.

'Do tell, Twin? Should we claw her eyes out for Z?' Erin said. 'I haven't done a nice eye-clawing in ages.'

'You two are so banal,' Damien said. 'Erik and Zoey are broken up, remember?'

'Yeah, well, your vocab is a ba-pain in our ba-asses,' Erin said.

'Ba-exactly,' Shaunee said.

'Holy crap! Would you guys stop bickering? We've got some major life stuff going on that makes my pathetic love life stuff seem even more ridiculous than it already is. Now I'm gonna get myself a brown pop and try like hell to find some real chips in the kitchen. While I do that, get your butts upstairs and meet me in Aphrodite's room. We have stuff we have to figure out.'

'Stuff?' Damien said. 'What kind of stuff?'

'The same old stuff of the scary, life-shattering, world-ending variety we're so familiar with,' I said.

Damien and the Twins blinked at me for a couple of seconds; then all three muttered, 'Okay, cool. We're in.'

'Oh, and Damien,' I said. 'Get Jack. He's part of this, too.'

Damien looked surprised and then happy, and then a little sad. 'Z, is it okay if he brings Duchess? The dog won't let him out of her sight.'

'Yeah, she can come. But warn him that Aphrodite has a new cat, and the cat is a weird furry clone of Aphrodite.'

'Oh, ewww,' the Twins said.

Shaking my head, I disappeared into the kitchen, determined not to let any of them give me another headache.

'Ohmigod, I feel faint!' Jack fanned himself while he looked really, really pale and kept shooting glances at the heavily draped window. Duchess, who was crammed into Aphrodite's room in the midst of all of us and her snarling cat, leaned against him and whined. Jack had been the first to speak after the long silence that followed Aphrodite and me clueing them in on her vision, the poem, and Grandma's story about the Tsi Sgili, Raven Mockers, and Kalona.

'Okay, that's the creepiest story I've heard in ages.' Shaunee sounded practically breathless. 'I swear it's even scarier than all of the Saw movies put together.'

'Ohmygod, Twin. Saw Four scared the bejezzus right outta me,' Erin said. 'But you're right. This Kalona stuff is even freakier. And I think it was a good idea to get your grandma here, Z.'

'Ditto, Twin,' Shaunee chimed in.

'Oh, Z!' Jack cried, petting Duchess's ears frantically. 'Just thinking about those disgusting raven things croaking at your sweet grandma sitting there in her little house on that lavender farm way out in the boondocks gives me the heebie-jeebies.'

'Nice,' Aphrodite said. 'As if Zoey isn't freaked out enough without you three feeling the need to twist the knife in her gut.'

'Oh, jeesh! I'm so sorry, Zoey!' Jack was instantly contrite, clutching Damien with one hand and petting Duchess with the other. He looked like he was going to cry.

I expected the Twins to puff up and hiss at Aphrodite as per usual, but instead they shared a look and then turned to me.

'Sorry, Z,' Erin said.

'Yeah, the hag—I mean Aphrodite—is right. We shouldn't have freaked you out about your grandma,' Shaunee said.

'Damn. Did the Dorkamese Twins just say I was right about something?' Aphrodite pressed the back of her hand against her forehead and pretended to be about to faint.

'If it makes you feel any better,' Shaunee said.

'We still hate you,' Erin finished.

'Uh, can we please remember that Duchess has been through a bunch of bullpoop in the past day?' Crouching in front of the big blond Lab, I took her face between my hands. Her eyes were calm and knowing, like she already understood way more than we ever would. 'You're a better girl than all of us, aren't you?'

Duchess licked my face, and I smiled. She reminded me of Stark—the living, breathing, confident Stark—and I felt a rush of hope that maybe he would come back for his dog (and for me). Even though that would only add to the complexity of my life, it also somehow made me feel like maybe things weren't so scary as I'd thought they were. Then Damien shattered my illusion.

'Let me see the poem.' Typical for Mr. Studious, he went right to the point, bypassing a good portion of the drama.

Feeling utterly relieved to have another brain trying to figure it out, I stood up and handed him the poem.

'First, you know calling it a poem is really a misnomer,' Damien said.

'Grandma called it a song,' I said.

'It's not actually that, either. Or at least in my opinion it's not.'

I had some major respect for Damien's opinion, especially on anything vaguely academic, so I said, 'If it's not a poem or a song, what is it, then?'

'It's a prophecy,' he said.

'Well, shit! He's right,' Aphrodite said.

'Sadly, I have to agree,' Shaunee said.

'Gloom and doom to come put in confusing what-the-fuck language. Yep, definitely a prophecy,' Erin said.

'Prophecy, like in Lord of the Rings about the return of the king?' Jack said.

Damien smiled at him. 'Yes, just like that.'

Then they all looked my way. 'Feels right to me,' I said lamely.

'All right. Let's get to work deciphering it.' Damien studied the prophecy. 'Okay, so, it's written in an abab cdcd ee rhyme scheme, breaking it into three stanzas.'

'Is that important?' I asked. 'I mean, we're calling it a prophecy now instead of a poem, so do we care about that abab stuff?'

'Well, I'm not one hundred percent sure, but it is written in poetic form, so my best guess is that we should