“Sweet, blessed Nyx.” Erik’s shocked voice came from behind me, kept low for my ears alone to hear. “They’re all about him.”
“What does ‘sweet like dots’ mean?” Jack was asking Kramisha.
“You know—dippin’ dots. I love me some dippin’ dots,” she said.
Erik and I moved around Kramisha’s room. The more I read, the tighter the knot my stomach curled into.
“Kramisha, what were you thinking about when you wrote this one?” I asked her, pointing at the last one I’d read.
She shrugged that one shoulder again. “I guess I thought ’bout how we out of the House of Night, but we shouldn’t be. I mean, I know it’s best for us underground, but it just don’t feel right that only Neferet know about us. She a wrong kind of High Priestess.”
“Kramisha, would you do me a favor and copy down all of these poems?”
“You think I messed up, don’t you?”
“No. I do
“I think she’s Vamp Poet Laureate material, and a major improvement over our last one,” Erik said.
I looked up at him sharply, and he shrugged and grinned. “It was just a thought, that’s all.”
Okay, even though it made me uncomfortable to think about Loren, especially when Erik had been the one to bring him up, I felt the rightness of what he was saying down deep in my gut, which said more about Kramisha’s true nature than my exhausted guessing and my apparently overactive imagination were telling me. Nyx obviously had her hand on this kid.
“Whaaaaat?! Are you kiddin’? You kiddin’, ain’t ya?”
“I’m not kidding. We’re a new kind of vamp group. We’re a
“Um, I agree and everything with you, Z, but doesn’t the council have to vote on a new Poet Laureate?” Jack said.
“Yep, and I have my Council down here with me.” I realized Jack had been talking about
“Kramisha has my vote,” Erik said.
“See, it’s practically official,” I said.
“Yea!” Jack cheered.
“It’s a crazy idea, but I like it.” Kramisha beamed.
“So, write those poems down for me before you go to sleep, ’kay?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Come on, Jack. Our Poet Laureate needs to get her sleep,” Erik said. “Hey, congratulations, Kramisha.”
“Yeah, big congrats!” Jack said, giving Kramisha a hug.
“Y’all go on now. I got work to do. Then I gotta get my rest. A Poet Laureate do have to look her best,” Kramisha said primly, finishing up with a couplet.
Erik and I followed Jack and Duchess out of Kramisha’s room and down the tunnel.
“Was that poem really about Kalona?” Jack said.
“I think they all were,” I said. “Do you?” I asked Erik.
He nodded grimly.
“Ohmigod! What’s that mean?” Jack said.
“I don’t have a clue. Nyx is at work, though. I can feel it. The prophecy came to us in poem form. Now this? It can’t be a coincidence.”
“If it’s the work of the Goddess, then there must be some way we can use it to help us,” Erik said.
“Yeah, that’s what I think, too.”
“We just have to figure out how,” Erik said.
“That’s gonna take someone with more brains than me,” I said.
There was a short pause, and then the three of us spoke together, “Damien.”
Spooky shadows, bats, and my worries about the red fledglings temporarily forgotten, I hurried down the tunnel with Erik and Jack.
“The door to the depot’s over here.” Jack led us through the surprisingly homelike kitchen to a side room that was obviously a pantry, though I’d bet what used to be stored there was more liquid than the bags of chips and boxes of cereal it now held. All along one wall, rolled neatly, piled side by side and on top of each other, were a bunch of puffy sleeping bags and pillows.
“So is that the way into the depot?” I pointed to a wooden pull-down staircase in the corner of the storage closet that led up to an open door.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Jack said.
Jack went first and I followed him, poking my head up into the supposedly abandoned building. My first impression was of darkness and dust, fragmented every few minutes by what looked like a strobe-light effect of flashes of sudden brightness leaking through the boarded-up windows and door. When I heard the rumble of thunder, I understood and remembered what Erik had said about a major thunderstorm going on, which wouldn’t be unusual for Tulsa, even in early January.
But this wasn’t a normal day, and I couldn’t help but believe this also wasn’t a normal thunderstorm.
Before I did any looking around I pulled my cell phone out of my purse. I opened it. No service.
“Mine hasn’t worked, either. Not since we got here,” Erik said.
“Mine’s charging down in the kitchen, but I know Damien checked his when we got up here, and he didn’t have any service, either.”
“You know bad weather can knock the towers out,” Erik said in response to what I’m sure was my sickeningly worried expression. “Remember that big storm a month or so ago? My cell didn’t work for three entire days.”
“Thanks for trying to make me feel better, but I just…just don’t believe this is a natural phenomenon.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”
I drew a deep breath. Well, natural or not, we were going to have to deal with it, and right now there wasn’t a darn thing we could do about our isolation here. There was a storm raging outside, and we weren’t ready to face it yet.
So first things first. I squared my shoulders and looked around. We’d come up in a little room that had a half
