Tempted

around the infirmary, infilling the fledglings. I stayed there, being a living conduit for the elements until my arms ached and sweat poured down my body.

“Zoey! I said, ‘Enough!’ You’ve helped them. Close the circle.”

I heard Stark, and realized that he had been talking to me for a while, but I’d been concentrating so hard and for so long that he literally had to shout to finally break through to me.

Wearily, I dropped my hands and whispered sincere thanks and goodbyes to the five elements, and then I somehow lost my legs and fell to the floor smack on my butt.

CHAPTER 24

Zoey

“No, I do not need a bed in the infirmary,” I repeated for the third time to Stark, who kept hovering around me looking way too worried. “And there are no extra beds here anyway.”

“Hey, I’m feeling lots better,” Denio called. “You can have my bed, Z.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I told her. And then I stuck my hand out to Stark. “Just help me stand up, would ya?”

He frowned dubiously at me, but helped me up. I stood very still so that no one was aware that the room was spinning like a crazy mini-tornado around me.

“I think she looks worse than I feel,” said Drew from his pallet on the floor.

“She can hear you,” I said. “And I’m fine.” I let my slightly blurry vision wander from wounded kid to wounded kid. They were all looking better, which gave me a great sense of relief. I checked “be sure the hurt kids aren’t writhing in pain and dying horribly” off my mental to-do list. Time for the next list item. I stifled a sigh because I didn’t want to waste the oxygen. “Okay, things are better here. So, Stevie Rae, we need to figure out where the red fledglings will be staying when the sun comes up before the sun comes up.”

“Good idea, Z,” said Stevie Rae, who was sitting on the floor next to Drew. I remembered then that she’d had kind of a thing for the kid before she’d died and un-died, and I acknowledged to myself that seeing her flirting with him, when I thought she probably had a thing for that red fledgling kid named Dallas, gave me a little moment of selfish glee. It might be borderline mean of me, but it would sure be nice if my BFF and I could talk about how to juggle multiple-guy problems.

“Z? Do ya think that’s a good idea?”

“Oh, sorry, what?” I realized Stevie Rae had been talking away at me while I’d been hoping she’d accumulate a zillion (or at least two) boyfriends.

“I said the red fledglings could stay in empty dorm rooms. There should be enough, even if they have to sleep three to a room. We could be sure their windows are covered. It’s not as good as being underground, but it’ll do, at least until this stupid ice storm stops and we can figure something else out.”

“Okay, then let’s get that going. And while the room situation is being fixed, we”—I enunciated the word carefully, taking in my circle plus Aphrodite, Darius, and Stark—“need to have a talk with Lenobia.”

My gang nodded, everyone apparently clued in to the fact that we needed to quickly be brought up to speed on what had happened at the House of Night while we were gone.

“You guys are all going to be okay,” I told the hurt kids as my gang said their goodbyes and we started straggling toward the exit.

“Hey, thanks, Zoey,” Drew called.

“You really are a good High Priestess—even if you’re not really one yet,” Ian yelled from his room.

I wasn’t sure his lopsided compliment required a thanks or not, and as I was standing in the entrance to the infirmary, looking back at the kids and thinking that, except for the fact that they’d just battled Raven Mockers and witnessed the murder of a professor, they all seemed so normal.

Then it hit me. They seemed normal. Just the day before, almost everybody at the school, with the exception of my group, Lenobia, Dragon, and Anastasia, had fallen under the charismatic spell of Kalona and Neferet, and hadn’t acted normal at all.

I walked back into the infirmary hallway. “I have a question for all of you guys. It may sound weird, but I really need honest answers, even if that might be embarrassing.”

Drew grinned over my shoulder, where I was sure my BFF was standing, “Ask me anything you want, Z. Any friend of Stevie Rae’s is cool by me.”

“Uh, thanks, Drew.” I managed not to roll my eyes at him. “This question is for all of you, though. Here’s the thing: Did you guys think there was anything wrong with the Raven Mockers, or even Kalona and Neferet, before Professor Anastasia was attacked?”

Not surprisingly, Drew answered first. “I didn’t trust the winged guy, but I didn’t know why.” He shrugged. “I dunno, maybe because he had wings. It’s just too weird.”

“I thought he was hot, but those man-bird sons of his were super-disgusting,” said Hanna Honeyyeager.

“Yeah, the Raven Mockers were gross, but also Kalona was old, and I couldn’t figure out how come so many fledgling girls had a thing for him,” said Red. “I mean, George Clooney’s hot and all, but he’s too old, and I wouldn’t want to, like, do him. So I didn’t get why practically everyone else wanted to do Kalona.”

“How about the rest of you?” I asked the rest of them.

“Like you said before, Kalona exploded from the ground. That’s just bizarre.” Denio paused, looked at Aphrodite, and then continued. “Plus, some of us have known for a while that Neferet wasn’t everything she seemed to be.”

“Yeah, you knew it, but you didn’t do anything about it.” Aphrodite’s voice wasn’t hateful or pissed. She was just making a statement, an awful but true statement.

Denio lifted her chin. “I did do something about it.” She gestured at her bandaged arm. “It was just too late.”

“Nothing’s felt right to me since Professor Nolan was killed,” Ian said from his room. “The stuff with Kalona and the Raven Mockers was more of that same feeling.”

“I saw what he was doing to my friends,” T.J. called from the last room down the hall. “They were like zombies and believed anything he said. When I tried to talk to them about anything, like asking how we could be sure he was really Erebus come to earth, they’d get pissed or laugh at me. I didn’t like him from the very beginning. And those damn bird things were evil. I don’t know why everyone couldn’t see it.”

“Neither do I, but that’s something we’re going to figure out,” I said. “Right now y’all don’t worry about any of this. Kalona is gone, and so’s Neferet and the Raven Mockers. Just get well. Okay?”

“Okay!” they yelled back at me, sounding way healthier than they had when we first saw them.

On the other hand, channeling all five elements had me feeling like poo, and I was glad Stark grabbed my elbow and lent me his strength as we left the building. Unbelievably, the ice and rain had stopped. The clouds that had blanketed the sky for days actually had breaks in them through which I glimpsed sections of a starry night. My gaze moved to the center of the school grounds. The fire that had completely consumed Anastasia’s pyre was beginning to die, though Dragon was still on his knees in front of it; Lenobia stood beside him, one hand resting on his shoulder. The circle made of red fledglings, plus Erik, Heath, and Jack, stretched all the way around the smoldering funeral pyre. They stood quietly, bearing witness to their respect for Dragon and his beloved.

I motioned for my group to follow me a little way into the shadows and huddle up. “We gotta talk, but we don’t need to do that with an audience. Stevie Rae, can you delegate getting rooms ready for your kids to someone?”

“Sure, Kramisha is so organized she’s almost OCD. Plus, she was a sixth-former when she died and un-died. She knows all sorts of stuff about this place.”

“Good. Put her on it.” I turned to Darius. “The bodies of the Raven Mockers have to be gotten rid of—now. If we’re lucky, this storm is finally clearing, which means humans are going to start to stir as soon as it’s light. They can’t find those creatures.”