Tempted

and made my way out into the amazingly beautiful hall. White spun-glass chandeliers, holding real candles, lent a warm flickering light to the creams and golds of the upholstery, making me feel like Alice in Wonderland talking through a rabbit hole to an entirely different world. “Okay, that’s better. Less ears out here,” I continued. “Aphrodite said you were trapped. She was sure of it.”

“Z, I tripped and hit my head. I’m sure Aphrodite picked up on my panic. I mean, when I woke up I was burning. Plus, I’d fallen over some metal trash on the roof, and I was all tangled up in it. I’m tellin’ you—it scared the bejesus outta me. She musta felt that.”

“So no one grabbed you? You weren’t caged in anywhere?”

“No, Z,” she laughed. “That’s just crazy. But it would make a better story than me trippin’ over my own feet.”

I shook my head, still not able to take it all in. “It was scary, Stevie Rae. For a while I thought I was gonna lose both of you.”

“Everything’s okay. You’re not losin’ me or pain-in-the-butt Aphrodite. Even though I can tell you I’m not sorry my Imprint with her is broken.”

“Okay, that’s another weird part. How did that happen? Your Imprint didn’t even break when Darius drank from her, and you know they have that thing between them.”

“Best I can figure is that I was closer to dying than I knew. That must have snapped our Imprint. And it wasn’t like we wanted to be together. Maybe her thing with Darius had weakened it.”

“It sure didn’t seem like the Imprint between you was weak,” I said.

“Well, it’s gone, so when it came down to it, our Imprint was pretty easy to break.”

“From where I was watching it didn’t seem easy,” I said.

“Well, from the perspective of the flaming kid in the sun, I can say it wasn’t easy here either,” she said.

Instantly I felt bad for the way I’d been firing questions at her. She’d almost died (for good), and here I was, grilling her about details. “Hey, I’m sorry. I was just so darn worried, that’s all. And it was awful to watch Aphrodite experiencing your pain.”

“Should I talk to her?” Stevie Rae asked.

“Uh, no. At least not right now. Last time I saw her, Darius was carrying her up an amazingly wide staircase to what sounded like a totally expensive suite so she could sleep off the drugs the vamps had given her.”

“Oh, good. They medicated her. Aphrodite will like that.”

We laughed, and it felt normal between us again.

“Zoey? The High Council is calling the session to order. You must go,” Erce’s voice called down the hallway.

“I gotta go take care of business,” I said.

“Yeah, I heard. Hey, I want to say somethin’ to you that you need to remember. Follow your heart, Z. Even if it seems like everyone else is against you, and that you might be messing up royally. Follow what everything inside you tells you to do. What happens because of it might surprise you,” Stevie Rae said.

I hesitated and then said what was foremost in my mind. “And it might save your life?”

“Yes,” she answered. “It might.”

“We need to talk when I get home.”

“I’ll be here,” she said. “Kick ass and take names, Z.”

“I’ll try,” I said. “Bye, Stevie Rae. I’m glad you’re not dead. Again.”

“Me, too. Again.”

We hung up. I drew a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and got ready to face the High Council.

The High Council met in a really old cathedral that sat right next to the super-beautiful San Clemente Palace. It was obvious that it had once been a Catholic church, and I wondered what Sister Mary Angela would think of how the vamps had changed it. They’d gutted the place, except for the enormous light fixtures that hung on thick bronze chains from the ceiling, looking like something that should have been suspended magically over the tables at Hogwarts. They’d built circular seating in tiers in a style I remembered studying about when we read Medea. Down on the granite floor, seven carved marble chairs sat side by side. I thought they were pretty, but looked like they’d make your butt fall asleep or freeze.

The stained-glass window scenes of the original cathedral had been changed from bloody Jesus on the cross and a bunch of Catholic saints to a representative of Nyx, arms upraised holding a crescent moon between her hands, a brilliant pentagram close beside her. In the other windows I saw stained-glass versions of the four class emblems that symbolized which year a fledgling ranked at the House of Night. I was looking around the cathedral, thinking how beautiful the windows were, when I noticed the scene depicted directly across from the image of Nyx—and it felt like everything inside me froze.

It was Kalona! Wings fully extended, his naked body muscular and bronzed and powerful. I felt myself begin to tremble.

Stark took my arm and wrapped it through his, like he was being a gentleman and guiding his lady down the stone stairs of the amphitheater-like space to our seats near the floor. But his touch was strong and steady, and he spoke low for my ears alone, “It isn’t him. It’s just an ancient repre sen ta tion of Erebus, like the symbol of Nyx over there.”

“But it looks enough like him that they’re going to think Kalona really is Erebus,” I whispered frantically back to Stark.

“They might. And that’s why you’re here,” he murmured.

“Zoey and Stark, these seats are for you.” Erce pointed down to a tier of seats in the front and off to the side of the seven chairs. “The rest of you may fill in the row back there.” She ushered Damien, Jack, and the Twins into seats several tiers behind us saying, “Remember, you may only speak if the Council recognizes you,” Erce said.

“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” I said. Something about Erce was annoying me. Okay, she was Lenobia’s friend, so I wanted to like her, but since Aphrodite’s freak-out she’d stepped in and been acting like she was seriously the boss of me and all my friends. I’d insisted Darius stay with Aphrodite, so I’d basically watched without saying much as Erce had droned on and on about the rules of the High Council and What Not to Do.

Okay, a fallen immortal and a rogue ex—High Priestess were trying to manipulate the Vampyre High Council. Wasn’t clueing them in to that a little more important than being polite?

Of course, Damien, Jack, and the Twins all chimed in with innocent, intimidated “okays.”

“I’m gonna be back here behind you, sitting next to Damien and Jack. I’m not feeling the love in this place for humans, so I’m keeping a low profile,” Heath said.

I saw Stark exchange a long look with him. “You watch her back,” he said.

Heath nodded. “I’ll always have her back.”

“Good. I’ll focus on everything else,” Stark said.

“Got it,” Heath said.

And they weren’t kidding. They weren’t being sarcastic or testosteroney or overly possessive guy-like. They were so worried that they were working together.

That made me really, really paranoid.

I know it was ridiculous and immature, but I felt a terrible longing for my grandma. I wished with everything inside me that I was curled up in her cottage back at her Oklahoma lavender farm, eating popcorn that was too buttery, watching a marathon of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, and the worst thing I had to worry about was how much I totally didn’t get geometry.

“The Vampyre High Council!”

“Remember to stand up!” Erce whispered over her shoulder to me.

I squelched an eye roll. The big room fell absolutely silent. I stood up with everyone else, and then gawked as seven of the most perfect creatures I’d ever seen strode into the room.

All of the High Council were women, but that much I’d known already. Our society is matriarchal, so it figures that its governing council would be female. I knew that they were old, even for vampyres, and they were. Of course you couldn’t tell their age from just looking at them. All you could tell was how incredibly beautiful and amazingly powerful they were. On one hand it gave me a little squee of pleasure to see proof that even though vamps did age and, eventually die, they didn’t get all grossly Shar-Pei—looking and full of wrinkles. On the other hand, the sense of