Burned

“Oh for shit’s sake, answer your fucking phone! Or are you in your casket? Goddess! Time zones are annoying. Anyway, update: Z’s still an eggplant, and Stark’s still checked out and being sliced up. That’s the good news. The bad news is my newest vision stars you, a hottie Indian kid, and the biggest baddie of all the Raven Mockers, Rephaim. We need to talk ’cause I have one of my feelings about this, which means Not Good. So hurry the hell up and call me. If I’m sleeping, I’ll actually wake up and answer you.”

“Big surprise that she hung up without saying bye,” Stevie Rae said. Not wanting to stay in the same room with the words and the biggest baddie of all the Raven Mockers, Rephaim, hovering around, she shoved her phone in her pocket and started up the basement stairs. She didn’t have to look behind her to make sure he was following. She knew he would.

The night was cool, but not cold, right on the edge of that freezing/slushy line. Stevie Rae felt sorry for the poor people in the houses surrounding the Gilcrease and was glad to see a bunch of the lights were back on. But at the same time, it gave her an eerie “we’re being watched” feeling, and she hesitated on the front porch of the mansion.

“No one is about. They’re putting their focus on fixing the power to the people first. This will be one of the last places they come, especially at night.”

Relieved, Stevie Rae nodded and left the porch, walking aimlessly toward the fountain that sat silent and cold in the middle of the yard.

“Your people are going to find out about me,” Rephaim said.

“Some of them already have.” Stevie Rae reached down and touched the top edge of the fountain, breaking off an icicle that was suspended there and letting it fall into the water in the basin below.

“What will you do?” Rephaim stood beside her. They both stared down at the dark fountain water as if they could discover the answer there.

Finally, Stevie Rae said, “I think the question is more like, what will you do?”

“What would you have me do?”

“Rephaim, you can’t answer my question with a question.”

He made a derisive noise. “You did mine.”

“Rephaim, stop. Tell me what you want to do about, well, us.”

She stared at his changed eyes, wishing his features were easier to read. He took so long to answer that she thought he wasn’t going to, and frustration gnawed at her. She had to get back to the House of Night. She had to do damage control there before Dallas messed everything up.

“What I would do is stay with you.”

His words, simple, honest, and said in one rush didn’t sink in at first. At first she just looked at him questioningly, unable to fully grasp what he’d said. And then she truly heard him, and understood, and she felt an unexpected, unwanted, rush of joy.

“It’s going to be bad,” she said. “But I want you to stay with me, too.”

“They’ll try to kill me. You must know that.”

“I won’t let them!” Stevie Rae reached out and took his hand. Slowly, very slowly, his fingers twined with hers, and he gave a little tug, pulling her closer to his side. “I won’t let them,” she repeated. She didn’t look at him. Instead, she held his hand and stole one small moment together. She tried not to think too much. She tried not to question everything. She stared down into the still, black water of the fountain, and the cloud that was blanketing the moon lifted, revealing their reflection. I’m a girl who’s somehow been bound to the humanity of a guy who is a beast. Aloud, she said, “I’m bound to you, Rephaim.”

Without any hesitation he said, “And I you, Stevie Rae.”

As he spoke, the water rippled, as if Nyx herself had breathed across its surface, and their reflection changed. The image revealed in the water was Stevie Rae holding the hand of a tall, muscular Native American boy. His hair was thick and long, and as black as the raven feathers that were braided into its length. His chest was bare, and he was hotter than an Oklahoma blacktop in the middle of the summer.

Stevie Rae stayed very still, afraid if she moved the reflection would change. But she couldn’t help smiling and, softly she said, “Wow, you’re really pretty.”

The guy in the reflection blinked a bunch of times, like he wasn’t sure he was seeing clearly, then in Rephaim’s voice, he said, “Yes, but I don’t have wings.”

Stevie Rae’s heart fluttered, and her stomach tightened. She wanted to say something profound and really smart, or at least a little romantic. Instead, she heard herself say, “Sure, that’s true, but you are tall and you got those cool feathers braided into your hair.”

In the reflection, the boy lifted the hand that wasn’t holding hers and touched his hair. “They’re not much if you compare them to wings,” he said, but he smiled at Stevie Rae.

“Well, yeah, but I’ll bet they’re easier to fit into shirts.”

He laughed, and with an obvious sense of wonder, let his hand touch his face. “Soft,” Rephaim said. “The human face is so soft.”

“Yeah, it is,” Stevie Rae said, totally mesmerized by what was happening in their reflection.

As slowly as he’d woven their fingers together, without taking his gaze from their reflection, Rephaim reached from his face to hers. His hand touched her skin lightly, gently. He stroked her cheek and let his fingers brush her lips. She smiled, then, and couldn’t help an awkward giggle. “It’s just that you’re so pretty!”

Rephaim’s human reflection smiled, too. “You’re pretty,” he said so softly she almost didn’t hear him.

Heart hammering, she said, “You think so? Really?”

“Really. I just can’t ever tell you. I can’t ever let you know how I really feel.”

“You are now,” she said.

“I know. For the first time I feel—”

Rephaim’s words cut off midsentence. The reflection of the boy wavered and then disappeared. In its place Darkness lifted from the still water, forming the shape of a raven’s wings and the body of a powerful immortal.

“Father!”

Rephaim didn’t need to speak the name. Stevie Rae knew what had come between them the moment it had happened. She pulled her hand from his. He resisted for only an instant before letting her go. Then he turned to face her, bringing one dark wing forward to blot out her view of their reflection in the fountain.

“He’s returned to his body. I can feel it.”

Stevie Rae didn’t trust herself to speak. She could only nod.

“He’s not here, though. He’s far away from me. Must still be in Italy.” Rephaim was speaking rapidly. Stevie Rae took a step away from him, still unable to say anything at all. “He feels different. Something has changed.” Then it was like his thoughts were catching up to him, and Rephaim’s eyes met hers. “Stevie Rae? What are we going to—”

Stevie Rae gasped, cutting off his words. Earth swirled around her, filling her senses with a joyous dance of homecoming. The cold Tulsa landscape shimmered, shifted, and suddenly she was surrounded by amazing trees, all green and shiny-leafed, and a bed made of thick, soft moss. Then the image focused, and Zoey was there, in Stark’s arms, laughing and whole again.

“Zoey!” Stevie Rae shouted, and the image disappeared, leaving only the joy of it and the certainty that her BFF was whole again and most definitely alive. Grinning, she went to Rephaim and threw her arms around him. “Zoey’s alive!”

His arms tightened around her, but only for the space of a breath, and then they both remembered the truth, and at the same time, stepped away from each other.

“My father returns.”

“So does Zoey.”