Awakened

“See you soon,” Stevie Rae told Damien, and kissed him on the cheek.

Out in the hall Stevie Rae frowned at Aphrodite. “Seriously, even you couldn’t have thought taking those animals away from him would be a good idea.”

Aphrodite rolled her eyes and flipped her hair back. “Of course not, moron. I knew it would horrify him and start to snap him out of his non-thinking-super-depressed state, which it did. Darius and I will bring animal food back for the dog and cat zoo up there and, just coincidentally, we’ll stop by the dining hall and get some to-go stuff for our dinner, bring enough for him, and Damien is too much of a lady to kick us out or make us eat by ourselves. Et voilà! Damien has something in his stomach before he has to go through the whole funeral pyre horribleness.”

“Neferet is up to something really, really bad,” Stevie Rae said.

“Count on it,” Aphrodite said.

“Well, at least it’s gonna happen in front of everybody, so she can’t, like, kill her.”

Aphrodite raised her brow disdainfully at Stevie Rae. “In front of everybody Neferet broke loose Kalona, killed Shekinah, and tried to order Stark, who cannot miss what the hell he shoots at, to fire an arrow at you once and at Z another time. Seriously, bumpkin, get a clue.”

“Well, there were extenuatin’ circumstances with me, and Neferet didn’t order Stark to shoot Z in front of the whole school, just in front of us and a bunch of nuns. Of course now she’s saying Kalona made her do it for both things. Plus, it’s still our word against hers. No one listens to teenagers, or nuns, for that matter.”

“Do you doubt for one single instant that Neferet can make whatever she does tonight look like she’s as innocent as an infant?” Aphrodite paused to grimace. “Goddess, I can’t stand babies—ugh, all that puking and eating and pooping and stuff. Plus, they stretch out your—”

“Really?” Stevie Rae interrupted her tirade. “I’m not talkin’ ’bout girl parts and babies with you.”

“I was just using an analogy, stupid. Basically, we’re in for some shit in just a few hours. So get Z ready while I try to prop up Damien so he won’t dissolve into a puddle of tears and snot and angst tonight.”

“You know, you can’t pretend to be all ‘I don’t care about Damien’ with me after I saw you kiss him on the top of his head.”

“Which I will deny for the rest of my very long and attractive life,” Aphrodite said.

“Aphrodite, is you ever gonna get un-obsessed with your own self?”

Stevie Rae and Aphrodite came to a sudden stop when Kramisha stood up from the shadows at the edge of the porch of the girl’s dorm.

“I’m gonna have to get my eyes checked. I can’t see crap until it’s right in front of me,” Stevie Rae said.

“It’s not you,” Aphrodite said in a deadpan voice. “It’s Kramisha. She’s black. Shadows are black—hence the reason we didn’t see her.”

Kramisha stood up and looked down her nose at Aphrodite. “No, you did not just—”

“Oh, please, save it.” Aphrodite breezed past her to the door of the dorm. “Prejudice, oppression, the Man, blah, blah, yawn, blah. I’m the biggest minority here, so don’t even try to pull that on me.”

Kramisha blinked twice and looked as stunned as Stevie Rae felt.

“Uh, Aphrodite,” Stevie Rae said. “You look like Barbie. How in the heck can you be a minority?”

Aphrodite pointed to her forehead, which was completely blank and unMarked. “Human in a school full of fledglings and vamps equals mi-nor-i-ty.” She opened the door and twitched into the building.

“That girl ain’t no human,” Kramisha said. “I’d say she more like a mad dog, but I don’t want to offend no dogs.”

Stevie Rae let out a long-suffering sigh. “I know. You’re right. She’s really not nice, even when she’s bein’ nice. For her. If that makes any sense.”

“It don’t, but you ain’t been makin’ a whole lot of sense in general lately, Stevie Rae,” Kramisha said.

“You know what? I do not need this right now and I do not know what you mean and at this second I do not care. I’ll see you later, Kramisha.” Stevie Rae started to walk by her, but Kramisha stepped firmly in her way. She smoothed back the outside flip edge of her yellow bob wig and said, “You got no call to have that hateful tone of voice with me.”

“My tone’s not hateful. My tone’s annoyed and tired.”

“Nope. It be hateful and you know it. You shouldn’t lie much. You ain’t very good at it.”

“Fine. I won’t lie much.” Stevie Rae cleared her throat, gave herself a little shake like a cat caught in a springtime shower, planted a big, fake grin on her face, and started again in a super bright tone of voice. “Hey there, girlfriend, nice to see ya, but I gotta be goin’ now!”

Kramisha raised her brows. “Okay, first, don’t say ‘girlfriend.’ You sound like that chick in that old movie, Clueless. The one the blonde and Stacey Dash reformed into somethin’ popular. Not. Good. Second, you can’t run off right now ’cause I got to give you—”

“Kramisha!” Shaking her head, Stevie Rae backed away from the purple sheet of paper Kramisha had started to hand to her. “I am just one person! I cannot handle anythin’ else right now other than the shit storm I’m already caught in—excuse my French. But you gotta keep your future-telling poems to yourself. At least till Z gets here, gets settled, and helps me be sure Damien isn’t gonna hurl himself off the top of the closest high building.”

Kramisha gave her a narrowed-eye look. “Too bad you ain’t just one person.”

“What in the Sam Hill do you mean? ’Course I’m one person. Jeeze Louise, I wish there was more than one of me. Then I could keep an eye on Damien, be sure Dragon doesn’t go totally postal, pick up Zoey from the dang airport on time and figure out what’s goin’ on with her, get some dang thing to eat, and start to deal with the fact that Neferet is up to something of massive cat-herding proportions tonight at Jack’s funeral. Oh, and maybe one of the me’s could take a long bubble bath and listen to my Kenny Chesney while I read the end of A Night to Remember.”

“A Night to Remember? You mean that Titanic story I read last year in Lit class?”

“Yeah. We’d just started it when I died and un-died, so I never got to finish it. I kinda liked it.”

“Here. I’ll help ya out. THE SHIP SINKS. THEY DIE. The end. Now can we please move on to somethin’ more important?” She lifted the piece of purple paper again.

“Yes, hateful, I do know what happens, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good story.” Stevie Rae tucked an annoying blond curl behind her ear. “You say I don’t tell good lies? Okay, here’s the truth. My mama would say I got too dang much on my plate right now to get even one more forkful of chicken-fried stress, so let’s lay off the poem stuff for a while.”

Totally surprising Stevie Rae, Kramisha took a big step into her personal space, and then grabbed her by the shoulders. Looking straight into her eyes, she said, “You ain’t just one person. You a High Priestess. A red High Priestess. The only one they is. That means you gotta deal with stress. Lots of it. ’Specially right now when Neferet is creatin’ all kinds of crazy messes.”

“I know that, but—”

Kramisha squeezed her shoulders hard, and cut in saying, “Jack is dead. They’s no tellin’ who’s next.” Then the Poet Laureate blinked a couple of times, her smooth brown brow furrowing, leaned forward, and took a giant noisy sniff of the air right next to Stevie Rae’s face.

Stevie Rae pulled out of her vise grip and stepped backward. “Are you sniffing me?”

“Yes. You smell weird. I noticed it before. When you was in the hospital.”

“So?”

Kramisha studied her. “So, it reminds me of somethin’.”

“Your mom?” Stevie Rae said with forced nonchalance.

“Don’t even go there. And while I’m thinkin’ a’ it, where is you goin’?”

“I’m supposed to be helping Aphrodite get stuff to feed Damien’s cat and Duchess. Then I have to pick up Z from the airport and let her know that Neferet has decided to step aside and let her light Jack’s funeral pyre. Tonight.”

“Yeah, we all heard ’bout that. It don’t seem right to me.”

“Zoey lighting Jack’s fire?”

“No, Neferet lettin’ her.” Kramisha scratched her head and her yellow wig moved from side to side. “So, here’s the thing: let Aphrodite take care of the Damien stuff right now. You need to go out there”—she paused and