Destined

said. “That will be easy with you living here at the House of Night with her. Watch her well, my son.”

“We’re not living here,” he said before I could stop him. “I’m with Stevie Rae and Zoey and the rest of them at the depot.”

“Are you? How interesting. Are all the red fledglings at the depot with you?”

“No, Neferet brought the other red fledglings, the ones who aren’t part of Stevie Rae’s group, to the House of Night. They’re staying here now,” Rephaim said.

I scowled at Rephaim and gave him a would you please be quiet look.

“That could be important. They tip the balance of Light and Darkness at this school.”

“Yes,” Rephaim said. “There is also a fledgling who can—”

“Who can keep her mouth shut and not tell everybody our business,” I finished for him, giving Rephaim the stank eye.

Kalona smiled knowingly. “You do not trust me, little A-ya?”

I felt my heart freeze over. “No. I don’t trust you. And don’t call me that name again. I’m not A-ya.”

“She’s within you,” he said. “I can sense her.”

“She’s only a piece of what makes me who I am today, so back off. Your time with her is over.”

“There may come a day when you learn that past lives circle around to the present,” he said.

“Why don’t you hold your breath until that happens?” I asked with pretend sweetness.

Kalona laughed. “You do still amuse me.”

“And you do still gross me out,” I said.

“Can we not have a form of peace between us?” Rephaim said.

“We can have a truce,” I said, looking at Rephaim and forcing him to meet my gaze. “But that’s not peace. It’s also not trusting him and telling him our business. You gotta get that straight in your head, Rephaim, or you need to leave with him right now.”

“I stay with Stevie Rae,” he said.

“Then remember whose side you’re on,” I said.

“You may rest assured that I will not let him forget that,” Kalona said.

“Yeah, and you should know that Rephaim has a whole bunch of people who care about him, and we won’t let him be used by you.”

Kalona ignored me and spoke to his son instead. “If you need me, look to the west and follow our blood.” He started to spread his wings. “Remember that you are my son, because I can assure you those around you will never forget it.” He leaped into the sky and with a few powerful strokes of his wings Kalona disappeared into the night.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Zoey

So, I ended up cutting first hour. I mean, seriously. No way was I up to sitting there and letting Neferet take passive-aggressive shots at me after the whole Kalona/Rephaim thing. Instead I sent Rephaim to class (and told him to tell the professor he’d been in the bathroom) and then found a shadowy seat not far from the stables. I needed time to sit and think. By myself.

Kalona said he wanted a truce with us, which I figured was pretty much bullpoopie. The truth probably was that he wanted to use Rephaim to infiltrate our ranks and mess us up—and that sounded like I thought the nerd herd and I were turning into a redneck Okie paramilitary group. I sighed. Why couldn’t those groups be more attractive? Which made me think about the inbred panther people on True Blood and how stupid Jason was. Jeesh, I needed to rewatch season three. I was totally behind on season four …

“Hello, Zoey. Focus,” I told myself.

So, Kalona is pretending like he wants a truce. Rephaim believes him because that kid has a bad case of I- want-my-dad-to-love-me. Stevie Rae is gonna be pissed when she finds out he’s been talking to Rephaim, which I totally understood. She wanted to protect Rephaim’s feelings, and Kalona + a new and improved Rephaim = train wreck.

And then there was the whole bad red fledglings returning to school and pretending not to be raving lunatics and killers. Ugh, just ugh. Thinking about the fights in the halls that was going to cause gave me a headache.

Throw into the mix the fact that Stark still wasn’t sleeping well, Neferet’s new Consort was a bull (Eew, that couldn’t mean what it sounded like it meant, could it?), and the Aurox kid/whatever who made me feel uber weird —scared and anxious and just downright freaked—and the whole school seemed to be a bomb waiting to explode.

I stared up at the moon. “Plus,” I said quietly, as if speaking directly to the shining crescent, “in six days I have to go perform a cleansing ritual on my grandma’s land because my mom was killed there.”

I blinked hard. I was not going to cry. Again. I was just going to sit out here in the moonlight until it was time for me to go to drama class second hour.

As if I didn’t have enough drama in my life already.

“Well,” I told the moon. “At least my soul isn’t shattered anymore and I’m not a sleepless Otherworld almost-ghost.” Right on the heels of that cheery thought I spoke aloud the very next thing that came into my mind: “I miss Heath so much.”

The words were still in the air around me when the small place in the middle of my chest began to warm. With a terrible sense of rubbernecking at an accident my gaze was pulled from the serene moon to the wall that framed the House of Night. Aurox was jogging along the school side of the wall. Even from this distance I could see that he was alert and searching for possible trouble, his gaze scanning around and up. He even looked like he was sniffing the air. He was coming toward me, though not directly so. My bench was several yards closer to the school from the wall and hidden in the shadows under the big trees, and he hadn’t seen me. But he wasn’t sticking to the shadows. He jogged in the open and even though the moon was not full, the night was clear and the fat crescent gave off enough silver-blue light that, as he approached, I could see his face.

Aurox was definitely what any girl would call hot. Well, any girl who didn’t know he was some kind of killer creature in a boy skin suit. Then I remembered how a bunch of the fledglings had made over him after he’d killed the Raven Mocker. Guess they didn’t care whether his skin was a suit or for real. It felt like something was crawling up my spine and I gave a little shudder. I cared. I cared a lot about what was beneath the skin.

His eyes were super strange. I’d noticed them before. Ironically enough, in this light they reminded me of the moon, or at least of those rocks called moonstones—only his eyes glistened, almost glowed.

My hand went slowly to my seer stone. I could feel my heartbeat speed up. What was it about Aurox that scared me so badly? I didn’t know, but I did believe that I needed to defeat this fear. I needed to look through the seer stone and see whatever the rock revealed to me—Dark or Light, evil or good. I began to lift the stone and it was then that I noticed it.

His shadow, cast against the rocky wall of the school, did not mirror the tall, muscular body of a human guy. Aurox’s shadow was that of a bull.

I must have gasped—must have made some little noise because his glowy eyes found me immediately. He changed the direction he was jogging and headed straight for me.

I slid the seer stone under my shirt and tried to keep my breathing normal and stop my heart from beating out of my chest.

When he was just a few yards away I couldn’t help myself. I stood and moved around behind the wrought iron bench. I know it was silly, but somehow it felt better to have something, anything between us.

He stopped and looked at me for a few seconds without speaking. His expression was bizarrely curious, like he’d never seen a girl before and was trying to figure out what the heck I was—even though that analogy was ridiculous.

“You do not weep this night,” he finally said.

“No.”

“You should be in class,” he said. “Neferet has ordered all fledglings to class.”