“What? Kalona? Here?” Stevie Rae’s voice almost squeaked the words. Kids at the nearest tables sent us curious glances.
“That’s right,” Aphrodite said, raising her voice and looking typically annoyed. “Barcelona is where all the best shoe shopping is—not here. Get a clue, bumpkin.” Then she tilted her head down and whispered, “Not a good idea to say much about this in public—which means as in anywhere but the tunnels.”
“Rephaim, are you okay?” Stevie Rae asked in a much quieter voice.
“Yes. I wasn’t alone. Zoey was with me,” he answered softly.
Stevie Rae blinked in surprise. “Z?”
“He’s right. I was with him the whole time. It’s okay. Well, as okay as it can be when He Who Cannot Be Named is involved,” I whispered.
“Oh for shit’s sake. This isn’t Hogwarts,” Aphrodite said.
“Wish it was,” Erin said.
Then Shaunee did something that shocked me worse than Kalona’s visit. She didn’t echo her Twin. Instead, in a very small, very un-Twin-like voice she said, “You still care about him. Don’t ya?”
Rephaim nodded once, just a little.
“Twin? Hogwarts?” Erin said, looking a little lost.
“Twin, this is more important.” Shaunee’s eyes found Rephaim again. “Dads are important.”
“I didn’t know you were close to your daddy,” Stevie Rae said.
“I’m not,” Shaunee said. “That’s why I understand how important they are. Not having one who pays any attention to you doesn’t mean you don’t wish they were different.”
“Huh,” Erin said, still looking befuddled. “I didn’t know that bothered you, Twin.”
Shaunee shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “I don’t like to talk about it much.”
“Was he mean?” Erin asked Rephaim.
Rephaim glanced at me. “No, not very.”
“I think Aphrodite is right. We need to talk about this when we don’t have to worry about being overheard. Right now let’s finish lunch and then everyone needs to go to their mailboxes and check for schedule changes, that includes the red fledglings,” I said.
“Dallas’s group already got theirs,” Aphrodite said. “I heard them talking about it in art class.”
I looked at Stevie Rae. Her face had gone real white. “We’ll all be with you,” I said. “And Thanatos is a powerful vampyre, a member of the High Council. She’s not gonna let anything happen.”
“Shekinah was Leader of the High Council, and she got killed her first day here, remember?” Stevie Rae said.
“That was by Neferet and not some douche-bag red fledgling guy,” I said.
“The girls are on my nerves, too,” Aphrodite said. “That Nichole bitch needs to have her hair pulled out by the roots, which are probably a different color than the rest of that mess on her head.”
“I hate it when I agree with you,” Stevie Rae said.
“Well, bumpkin, even you can be right sometimes.”
“Can we stop now and eat the rest of our spaghetti?” I said. “There’re only two more hours to get through, then we can go back to the depot and we’ll have all weekend to figure this stuff out.”
“That’s a good idea,” Damien said. “Next hour I’m checking out books and files on some of the questions we’ve been trying to answer. I got permission from Professor Garmy to go to the media center during Spanish class. I’m really good at conjugating verbs, and that’s what she’s focusing on today.”
“Ugh,” I said. Everyone (besides Damien) at the table nodded in agreement to my conjugating ugh, even though the Twins seemed out of synch and Erin kept giving Shaunee looks that went from annoyance to confusion and back again.
And that pretty much summed up the rest of the day: confusing, annoying, and just plain ugh.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I like his horse,” I said to Lenobia.
“I like his horse, too,” Lenobia said, even though she sounded like she hated to admit it.
We were standing in the corral, a little ways from the group that was clustered around Travis and his giant Percheron, Bonnie. The cowboy had been demonstrating to a very attentive audience of fledgling guys (and Darius and Rephaim and Stark) how to use a lance and a sword from horseback.
“So,” Johnny B said, “Is that all she can do? Just, like, lope or whatever back and forth in a straight line?”
From on top of Bonnie the cowboy looked about a zillion feet tall. Currently, he had a long lance in his hand and I wondered for a second if he was going to skewer smart aleck, muscle-brained Johnny B. But Travis just tilted his hat back, rested the lance on his hip, and said, “My girl can do everything a smaller horse can do. She has all the gaits: walk, trot, lope, gallop.” He glanced over at Lenobia and his easygoing smile turned wry. “Well, Bonnie can’t turn as quick as a quarter horse. She can’t run as fast and as long as a Thoroughbred. But she can tear up a trail with the best of ’em. Don’t forget that she can carry me, a pile of armor and weapons, and pull down a house. All at the same time. Underestimating her would be a mistake.” He shot another look at Lenobia and added, “But then underestimating females in general isn’t a good idea, boy.”
I covered my laugh with a cough.
Lenobia looked at me. “Don’t encourage him. He’s been holding fledgling court all day. The girls want to date him. The boys want to be him. He’s making my head hurt.”
“So you like him a little?”
I was wincing from Lenobia’s frosty stare when Travis raised his voice and called, “Well, you’d have to ask the professor over there about that, but I’d be all for a little field trip.”
“Not since we’ve been battling evil we haven’t,” Lenobia said under her breath. Then she raised her voice and started toward Bonnie and her cowboy saying, “I’m sorry, Travis, I wasn’t listening. What is it you’re asking?”
“One of the kids wanted to see Bonnie in action on a trail ride. I’d be happy to take some of ’em out with me and a few horses on a clear night. I grew up outside Sapulpa and know the old oil paths on the ridges there like the back o’ my hand.”
I saw Lenobia sucking in a breath and was sure she was getting ready to blast the cowboy into the stratosphere, when Ant, the littlest of the red fledgling kids, reached way up and, looking starstruck, patted Bonnie on her nose saying, “Wow! A trail ride? Like cowboys used to do? That’d be awesome.” With obvious adoration in his eyes, he gazed at Lenobia. “Professor Lenobia, could we really?”
I think it hit me at about the same time it hit Lenobia—Ant was just asking to do some normal school stuff— to take a field trip and be a kid—versus being dead and undead and fighting immortals and the booger monsters they brought with them and worrying about saving the world.
“Perhaps. I’ll have to see if I can work it into my lesson plan. There have already been several changes lately,” Lenobia said in her teacher voice.
Johnny B sighed. “Changes. That’d be us undying and coming back here and messing up the schedule.”
“Actually, the professor probably means me more than you,” Rephaim said. “I’m the reason Stark and Darius had to start a new class here in the stables.”
“Neither and both of you are right,” Lenobia said crisply. “You’ve changed things at this House of Night, but that’s not necessarily negative. I like to see change as a positive thing. It prevents stagnation. And I’m enjoying having the Warrior classes in my stables. As Travis has so aptly demonstrated today, Warriors and horses have a long, rich history together.”
I saw Rephaim’s surprised look and his tentative smile. Then the bell chimed and before everyone could sprint for the door Travis called out, “Whoa there, guys! No one leaves the stable until everythin’s in its right place. You boys there help Stark and Darius put the weapons and targets up.” Then he pointed at Rephaim and Ant. “You and you—help me get this tack off Bonnie and wipe her down. She’s worked hard today.”
