Hidden

Neferet.”

“Let me show you the truth of who we are, and then you might understand more about this fight you are insisting we take to the humans.” Thanatos lifted her right arm, holding her palm up at about chest level away from her body. She cupped her hand, breathed in deeply, and with her left hand, swirled the air above her upraised palm, saying, “Behold the world!” Her voice was powerful, mesmerizing. My eyes were drawn to her palm. On it a globe of the world was taking form. It was awesome—not like those boring globes history teachers/coaches use as dust- gatherers. This one looked like it was made of black smoke. The water rippled and rolled. The continents emerged, carved from onyx.

“Ohmygoodness,” Stevie Rae said. “It’s so pretty!”

“It is,” Thanatos said. “And now behold who we are in the world!” She flicked the fingers of her left hand at the globe, as if she were sprinkling it with water. Aphrodite, Stevie Rae, Shaylin, and I gasped. Little sparkles began appearing, dotting the onyx landmasses with tiny diamond lights.

“That’s beautiful,” I said.

“Are they diamonds? Real diamonds?” Aphrodite asked, stepping closer.

“No, young Prophetess. They are souls. Vampyre souls. They are us.”

“But there are so few lights. I mean, compared to the rest of the globe that’s all dark,” Shaylin said.

I frowned and stepped closer along with Aphrodite. Shaylin was right. The earth looked huge compared to the sprinkling of sparkly dots. I stared and stared. My eyes were drawn to the clusters of shininess: Venice, the Isle of Skye, somewhere in what I thought was Germany. A cluster of light in France, a few splotches in Canada, and several more sprinkled around the continental U.S.—several more, but still not very many.

“Is that Australia?” Stevie Rae asked.

I peered around to the other side of the globe, catching sight of another spattering of diamonds.

“It is,” Thanatos said. “And New Zealand as well.”

“That’s Japan, isn’t it?” Shaylin pointed to another tiny splotch of glitter.

“Yes, it is,” Thanatos said.

“America doesn’t have as many diamonds as it should,” Aphrodite said.

Thanatos didn’t respond. She met my gaze. I looked away, studying the globe again. Slowly, I walked all the way around her, wishing I’d paid better attention in geography class—any of them. When I completed my circle I met the High Priestess’s gaze again.

“There aren’t enough of us,” I said.

“That is the absolute, unfortunate truth,” Thanatos said. “We are brilliant, powerful, and spectacular, but we are few.”

“So, even if we could get the humans to listen to us we’d be opening a door to our world that’s better left closed.” Aphrodite spoke calmly, sounding mature and uncharacteristically non-bitchy. “They start thinking their rules apply to us, that we need them to keep us in line, and that means they start putting out our lights.”

“Simply, but well put.” Thanatos clapped her palms together and the globe disappeared in a puff of sparkly smoke.

“Then what do we do? We can’t just let Neferet get away with her crap. It’s not like she’s gonna stop with a press conference, a committee, and a newspaper column. She wants death and destruction. Hell’s Bells, Darkness is her Consort!” Stevie Rae said.

“We gotta fight her fire with our fire,” Shaylin said.

“Oh, for shit’s sake. I can’t deal with one more kid who uses bad metaphors instead of just saying what’s what,” Aphrodite said.

“What I mean is if Neferet is involving humans, then we should, too. But on our own terms,” Shaylin said. I saw her mouth the word hateful afterward, but Aphrodite had decided to ignore the fledgling. Again. And, thankfully, Aphrodite wasn’t looking at her.

“Shaylin, you interest me, child. Why is it you have accompanied these two Priestesses and the Prophetess?” Thanatos asked abruptly.

We Priestesses and Prophetess went silent. Personally, I wanted to see how Shaylin was going to handle Thanatos. I liked to think Stevie Rae had shut up for the same reason. I already knew Aphrodite’s reasoning, which Shaylin had summed up with the succinct word she’d mouthed: hateful.

The little red fledgling raised her chin and looked super stubborn. “I came with them because I wanted to ask you about my gift. And they agreed.” Shaylin paused, glanced at Aphrodite and added, “Well, two of the three agreed.”

“What gift has Nyx given you, fledgling?”

“True Sight. I think.” She glanced nervously from Stevie Rae to me. “Right?”

“We think so,” I said.

“Yep. At least that’s what Damien’s research tells us, and he’s almost always right about anythin’ he’s researched,” Stevie Rae said.

“She said Neferet was the color of dead fish eyes. That makes me think she might have something more than simple mental illness or mild retardation going on,” Aphrodite surprised me by saying.

“You see auras?” Thanatos asked while she studied Shaylin like she was peering down a microscope and the fledgling was pressed against a glass slide.

“I see colors,” Shaylin said. “I don’t know what to call it. I—I was blind before the night I was Marked. I had been since I was five. Then, zap! I get a red crescent moon in the middle of my forehead, my vision back, and with it I get colors. Lots of colors. Because of them I know things about people. Like I knew Neferet was rotten inside the second I saw her. Even though on the outside she was beautiful.” I watched her clench her hands together behind her, and hold still under the High Priestess’s scrutiny. “It’s the same way I know Erik Night is basically an okay guy, but he’s weak. He’s always taken the easy road. Your color is black, but not like flat black. It’s deep and rich and I can see little lightning bolts of golden light zapping through it.” She sighed. “I think that means you’re really old and smart and powerful, but you also have a serious temper, which you keep under control. Most of the time.”

Thanatos’s lips tilted up. “Go on.”

Shaylin looked quickly at Stevie Rae and then back at Thanatos. “Stevie Rae’s colors are like fireworks. That makes me think that she’s the kindest, happiest person I’ve ever met.”

“That’s only ’cause you never knew Jack,” Stevie Rae said, smiling a little sadly at Shaylin. “But thanks. That’s a real nice thing to say about me.”

“I’m not meaning to be nice. I’m just trying to tell the truth.” Her eyes went to Aphrodite. “Well, most of the time I’m trying to tell the truth.”

Aphrodite snorted.

I waited for her to get to me—to tell Thanatos that my colors had gotten darker because I was super worried—but she didn’t say anything about me at all. She just gave a little nod of her head, like she’d decided something inside herself, and finished by saying, “That’s why I’m here. I need your advice about how to use my gift and to know the truth about it.”

I think it was then that I started to respect her. Thanatos wasn’t just any High Priestess. She was a member of the High Council and her affinity was for death. Okay, Thanatos was scary. Seriously. Yet here was Shaylin, all less than a hundred pounds of her, less than a month old as a fledgling, standing up to Thanatos, without giving away anything too private about me. She hadn’t even said the stuff about Aphrodite’s flickery nice spot color. That took guts. Lots of them.

I glanced down at Shaylin’s clenched hands and saw that her fingers had gone white. I knew how she felt. I’d had to stand up to a powerful High Priestess shortly after I’d been Marked, too.

I moved closer to Shaylin. “Whatever you want to call what she sees, Shaylin has a gift. I agree with Damien. I think it’s True Sight.”

“We all do,” Stevie Rae said.

“Can you help me?” Shaylin asked.

Thanatos surprised me then. She didn’t say anything. She turned and walked over to her desk, gazing down at it as if the answer to Shaylin’s question were written on the big daily calendar she used as a desk pad. She just stood there like that, with her head bowed, for what seemed like a super ridiculously long time. I’d decided that I needed to clench my hands behind me to keep from fidgeting, too, when the High Priestess finally turned around