"Shaunee, Erin," Erik continued, nodding at them. The Twins smiled, fluttered their lashes, and said hi in unison. At last, he looked at me. "Hello, Zoey." His voice had changed from the easy, friendly tone he'd used with everyone else. He didn't sound hateful, though. Instead he sounded cool and polite. I thought this might be an improvement, but then I remembered what a good actor he was.

"Hi." I couldn't say anything else. I'm not a particularly good actor, and I was scared my voice would sound as shaky as my heart felt.

"We just heard you're going to be teaching drama class," Damien said.

"Yeah, it makes me a little uncomfortable, but Shekinah asked, and it's really not possible to say no to her," he said.

"I think Professor Nolan would be glad you're going to do it," I blurted before I could make my mouth shut up.

Erik looked at me. His blue eyes were absolutely expressionless, which felt completely wrong. Those same eyes had shown me happiness and passion and warmth and even the beginnings of love. Then they'd shown me hurt and anger. And now they showed me nothing at all? How could that even be possible?

"Did you gain a new affinity?" His tone wasn't outright hateful, but his words were definitely clipped and cold. "Can you speak to the dead now?"

I felt my face get hot. "N-no," I stammered. "I just . . . well, I just thought Professor Nolan would like it that you're here for her students."

He opened his mouth, and I saw something mean stir in his eyes, but instead of speaking he looked away from me and off into the darkness. His jaw tightened and he ran a hand through his thick, dark hair in a gesture I recognized as one that he automatically did whenever he was feeling confused.

"I hope she does like it that I'm here. She was always my favorite teacher," he finally said without looking at me.

"Erik, are we going to be roommates again?" Jack asked tentatively into the increasingly uncomfortable silence.

Erik blew out a long breath and then gave Jack a quick, easy smile. "No, sorry. They've put me in the professor building."

"Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting you've been through the Change," Jack said with a nervous little giggle.

"Yeah, sometimes I almost forget myself," Erik said. "Actually, I better get to my new place—I have boxes to unload and lesson plans to figure out. See you guys later." He paused, and then his eyes flicked to mine. "Bye, Zoey."

Bye. My lips moved, but no sound came out.

"Bye, Erik!" Everyone else called as he turned and walked quickly away from us and back toward the professors' part of the school.

My friends babbled about nothing in particular while we walked the rest of the way to the dorms. Everyone studiously ignored the fact that we'd just run into my very ex-boyfriend and that it had been a really awkward, really awful scene. Or at least for me it had been awkward and awful.

I hated feeling like this. I'd caused Erik to break up with me, but I missed him. A lot. And I still liked him. A lot. Sure, he was acting like a butt right now, but he'd caught me having sex with another man—well, another vampyre, actually. As if that mattered. Anyway, bottom line is I'd caused this mess and it was incredibly frustrating that I couldn't fix it, because I still cared about Erik.

"What do you think of him, Z?"

"Him?" Erik? Hell, I thought he was amazing and frustrating and . . . and I realized Damien hadn't been asking me about Erik when he frowned and gave me a get a clue look. "Huh?" I said brilliantly.

Damien sighed. "The new kid. Stark. What do you think of him?"

I shrugged. "He seemed nice."

"Nice and hot," Shaunee said.

"Just the way we like 'em," Erin finished.

"You spent more time with him than we did. What do you think of him?" I asked Damien, ignoring the Twins.

"He's okay. But he seems distant. I suppose it doesn't help that he can't have a roommate because of Duchess. You know, that dog is really big," Damien said.

"He's new, guys. We all know how that feels. Maybe how he deals with it is being distant," I said.

"It's odd that a kid with such an amazing talent is unwilling to use it," Damien said.

"There could be more to it than we know," I said, thinking about how cool and confident Stark had acted when he'd been standing up to the vamps about his dog, but then that nonchalance had changed when Neferet made him think that she wanted him to use his talents to compete. He'd gotten weird then, maybe even scared. "Sometimes having unusual powers can be scary." I spoke more to myself than to Damien, but he smiled at me and bumped his shoulder against mine.

"Guess you'd know about being unusual," he said.

"Guess I would." I smiled at him, trying to lighten the crappy mood meeting up with Erik had gotten me in.

Shaunee's cell phone made the little bleeping sound it makes when she gets a text message, and she whipped out her iPhone.

"Oooh, Twin! That's Mr. So Fiiiine Cole Clifton. He and T.J. want to know if we're up for a Bourne movie marathon in the guys' dorm," Shaunee said.

"Twin, I was born ready for a Bourne marathon," Erin said. Then the Twins giggled and did a bump and grind that made the rest of us roll our eyes.

"Oh, and you guys are invited, too," Shaunee said to Damien, Jack, and me.

"Goody," Jack said. "I never did get to see the last one. What was it called?"

"The Bourne Ultimatum," Damien said right away.

"That's right." Jack took his hand. "You're so smart about movies! You know all of them."

Damien blushed. "Well not all of them. Mostly I like the old classics. Back then is when movies had real stars in them, like Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart and James Dean. Today too many actors are—" Then his words came to an abrupt halt.

"What is it?" Jack asked.

"James Stark," he said.

"What about him?" I said.

"James Stark is the name of James Dean's character in the old movie, Rebel Without a Cause. I knew his name sounded familiar, but I thought it was just because he's so famous."

"Twin, have you ever seen that movie?" Erin asked Shaunee.

"No, Twin. Can't say that I have."

"Huh," I said. I had seen the movie—with Damien, of course—and I wondered if the name had been his before he'd been Marked. Or had he, like many kids, decided on a new name when his new life as a fledgling began. If so, that said something pretty interesting about his personality.

"So, are you coming, Z?" Damien's voice penetrated my internal babble.

I looked up to see four sets of eyes blinking questioningly at me. "Coming?"

"Jeesh, earth to Zoey! Are you coming with us to the guys' dorm to watch the Bourne movies?" Erin said.

I answered automatically. "Oh, that. No." I was glad my friends weren't pissed at me anymore, but I really didn't feel like hanging out. Actually, I felt kinda bruised and not myself inside. Within just a couple days, I'd Imprinted with and lost my virginity to a man/vamp who hadn't loved me, and then he'd been horribly killed. I'd broken my boyfriends' hearts. Both of them. A war had almost been started and then ended. Kind of. My best friend wasn't undead anymore, but she wasn't a "normal" fledgling or vampyre either, and neither were the kids she was living with. But I couldn't tell most of my friends, as in anyone who wasn't Aphrodite, about the weird red fledglings, 'cause it was better if Neferet didn't know what we knew. And now Erik, one of my two broken-hearted ex-boyfriends, was going to be my drama teacher—as if having him back at the House of Night wasn't drama enough. "No," I repeated more firmly. "I think I'm going to go check on Persephone." Okay, I realize I'd been in her stall not too long ago, but I could definitely use another dose of her quiet, warm presence.