“Sorry. I didn’t mean anything,” she said, almost cringing away from me.

I sighed and my hand found the stone, which had cooled to ordinary rock. “Look, I didn’t mean to yell at you. I have a headache and I’m hungry, that’s all.”

“Well, Z, you just circled. You should ground yourself. Go to the cafeteria and get something to eat,” Damien said, patting my arm. “I’ll tell Professor P where you are. It’ll be fine.”

“You’re right, Damien. Food would definitely help my head.”

“Food or brown pop?” Damien asked, smiling.

“Brown pop is food,” I said.

“Zoey, do you mind if I go to the cafeteria with you?” Aurox asked me.

“Don’t you have to get to class?” I said.

“No. I only go to first hour. Then I patrol the school grounds.”

“Oh, I, uh, didn’t know that,” I said inanely, not sure whether to be envious of him or feel sorry for him.

“Actually, it’s probably a good idea if Aurox ate something, too,” Damien said. “It was his first circle.” He paused and smiled at Aurox. “And you were excellent. Well done you.”

“Hey, thanks Damien.” A grin broke over Aurox’s face, making his eyes sparkle a little too familiarly.

How the hell could moonstone-colored eyes remind me of Heath’s?

“Zo, you don’t mind if I go with you, do you?”

I realized I’d been staring at Aurox—while Shaylin and Damien and Aurox had been staring at me—and I blinked. “No, that’s fine. You’ll have to hurry, though. I should try to make at least the last few minutes of lit class. Just because it’s not math doesn’t mean I’m great at it.” With Aurox following, I practically jogged away, saying a quick bye to Damien and Shaylin.

The cafeteria was deserted, but I could hear pots and pans clattering in the distance from the kitchen, and something smelled delicious. My mouth was watering like crazy when Aurox said, “If you get our drinks I’ll go back to the kitchen and see what’s ready to eat.”

I said okay without thinking about it, and went straight for the brown pop, sucking down a glass before I even left the drink dispenser. My head was a little clearer when I carried two big glasses to the table my group usually sat at. Sipping the cold brown goodness, I thought about how strange it was that some rooms totally changed when they were empty. Like, the cafeteria was usually loud and filled with kids and food, but right now, half an hour before lunch, it seemed unusually big and almost alien, as if it echoed with the ghosts of kids not here, but still, somehow, watching me.

It gave me a seriously creepy feeling.

“I got you grilled cheese sammiches and tomato poop.” Aurox smiled happily as he slid in beside me, plopping a tray filled with soup and sandwiches in front of us.

All I could do was stare at him.

His smile faded. He looked at the grilled cheese and soup, and then at me. “I thought you would like this. I can take it back. They have turkey and cheese, too, and the cook said they’re almost done making cobb salads.”

“It’s not that. I love grilled cheese. And the soup.”

“Then why do you look like that?”

“Grilled cheese sammiches and tomato poop. Why did you call them that?”

His brow scrunched. “It just came out of my mouth. That’s not what you call them?”

“Aurox, it’s what I’ve called them since grade school. It’s also what Heath called them. It was our favorite lunch because our school made seriously crappy spaghetti.”

“Psaghetti,” he said softly.

My mind told me to tell him to shut up and eat, but my mouth said, “We only call it that when it’s good. Psaghetti madness can’t happen with crappy spaghetti.” I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop myself. “There’s a song and a dance that go with psaghetti madness, too.”

“I know.”

“What else do you know?” I felt hot and cold at the same time.

“That I want to touch you so badly that sometimes I think I might die if you don’t let me,” he said.

My stomach butterflied. “I’m with Stark.”

“I know, and I think you should take a chill pill about that.”

Chill pill! When he said that he sounded so much like Heath I couldn’t breathe.

Neither of us said anything, and then he reached slowly up toward me. One of my hands was resting on the table between us. Gently, he turned it over. With one finger he softly traced the filigree pattern of the tattoo that covered my palm.

“These were gifts from Nyx,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You have more special tattoos.” He moved his finger from my palm to my face, where he stroked the repeated pattern there.

His finger was warm and it brought alive my nerves so that everywhere he touched I tingled. He followed the line of my neck down to the deep vee of my BDG T-shirt, and began to trace the tattoo that stretched over the puckered scar, which ran from one of my shoulders to the other.

“This almost killed you,” he whispered.

“Almost.” The word came out breathy, like I was trying to talk and jog at the same time.

His fingertips still on my body, his eyes met mine. “You Imprinted with Heath and he saved you. That is why this didn’t kill you.”

“Yes.”

“You drank his blood.”

It was too hard to speak, so I just nodded.

“Zo, I want you to drink my blood.”

“Heath, uh, Aurox,” I stuttered, “I can’t. It would hurt Stark and—”

My words broke off when he lifted the knife and pricked the tip of the finger that had been touching my chest. A single drop of scarlet welled. The scent of his blood washed over and through me. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t fledgling or vampyre. It was magick.

I licked the tip of his finger and he moaned my name, “Zo!”

The taste hit my body like a nuclear bomb. My hands covered his, clutching, imprisoning, needing. I closed my eyes and took his finger in my mouth. He leaned forward, his head pressing against mine.

The bell that signaled the end of third hour and the beginning of lunch rang. My eyes opened wide and I realized what I was doing.

“No, this isn’t right! No. Aurox.” Shaking my head, I let loose his hand.

He was breathing as heavily as I was. “I won’t tell anyone. I won’t ever betray you like that.”

I wanted to cry. “If you really care about me you’ll just go. Please.”

He nodded, wrapped a napkin around his bleeding finger, and bolted from the cafeteria.

I drank an entire glass of pop in a single gulp. I wiped my mouth. I smoothed my T-shirt. I picked up a triangle of grilled cheese and forced myself to eat it. And when my friends all crowded into the booth I smiled and talked and let Stark put his arm around me possessively.

No one knew I was screaming inside. No one. 

Neferet

Neferet’s eyes moved under her closed lids as she relived the twentieth century. For a time that ultimately brought her such power, and the beginnings of her immortality, it really had been a terrible bore.

Two things had been the exception: her dreams and the old woman. The first had proven to be lies and the second to be spectacularly more than the truth. It was ironic that her dreams were the more enjoyable to revisit.

Neferet had returned to Tower Grove House of Night and to a school all too willing to shower her with concern and compassion. Too close together had been the untimely deaths of her first familiar, little Chloe, and her Warrior. Everyone understood when Neferet withdrew from social events and spent an unusual amount of time in meditation and prayer.

They had no idea that Neferet actually spent her prayer time in a deep, drugged sleep, yearning for the god that came to her only when she was unconscious.

Kalona had been clever. Though he was spectacularly handsome, he came to her dreams as the Faceless God, who asked only that she reveal her fantasies to him and allow him to worship her.