“Shaylin, the answer I have for you is the same as the answer I have for Zoey and Stevie Rae and Aphrodite.” I heard Aphrodite mutter something about not remembering asking her a damn question, but Thanatos spoke over her. “Each of you has been unusually gifted by our Goddess, and that is fortuitous for us because we will need all of the powers Light can gift us with if we are to battle Darkness.”

“You mean beat Darkness, don’t ya,” Stevie Rae said.

I knew Thanatos’s answer before she spoke it. “Darkness can never truly be beaten. It can only be battled and exposed by love and Light and truth.”

“Losing side. Again,” Aphrodite said under her breath.

“I am going to give each of you a task so that you may exercise your gifts. Prophetess, I give the first to you,” Thanatos spoke to Aphrodite.

Aphrodite sighed heavily.

“You have been gifted by Nyx with visions that are warnings of dire things to come. Did you have a vision before Neferet’s press conference?”

“No.” Aphrodite looked surprised by Thanatos’s question. “I haven’t had a vision for about a week now.”

“Then what good are you, Prophetess?” Her words were hard, cold. Thanatos almost sounded cruel.

Aphrodite’s face got real pale, and then blazed with pink. “Who are you to question me? You’re not Nyx. I don’t answer to you. I answer to her!”

“Exactly.” Thanatos’s expression relaxed. “Then answer to her. Listen to her. Watch for her signs and signals. Your visions have become increasingly painful and difficult, have they not?”

Aphrodite nodded in a quick tight movement.

“Perhaps that is because our Goddess wishes for you to exercise your gift in other ways. You did so, briefly, before the High Council. Remember?”

“Of course I remember. It’s how I knew Kalona and Zoey’s souls had left their bodies.”

“But you didn’t need a vision to tell you that.”

“No.”

“My point has been made,” Thanatos said. She turned to Stevie Rae. “You are the youngest High Priestess I have ever met, and I have lived a very long time. You are the first red vampyre High Priestess in the history of our people. You have a powerful affinity for earth.”

“Yeaaah.” Stevie Rae drew the word out as if she was waiting for Thanatos’s punch line.

“It is your task to practice leadership. You defer to Zoey far too often. You are a High Priestess. Draw strength from the earth and begin behaving as a High Priestess should.” Thanatos didn’t give Stevie Rae a chance to respond. Her dark gaze skewered Shaylin. “If you have True Sight your gift is only as good as you are. Do not squander it on pettiness and jealousies.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Shaylin spoke quickly. “I want to learn how to use it the right way.”

“That, young fledgling, is something you must grow up and teach yourself. Your task is to study those around you. Come to your High Priestess with your results. Stevie Rae will use the power of her element, as well as her growing leadership power, to guide you.”

“But I don’t know—” Stevie Rae began and Thanatos cut her off. “And you never will know. Anything. Anything important at all. Unless you take on the responsibility of being a High Priestess. Learn to rely on yourself so that others may feel secure in relying on you.”

Stevie Rae closed her mouth and nodded, looking like she was about twelve and the exact opposite of a High Priestess. But I didn’t have time to say anything to her because Thanatos had finally turned her torpedo eyes on me.

“Use your Seer Stone.”

“Huh?”

“It frightens you,” she spoke as if I hadn’t said anything. “The truth is the world should frighten you, should frighten all of you, right now. Fear is not a reason to avoid your responsibilities. You have a piece of old magick that responds to you. Use it.”

“How? For what?” I blurted.

“A Seer Stone, a True Color gift, a Prophetess, a High Priestess—all of those powerful things are useless unless you all begin to answer those questions for yourself. You say you are not bickering children? Prove it. You are dismissed.” She turned her back to us and strode to her desk.

My friends and I obviously had the same impulse at the same time. As one we began scurrying for the exit door.

“I will light Dragon Lankford’s pyre at midnight. Be present for the ceremony. Immediately afterward I need you and the rest of your circle in the school lobby. I have called my own press conference.”

Her words hit us like an invisible wall. We all stopped, turned, and gawked at her. I swallowed past the lump of dryness in my throat and said, “But you said we can’t stand up to Neferet in the human community. So, what are we press conferencing about?”

“We are continuing in goodwill what Neferet began only to create chaos and conflict. She opened this school to human employees. We are going to announce in the conference that, though we are sad to see Neferet leave our school’s employ, we are happy to take job applications from the community for more positions at the House of Night. We will smile. We will be warm and open. James Stark will be present and will be charming and handsome and harmless.”

“You’re going to make Neferet look like nothing more than a disgruntled employee?” Aphrodite said. “That’s brilliant!”

“And normal,” I said.

“Something humans will totally understand,” Shaylin said.

“Hey, if ya really want to be normal and human-like, we need to have an open house job fair thingie.” We stared at Stevie Rae.

“Go on,” Thanatos said. “What is your idea, High Priestess?”

“Well, my high school used to have a job fair for seniors at the end of the school year. It was kinda like a regular open house at school, what with the bad punch and the baked goods and all. But businesses from Tulsa and Oklahoma City, and even from Dallas would come and take job applications and set up interviews for the seniors while the rest of us hung around and wished we were graduating.” Stevie Rae smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “Guess I thought of it ’cause I missed my chance, gettin’ Marked and all.”

“Actually that is an interesting idea,” Thanatos shocked me by saying. “We will mention our willingness to open our school to a job fair”—she spoke the words as if they were in a foreign language—“during the press conference later tonight.”

“If you’re gonna have a real open house we need a bunch of folks here. How ’bout we invite Street Cats and do a whole fund-raising cat adoption thing? That’d be something Tulsa could get behind,” Stevie Rae added.

“And it would be normal,” Aphrodite said. “Charity events are normal, and they bring out the people with the big bucks, and that’s a good thing.”

“An excellent point,” Thanatos said.

“My grandma can help coordinate with Street Cats. She and Sister Mary Angela, the nun who’s their director, are friends,” I said.

Thanatos nodded. “Then I will call Sylvia, and ask her if she feels up to coordinating what we shall call an open house evening and job fair for Tulsa. The presence of your grandmother, as well as the nuns, will have a normalizing, calming affect.”

“My momma can bake like a ton of chocolate chip cookies and come, too,” Stevie Rae said.

“Then invite her. I have faith in you, as does Nyx. Do not disappoint either of us. And now, you are truly dismissed.”

We left Thanatos’s classroom talking about the press conference and the open house and how it felt good that we had a Plan. It was only later that I realized I hadn’t said one single word about the Aurox/Heath situation …

Shaunee

The Sons of Erebus Warriors went grimly about the job of stacking timber and building Dragon’s pyre. Shaunee tried to do what she could to help them. She could tell how well wood would burn just by touching it, so she pointed out all of the particularly dry logs, or planks, and guided the Warriors into placing them just right, so that the fire would burn cleanly and quickly.