Lenobia frowned slightly, but nodded. “I understand, and though it pains me, I am in agreement with you.”
“You should come with us—you and Dragon and Anastasia. The House of Night is no place for you right now.”
“The House of Night is our home,” she said.
I met her eyes. “Sometimes the people closest to you betray you, and your home isn’t a place you can be happy anymore. It’s hard, but it’s true.”
“You sound very wise for your years, Priestess.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a product of divorce and crappy stepparenting. Who knew it would come in handy?”
We were laughing together when the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. Lenobia was on her feet in an instant. “We should get messages to your friends. They can meet here. It, at least, is safe from the ears and eyes of the Raven Mockers.”
“Already done,” I said. “They’ll all be here in a little while.”
“If Neferet realizes you’re meeting here, it will go badly for us.”
“I know,” was what I said; Ah, hell, was what I thought.
CHAPTER 30
Despite the fact that it had started to sleet again, Damien, the Twins, Aphrodite, and Darius arrived just minutes after the bell rang.
“Nice note,” Erin said.
“Very wily of you to get us here without having us think about it beforehand,” Shaunee said.
“Well done, you!” Damien said.
“But you are thinking of it now, so we need to be sure those thoughts are protected, and move and move fast with whatever it is we’re going to do,” Darius said.
“Agreed,” I said. “Guys, summon your elements and get them to form a protective wall around your thoughts.”
“No problem,” Erin said.
“Yeah, we’ve been practicing,” Shaunee said.
“Do you need me to cast a quick circle?” I asked.
“No, Z, we just need you to hush for a second,” Damien said. “We’ve already had our elements primed and waiting.”
“Partial herd of nerd, get to it!” Aphrodite said.
“Shut up!” the Twins yelled at her.
Aphrodite snorted at them and went to stand beside Darius, who automatically put his arm around her. I noticed the cut on his face was almost completely healed, and there was only a thin pink line where before there had been a nasty laceration. It made me think of my own scar, and while the Twins and Damien were busy summoning their elements, and Aphrodite was nuzzling Darius, I turned my back to them and unobtrusively peeked down the front of my shirt. And grimaced at what I saw. Okay, my scar wasn’t a long, thin pink line. It was puckered and jagged, and was still red and angry-looking. I shifted my shoulders. No, it didn’t really hurt. It was just sore and tender to the touch. And ugly. Really, really ugly.
Whenever I thought about anyone seeing my nasty scar (“anyone” being Stark, or Erik, or even Heath, for that matter) I wanted to burst into tears. Maybe I’d just never be with another guy. It would certainly make my life less complicated…
“Battle scars from the war of good versus evil have a unique beauty all their own,” Lenobia said.
I jumped. She was standing close to me, and I hadn’t heard her approach. I looked at her steadily. She was utterly perfect and completely unscarred and beautiful. “That sounds nice in theory, but when the scar belongs to you, reality is kinda different than the theory.”
“I know of what I speak, Priestess.” She swept the curtain of her silver hair over one shoulder, turned so that I could see the back of her neck, and with her other hand, pulled aside the yoke of her white blouse to expose a terrible scar that ran from up into her hairline, down the back of her neck, and disappeared, thick and puckered, into her back.
“Okay! We’re all elemented up over here,” Erin called.
“Yeah, we’re ready to get down and dirty,” Shaunee said.
“So, what’s the latest?” Damien said.
Lenobia and I exchanged a quick glance. “That story will wait for another time,” she said softly. I followed her back to my friends, wondering what kind of evil she could have been fighting that could have made those awful scars.
“Zoey has named the people mentioned in the poem,” Lenobia said without any preamble. “And the place of power at which they need to join.”
Everyone looked at me. “It’s the Benedictine Abbey. I remembered that one of the reasons Sister Mary Angela wasn’t totally shocked when I showed her I could invoke the elements was that she’d felt elemental power herself. She said her abbey had been built on a place of spiritual power. I didn’t think much of it then.” I paused and gave a little laugh. “Actually, I didn’t take her seriously, and thought she was just being crazy-eccentric-nun-lady.”
“Well, in your defense, the nun is kinda different,” Aphrodite said.
Darius nodded, “At least she is for a nun.”
“She’s also the Spirit the poem talks about,” I said.
“Wow, you did figure it out!” Damien grinned at me. “Who are the rest of the personifications?”
“Blood is Stevie Rae.”
“She definitely likes it enough,” Aphrodite said under her breath.
“You’re Humanity,” I told her firmly, punctuating my announcement with a big grin.
“Great. Just great. Let me state right now for the record: I. Do. Not. Want. To. Get. Bit. Again. Ever.” Then she glanced up at Darius and her expression changed, and she added, “Except by you, handsome.”
The Twins made retching noises.
“Earth is my grandma,” I continued, ignoring all of them.
“Good thing your grandma’s already at the abbey,” Damien said.
“How about Night?” Shaunee asked.
“It’s Zoey,” Aphrodite said.
I raised my brows at her.
She rolled her eyes. “Who the hell else could it be? Anyone who’s not mentally impaired or sharing a brain”—she gave the Twins and Damien pointed looks—“could figure that one out.”
“Okay, yeah, I’m Night,” I said.
“So we need to get to the Benedictine Abbey,” Darius said, going, as usual, straight to the heart of the logistics of our “operation.” I say “operation” because it usually feels to me like I’m flailing about hoping that somehow I’m getting enough things right that I don’t totally make a mess of stuff, which isn’t exactly an Operation.
“Yes, and you need to get there quickly, before Kalona and Neferet cause any more damage to our people,” Lenobia said.
“Or begin a war with the humans,” Aphrodite said.
Everyone but Darius gawked at her. And in my gawking I saw through the façade of her beauty, and how she always looked totally together, to the bruised darkness under her eyes and the vaguely reddish tint that hadn’t yet faded from their whites.
“You had another vision,” I said.
She nodded.
“Ah, crap. Did I get killed again?”
I heard Lenobia’s shocked intake of breath. “Uh, long story,” I said.
“No, dork. You did not get killed. Again,” Aphrodite said. “But I got a flash of the war—the same one I saw before—only this time I recognized the Raven Mockers.” She paused, shuddering. “Did you know they can rape women? Not a comfortable vision to have. Anyway, Neferet hooked up with Kalona to fulfill her crazy war-with-the-humans scheme.”
“But last time you had the war vision, saving Zoey kept it from happening,” Damien said.
“I know that. I’m Vision Girl, remember? What I don’t know is why this one was different, except that now Kalona has been added into the mix. And, well, I hate to clue you in about this, ’cause it’s more than a little frightening, but Neferet has totally gone over to the Dark Side. She’s turning into something, and it’s like no vampyre we’ve ever known before.”