the magic department. A few tweaks, and you'll be casting spells like a pro." He stood back and gauged me. "What do you think, Bella, six and a half feet?"
Bella looked me up and down. "I think it would be perfect."
"What would?" I asked, confused.
Shelton clapped me on the shoulder. "I think it's time we got you a staff. You're ready for the big leagues now."
Chapter 34
"My own staff!" I said for at least the tenth time, so excited I couldn't stop rubbing my hands together.
Elyssa snorted and glanced over at me. "Don't have a nerdgasm in the car, hot stuff." She took a left turn and pulled into the parking lot of the pizza place.
"Is a staff a big deal?" Katie asked from the back seat.
"Don't even get him started," Elyssa said with a grin.
Nyte and Ash stood near the front door of Ghetto Pizza, their eyes already locked onto us. Elyssa opened the door to get out, but Nyte jogged over. In place of his usual Goth attire, he wore designer jeans and a leather biker jacket. He wore only a couple of earrings in place of the metric ton of metal he used to wear in his nose, eyebrow, and numerous other places on his face. His red hair was shorter and worn stylishly. He looked really good.
I leaned over so I could look at his irises, and breathed with relief when I saw they weren't red—a sure sign of vampirism.
"Don't come in," Nyte said, looking around conspiratorially. "We grabbed some pizza to go. Thought we'd eat it at Spooky House for old time's sake." He winked at Elyssa. "You cool with that?"
She smiled. "Wow, I haven't been there in ages." She looked at me. "You're not scared to go are you?"
I laughed. "I'm petrified. Let's do it."
"I'm in," Katie said, an uncertain look on her face.
"Sweet!" Nyte slapped the top of the car and jogged over to Ash's tank-like, periwinkle Ford, a car that looked like something out of a seventies film.
"What's this Spooky House?" I asked.
Elyssa rolled up the window and made a U-turn out of the parking lot. "It's this old antebellum house just down the street. Nobody's lived there for years. Remember how I told you about our ghost stories in the graveyard?"
I nodded.
"This is just another place we used to go to scare each other and party." She smiled. "Not just us, but a bunch of other Goths, too. It's a cool place."
"You used to party? Like drink and all that?" It was hard to imagine Little Miss Templar as a party girl.
Her lips curled into a lopsided grin. "Yeah. Alcohol doesn't affect me that much thanks to my dhampyr–enhanced metabolism." She gave me a sideways look. "I suppose I could lie to you and say I did it as part of my undercover duties as a Templar, but truth is, I actually had a lot of fun." She sighed. "I miss those days sometimes. Now everything is so serious."
"Well, maybe we can have fun tonight. Doesn't look like our friends are vampires."
"You looked at his eyes, too?" Elyssa glanced at me as she stopped at a stop sign, and looked both ways.
"First chance I got."
"Thank goodness," Katie said. "I was so worried we were too late."
"We might have gotten lucky." Hopefully. I looked out the window at the neat little houses with their porches and tiny front yards. We were in Kirkwood, not far from East Atlanta Village, so the houses were smaller and tightly spaced.
Elyssa parked on the road before a crumbling stone wall. Behind it loomed the silhouette of a house. Darkened windows and a thick overgrown lawn told me it had been abandoned a long time.
"Whoa, this is a spooky house," I said, peering out the window. I looked at Elyssa. "Does it have ghosts?"
She laughed. "Probably." We got out of the car. "Looks like they're inside already."
"The ghosts?"
"No, Ash and Nyte, silly."
Katie regarded the house, an uncertain look on her face, but said nothing.
The three of us squeezed through the gap in the rusted, iron gate and waded through a footpath overgrown with weeds, brambles, and ivy. Large columns supported a wide porch. At one end, a broken bench swing hung by a chain. A gentle breeze caused the swing to scrape against the deck, sending a chill up my spine. Skeletal branches from the oak tree slapped against a window. Despite all the horrors I'd seen, something about this place creeped me out. The porch groaned