tense probably sounded really bad. "When was the last time you saw the two boys?" Marx asked. I chewed my lip, trying to remember. "Not for months--since the beginning of football season, and then I just went to maybe two or three parties and they were there, too."
"So you weren't with either boy?" I frowned. "No. I was kinda dating the Broken Arrow quarter back. That's the only reason I knew any of those Union guys." I smiled, trying to lighten things up. "People think Union players hate BA players. It's not really true. Most of them grew up to gether. A bunch of them are still friends."
"Miss Redbird, you've been at the House of Night for how long?" the short cop asked as if I hadn't tried to be pleasant. "Zoey has been with us for almost exactly one month," Neferet answered for me. "And in that month did either Chris or Brad visit you here?" Totally surprised, I said, "No!"
"Are you saying no human teenagers have visited you here at all?" Martin fired the question quickly. Caught off guard I sputtered like a moron and I'm sure looked completely guilty. Thankfully, Neferet saved me. "Two friends of Zoey's did see her during her first week here, although I do not believe you'd call it an official visit," she said with a smooth, adult smile aimed at the detectives that clearly said kids will be kids. Then she nodded encouragement at me. "Go ahead and tell them about your two friends who thought it'd be fun to scale our walls." Neferet's green eyes locked on mine. I'd told her all about Heath and Kayla climbing the wall with the ridiculous idea of busting me out. Or at least that had been Heath's idea. Kayla, my ex-best friend, had just wanted me to see that she'd staked a claim on Heath. I'd told Neferet all of that, and more. How I'd kinda accidentally tasted Heath's blood--until Kayla had caught me and totally lost her mind. Staring into Neferet's eyes I knew as sure as if she'd said the words aloud that I was to keep the little blood-tasting incident to myself, which was more than okay with me. "There really wasn't much to it, and it was a whole month ago. Kayla and Heath thought they'd sneak in and bust me out." I paused to shake my head like I thought they were totally crazy, and the tall cop jumped in with, "Kayla and Heath who?"
"Kayla Robinson and Heath Luck," I said. (Yeah, Heath's last name really is Luck, but the only thing he was particularly lucky about is not getting picked up DUI.) "Anyway, Heath is kinda slow sometimes, and Kayla, well, Kayla's really good at shoes and hair, but not so good at common sense. So they hadn't really thought out the whole `Hey, she's turning into a vampyre and if she leaves the House of Night she'll die' issue. So I explained to them that not only did I not want to leave, I couldn't leave. And that was about it."
"Nothing unusual happened when you saw your friends?"
"You mean when I went back to the dorm?"
"No. Let me rephrase the question. Nothing unusual hap pened when you saw Kayla and Heath?" Martin said. I swallowed. "No." Which wasn't actually a lie. Apparently it's not unusual for fledglings to experience a vampyre's bloodlust. I shouldn't so early in my Change, but my Mark shouldn't be filled in and I shouldn't have the added decorative tattooing of an adult vamp either. Not to mention the fact that no other fledgling or vamp had ever been Marked on the shoulder and back like I had. Okay, I'm not exactly a normal fledgling. "You didn't cut the boy and drink his blood?" The short cop's voice was like ice. "No!" I cried. "Are you accusing Zoey of something?" Neferet said, stepping closer to me. "No, ma'am. We're simply questioning her to try and get a clearer idea of the dynamics of the friends of Chris Ford and Brad Higeons. There are several aspects of the case that are rather unusual and ..." The short cop rambled on and on while my mind raced. What was going on? I hadn't cut Heath; I'd scratched him. And I hadn't done it on purpose. And "drinking" his blood wasn't ex actly what I'd done--it was more like I lapped it up. But how the hell did they know anything about it? Heath wasn't very