“Z, I don’t expect you to be perfect. No one does.” Stark squeezed my hand. “You know it won’t always be like this.”
My stomach clenched. “I think that’s the problem. I don’t know that it won’t always be like this.”
“This is the second time we’ve beaten Neferet—and she didn’t look so good tonight. Seriously—spiders? That’s all she’s got? She can’t keep fighting us forever.”
“She’s immortal, Stark. She can’t be killed, so she can keep fighting us forever,” I said gloomily. “And she’d changed from spiders to yucky, gooey, black crap that was starting to reform her body. Ugh. She’s back.”
“Well, at least everyone knows she’s turned bad,” he countered with.
“Nope, everyone doesn’t know she’s turned bad. Vampyres know it—and the High Council had decided to not do squat to her. Humans, local humans—hell, our own mayor and his council—think that she’s practically Glenda the Good Witch of the North. What pissed me off tonight was that I overheard some of the guys in suits and the PTA moms talking about her and wondering if we had something to do with her penthouse being vandalized last week because ‘poor Neferet,’” I air quoted, “hasn’t been seen since then.”
“Really? I can’t believe they’re saying that.”
“Believe it. Neferet’s press conference set the stage for her to look like a victim if anything happened to her.”
“Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t change the fact that we had to kick her ass to get your grandma back. We were cloaked that night. No one saw us, so all that talk is just bullshit gossip. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Gossip always means something, Stark. In this case I think it means that it’s going to take some major bullpoopie hitting the fan for anyone who isn’t a vampyre to know how evil Neferet is.”
“You’re probably right about that, but that’s actually good news,” Stark said.
“Huh?”
“Neferet has never known how to lay low and let a situation cool down. And she sure as hell has never been able to pull off being a victim. If she can manage to get herself together—literally—and manifest a body that’s more than black snot, she’s right back where she was before. She’s eventually going to realize that the local humans aren’t going to bow down and worship her. A bunch of them even feel sorry for her. That is going to piss her off big time and Neferet will mess up. Again. Then she’ll be outed with the humans, just like she was with the vamps. That’ll leave her no shit pot to stir here, and if she can’t stir up some shit, Neferet will find someplace else to haunt. Getting rid of her for good could actually be, as Stevie Rae would say, easy-peasy.”
“Stevie Rae!” I felt a flush of guilt. “Crap. I pretty much left her alone to deal with the Erin death mess.”
“Thanatos is handling it, and by it I mean Shaunee. Stevie Rae and Kramisha are getting the kids together for the bus. Everyone wanted to know where you were, which brought me out here looking for you.”
“Sorry. I guess my second to breathe is up. I’m ready to dive back into crazy. Let’s go say bye to Grandma before we get on the bus.”
“I’m with you, Z.” Stark stood, pulled me to my feet, and kissed me softly. “I’m always with you, even if that means I’m with crazy, too.”
I was still in his arms, feeling safe, when we heard the screaming start.
“Holy crap, what is that?”
I could feel the tension in Stark’s body. “Someone’s hysterical.” He took my hand again, and listened for a few seconds before he began guiding me toward the entrance to the field house. “Come on. It’s coming from around the other side of the school. Stay close to me. I have a bad feeling about this.”
Oh, Goddess! Please, don’t let it be another kid dying … was all I could think as we cut through the field house and jogged to the school’s parking lot.
We were coming from a different direction than everyone else, so no one noticed us at first, and Stark and I got to get a good look at the creepy scene. In the middle of the parking lot—surrounded by dazed locals, and a gaggle of Benedictine nuns who were herding her from her headlong run from the front gates of the school—was a tall blond woman having an absolute and utter hysterical meltdown. She was wearing meticulously tailored black slacks; a light blue, skintight cashmere sweater; and a thick strand of expensive-looking pearls. Her hair had come loose from a rich lady updo, and blond wisps were sticking out from her head like she’d been electrocuted. Even though the nuns had managed to get her to stop running in circles, she was shrieking and flailing her arms like a crazy person.
I admit that my first reaction was to feel super relieved that it was a freaked-out local and not another dying fledgling.
Sister Mary Angela stepped from the crowd and began trying to calm the woman down. “There, there, madam. I know it is distressing when a young person dies, but we all know death is never far from every fledgling. They accept it, and so must we.”
The screaming woman paused in her hysterics and blinked at Sister Mary Angela as if she’d just realized where she was. She drew a deep breath and her face twisted, changed, going from terror to anger so quickly it was scary. Later I realized that should have made me recognize her.
“You think I’m crying about a fledgling? That’s absurd!” the woman hurled the words at the nun.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand wh—”
Aphrodite rushed up, interrupting the nun and looking wide-eyed at the crying woman. “Mom? What’s wrong with you?”
“Oh, shit!” Stark spoke under his breath to me. “That’s Aphrodite’s mom.”
I’d dropped his hand and was moving forward before my mind had time to catch up with my actions.