“They cannot know. I have your word that you will keep this secret.”

“Why? Why should I know and not them?”

Instead of a clear answer, she just started talking. “I have lived almost five centuries. For most of that time I have dealt with death daily. I have seen Darkness. I have seen its carnage, its waste, its wages. I recognize its threads and shadows all too well. Perhaps it is because I have watched it for so long that I can also see that which is its opposite—that which causes the strength of Darkness to weaken, to falter.”

“What are you talking about!” I wanted to scream.

“You, Zoey Redbird. There is something about you that cannot be touched by Darkness; therefore, it is your fate to stand in the Light and lead the battle against evil.”

“No. I don’t want to lead any battle. You do it. Or ask Darius to. Or even Stark. Hell, get Sgiach and the Guardians! They’re all leaders. They’re all Warriors who know how to fight. I don’t know anything. I don’t even know what to do without my mom.” I ended up gasping for breath and pressing my hand against my chest. When Thanatos didn’t speak, when she just held me with her dark eyes I finally managed a less crazy voice and said, “I don’t want this. I just want to be a normal kid.”

“That may be part of why this has fallen on your shoulders, young High Priestess, because you do not want it. Perhaps the power that goes with the claiming of it will not be able to corrupt you.”

“Like Frodo,” I whispered, more to myself than to Thanatos. “He never wanted the damn ring.”

“J. R. R. Tolkien. Good books—excellent movies.”

I gave her a look and said, “Yeah, I know. It’s the twenty-first century. You probably have cable.”

“I definitely have cable.”

“That’s cool for you, but let’s go back to the Ring Bearer stuff. Uh, if I remember correctly, and I do ’cause I’ve seen the long extended version of the movies like a gazillion times, Frodo is basically destroyed by this ring he didn’t want to bear.”

“And thereby he saved his world from Darkness,” Thanatos said.

I felt a freezing shiver wash down my spine. “I don’t want to die. Not even to save the world.”

“Death comes to us all,” Thanatos said.

I shook my head again. “I’m no Ring Bearer. I’m just a kid.”

“A kid who’s already won her life back from Darkness, not once but several times.”

“Okay, if you get that—and if you get that Neferet is on the side of Darkness ’cause you can see it why are you pretending like you don’t?”

“I am here to settle the issue of Neferet and her true allegiance once and for all.”

“Then tell the High Council about the Darkness that surrounds her!”

“And have her admonished slightly only to return, perhaps stronger, to do more evil? What if she is really the Consort of Darkness? If that is truth, then the full might of the High Council must come against her, and for that to happen we must have unequivocal proof that she is forever lost to the Goddess.”

“That’s why you’re here. To get that proof.”

“Yes.”

“I won’t say anything about you seeing Darkness. And I’m telling you the honest truth—get ready to see a whole bunch of it. Get ready to find your proof because I know with everything inside me that Neferet has gone over to it.” I almost added that she’s not even mortal anymore. But, no. That was something Thanatos needed to discover for herself. “Oh, and I forgive you. Just promise me you’ll keep your eyes open and when the time comes, you’ll make sure the High Council does the right thing.”

“I give you my oath on it.”

“Good,” I said. And then while Thanatos was calling Grandma I did finally return to sixth hour.

Shaunee

She hadn’t had any idea how much it would suck not to be Erin’s Twin anymore. It was like that one thing—not having Erin as her BFF—changed the whole blueprint of her life.

It was so damn confusing.

When had she lost Shaunee and become Twin? She really didn’t know. They’d been Marked the same day and arrived at the Tulsa House of Night the same exact hour. And they’d been friends right away. Shaunee had thought that had been because they were like soul sisters ’cause it hadn’t mattered that she was black and Erin was white. That she was from Connecticut and Erin from Tulsa. They’d been friends and all of a sudden Shaunee hadn’t felt lonely anymore. Especially ’cause she never had to be alone. Literally. She and Erin were roommates, had the same class schedule, went to the same parties, they only even dated guys who were friends.

By herself in her seat on the bus Shaunee shook her head. She could hear Erin laughing with Kramisha somewhere in the back of the bus. For a second a mean little thought snaked through her mind: guess she’s trading me in for another black girl BFF. But Shaunee stopped that crap right away. It wasn’t about skin color. It never had been. It was about not being able to be alone. Which was super ironic because figuring that out had somehow put her in a position where she was alone.

“Hey, can I sit here?”

Shaunee’s gaze shifted from staring out the window at the lightening pre-dawn sky to Damien standing in the aisle of the bus.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Thanks.” He sat beside her and dropped his heavy book bag between his feet. “I have soooo much homework. How ’bout you?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess. Hey, did you see Zoey sixth hour?”

“Not during sixth hour. She has Equestrian Studies and I have business class, but I saw her right after school. Why? What’s up?”

“Did she look okay to you?”

“Okay? Like physically okay or not-stressed-out okay?”

“She’s always stressed out. I mean physically.”

“Yeah, fine. What’s going on?”

“Nothin’,” Shaunee said. “It’s just that I, uh, saw her at the beginning of sixth hour. Me and her, we talked over here by the parking lot. Then we went back to class.” She studied Damien, wondering if she should tell him the truth. “Did you feel anything weird about the air tonight?”

Damien cocked his head to the side. “Nothing odd. Well, it was windy, but that’s not really odd for Oklahoma. You know we’re the state where the wind comes sweeping down the plain,” he sang.

“I know that, Mr. Broadway Musical. All I’m saying is the wind was blowing really hard when Z and I split up, and I thought I heard something about tree limbs falling and—”

“A tree limb did fall.” Stark butted in as he and Zoey slid into the seat in front of Damien and Shaunee.

“Yeah, it was all psycho-windy,” Stevie Rae said, sitting beside Rephaim in the seat across the aisle from Damien. “But tellin’ you that would be like tryin’ to tell white about rice.”

“What in the for-shit’s-sake is that supposed to mean?” Aphrodite forced Z to scoot over and perched beside her as Darius did a quick head count and then got in the driver’s seat and started the bus up.

“It means, Hateful, that Damien already knows it was windy today ’cause his affinity is wind. Just like rice is white. I don’t even know what was hard about that analogy,” Stevie Rae said.

“Just. Don’t. Speak,” Aphrodite told Stevie Rae.

“Rice is brown, too,” Shaunee said.

Aphrodite raised a brow. “Did you just make a snarky comment without your Twin?”

“Yeah,” Shaunee said, meeting her gaze steadily.

Aphrodite snorted and looked away, first saying, “It’s about time.”

“About the wind,” Zoey said. “Yeah, it was kinda crazy tonight, and it even broke a branch from one of those old oaks.” She shrugged. “Like Damien said—it’s windy in Oklahoma. Hey, speaking of, Damien, did you know Thanatos had a little wind affinity?”

“Ohmygod! I’m not surprised! Did you see how uber-scary she got today when Dallas said that stupid stuff in class? I couldn’t believe…”

Shaunee let everyone’s words flow around her, but she kept watching Zoey, waiting for her to say something—anything—about what had really happened when the tree limb broke. She knew. She’d seen the whole thing.