I elbowed Stark and he shot me his cute, cocky grin, mouthing airbus! I rolled my eyes.

“Okay, okay,” Detective Marx was saying while he raised his hands in a calming gesture. “There’s nothing to see here. You folks need to move along and not block this entryway.”

“Oh, do not worry, Detective. We don’t wish to block the school’s entrance. We only wish to enter the school.” The tall, wimpled nun strode forward purposefully, smiling with motherly warmth. “It is so nice to see you again, Kevin.”

“Sister Mary Angela, ma’am.” Detective Marx tipped an invisible hat to her in an old-time gesture of respect. “It’s awful late for you and the other ladies to be paying a social call.”

“Oh, Kevin, we aren’t here to socialize,” she said cryptically.

Before Marx could start to question her, Grandma spoke up, walking past him to meet the nun at the boundary of the school. “Mary Angela, I was just thinking of you earlier.” They embraced quickly.

The nun laughed and said loudly enough for a good part of the watching crowd to overhear, “And when did you think of me? Before or after you were being attacked by Darkness? You do lead such an interesting life, Sylvia.”

Aphrodite, who had come over to stand by me, snorted, saying, “Old people should have less interesting lives.”

“We should have less interesting lives,” I said under my breath.

Grandma smiled as if she could hear us. “It was afterward, when Thanatos called for the prayers of Tulsa to aid us.”

“Ah, that is a lovely coincidence, because prayer is what brought us here.”

“Please explain, good Sister,” Thanatos said. I noticed she didn’t join Grandma. I glanced at Kalona, who was sticking to her side like he expected more tendrils of Darkness to appear at any moment.

“Oh, for shit’s sake, enough with this procrastinating,” Aphrodite muttered, and then strode forward. “They want protection.”

I followed her, though Stark’s hand on my elbow slowed me down.

“I believe the correct word for what they want is ‘sanctuary,’” said Lenobia.

“You mean the politically correct word,” Aphrodite said.

“If any of us were politically correct, we would not be here.” From the middle of the flickering lamplight, a petite woman, followed by a slender man, walked to stand beside Sister Mary Angela. She nodded politely to Thanatos. “Shalom, High Priestess.”

“I greet you with peace, Rabbi Margaret,” Thanatos said. Now that they were closer to the light, the couple looked kinda familiar to me. “I greet you with peace as well, Rabbi Steven. It is always a pleasure to see our neighbors from Temple Israel.”

I realized that’s why the woman and the man looked familiar. They were the married rabbis, Margaret and Steven Bernstein, who had recently become the rabbinic leadership at Temple Israel, which literally backed to the Utica Square side of the House of Night. I remembered that they’d raved about Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies at our open house before that night had, of course, ended in disaster and death.

“So it is indeed sanctuary you seek here tonight?” Thanatos asked the couple, but her voice carried throughout the crowd.

“We do,” said Rabbi Margaret, as she and her husband, as well as a bunch of people standing behind them, nodded their heads.

“The Benedictine Sisterhood seeks sanctuary as well,” said Sister Mary Angela.

“As does the congregation of All Souls,” said an older woman, moving forward out of the shadows. She had long, faded blond hair but eyes so brilliantly blue that even in the dim light they sparkled like little aquamarines. She walked straight up to Thanatos, ignoring Detective Marx’s glower, and stuck out her hand. “It’s about time we met. I’m Suzanne Grimms, leader of The Point ministry at All Souls. Like I said, we’re asking you for sanctuary, too.”

Thanatos hesitated. She glanced at Lenobia, who smiled. She glanced at Kalona, who frowned. And then she surprised me by glancing over her shoulder at me. I met her eyes and did what my gut told me to do—I smiled and nodded.

Thanatos turned to Suzanne, grasped her forearm in the traditional vampyre greeting, and raised her voice so that it was filled with the power of Nyx: “As High Priestess of Tulsa’s House of Night, I welcome you and grant sanctuary to all who seek it!”

Beside me, I heard Stark sigh and whisper, “Ah, hell…”

Zoey

“No, Bobby! How many times does Mommy have to tell you? You cannot touch the tall man’s wings!” A frazzled-looking woman plucked a toddler from where he was teetering on the field house’s sandy floor, arms stretched out, reaching for the tip of Kalona’s wing.

I bit my cheek to keep from giggling as the winged immortal grunted in annoyance and sidestepped to avoid sticky reaching fingers. The toddler tried to lurch out of his mom’s tired arms. Kalona dodged around her the other way. As usual, whenever Kalona appeared, all the humans focused their attention on him, which seemed to be wearing on him. He looked tired. Weirdly, his wounds hadn’t totally healed yet but were painful-looking pink lines and puckered gouges. I was thinking that he must not have spent enough time on the roof of the ONEOK building when Aphrodite’s “Psst!” took my attention.

“Z, bumpkin—over here with me, now!” Aphrodite called to us. Stevie Rae and I let go of the case of water we’d been carrying into the field house and followed Aphrodite to the shadowy far wall and a little alcove that held a statue of Nyx.

“Man, I’m beat,” Stevie Rae said.

“Seriously,” I agreed.

“We’re overdue for a break,” Aphrodite said, tossing cans of brown pop to Stevie Rae and me. Then she totally surprised me by cracking open her own can.

“Pop? You? I thought you hated it.”

“I do, and this isn’t pop. It’s Sophia champagne,” she said, sipping happily through a little pink straw that she’d unwrapped from the side of the slender pink can.

“Champagne in a can—who knew?” Stevie Rae said.

“Anyone civilized.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“My point exactly,” Aphrodite said. Then she cut her eyes to Kalona, who was standing in the middle of the field house, obviously looking for someone and just as obviously trying to ignore the people who were staring at him.

“Kalona and humans, especially little humans, equals apocalyptic train wreck,” Aphrodite said.

“In total agreement with you,” I said. “Does he look tired to you guys?”

Aphrodite snorted. “We all look tired.”

“I think he looks like he always does, except beat up, which makes it kinda mean that I was rootin’ for that baby to grab a feather,” Stevie Rae said.

“Kalona’s an immortal. He’s fine, and a baby yanking on his feathers would be beyond awesome,” Aphrodite said. “I wonder what I could bribe a toddler with to do that—or, better yet, his mom to allow him do that. Do you think she likes mimosas?”

“That mom sure looks like she needs a mimosa, without the orange juice. She’d probably like one of your pink cans,” Stevie Rae said.

“I don’t say this often because it isn’t often true, but I think you’re right, Stevie Rae,” Aphrodite said. “I’ll need more than one of these little cans, though. Looks like a job for the Widow Clicquot.”

“Widow Clicquot? Is she from Temple Israel?”

“Oh, you poor, ignorant peasant,” Aphrodite said, shaking her head sadly at Stevie Rae.

Kalona had made it past the toddler, and he was moving again. Ugh, it seemed he was heading in our direction. “Tell me he isn’t coming our way.”

“Wish I could,” Aphrodite said.

“He’s like a ginormic homing pigeon,” Stevie Rae said.

“Should we meet him halfway?” I asked, yawning. I glanced at the school clock. It read 5:30 A.M. There was a little over an hour left before sunrise, and for once I totally understood red fledgling exhaustion.