"Drop me back by the trapdoor in the wall. I still don't think it's a good idea if people think we're hanging out," Aphrodite said.
I turned right on Peoria Street and headed back to the school. "I'm surprised you care so much what other people think."
"I don't. I care what Neferet finds out. If she thinks the two of us are friends, or even just not enemies, she's going to figure that we've shared info about her."
"And that would be majorly bad," I finished for her.
"Definitely," she said.
"But she's going to see us together once in a while because you're going to be evoking earth in my circles." Aphrodite gave me a startled look. "No, I'm not."
"Of course you are."
"No, I am not."
"Aphrodite, Nyx has given you an affinity for earth. You belong in the circle. Unless you want to ignore Nyx's will." I didn't add the word "again," but it seemed to hang in the air between us.
"I already said I'd do Nyx's will," she said through clenched teeth.
"Which means you're going to be part of the Full Moon Ritual tonight," I said.
"That's going to be a little difficult, seeing as I'm not a member of the Dark Daughters anymore." Crap. I'd forgotten about that.
"Well, then, you'll just have to rejoin the Dark Daughters." She started to say something. I raised my voice and talked over the top of her. "Which means you're going to have to swear to uphold the new rules."
"Lame," she muttered.
"You're doing that attitude thing again," I said. "So, will you swear to it?" I could see her chewing her lip. I waited without saying anything else and just kept driving. This was something Aphrodite was going to have to decide for herself. She said she wanted to atone for her screw-ups and wanted to do the Goddess's will. But wanting something and actually doing it was totally not the same thing. Aphrodite had been selfish and mean for a really long time. Sometimes I could see a spark of a change in her, but mostly I just saw the girl the Twins called the Hag from Hell.
"Yeah, whatever."
"What was that?"
"I said, yeah. I'll swear to your new lame-ass rules."
"Aphrodite, part of the swearing means that you don't believe the rules are lame."
"No, there's nothing in the swearing that says I can't think they're lame. I just have to say that I'll be authentic for air, faithful for fire, wise for water, empathetic for earth, and sincere for spirit. So I'm authentically saying I think your new rules are lame."
"If that's what you think, then why did you memorize them?"
"Know thy enemy," she quoted.
"Who said that, anyway?"
She shrugged. "Someone back in the day. The 'thy' gives it away as from the olden back in the day." I thought she was full of poopy, but didn't want to say anything (especially since she'd make fun of me saying
"poopy" instead of the s word).
"Okay, here you go." I pulled over to the side of the road. Thankfully, the clouds that had rolled in during the late night hours had multiplied, and the morning was dark and gloomy. All Aphrodite would have to do was cross the little grassy area that sat between the road and the wall that surrounded the school, go through the trapdoor, and then follow the sidewalk a short way to the dorm. As the Twins would say, easy-peasy. I squinted up at the sky, considering whether I should try asking the wind to blow in more clouds to make it even darker, but a glance at Aphrodite's sullen face made me decide, nah, she could deal with the sunlight.
"So, you'll be at the ritual tonight, right?" I prompted, wondering why it was taking her so long to get out of my car.
"Yeah, I'll be there."
She sounded distracted. Whatever. The girl was just plain weird some times.
"Okay, see ya," I said.
"Yeah, see ya," she mumbled, opening the door and (finally) getting out of the car. But before she closed it, she bent down and said, "Something feels wrong. Do you feel it, too?" I thought about it. "I dunno. I'm feeling kinda restless and stressed, but that could be because my best friend's dead-I mean undead." Then I looked more closely at her. "Are you getting ready to have a vision?"
"I don't know. I can never tell when one will come on. I do get feelings about things sometimes and don't have a full-blown vision, though."
She looked really pale and even a little sweaty (which was definitely out of the norm for Aphrodite). "Maybe you should get back in the car. There's probably no one awake to see us come in together anyway." Aphrodite was a pain in the ass, but I'd seen how visions made her helpless and sick and I really didn't like the thought of her getting stuck outside in the daylight alone when one hit her.
She shook herself, reminding me of a cat coming in out of the rain. "I'll be okay. I'm probably just imaging things. See you tonight."
I watched her hurry toward the thick brick and stone wall that ringed the school grounds. Huge ancient oaks lined the wall, throwing it into shadow so that suddenly it looked unusually sinister. Jeesh, now who was imagining things? I had my hand on the gear and was just shifting into first so I could pull away when Aphrodite screamed.
Sometimes I don't think. My body takes over and I just act. This was one of those times. I was out of my car and running toward Aphrodite before I even thought about it. When I got to her, I knew two things at once. One was that something smelled wonderful, kinda familiar, yet not. Whatever it was, the scent had settled in the area like a delicious fog and I automatically inhaled deeply. The second thing I saw was Aphrodite bent over at the waist, puking her guts out and crying at the same time, which is not a very pleasant to do or to watch. I was too busy looking at her and trying to figure out what was going on and too distracted by the lovely smell to notice it. At first.
"Zoey!" Aphrodite sobbed, still retching. "Get someone! Fast!"
"What is it-a vision? What's wrong?" I grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to steady her while she continued to puke her guts up.
"No! Behind me! Against the wall..." She gagged, but didn't have anything else to puke up. "It's so awful." I didn't want to, but my eyes automatically looked up and behind her to the school's shadowy wall. It was the most horrible thing I'd ever seen. At first my mind wouldn't even register what it was. Later I thought that must have been some kind of instant defense mechanism. Unfortunately, it didn't last long. I blinked and peered into the darkness. Something looked slick and wet andAnd I knew what the sweet, seductive smell was. I fought against falling to my knees and puking my guts up beside Aphrodite. I smelled blood. Not ordinary human blood, which is delicious enough. What I was smelling was a lethal shedding of a full-grown vampyre's lifeblood.
Her body was nailed grotesquely to a crude wooden cross that was resting against the wall. They'd not just nailed her wrists and ankles. They'd also driven a thick wooden stake through her heart. There was some kind of paper over her heart, held in place by the grotesque stake. I could see that it had something written on it, but my eyes wouldn't focus well enough to read the words.
They'd also cut off her head. Professor Nolan's head. I knew it was her because they'd mounted her head on a wooden stake next to her body. Her long dark hair lifted softly in the breeze, looking obscenely graceful. Her mouth was open in a terrible grimace, but her eyes were closed.
I grabbed Aphrodite's elbow and hauled her to her feet. "Come on! We have to get help." Leaning on each other, we stumbled to my car. I don't know how I managed to start the Bug and pull away from the curb.
"I-I-I think I'm gonna be sick again." Aphrodite's teeth were chattering so bad she could hardly talk.
"No, you're not." I couldn't believe how calm I sounded. "Breathe. Center yourself. Draw strength from the earth." I realized I was automatically doing what I was telling her to do, only in my case I was drawing strength from the five elements. "You're okay," I told her as I channeled energy from wind, fire, water, earth, and spirit to keep back the hysterics and shock I wanted to give in to. "We're okay."
"We're okay... we're okay...," Aphrodite kept repeating.
She was shivering so hard that I reached behind me and grabbed the hoodie I kept in my backseat. "Wrap this around you. We're almost there."
"But everyone's gone! Who are we going to tell?"
"Everyone's not gone." My mind flailed around. "Lenobia never leaves her horses for long. She's probably here." And then I grasped at a dark, alluring straw. "And I saw Loren Blake yesterday. He'll know what to do."
"Okay... okay..." Aphrodite murmured.
"Listen to me Aphrodite," I said sternly. She turned wide, shock-filled eyes on me. "They're going to want to know why we were together, and especially why I was dropping you off so you could sneak back."
"What do we say?"
"I wasn't with you and I wasn't dropping you off. I'd been to visit my grandma. You were..." I paused, trying to force my numb mind to think. "You were at home. I saw you walking back to the school and I gave you a ride. When we passed the wall you felt something was wrong and we stopped to check it out. That's how we found her."
"Okay. Okay. I can say that."
"You'll remember?"
She took a deep, shaky breath. "I'll remember."
I didn't bother with parking in a regular space. I screeched to a stop as close as possible to the section of the main building that held the in-residence professors' rooms. I waited only long enough to grab hold of Aphrodite again, and together we ran up the sidewalk to the old castle-like wooden front doors. Silently thanking my Goddess for the non-lock school policy, I wrenched open the door and stumbled inside just ahead of Aphrodite.
And I ran right into Neferet.
"Neferet! You have to come! Please! It's horrible!" I sobbed and threw myself into her arms. I couldn't help it. My mind knew that she had done terrible things, but up until just a month ago Neferet had been a mother to me. No, actually, she'd become the mother I wished I'd had, and in my panic seeing her sent a rush of incredible relief pouring through my body.
"Zoey? Aphrodite?"
Aphrodite had collapsed against the wall beside us and I could hear her sobbing brokenly. I realized I'd started to shake so hard that if it hadn't been for Neferet's strong arms around me I would probably have not been able to stand. The High Priestess held me gently, but firmly away from her so that she could look into my face.
"Talk to me, Zoey. What has happened?"
My trembling got worse. I bowed my head and gritted my teeth, trying to find my center again and draw enough strength from the elements to speak.
"I heard something and-" I recognized our equestrian professor, Lenobia's, clear strong voice getting closer as she strode purposefully down the hall to us. "By the Goddess!" From the corner of my graying vision I could see that she had rushed to Aphrodite and was trying to support her weeping body.
"Neferet? What's wrong?"
My head snapped up at the familiar voice and I saw Loren, hair all messed up as if he'd been asleep, coming out of the stairwell that led to his loft as he pulled on an old House of Night sweatshirt. My gaze locked on his and I somehow managed to find the strength to speak.
"It's Professor Nolan," I said, and wondered at how clear and strong my voice sounded when I felt like my body was being shaken into little pieces. "She's out by the trapdoor in the eastern wall. Someone killed her."
