2
Zoey
“Me-uf-ow!”
I opened my eyes to find Nala so close to my face that she was just a fat orange and white blur.
“Good morning,” I whispered, trying not to wake the warm body pressed against my side.
Nala promptly sneezed directly in my face and then climbed over my chest (how can such a fat cat have such little, tiny, sharp paws?) to circle three times and curl in donut form against my hip, where she turned her purr machine on high.
“Why does she sneeze so much? Do you think she’s allergic to people?”
I turned my head to look into Stark’s gentle brown eyes. “Sorry,” I was still whispering. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. And I’m pretty sure Nala sneezes so much because she likes to sneeze on people—not because she allergic to people. I mean, how often do you hear her sneezing randomly when she’s not near someone’s face?”
“Good point. Why are you whispering?”
“Because I didn’t want to wake you up,” I said in a normal voice.
“Too late. You started mumbling and twitching in your sleep a little while ago. I could feel something going on with you. Bad dream? But wait. Before we get into that—come here, my High Priestess. My Queen.” With one hand Stark lifted the covers he’d cocooned around himself, showing me a lovely amount of his bare, muscly chest, while his other hand slipped under my shoulders, drawing me against him.
I snuggled close eagerly, putting off the bad news Kalona had delivered for at least a few more minutes. I kissed his neck and then let my hand trace the broken arrow–shaped scar that had been burned into the flesh over his heart. I kissed him again, this time lingering. His lips were warm and eager, and when his hands slid down my back, kneading the tension Kalona had brought on, I felt like Nala and wished I could purr.
Instead I explored his body, which never got old. His chest was the right amount of muscle. And I loved his scent. He was sexy man mixed with red cherry licorice, his current snack obsession. He was smooth in all the right places and hard in all the right places—and we fit together perfectly.
Soon the dream was temporarily forgotten as I lost myself in the heat and passion that was Stark.
“My beautiful Queen,” he murmured as he kissed my ear as we eventually came back to the present.
“I love it when you call me your Queen.”
“Because you like to pretend you’re British?”
I grinned up at him. “Oh, kind sir, you know me so well,” I said in my best bad British accent.
“Sssh,” he pressed a finger against my lips. “Don’t speak. Or at least don’t speak in that awful accent.”
“Hey! I’ve been working on that accent. Someday soon I’m going to be victorious in my quest to get tickets to the Harry Potter play in London. I’m preparing.” I muttered against his finger, which he refused to move.
“Sssh again. I want to pretend like you’re not going to try to use a British accent while we’re over there.”
“I thought it would be polite.”
“If by polite you mean disaster of monumental proportions, then yes. Polite.”
“Good sir, my accent is simply not that ba—” I tried to speak through his finger in said awesome accent, but he covered my entire mouth with his hand.
“Trust me. It could start an international event. It’s that bad.”
I scowled at him and bit his palm. Stark yelped and pulled his hand back.
“Aphrodite said my accent is good.”
His brows shot up. “And you never considered that she might be setting you up?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it. Sighed. “She’s setting me up.”
“Absolutely. Now, how about good morning round two, my Queen?”
“Certainly, kind sir.”
This time Stark used his lips to stop my unfortunate accent. And all I’ll say is that his lips had a decidedly positive effect.
Several minutes of kissing later, it was Stark who—uncharacteristically—pulled back and, brushing a stray strand of dark hair from my cheek, reminded me of what he temporarily had me forgetting.
“So, bad dream? You haven’t had a scary Neferet nightmare in months.”
“It wasn’t a Neferet nightmare. Or at least not exactly. It was Kalona.”
“You had a Kalona nightmare? That’s weird.”
“Well, it wasn’t a nightmare. It was a visit. Or at least I’m pretty sure it was.” Stark’s look darkened with the same memories that had made me snap at Kalona, and I hurried on to explain. “But not a creeper visit, like he used to do.”
“That’s good. Did Nyx send him to you?”
“No. Actually, he said Nyx doesn’t know. He came to warn me. Apparently, Nyx thinks he’s being, I don’t know—overly cautious, I guess, which he admitted was a possibility.”
Stark sat up and grabbed his T-shirt from the bedside table, pulling it on. He ran his hand through his adorable bed-headed hair and sat across from me looking very Warrior-like and alert. “Explain, please.”
I sat and rearranged the pillows behind me, causing Nala to grumble. “Kalona said he felt that danger was coming. Here. To the House of Night. He wanted to warn me and recommend some reading material.”
“I don’t get why Nyx didn’t want him to do that.”
“I think it has something to do with the recommended reading material,” I said.
“Which is what?”
“Neferet’s old journal. And by old, I mean really old—as in written when she was still Emily Wheiler.”
Stark’s face paled. “Shit. Neferet again? That’s bad. Really bad.”
“Well, Kalona couldn’t say for sure that he thought the danger had to do with Neferet. But he also couldn’t say for sure that it didn’t have to do with her. So, he thought he’d warn me and tell me about the journal.”
“His reasoning?”
“That if something was going on with Neferet—again—we’d need to know everything we possibly can about her.” I raised my hand to stop him as he started to mumble something about that being too little too late. “Yeah, I know. I asked him why he was just now telling me about the journal. He made a semilame excuse.”
“Sounds like him. He’s not a bad guy anymore, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still a pain in the ass,” Stark said.
“Exactly. So, I’m supposed to read the journal and put our circle on a big trouble alert, even though they’re scattered all over the US right now. Or, I think most of them are still in the US. Last time I talked to Damien he was going on and on about needing to open a new House of Night.” I waggled my eyebrows at Stark. “In the Caribbean on Grand Cayman Island.”
Stark grinned through his worry. “That couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that it’s December and New York City is having record cold temps, could it?”
“Um, yes. I think, as Damien would say, there is a direct correlation.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and put on my cushy slippers. “But he’s still reachable. I’ll text him and Stevie Rae, Shaunee and Shaylin—just to put them on alert. You know, it’s weird. I usually hear from all of them at least once a day, but lately they’ve been pretty quiet.” I froze and met Stark’s eyes, feeling my first wave of foreboding. “Oh, Goddess! Could something have happened to them? Hell! I didn’t even think about that when Kalona was warning me.” I started to reach for my cell phone, which was turned off but charging on my night table. “I’m such an idiot. If they’re in danger and I didn’t—”
Stark intercepted my hand. “They’re fine. Nothing’s happened to them.”
I realized my hand was shaking when he took it in both of his. “You can’t know that,” I said, feeling frantic. “I’m calling them. All of them. Now.”
Stark blew out a long breath and then reluctantly said, “You can’t. They’re in the air.”
“Huh? What do you mean? What’s going on?”
“Z, what’s today’s date?”
I frowned at him. “I don’t know. Um. The twenty-third. Of December. I think.”
“Yeah. It’s the twenty-third. What’s tomorrow?”
“The twenty-fourth.” And then I knew what was going on. “OMG, are they surprising me for my birthmas?”
“Well, they were surprising you. And I kept the damn thing secret for months.” He shook his head. “Aphrodite’s gonna kill me.”
“Wait, for real? They’re coming here for my birthday?” Even Kalona’s weird visit and ominous message couldn’t dampen the flutter of happiness that lifted inside me. “All of them?”
“All of them.”
I jumped up and down, giggling. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. You didn’t think your circle was going to ignore your eighteenth birthday, did you?”
I lifted my shoulders. “I’m pretty used to my birthmas being a disaster of smooshed holidays, so yeah—I did.”
“I hate that your birthday has always been so crappy,” he said. “I really wanted to change that for your eighteenth.”
“Hey, there were little bits of good with the crappy. Grandma always gave me something cool, and my little brother, Kevin, used to sneak me silly little things he made or got from the Dollar Store because my mom’s awful husband, the step-loser, used to only give me Jesus-themed gifts because, you know, the baby Jesus’ birthday is the only one that should be celebrated in December.”
“Oh, right, of course,” Stark said sarcastically.
“But it’s awesomesauce that my friends are surprising me! And well-timed awesomesauce, at that. I can give Neferet’s stupid journal to Damien. He’ll love studying it, and I can already hear him lecturing us about making it required reading and such for all House of Night students—a cautionary tale or whatever.”
“That’s probably a good idea. So, where is it?”
“You’re not gonna like this part.”
“Just this part? When it comes to Neferet, I don’t like any part,” he said.
“Neferet hid the journal in the floorboards under our bed,” I said.
Stark’s jaw clenched and unclenched before he spoke. “You’re right. I don’t like that part. At all.”
I sighed, giving our giant four-poster bed a long look. Stark and I had designed it ourselves. The tall posters were carved to look like four trees, their branches joining above us like a living canopy. “I wonder if it’s as heavy as I remember it being.”
“Well, as Stevie Rae would say, let’s get ’er done.”
“That thing was way heavier than I remembered it.” I wiped sweat from my face and tried to peek over Stark’s shoulder. He was on his knees using a pocketknife to dislodge the thick wooden panel in the floor that had made the ominously hollow sound as we’d knocked over every square inch beneath our bed.
“Uh, Z, you don’t remember the bed being heavy because the Sons of Erebus Warriors and I hauled the thing up here and put it together to surprise you. I remember how heavy it was.”
“Oh, well, that would be why then. OMG, there it is!” I gasped as Stark pulled a bundle that was wrapped in an old linen cloth from the hidden floor cubby. I held out my hands and he passed it gingerly to me, like it was an unexploded bomb. Carefully, I unwrapped it and found a worn, brown leather journal. The slender book was longer than it was wide. Its faded cover was unadorned, except for the very center. There, in surprisingly easy-to-read cursive, were the words “Emily Wheiler’s Journal,” which were marked through with an ominous X. Beside them, in the same handwriting, only much bolder, much darker, was the new title: Neferet’s Curse.
“Looks like we found the right book,” Stark said. This time it was his turn to peek over my shoulder.
“Looks like it,” I said.
Neither of us moved.
“Uh, you gonna open it?” he asked.
“I wish I didn’t have to.” I looked up from the journal to meet his concerned gaze. “How about we get breakfast first? Everything seems better after a big bowl of Count Chocula.”
“And brown pop?”
“Breakfast of champions,” I agreed, pulling on my sweat pants that were decorated with fat orange tabby cats.
“I’d usually say we shouldn’t procrastinate about this, but you’re right. It’s gonna read like a horror story, and that’ll be better on a full stomach. Plus, I need coffee. Now.”
I brushed my teeth and stuck my hair up in a messy ponytail, glad that one of the first rules I’d proposed when I’d officially become High Priestess of our new Council was to relax the dress code of the professors’ dining hall. Holding the journal carefully, I beat Stark to the door and opened it. Aphrodite fell forward, barely catching herself in time to not knock me over.
“Seriously? You’re lurking outside my bedroom door?” I shook my head at her. “That’s creepy AF.”
“Please don’t use text abbreviations when we’re talking. Out loud. I realize it’s your special little way to use cuss words without actually cussing, but it’s not cool,” she said, patting her flawless hair back into place.
“Aphrodite was just bein’ polite. We heard that bed a thumpin’ so we thought we’d wait until you was done. Like Aphrodite said—it didn’t take long.” Kramisha shoved past Aphrodite, eyes narrowed at the bed that was totally catawampus, off-centered and rumpled. The Vampyre Poet Laureate shook her head, making her gold, waist-length Beyoncé braids swirl as she sent Stark a look. “Boy, you got you some excess energy.”
“I don’t know whether I should be impressed or squeed out.” Along with Kramisha, Aphrodite was staring at our displaced bed.
I felt my cheeks flush with heat. “No, no, no. First, you’re wrong. Second, we’re not having this conversation. Third, what are you two doing here?” Magnet-like, my gaze was pulled to the lavender notebook Kramisha clutched in her hands.
“Yeah. It’s what you think. A poem woke me up. First time in almost a year,” Kramisha said.
“And because misery loves company, she woke me up,” Aphrodite said. “Have I mentioned how much I hate poetry?”
“Not for about a year,” Stark said.
“Thank you, Bow Boy,” she said. “And, as per usual, I couldn’t figure out what the hell the stupid thing was saying—hence the fact we’re both here.”
“Poems ain’t stupid,” Kramisha said firmly.
“Why do we have to keep going over this? ‘Ain’t’ isn’t a word,” Aphrodite countered.
“How ’bout we go over this—I’m gonna kick your tight white ass if you keep disparaging poetry. Is that a word?” Kramisha said with mock sweetness.
“That’s a bunch of words.” Aphrodite flipped her hair back. “And I don’t think the vamp Poet Laureate is supposed to resort to violence.”
“If you had to read the awful poems them kids be writin’ in my class you’d know that we in a war. A literacy war.”
“But I think that war’s figurative—not literal.” Aphrodite paused, shrugging her smooth shoulders. “What do I know, though? I’m shitty at figurative language so, war away. Just not on me. It’s unattractive.”
“Stop. I can’t deal with bickering today,” I said, and the two of them turned to face me. Instantly their expressions changed.
“Something’s up,” Aphrodite said. “Right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Double right,” Stark said.
“Yep. I knew it. That’s why I wrote this.” Kramisha thrust the purple pad at me, but before I could (reluctantly) take it, Aphrodite interrupted.
“What’s that?” She pointed at what I was still holding.
I drew a deep breath and then spoke quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “It’s Neferet’s journal from when she was young. Kalona showed up in my dream last night. He told me where to find it. He said I need to read it because he felt like trouble was on its way. Again.”
“Neferet? Oh, Goddess, no …” Kramisha’s voice was a strained whisper.
“Oh, for shit’s sake. Not again!” Aphrodite said.