Grandma tried to save the rest of my birthday celebration. We walked across Utica Square to the Stonehorse Restaurant, where we decided to have some decent birthday cake. Which meant Grandma had two glasses of red wine and I had a brown pop and a huge, gooey slice of devil's food cake. (Yes, we enjoyed the irony.) Grandma didn't try to make it all better by fabricating some crap about my mom not meaning it... she'd come around ... just give her time ... blah...blah ... blah. Grandma's way more practical and tons cooler than that.

"Your mom's a weak woman who can only find her identity through a man," she said as she sipped her red wine. "Unfortunately, she chose a really bad man."

"She'll never change, will she?"

Grandma touched my cheek gently. "She might, but I honestly doubt it, Zoeybird."

"I like it that you don't lie to me, Grandma," I said.

"Lies don't fix things. They don't even make things easier, at least not in the long run. Best to tell the truth and then clean up an honest mess."

I sighed.

"Honey, do you have a mess you need to clean up?" Grandma asked.

"Yeah, but unfortunately it's not an honest one." I gave Grandma a sheepish smile and told her about my disastrous birthday party.

"You know, you're going to have to straighten out this boyfriend issue. Heath and Erik are only going to put up with each other for about this long." She held up her fingers, measuring out roughly an inch's worth of "this long."

"I will, but Heath was in the hospital for almost a week after that whole serial killer thing that I saved him from, and then his parents jetted him off to the Cayman Islands for their Christmas vacation. I haven't even seen him in a month. So I really haven't had the chance to do much about the Heath and Erik issue." I focused on scraping the bottom of my plate instead of looking at Grandma. The "whole serial killer thing" was utter b.s. I'd saved Heath, but it hadn't been from something as simple as a crazy human. I'd saved him from a group of creatures that my best friend, the undead Stevie Rae, had been (and probably still was) leader of. But I couldn't tell Grandma that. I couldn't tell anyone that, because behind it all was the High Priestess of the House of Night, my mentor, Neferet, and she was way too psychic for my own good. She can't seem to read my mind, at least not very well, but I tell someone-she reads his or her mind-we're all in a lot of trouble. Talk about stress.

"Maybe you should go home and make it right," Grandma said. Then, when she saw my startled look she added, "I mean, make the birthmas present issue right, not the Heath and Erik issue."

"Oh, good. Yeah, I should do that." I paused, thinking about what she had just said. "You know, it really has turned into my home."

"I know." She smiled. "And I'm glad for you. You're finding your place, Zoeybird, and I'm proud of you."

Grandma had walked me back to where I'd parked my vintage VW Bug, and hugged me good-bye. I'd thanked her for the great presents again, and neither of us had mentioned my mother. There are just some things it doesn't do any good to talk about. I'd told Grandma I was going back to the House of Night to make things right with my friends, and I'd meant to. But instead I found myself driving downtown. Again. For the past month every night I could make a lame excuse or sneak out by myself, I'd been haunting the streets of downtown Tulsa. Haunting... I snorted to myself. That was an excellent word to use for me searching for my best friend, Stevie Rae, who had died a month ago, and then become undead. Yes, it was as weird as it sounded.

Fledglings died. We all knew that. I'd witnessed the death of two of the three who had died since I'd been at the House of Night. Okay, so everyone knew we could die. What everyone didn't know was that the last three fledglings who had died had resurrected, or come alive again, or ... hell! I suppose the easiest way to describe it is that they had become the stereotype for vampyres: the walking undead who were bloodsucking monsters with no humanity left within them at all. And they smelled bad, too.

I knew because I'd been unlucky enough to see what I had at first thought were the ghosts of the first two dead fledglings. Then human teenagers started being killed, and it had looked like someone was trying to set up a vampyre as the killer. That sucked, especially since I'd known the first two boys who had been killed, and the police's attention turned on me for a little while. What sucked even worse was when Heath had been the third human taken.

Well, I couldn't let him be killed. Plus, we'd kinda sorta accidentally Imprinted. With Aphrodite's help I'd figured out how to follow the Imprint to Heath. The police thought that then I'd rescued a pretty messed-up Heath from a human serial killer.

What had I really discovered?

My undead best friend and her disgusting minions. I'd gotten Heath out of there (the "there" had been the old downtown Prohibition tunnels under the abandoned Tulsa depot) and confronted Stevie Rae. Or what was left of her.

See, one problem was that I didn't believe all of her humanity had been destroyed, like it appeared to have been with the other undead and very nasty ex-fledglings who had been trying to chomp on Heath. The second problem was Neferet. Stevie Rae had told me that Neferet was behind their undeadness. I knew it was true because Neferet had put a really awful spell on Heath and me right before the police had showed up. It was supposed to make us forget everything that had happened in the tunnels. I think it worked on Heath. It had only worked on me temporarily. I'd used the power of the five elements to break through mine. So, long story short. Since then I'd been worried about what the hell I was going to do about: one, Stevie Rae; two, Neferet; three, Heath. It might seem that it helped that none of my three worries had been around during the past month, but it didn't.

"All right," I said aloud, "it's my birthday, and an exceedingly crappy birthday it has been, even for me. So, Nyx, I'm going to ask for only one birthday favor from you. I want to find Stevie Rae." I added a hasty

"Please." (As Damien would remind me, when speaking to one's goddess it was best to be polite.) I hadn't really expected any kind of answer, so when the words roll down your window kept drifting around and around my mind, I thought they were the lyrics to a song on the radio. But my radio wasn't on, and the words had no music with them-plus, they were inside my head and not inside my radio. Feeling more than a little nervous I rolled down my window.

It had been unusually warm all week. Today the high had been almost sixty, which was weird for December, but it was Oklahoma, and weird was just another word for Oklahoma weather. Still, it was close to midnight and the night had definitely cooled off. Not that that bothered me. Adult vamps don't feel the cold with the same intensity as humans. No, it isn't because they are cold, dead, pieces of walking reanimated flesh (eesh, that might be what Stevie Rae is, though). It's because their metabolism is way different than humans. As a fledgling, especially one who is more advanced than most kids who have only been Marked for a couple of months, my resistance to the cold was already way better than a human kid's. So the cool air rushing into my Bug didn't bother me, which was why it was strange that I suddenly started to sneeze and felt kinda creepy. Ugh, what was that smell? It was like a musty basement and egg salad that hadn't been refrigerated soon enough and dirt all mixed together to make a disgusting whiff of something that was nastily familiar.

"Ah, hell!" I realized what I was smelling and jerked my Bug across all three one-way lanes to park a little bit north of the downtown bus station. I barely took time to roll up my window and lock the door (I'd just die if my first edition of Dracula was ripped off) before I got out of the car and hurried to the sidewalk where I stood very still and sniffed the air. I caught the scent right away. Ugh. It was too horrible to ignore. Still sniffing like a retarded dog, I began following my nose down the sidewalk away from the comforting lights of the bus station.

I found her in an alley. At first I thought she was leaning over a big trash bag full of garbage and my heart squeezed. I had to get her out of this kind of life-I had to figure out a way to keep her safe until this awful thing that had happened to her could be fixed. Or she needs to die once and for all. No! I closed my mind to that kind of thinking. I'd watched Stevie Rae die once. I wasn't going to do it again. But before I could get to her and wrap her in my arms (while I held my breath) and tell her I'd make all of this okay, the bag of garbage moaned and moved and I realized that Stevie Rae wasn't digging through the trash, she was biting a street person on the neck!

"Oh, gross! Jeesh, would you just stop!"

With inhuman quickness, Stevie Rae whirled around. The street person fell to the ground, but Stevie Rae kept hold of one of her dirty wrists. Teeth bared and eyes glowing a very creepy red she hissed at me. I was too disgusted to be scared or even freaked out. Plus, I'd just had a really terrible birthday and people, even undead best friend people, were on my last nerve.

"Stevie Rae, it's me. You can turn off the hissing crap. Plus, it's a ridiculous vampyre clich??." She didn't say anything for a second, and I had the horrible thought that she might have somehow deteriorated in the month since I'd last seen her, to a point where she was actually like the rest of them-bestial and unreachable. My stomach gave a painful flip, but I met her red eyes and rolled my own. "And, please, you smell really bad. Are there no showers in Creepy Undead Land?"

Stevie Rae frowned, which was actually an improvement, because then her lips covered her teeth. "Go away, Zoey," she said. Her voice was cold and flat, making what used to be a sweet Okie accent sound like rough trailer trash, but she'd said my name, which was all the encouragement I needed.

"I'm not going anywhere until we talk. So let go of that street person-eesh, Stevie Rae, she probably has lice and who knows what else-and let's talk."

"If you want to talk you'll have to wait till I'm done eating." Stevie Rae cocked her head to the side in a movement that looked insectile. "Don't I remember that you Imprinted your little human boy toy? Looks like you have a taste for blood your own self. Want to join me in a bite?" She smiled and licked her fangs.

"Okay, nasty, just nasty! And for your information Heath is not my boy toy. He's my boyfriend, or one of them anyway. I sucked his blood kinda sorta by accident. I was going to tell you about it, but you died. So, no. I do not want to bite that person. I don't even know where she's been." I gave the poor, wide-eyed, matted-hair woman a weak smile. "Uh, no offense, ma'am."

"Good. More for me." Stevie Rae began to bend back over the woman's throat.

"Stop it!"

She looked over her shoulder at me. "Like I said, go away, Zoey. You don't belong here."

"Neither do you," I said.

"That's just one of the many things you're wrong about."

When she turned back to the woman, who was now crying and repeating "please, oh please" over and over, I took a couple of steps forward and raised my hands over my head. "I said let her go" Stevie Rae's answer was to hiss and open her mouth to chomp the woman's neck. I closed my eyes and quickly centered myself. "Air, come to me!" I commanded. Instantly my hair began to lift in the breeze that surrounded me. I circled one hand in front of me, imagining a mini-tornado. I opened my eyes as I flicked my wrist and tossed the power of air toward the crying homeless woman. Exactly as I'd imagined it, the whirling air surrounded her, and hardly rustling one hair on Stevie Rae's very nappy head, it picked up her victim and carried her down the alley, letting go of her only when she reached the safety of a streetlight. "Thank you, air," I murmured, and felt the breeze brush my face caressingly before it dissipated.

"You're getting good at that."

I turned back to Stevie Rae. She was watching me with an obviously leery expression, as if she thought I was going to conjure another tornado and suck her up into oblivion.

I shrugged. "I've been practicing. It's really just concentration and control. You'd know that if you'd been practicing, too."

A flash of pain crossed Stevie Rae's gaunt face so quickly that I wondered if I'd really seen or just imagined it.

"The elements have nothing to do with me now."

"That's crap, Stevie Rae. You have an affinity for earth. You had it before you died, or whatever," I faltered over how awkward it was to be talking to undead dead Stevie Rae about being dead. "That kind of thing just doesn't go away. Plus, remember the tunnels? You still had the affinity then." Stevie Rae shook her head and her short blond curls, the ones that weren't all nappy and dirty, bounced, reminding me of how she used to look. "It's gone. Whatever I once had died with the part of me that was human. You need to accept it and move on. I have."

"I'll never accept it. You're my best friend. I'm not going to move on." Suddenly Stevie Rae hissed a nasty, feral sound, and her eyes blazed blood red. "Do I look like your best friend?"

I ignored the way my heart was beating around inside my chest. She was right. What she had become was absolutely not like the Stevie Rae I'd known. But I wouldn't believe that she was all the way gone. I'd seen glimpses of my best friend in the tunnels and that meant I couldn't give up on her. I felt like crying, but instead I pulled myself together and forced my voice to sound normal.

"Well, hell no, you don't look like Stevie Rae. How long has it been since you've washed your hair? And what are you wearing?" I pointed at the sweat pants and oversized shirt that were covered by a long, nastily stained black trench coat like the ones those freaky goth kids like to wear even when it's a hundred degrees outside. "I wouldn't look like me if I was dressed like that either." I sighed and took a couple steps closer to her. "Why don't you just come with me? I'll sneak you back into the dorm. It'll be easy-practically no one's there. Neferet's not there," I added, and then hurried on (I doubted if either of us wanted to talk about Neferet just then-hell, if ever). "Most the teachers are on winter break and the kids are taking short trips to see their families. Absolutely nothing is going on. We won't even be bothered by Damien and the Twins and Erik

'cause they're pissed at me. So you can take a long, soapy shower, and I'll get you some real clothes, then we can talk." I was looking into her eyes, so I saw the longing that filled them. It lasted only an instant, but I knew it had been there. Then she looked quickly away.

"I can't come with you. I have to feed."

"That's no problem. I'll get you something to eat from the dorm kitchen. Hey, I'll bet I can find a bowl of Lucky Charms," I smiled. "Remember, they're magically delicious-and have absolutely no nutritional value at all."

"Like Count Chocula does?"

My smiled widened into a relieved grin as Stevie Rae took up the thread of our old argument about which of our personal favorite breakfast cereals was the best. "Count Chocula has coco-flavored goodness. Coco is a plant. It's healthy."

Stevie Rae's eyes met mine. Hers weren't glowing red anymore, and she also wasn't trying to hide the tears that were filling them and flowing down her cheeks. I automatically moved to hug her, but she stepped back.

"No! I don't want you to touch me, Zoey. I'm not who I was. I'm dirty and disgusting."

"Then come back to the school with me and wash up!" I pleaded. "We'll figure this out-I promise." Stevie Rae shook her head sadly and wiped at her eyes. "There's no figuring this out. When I said that I'm dirty and disgusting I didn't mean on the outside. What you see on the outside of me isn't half as nasty as what I'm really like on the inside. Zoey, I have to feed. That's not eating cereal or sandwiches and drinking brown pop. I have to have blood. Human blood. If I don't-" She paused and I saw a terrible shudder move through her body.

"If I don't, the pain is a gnawing, burning hunger that I can't stand. And you need to understand that I want to feed. I want to tear open human throats and drink that warm blood so filled with terror and anger and pain that it makes me dizzy." She paused again, this time breathing heavily.

"You can't really want to kill people, Stevie Rae."

"You're wrong. I do."

"You say that, but I know there are still parts of my best friend inside you, and Stevie Rae wouldn't be comfortable spanking a puppy, let alone killing someone." I hurried on when she opened her mouth to disagree with me. "What if I can get you human blood so that you don't have to kill anyone?" In that horrid emotionless tone she said, "I like the kill."

"Do you also like to be filthy and smelly and disgusting-looking?" I snapped.

"I don't care about how I look anymore."

"Really? What if I said I could get you a pair of Roper jeans, cowboy boots, and a nice long-sleeved, tuck-in shirt that is very crisply ironed?" I saw the flicker in her eyes and knew I'd managed to touch the old Stevie Rae. My mind rushed around, trying to come up with the right thing to say while I still had some piece of her listening. "So here's the deal. Meet me tomorrow at midnight-no, wait. Tomorrow's Saturday. No way things will be settled down enough by midnight for me to sneak out. So make it three a.m. at the gazebo on the Philbrook grounds." I paused for a second to grin at her. "You remember the place, right?" Of course I knew she definitely remembered where I meant. She'd been there with me before, only that night she'd been trying to save me, and not the other way around.

"Yes. I remember." She clipped the word in that same cold, flat voice.

"Okay, so meet me there. I'll have your outfit with me and I'll also have blood. You can eat, or drink, or whatever, and change your clothes. Then we can start to figure this out." I added to myself that I'd also have soap and shampoo and do some conjuring of water so the girl could wash up. Eesh, she smelled as terrible as she looked. "Okay?"

"There's really no point."

"Can you please let me decide that for myself? Plus, I haven't told you the horrors of my birthday yet. Grandma and I had a nightmare scene with my mom and step-loser. Grandma called the step-loser a turd monkey."

A laugh burst out of Stevie Rae that sounded so much like her old self that my vision got all blurry with the tears I had to frantically blink away.

"Please come," I said, my voice rough with emotions. "I've missed you so much."

"I'll come," Stevie Rae said. "But you'll be sorry."