Betrayed

I was going to be on Girls Gone Wild: Vamp Edition, but I ignored them and kept focused on Damien. We all knew he spent hours studying, and he remembered everything he read. If any of us would know the answer to my bizarre question, it would be him.
    "When a fledgling's body starts rejecting the Change there is no stopping it. That's clear in all the books. It's also what Neferet has told us. Zoey," I'd never heard him sound so serious. "What is wrong?”
    "Please, please, please tell me you're not feeling sick!" Stevie Rae practically sobbed.
    "No! It's nothing like that," I said quickly. "I'm fine. I promise.”
    "What's going on?" Shaunee said.
    "You're scaring us," Erin said.
    "I don't mean to," I told them. "Okay, this is coming out all wrong, but I think I saw that Elliott kid.”
    "Huh!"
    "What!" the Twins said together.
    "I don't understand," Damien said. "Elliott died last month.”
    Stevie Rae's eyes suddenly widened. "Like Elizabeth!" she said. Before I could say anything, she blurted, in one long, breathless sentence, "Last month Zoey thought she saw Elizabeth's ghost out by the east wall but we didn't say anything 'cause we didn't want to scare y'all.”
    I opened my mouth to explain about Elliott—and Neferet. And shut it again. I should have realized before I'd said one word to any of them that I absolutely could not tell them about Neferet. Vampyres were all intuitive to some degree. High Priestess Neferet was amazingly intuitive. So much so that she often seemed to be able to read actual thoughts. No way could my four friends walk around school knowing that I'd seen her letting some kind of disgusting undead Elliott creature suck her blood without Neferet knowing everything in their freaked-out minds.
    What I'd witnessed tonight I would have to keep completely to myself.
    "Zoey?" Stevie Rae put her hand on my arm. "You can tell us." I smiled at her and wished with all my heart that I could.
    "I did think I saw Elizabeth's ghost last month. And tonight I think I saw Elliott's," I finally said.
    Damien frowned. "If you saw ghosts why did you ask me about fledglings recovering from rejecting the Change?”
    I looked my friend in the eye and lied my ass off. "Because it seemed easier to believe than I was seeing ghosts—or at least it did until I said it. Then it sounded crazy.”
    "Seeing a ghost would have freaked me right out,” Shaunee said.
    Erin nodded enthusiastic agreement.
    "Was it like with Elizabeth?" Stevie Rae asked.
    At least this I didn't have to lie about. "No. He seemed more real, but I saw them both in the same place, over by the east wall, and both of their eyes glowed a weird red color.”
    Shaunee shivered.
    "I'm sure as shit staying away from the spooky east wall," Erin said.
    Damien, always the scholar, tapped his chin like a professor. "Zoey, maybe you have yet another affinity. Maybe you can see dead fledglings.”
    I would have thought this was a possibility, even though it was a gross one, if I hadn't seen the supposed ghost, solid and totally real, drinking my mentor's blood. Still, it was a good theory, and an excellent way to keep Damien busy. "You might be right," I said.
    "Ugh," Stevie Rae said. "I hope not.”
    "Me, too. But could you do some research on it for me, Damien?”
    "Of course. I'll also check out any references to hauntings by fledglings.”
    "Thanks, I appreciate that.”
    "You know, I do think I remember reading something in an old Greek history text about vampyre spirits that restlessly prowl the ancient tombs of ...”
    I shut out Damien's lecture, glad that Stevie Rae and the Twins were more involved with listening to his ghost stories than asking me more specific questions. I hated lying to them, especially since I really would have liked to have told them everything. What I saw had truly frightened me. How the hell was I going to face Neferet again?
    Nala rubbed her face against mine and then settled down in my lap. I stared at the TV and petted her while Damien droned on and on about old vamp ghosts. And then I realized what I was seeing and lunged across Stevie Rae for the remote that was sitting on the lamp table beside her, causing Nala to mee-uf-ow snort! in annoyance and jump from my lap. I didn't even take time to soothe her, but quickly turned up the volume.
    It was Chera Kimiko again on a repeat of the evening news' lead story.
    "The body of the second Union High School teenager, Brad Higeons, was found by museum security guards this evening