Burned

to.
    “Well, I’m not gay!” she muttered, and then shut her mouth again because the thought had crept through even though she hadn’t wanted it to.
    Stevie Rae had
liked
the way Rephaim looked. He’d been strong and beautiful and, just for a moment, she’d glimpsed beauty inside the beast, and he hadn’t been a monster. He’d been magnificent, and he’d been hers.
    She staggered to a halt. It was because of that dang black bull! It had to be. Before he’d totally materialized, he’d asked Stevie Rae:
I can chase away Darkness, but if I do so, you will owe a debt to Light, and that debt is that you will be forever tied to the humanity inside that creature over there—the one you called me to save.
She’d answered with no hesitation:
Yes! I’ll pay your price.
So the dang bull had zapped her with some kind of Light bullshit, and that had done something to her insides.
    But was that really the truth? Stevie Rae twirled a curl around and around while she thought back. No—it had changed between her and Rephaim
before
the black bull showed up. It had happened when Rephaim had faced Darkness for her and taken on the pain of her debt.
    Rephaim had said she belonged to him.
    Today she’d realized he was right, and that scared her worse than Darkness itself.
    Stevie Rae
    “Okay, so, we all here?”
    Heads nodded and from beside her, Dallas said, “Yep, everyone’s here.”
    “Them bad kids killed those folks at the Tribune Lofts, didn’t they?” Kramisha said.
    “Yeah,” Stevie Rae said. “I think so.”
    “That’s bad,” Kramisha said. “Real bad.”
    “You can’t let ’em kill people like that,” Dallas said. “They’re not even street people.”
    Stevie Rae blew out a long breath. “Dallas, how many times do I have to tell y’all that it doesn’t matter if someone’s a street person or not—it’s not right to kill
anyone
.”
    “Sorry,” Dallas said. “I know you’re right, but sometimes
before
gets messed up inside my head, and I kinda forget.”
    Before
. . . the word seemed to echo around them. Stevie Rae knew exactly what Dallas meant: before her humanity had been saved by Aphrodite’s sacrifice, and they had the ability to choose good over evil. She remembered
before,
too, but as she got another day farther away from that dark past, it was easier and easier for Stevie Rae to put it out of her mind. As she studied Dallas, she wondered if it was different for him—for the rest of the kids who hadn’t Changed yet, because Dallas did seem to make little slips like he just had kinda often.
    “Stevie Rae? You okay?” Dallas asked, obviously uncomfortable with her scrutiny.
    “Yeah, fine. Just thinkin’. So, here’s what’s up: I’m goin’ back down to the tunnels under the depot,
our
tunnels, and I’m givin’ those kids one more chance to decide to act right. If they do, they stay and start back at school with us on Monday. If they don’t, they’re gonna have to find their own way, in their own place, ’cause we’re takin’ the tunnels back, and they’re not welcome anymore.”
    Kramisha grinned. “We’re goin’ back to live in the tunnels!”
    “Yep,” Stevie Rae said, and she knew from the cheers and relieved shouts of “finally” she heard from the kids that she’d made the right decision. “I haven’t talked to Lenobia about it yet, but I can’t think that there’s gonna be any problem with us busing back and forth from the depot to the House of Night. We need to be underground, and even though I really like this school, it doesn’t feel like home anymore. The tunnels do.”
    “I’m with ya, girl,” Dallas said. “But we need to get somethin’ straight right now. You’re not gonna face those kids alone again. I’m comin’ with you.”
    “Me, too,” Kramisha said. “I don’t care what kind of big story you gave everbody else, I knew them bad kids was behind you almost gettin’ fried up on the roof.”
    “Yeah, we’ve all talked about it,” muscle-y Johnny B said. “We’re not letting our High Priestess face that shit alone again.”
    “No matter how earth-will-kick-your-ass powerful she is,” Dallas said.
    “I’m not goin’ alone. That’s why I called y’all here.
We’re
gonna take our tunnels back, and if ass needs to be kicked,
we’re
gonna do it,” Stevie Rae said. “So, Johnny B, I want you to drive the Hummer.” She tossed him the keys. The big guy grinned at her and snatched them out of the air. “Take Ant,