Burned

the driver’s side of the Bug. Over the roof, he caught her gaze, and said softly, “A room sounds good to me.”
    Stevie Rae felt her cheeks get hot, and another giggle escaped her mouth. She and Dallas ducked inside the car. From the backseat, Kramisha grumbled, “I heard that mess about a room soundin’ good, Dallas, and all I’m sayin’ is, you two best keep your minds out the gutter and on the bad kids who like to rip out people’s throats.”
    “I said room, not gutter,” Dallas grinned cockily over the seat at Kramisha.
    “And I can multitask,” Stevie Rae added with another giggle.
    “Whatever. Let’s just go. I got me a weird feelin’ ’bout this,” Kramisha said.
    Instantly serious, Stevie Rae glanced at Kramisha in the rearview mirror as she pulled out of the parking lot. “A weird feelin’? Did you write another poem, I mean besides the ones you already showed me?”
    “No. And I ain’t talkin’ ’bout those bad kids.”
    Stevie Rae frowned at Kramisha’s reflection.
    “What else could you be talkin’ ’bout?” Dallas asked.
    Kramisha gave Stevie Rae a long look before she answered him. “Nothin’. I just got me some paranoia goin’ on, that’s all. You two face-suckin’ instead of payin’ attention to business ain’t helping.”
    “I’m payin’ attention to business,” Stevie Rae said, looking away from Kramisha’s reflection and concentrating on the road.
    “Yeah, remember my girl’s a High Priestess, and they can definitely handle a bunch of shit at once.”
    “Huh,” Kramisha snorted.
    The drive to the depot was short and silent. Stevie Rae was uber-aware of Kramisha in the backseat.
She knows about Rephaim.
The thought whispered through Stevie Rae’s mind, and she immediately squelched it. Kramisha didn’t know about Rephaim. She only knew there was another guy. Nobody knows about Rephaim.
    Except the red fledglings.
    Panic fluttered through her stomach. What the heck was she gonna do if Nicole or one of the other kids told her fledglings about Rephaim? Stevie Rae could imagine the scene. Nicole would be hateful and crude. Her kids would be totally shocked and freaked. They wouldn’t believe she could have—
    With a bolt of realization that almost had her gasping out loud, Stevie Rae knew the answer to her problem.
Her fledglings wouldn’t believe she’d Imprinted with a Raven Mocker. Ever.
She would simply deny it. There wasn’t any proof. Yeah, her blood might smell weird, but she’d already explained that. Darkness had fed from her—that was bound to make her smell weird. Kramisha believed it, so did Lenobia.The rest of the kids would, too. It would be her word, the word of a High Priestess, against a bunch of kids who had gone bad
and
had tried to kill her.
    And what if some of them actually decided to choose good tonight and stayed here with the rest of them?
    Then they’ll have to keep their mouths shut, or they don’t stay,
was the grim thought that haunted Stevie Rae as she parked in the depot lot and gathered her fledglings around her.
    “Okay, we’re goin’ in. Don’t underestimate them,” Stevie Rae said. Without any discussion, Dallas moved to her right, and Johnny B took her left side. The rest of the kids followed closely behind as they pushed aside the deceptively secure-looking grate that gave them easy access to the basement of the abandoned Tulsa depot.
    It looked much like it had when they’d been living down there. There was maybe a little more trash, but basically it was a dark, cold basement. They moved to the rear corner entrance, where the tunnels dropped below them into an even deeper darkness.
    “Can you see?” Dallas asked her.
    “Of course, but I’ll light the wall torches as soon as I find a match or whatever, so y’all can see, too.”
    “I got a lighter,” Kramisha said, digging in her giant bag.
    “Kramisha, do not tell me you’re smoking,” Stevie Rae said, taking the lighter from her.
    “No, I ain’t smokin’. That’s just stupid. But I do believe in bein’ prepared. And a lighter come in handy sometimes—like now.”
    Stevie Rae started to lower herself down the metal ladder, but Dallas’s hand on her arm stopped her. “No, I’m goin’ first. They don’t want to kill
me
.”
    “Well, that you know of,” Stevie Rae countered with, but she let him drop down the ladder before she did, Johnny B following closely behind her. “Hang on.” She made both of them wait by the foot of the