Chosen

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."

CHAPTER FIVE

    On that not-so-positive note, Stevie Rae whirled around and then dashed down the alley, disappearing into its dark stinkyness. Much more slowly, I got in my Bug. I was sad and restless and had way too much thinking to do to head straight back to the school, so instead I drove to the twenty-four-hour IHOP that was in south Tulsa on Seventy-first Street, ordered a big chocolate milk shake and a stack of chocolate-chip pancakes, and did my thinking while I did some serious stress eating.
    I guess it had gone okay with Stevie Rae. I mean, she had agreed to meet me tomorrow. And she hadn't tried to bite me, which was a plus. Of course, the whole trying-to-eat-the-street-person was highly disturbing, as was the totally gross way she looked and smelled. But underneath all of that hateful crazy undead girl exterior I swear I could still sense my Stevie Rae, my best friend. I was going to hold tight to that and see if I could coax her back into the light. Figuratively speaking anyway. I think the actual light bothers her even more than it bothers me or adult vamps. Which figured. The gross undead dead kids were definitely vamp stereotypes. I wondered if she'd burst into flame if sunlight touched her. Crap. That would definitely be bad, especially since we're meeting at 3:00 A.M., which was only a couple hours before dawn. Crap again.
    As if worrying about sunlight and whatnot wasn't enough, I had to start thinking about what I was going to do when all the profs (Neferet in particular) came back to school in the too-near future, and the fact that I had to keep the knowledge that Stevie Rae was undead versus dead dead from everyone. No. I'd worry about that after I got Stevie Rae cleaned up and someplace safe. I'd just take it one little tiny baby step at a time and hope that Nyx, who had clearly led me to Stevie Rae, was going to give me some help figuring things out.
    By the time I got back to school it was almost dawn. The parking lot of the school was mostly deserted, and I didn't meet anyone as I walked slowly around the side of the castle-like cluster of buildings that made up the House of Night. The girls' dorm was at the opposite end of the campus, but I still wasn't in any hurry. Plus, I had something I needed to do before I went to the dorm and more than likely ran into at least a couple of my disgruntled friends. (Ugh, I really really hate my birthday.)
    The building that sat across from the main House of Night structure was made of the same odd mixture of old bricks and jutting rocks as the rest of the school, but this one was smaller and rounder, and in front of it was a marble statue of our goddess, Nyx, with her arms upraised as if her hands were cupping a full moon. I stood gazing at the goddess. The old-fashioned gaslights that illuminated the campus weren't just easy on our changing eyesight. They created a soft, warm light that flickered like a caress,