Chosen

Aphrodite."
    I expected Aphrodite to make a smart-ass comment, but she didn't. I snuck a sideways glance at her and saw she was staring off into the darkness and not paying any attention to my friends or me.
    "But, Z, you're gonna miss the chocolate-chip pancakes," Jack said.
    I smiled at him. "It's okay. I had some last night—it being my birthday and all."
    "They need to talk, so let's go," Erik said.
    I didn't like how he sounded—almost like he didn't care—but before I could say anything else he was walking away. Crap. I was definitely going to have some making-up to do with him.
    "Erik likes things his way. He also likes a girlfriend who puts him first. Guess you're just finding that out," Aphrodite said.
    "I'm not going to talk about Erik with you. I just want to hear about what Nyx has shown you of her will."
    "Shouldn't you already know about Nyx's will, blah, blah, whatever? Aren't you her chosen one?"
    "Aphrodite, I have a really bad headache right now. I'd like to be with my friends eating chocolate chip pancakes. Then I want to go see 300 with my boyfriend. So I'm already tired of the whole I'm-such-a-bitch-all-the-time act you put on. Here's the deal—just answer the question and we can both go do whatever we want to do." I was rubbing my forehead. The last thing I expected was the bomb she suddenly dropped on me.
    "You really mean just answer the question so that you can go meet the creature Stevie Rae's turned into, don't you?"
    I felt all the color drain from my face. "What in the hell are you talking about Aphrodite?"
    "Let's walk," she said and started to walk alongside the huge stone wall that borders the school.
    "Aphrodite, no." I grabbed her arm. "Tell me what you know."
    "Look, it's hard for me to hold still so soon after I've had a vision, and the one I had that made me come out here was not like my normal visions." Aphrodite pulled free from me and brushed a hand across her brow like she had a headache, too. I noticed for the first time that her hands were shaking—actually that her whole body was trembling and she looked abnormally pale.
    "All right. We'll walk."
    She didn't say anything for a little while, and I had to fight with myself not to grab her and shake her and make her tell me how she knew about Stevie Rae. When she finally started talking, she didn't look at me and seemed to be speaking to the night more than to me.
    "My visions have been changing. It started with the one I had when those human kids were being killed. I used to be able to see things like I was just an observer. I watched what was happening but wasn't touched by it. Everything and everyone were clear, easy to understand. With those boys it was different. I wasn't detached anymore. I was one of them. I could feel myself being killed with them." She paused and shuddered. "I also couldn't see things clearly anymore. Stuff becomes a big jumble of fear and panic and crazy emotions. I get some flashes of things I can identify or understand, like when I told you that you had to get Heath out of those tunnels or he'd die. But mostly I'm freaked and confused, and afterward I feel awful." Aphrodite glanced at me as if she was just then remembering I was really there. "Like it was with the vision I saw of your grandma drowning. I actually was your grandma, and it was just lucky that I caught glimpses of the bridge and knew where she'd go into the water."
    I nodded, "I remember you couldn't tell me very much. I thought it was more because you didn't want to tell me than that you couldn't tell me."
    Her smile was sarcastic. "Yes, I know. Not that I care what you thought."
    "Just get on with the Stevie Rae part." God, she was annoying.
    "I haven't had a vision for a month. Good thing, too, since my parents insist I visit during winter break. Often."
    Her grimace said that visiting her parents wasn't exactly a good thing, which I already knew. At the last parent visitation night I'd sorta accidentally watched a majorly nightmarish scene between Aphrodite and her parents. Her dad's the mayor of Tulsa. Her mom might be Satan. Basically, they made my 'rentals look like the Brady parents (yes, I'm a dork and watch Nickelodeon reruns).
    "I had to have a birthday scene with my parents yesterday."
    "Your stepdad's one of the People of Faith psychos, isn't he?"
    "Totally. My grandma called him a turd monkey."
    That made her laugh. I mean really laugh. I watched her, amazed at how it transformed her face from cold and pretty to