Chosen

shampoo would help that stench, but I kinda doubted it. After all, she was, well, dead.
    "Stevie Rae, I know you're here somewhere." I called as quietly as I could. Okay, vamps have the ability to move silently and to create a kind of bubble of invisibility around them. Fledglings also have this ability. It's just not as complete. Being as I'm a weirdly gifted fledgling, I can move around fairly well and not be seen by anyone who might be gawking out a window at 3:00 A.M., like a museum security guard. So I was pretty confident about my ability to be unseen in the semi-dark, fairyland grounds of the museum, but I had no idea if I could extend that ability to covering Stevie Rae. In other words, I needed to get her, and get out of there. "Come on out. I have your clothes and some blood and the latest Kenny Chesney CD." I added that last part as a blatant bribe. Stevie Rae had been ridiculously in lurve with Kenny Chesney. No, I don't understand it either.
    "The blood!" A voice that might have been Stevie Rae's if she had a really bad cold and had lost every last bit of her mind hissed from the bushes at the rear of the gazebo's base.
    I walked around behind the gazebo peeking into the thick (yet well-trimmed) foliage. "Stevie Rae?"
    Eyes glowing a horrible rust red, she stumbled out of the bushes and lurched toward me. "Give me the blood!"
    Ohmygod, she looked like an absolutely crazy person. Hurriedly I reached into my bag, jerked out the bag of blood, and handed it to her. "Hang on a sec, I have a pair of scissors in here somewhere and I'll—"
    With a really disgusting snarl, Stevie Rae tore open the little lip of the bag with her teeth (uh, fangs is more like it), upended the bag, and gulped down the blood. When she'd squeezed the bag dry she dropped it on the ground. She was breathing like she'd just run a race when she finally looked up at me.
    "Ain't pretty, is it?"
    I smiled and tried my best to ignore how horrified I really was. "Well, my grandma always says that correct grammar and good manners make one more attractive, so you might want to drop the 'ain't' and try saying 'please' next time."
    "I need more blood."
    "I got you four more packets. They're in the refrigerator at the place you're going to be staying. Do you want to change your clothes here, or wait till we get there and take a shower? It's just down the street."
    "What are you talking about? Just give me my clothes and the blood."
    Her eyes weren't such a bright red, but she still looked mean and mad. She was even thinner and paler than she had been the night before. I drew a deep breath. "This has to stop, Stevie Rae."
    "This is how it is with me now. This isn't going to change. I'm not going to change." She pointed to the outline of the crescent moon on her forehead. "It'll never be filled in and I'll always be dead."
    I stared at the outline of her crescent moon. Was it fading? I thought it definitely looked lighter, or at least less distinct, which couldn't be good. That did shake me up. "You're not dead" was all I could think to say.
    "I feel dead."
    "Okay, well, you kinda look dead. I know when I look like crap I usually feel like crap, too. Maybe that's part of why you feel so bad." I reached into my bag and pulled out one of her cowboy boots. "Check out what I brought you."
    "Shoes cannot fix the world." This was a subject Stevie Rae and the Twins had argued about before, and her voice held a hint of the old exasperation.
    "That's not what the Twins would say."
    The familiar tone in her voice flattened out to expressionless and cold. "What would the Twins say if they could see me now?"
    I met Stevie Rae's red eyes. "They'd say you need a bath and an attitude check, but they'd also be unbelievably happy that you're alive."
    "I'm not alive. That's what I keep trying to get you to understand."
    "Stevie Rae, I am not going to understand that because you're walking and talking. I don't think you're anything like dead—I think you're changed. Not like I'm Changing, as in becoming what we're used to recognizing as an adult vampyre. You've made a different kind of Change, and I think it's harder than the one that's happening to me. That's why you're going through all of this. Would you please give me a chance to help you? Can't you just try to believe everything might turn out okay?"
    "I don't know how you can be so sure about that," she said.
    I gave her the answer I felt deep in my soul, and knew the moment I'd said it that it was the right