Chosen

thing to say. "I'm sure about you being okay because I'm sure that Nyx still loves you and she let this happen for a reason."
    The hope that flashed in Stevie Rae's red eyes was almost painful to look at. "You really believe Nyx hasn't given up on me?"
    "Nyx hasn't and I haven't." I ignored her smell and gave her a firm hug, which she didn't return, but she also didn't jerk away from me or take a bite out of my neck, so I figured we were making progress. "Come on. The place I found for you to stay is just down the street."
    I started walking, believing she would follow me, which she did after only a slight hesitation. We cut around the grounds of the museum and came out on Rockford, the street that runs in front of it. Twenty-seventh, the street Aphrodite's mansion (well, it's really her crazy parents' mansion) sits off of runs right into Rockford. Feeling more than a little dreamlike, I walked down the middle of the road in the darkness, concentrating on shrouding us in silence and invisibility, with Stevie Rae following only a couple of feet behind me. It was dark and seemed preternaturally silent. I glanced up through the winter branches of the huge old trees that lined the street. I should have been able to see an almost full moon, but clouds had rolled in, obscuring all but an indistinct glow of white where the moon should be. It had turned cold, and I was glad that my changing metabolism protected me from the whipping wind. I wondered if weather changes bothered Stevie Rae, and I was going to ask her about it when she suddenly spoke.
    "Neferet won't like this."
    "This?"
    "Me being with you instead of with the others." Stevie Rae seemed really agitated and was plucking nervously at one hand with the other.
    "Relax, Neferet won't know you're with me, at least not until we're ready for her to know," I said.
    "She'll know as soon as she gets back and sees that I'm not with the rest of them."
    "No, she'll just know you're gone. Anything could have happened to you." Then a thought hit me that was so incredible I stopped like I'd run into a tree. "Stevie Rae! You don't have to be around adult vamps to be okay!"
    "Huh?"
    "It proves you've Changed! You're not coughing and dying!"
    "Zoey, I've already done that."
    "No no no! That's not what I mean." I grabbed her arm, ignoring the fact that she immediately pulled it from my grasp and took a step away from me. "You can exist without the vamps. Only another adult vampyre can do that. So it is just like I said. You have Changed, it's just a different kind of Change!"
    "And that's a good thing?"
    "Yep!" I wasn't as sure as I sounded, but I was determined to keep a positive front for Stevie Rae. Plus, she was looking not-so-good. I mean, even more not-so-good than her usual yucky look. "What's wrong with you?"
    "I need blood!" She wiped a shaky hand across her dirty face. "That little bag wasn't enough. You stopped me from feeding yesterday, so I haven't fed since the day before. It—it's bad when I don't feed." She tilted her head weirdly, like she was listening to a voice in the wind. "I can hear the blood whispering through their veins."
    "Whose veins?" I was as intrigued as I was grossed out.
    She made a sweeping gesture with her arm that was feral and graceful. "The humans sleeping around us." Her voice had dropped to a husky murmur. There was something in the tone of it that made me want to move closer to her, even though her eyes had flushed a bright scarlet again and she smelled so bad it made me want to gag. "One of them is awake." She pointed to the huge mansion to the right of where we'd stopped. "It's a girl… a teenager … she's by herself in her room …"
    Stevie Rae's voice was an alluring singsong. My heart had started to beat hard against my chest. "How do you know that?" I whispered.
    She turned her burning eyes on me. "There's so much I know. I know about your bloodlust. I can smell it. There's no reason you shouldn't give in to it. We could enter the house. Go to the girl's room and take her together. I'd share her with you, Zoey."
    For a moment I was lost in the obsession that heated Stevie Rae's eyes, and in my own need. I hadn't had human blood since the taste Heath had given me more than a month ago. The memory of that one exquisite drink lingered in my body like a tantalizing secret. Completely mesmerized, I listened to Stevie Rae spin a web of darkness that was catching me in its beautiful, sticky depths.
    "I can show you how to get in the house.