Hidden: House of Night: Book 10

wrong. This is like watching
The
stupid
Bachelorette.”
Aphrodite shook her head and rolled her eyes. She, Stevie Rae, and I were walking slowly to the parking lot and the waiting bus full of kids. We were moving slowly because we were super busy gawking at Damien and the reporter guy, Adam. The two of them were standing by the Fox 23 news van smiling and chattering.
    “Shhh!” Iwhispered at Aphrodite. “They’re gonna hear you and that will embarrass Damien.”
    “Oh, please,” Aphrodite snorted. “Gay boy’s all atwitter, or atitter, or whatever. He’s not paying any attention to us.”
    “I’m just glad he’s flirting,” I said.
    “Look! They’re takin’ out their phones!” Stevie Rae gushed in a whisper that was too exclamation pointed to be whispery.
    “I was wrong again,” Aphrodite said. “It’s not like watching
The Bachelorette.
It’s like watching the National Geographic Channel.”
    “I think he’s a cutie patootie,” Stevie Rae said.
    “The guy talking to Damien?” Shaylin asked as she joined us.
    “Yeah. We think they’re makin’ a date,” Stevie Rae said, still gawking.
    “He has soft, pretty colors,” Shaylin said. “Actually, they go real well with Damien’s.”
    “What, are their rainbows merging?” Aphrodite snorted sarcastically.
    Shaylin frowned. “They don’t have rainbow colors. That’s such a horrible stereotype. They have summer sky colors—blues and yellows. Damien also has some billowy white stuff that looks a lot like cumulus clouds.”
    “Oh, for shit’s sake, it has no sense of humor at all,” Aphrodite said.
    “Aphrodite, you gotta stop callin’ Shaylin
it
. It’s not nice,” Stevie Rae said.
    “So, for future reference, how not nice is it on the retard-mean-word scale?” She lifted a questioning blond brow at Stevie Rae. “Is it more asstard, fucktard, or old school, hardcore, retard not nice?”
    “You’re the High Priestess, but I say answering her at all just encourages her. You know, like what happens when you pick up a screaming toddler—they keep on screaming,” Shaylin said, sounding very matter-of-fact.
    All I couldthink was
holy crap, Aphrodite is going to yank her hair out by the roots.
    Instead Aphrodite laughed. “Hey, it made a joke! It might actually have a personality.”
    “Aphrodite, I think you might be brain damaged,” Stevie Rae said.
    “Thank you,” Aphrodite said. “I’m getting on the bus. And I’m timing Gay Boy. If he flirts for more than five more minutes I’m going to—” Her words stopped when she turned toward the bus. My eyes followed her gaze. Shaunee and Erin were standing just outside the bus’s open door. Shaunee looked upset. Erin’s face had no expression on it whatsoever. I could see that they were talking, but we were too far away to hear what they were saying.
    “There’s something wrong about her,” Shaylin said.
    “Who her?” Stevie Rae asked.
    “Erin,” Shaylin said.
    “Shaylin’s right. There’s something wrong about Erin,” Aphrodite said.
    I couldn’t tell which shocked me more, what Aphrodite and Shaylin were saying, or that they were agreeing.
    “Tell me what you’re seein’,” Stevie Rae spoke quietly to Shaylin.
    “Here’s the best way I can describe it. There was this culvert that ran behind the house I lived in when I was a kid, just before I lost my sight. I used to play by it and pretend that it was a bubbling, beautiful mountain stream and I was growing up in the Colorado Rockies, ’cause it was clear and even kinda pretty. But the second I got too close to it I could smell it. It stunk like chemicals and something else, something rotting. The water looked good, but under the surface it was dirty, polluted.”
    “Shaylin.” I was seriously at the edge of my patience. I felt like I was listening to one of Kramisha’s poems—and that’s not necessarily a good thing. “What in the hell are you saying? Erin is the color of polluted water? And if she is, why didn’t you say something before now?”
    “She’s changing!” Shaylin yelled. When faces on the bus, along with Shaunee and Erin, turned their heads toward us, she added, “Winter seems to be changing to Spring! Isn’t it a beautiful night?”
    Kids shooktheir heads and squinched their foreheads at her, but at least they seemed to quit listening.
    “Oh, for shit’s sake. You are no good at espionage at all.” Aphrodite lowered her voice and huddled us up. “Z, get a clue. It’s