Hidden (House of Night Novels)

looked like it was made of black smoke. The water rippled and rolled. The continents emerged, carved from onyx.
    “Ohmy goodness ,” Stevie Rae said. “It’s so pretty!”
    “It is,” Thanatos said. “And now behold who we are in the world!” She flicked the fingers of her left hand at the globe, as if she were sprinkling it with water. Aphrodite, Stevie Rae, Shaylin, and I gasped. Little sparkles began appearing, dotting the onyx landmasses with tiny diamond lights.
    “That’s beautiful,” I said.
    “Are they diamonds? Real diamonds?” Aphrodite asked, stepping closer.
    “No, young Prophetess. They are souls. Vampyre souls. They are us.”
    “But there are so few lights. I mean, compared to the rest of the globe that’s all dark,” Shaylin said.
    I frowned and stepped closer along with Aphrodite. Shaylin was right. The earth looked huge compared to the sprinkling of sparkly dots. I stared and stared. My eyes were drawn to the clusters of shininess: Venice, the Isle of Skye, somewhere in what I thought was Germany. A cluster of light in France, a few splotches in Canada, and several more sprinkled around the continental U.S.—several more, but still not very many.
    “Is that Australia?” Stevie Rae asked.
    I peered around to the other side of the globe, catching sight of another spattering of diamonds.
    “It is,” Thanatos said. “And New Zealand as well.”
    “That’s Japan, isn’t it?” Shaylin pointed to another tiny splotch of glitter.
    “Yes, it is,” Thanatos said.
    “America doesn’t have as many diamonds as it should,” Aphrodite said.
    Thanatos didn’t respond. She met my gaze. I looked away, studying the globe again. Slowly, I walked all the way around her, wishing I’d paid better attention in geography class—any of them. When I completed my circle I met the High Priestess’s gaze again.
    “There aren’t enough of us,” I said.
    “That is the absolute, unfortunate truth,” Thanatos said. “We are brilliant, powerful, and spectacular, but we are few.”
    “So, even if we could get the humans to listen to us we’d be opening a door to our world that’s better left closed.” Aphrodite spoke calmly, sounding mature and uncharacteristically non-bitchy. “They start thinking their rules apply to us, that we need them to keep us in line, and that means they start putting out our lights.”
    “Simply, but well put.” Thanatos clapped her palms together and the globe disappeared in a puff of sparkly smoke.
    “Then what do we do? We can’t just let Neferet get away with her crap. It’s not like she’s gonna stop with a press conference, a committee, and a newspaper column. She wants death and destruction. Hell’s Bells, Darkness is her Consort!” Stevie Rae said.
    “We gotta fight her fire with our fire,” Shaylin said.
    “Oh, for shit’s sake. I can’t deal with one more kid who uses bad metaphors instead of just saying what’s what,” Aphrodite said.
    “What I mean is if Neferet is involving humans, then we should, too. But on our own terms,” Shaylin said. I saw her mouth the word hateful afterward, but Aphrodite had decided to ignore the fledgling. Again. And, thankfully, Aphrodite wasn’t looking at her.
    “Shaylin, you interest me, child. Why is it you have accompanied these two Priestesses and the Prophetess?” Thanatos asked abruptly.
    We Priestesses and Prophetess went silent. Personally, I wanted to see how Shaylin was going to handle Thanatos. I liked to think Stevie Rae had shut up for the same reason. I already knew Aphrodite’s reasoning, which Shaylin had summed up with the succinct word she’d mouthed: hateful.
    The little red fledgling raised her chin and looked super stubborn. “I came with them because I wanted to ask you about my gift. And they agreed.” Shaylin paused, glanced at Aphrodite and added, “Well, two of the three agreed.”
    “What gift has Nyx given you, fledgling?”
    “True Sight. I think.” She glanced nervously from Stevie Rae to me. “Right?”
    “We think so,” I said.
    “Yep. At least that’s what Damien’s research tells us, and he’s almost always right about anythin’ he’s researched,” Stevie Rae said.
    “She said Neferet was the color of dead fish eyes. That makes me think she might have something more than simple mental illness or mild retardation going on,” Aphrodite surprised me by saying.
    “You see auras?” Thanatos asked while she studied Shaylin like she was peering down a