Hidden (House of Night Novels)

They weren’t real close to us, but still it felt like an invasion of their privacy to be gawking at them—even though we kept standing there gawking at them.
    Then it hit me. I bumped Stark’s arm and, keeping my voice low, said, “The stone got super hot as soon as Travis got out of the cab.”
    Stark looked from Travis and Lenobia to the stone and then to me. He put a firm hand on my shoulder and said, “Do it. Look through the stone at him. I’ve got you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. If something tries to suck time from you I’m going to stop it.”
    I nodded and, like ripping off a Band-Aid in one quick pull, I lifted the Seer Stone, framing Travis and Lenobia within its circle.
    It started like what happened at the tree, at first my vision of the two of them remained exactly the same. I watched Lenobia’s hands fluttering nervously over Travis’s bandaged hands. They looked like big white mittens, and I could see that the gauze wraps went up his forearms. Even from where we stood, his face looked abnormally red and shiny, like he’d gotten a bad sunburn and had put a bunch of aloe gel on it. But he didn’t look like he was in pain. He was smiling. A lot. At Lenobia. I was getting ready to drop the Seer Stone and tell Stark that I was, indeed, Crazy Universe, when Travis bent and kissed Lenobia.
    Everything changed then. There was a brightness that caused me to blink and when my sight cleared Travis was gone. In his place was a really hot, young, black guy. He had long hair that was pulled back in a low ponytail and shoulders so broad he looked like a linebacker. He was kissing Lenobia as if it were his last kiss in the world. And she was kissing him back—only it was a different Lenobia. She looked young, like she was only sixteen or so. She wrapped her arms around him like she’d never let go. All around them the air wavered and shimmered, like I was watching them over the top of a bubbling pot. Only instead of steam rising, I swear there were robin’s egg blue spirits of happiness flitting around them. The happiness swelled within me and started bubbling, as if the pot was my head and the water my emotions. The ground fell away beneath my feet. I was floating in joy and love and blue bubbles.
    Then my head got real dizzy and my stomach totally rebelled.
    “Zoey! Stop! That’s enough. Put! It! Down!”
    I realized Stark was yelling at me and pulling at the Seer Stone. I felt the earth under my feet again. The blue bubbles evaporated and the joy went away, leaving me sick and drained and super shaky. I dropped the Seer Stone in time to bend over and puke beside the tree.
    “You’re okay. You’re okay. I got you, Z. Everything’s fine.” Stark was holding my hair back while I continued to retch and heave up my guts.
    “Stark? Zoey?” Lenobia was coming toward us, sounding breathless and worried. I could hear Travis close behind her asking what was wrong. I couldn’t answer, though. I was too busy barfing.
    “Zoey! Oh, Goddess, no!” Lenobia’s concern skyrocketed when she realized I was puking.
    “She’s not rejecting the Change. She’s okay,” Stark reassured her while I took yet another tissue he offered me and wiped my mouth. Finally done puking I leaned against the tree, embarrassed and grossed out. I seriously hate to puke.
    “Then what is it? Why are you sick?”
    With Stark on one side and Lenobia on the other, they guided me to a wrought iron bench that wasn’t far away from the big tree (but far enough away so that we wouldn’t smell my puke—eesh).
    “Should I get someone?” Travis asked.
    “No,” I said quickly. “I’m fine. I’m better now that I’m sitting.” I glanced at Stark questioningly. He nodded. “Whatever you saw, tell her. We trust her.”
    I looked from him to Lenobia. “And you trust Travis?”
    She didn’t hesitate. “With my life.”
    The big cowboy smiled and stepped closer to her. Their shoulders touched.
    “Okay, what happened is my Seer Stone started heating up. When Travis got out of the car it got really hot. Stark was here, so we decided I should look through it at, well, you guys and see if that would help me start to understand what it shows me. So I looked through it at you two.”
    “Seer Stone?” Travis asked. He didn’t sound freaked out at all. He just sounded curious.
    “It’s an old magick amulet given to Zoey by an ancient vampyre queen,” Lenobia explained. “What did you see?”
    “Well,