House of Night 09 - Destined

They’d been Marked the same day and arrived at the Tulsa House of Night the same exact hour. And they’d been friends right away. Shaunee had thought that had been because they were like soul sisters ’cause it hadn’t mattered that she was black and Erin was white. That she was from Connecticut and Erin from Tulsa. They’d been friends and all of a sudden Shaunee hadn’t felt lonely anymore. Especially ’cause she never had to be alone. Literally. She and Erin were roommates, had the same class schedule, went to the same parties, they only even dated guys who were friends.
    By herself in her seat on the bus Shaunee shook her head. She could hear Erin laughing with Kramisha somewhere in the back of the bus. For a second a mean little thought snaked through her mind: guess she’s trading me in for another black girl BFF. But Shaunee stopped that crap right away. It wasn’t about skin color. It never had been. It was about not being able to be alone. Which was super ironic because figuring that out had somehow put her in a position where she was alone.
    “Hey, can I sit here?”
    Shaunee’s gaze shifted from staring out the window at the lightening pre-dawn sky to Damien standing in the aisle of the bus.
    “Yeah, sure.”
    “Thanks.” He sat beside her and dropped his heavy book bag between his feet. “I have soooo much homework. How ’bout you?”
    “Yeah,” she said. “I guess. Hey, did you see Zoey sixth hour?”
    “Not during sixth hour. She has Equestrian Studies and I have business class, but I saw her right after school. Why? What’s up?”
    “Did she look okay to you?”
    “Okay? Like physically okay or not-stressed-out okay?”
    “She’s always stressed out. I mean physically.”
    “Yeah, fine. What’s going on?”
    “Nothin’,” Shaunee said. “It’s just that I, uh, saw her at the beginning of sixth hour. Me and her, we talked over here by the parking lot. Then we went back to class.” She studied Damien, wondering if she should tell him the truth. “Did you feel anything weird about the air tonight?”
    Damien cocked his head to the side. “Nothing odd. Well, it was windy, but that’s not really odd for Oklahoma. You know we’re the state where the wind comes sweeping down the plain ,” he sang.
    “I know that, Mr. Broadway Musical. All I’m saying is the wind was blowing really hard when Z and I split up, and I thought I heard something about tree limbs falling and—”
    “A tree limb did fall.” Stark butted in as he and Zoey slid into the seat in front of Damien and Shaunee.
    “Yeah, it was all psycho-windy,” Stevie Rae said, sitting beside Rephaim in the seat across the aisle from Damien. “But tellin’ you that would be like tryin’ to tell white about rice.”
    “What in the for-shit’s-sake is that supposed to mean?” Aphrodite forced Z to scoot over and perched beside her as Darius did a quick head count and then got in the driver’s seat and started the bus up.
    “It means, Hateful, that Damien already knows it was windy today ’cause his affinity is wind. Just like rice is white. I don’t even know what was hard about that analogy,” Stevie Rae said.
    “Just. Don’t. Speak,” Aphrodite told Stevie Rae.
    “Rice is brown, too,” Shaunee said.
    Aphrodite raised a brow. “Did you just make a snarky comment without your Twin?”
    “Yeah,” Shaunee said, meeting her gaze steadily.
    Aphrodite snorted and looked away, first saying, “It’s about time.”
    “About the wind,” Zoey said. “Yeah, it was kinda crazy tonight, and it even broke a branch from one of those old oaks.” She shrugged. “Like Damien said—it’s windy in Oklahoma. Hey, speaking of, Damien, did you know Thanatos had a little wind affinity?”
    “Ohmygod! I’m not surprised! Did you see how uber-scary she got today when Dallas said that stupid stuff in class? I couldn’t believe…”
    Shaunee let everyone’s words flow around her, but she kept watching Zoey, waiting for her to say something—anything—about what had really happened when the tree limb broke. She knew. She’d seen the whole thing.
    As they bounced and bumped their way back to the depot, Shaunee realized Zoey wasn’t going to say anything. Okay, well, maybe she just told Stark what had happened—how she would’ve been smashed under that tree limb if Aurox hadn’t saved her. During the next lull in the conversation, which happened when they paused at a railroad crossing like Super Giant