House of Night 09 - Destined

High Priestesses are in charge. Running screaming away from one my first day as a fledgling didn’t seem like a good option.”
    “So you figured you’d play opossum,” Stevie Rae said.
    “Play what?”
    “That’s a bumpkin way of saying that you pretended to be out of it so Neferet would leave you alone,” Aphrodite said.
    “Yeah, that’s exactly what I did,” Shaylin said.
    “Not a bad plan,” Stark said. “Meeting Neferet and being Marked all in one day sucks for you.”
    “What did you see?” My question seemed to take everyone except Shaylin by surprise. She met my gaze and held it steadily as she answered me. “Right before I went blind I was at Nam Hi, that big Vietnamese grocery store on Twenty-first and Garnett, with my mom. They had whole fish for sale in a giant bin of ice. They scared me so bad I remember all I could do was stand there and stare at their milky, dead eyes and their horrible slit open bellies.”
    “Neferet’s dead fish belly color?” Stevie Rae asked.
    “No. Neferet’s color is the same color as dead fish eyes. That’s her only color.”
    “That can’t be good,” Kramisha said.
    “What can’t be good?” Darius asked as he joined our group, taking Aphrodite’s hand. She leaned into him and said, “Darius, stud Warrior, meet Shaylin, newly Marked red fledgling who didn’t die to be red and who has True Sight. She just ‘saw’”—Aphrodite air quoted—“Neferet and apparently her true color is like dead fish eyes.”
    Darius didn’t miss a beat. He just gave the new kid a little bow and said, “Merry meet, Shaylin,” which either showed the Warrior had impressive control or was just more proof that our lives had become totally bat-poop crazy.
    “We need to learn more about True Sight,” Damien said. “It’s sixth former and beyond level information. Do you know anything about it?” he asked Darius.
    “Not a lot. I focused mostly on knives, not vampyre sociology,” Darius said.
    “Well, I have the stupid advanced handbook,” Aphrodite said. When we gave her a group gawk she frowned. “What? I was a sixth former before this happened.” She pointed at her unMarked forehead. “Sadly, I had to rejoin my old schedule today.” When we all kept staring without speaking she rolled her eyes. “Oh, for shit’s sake, I have homework, that’s all. The book’s in my extremely attractive Anahata Joy Katkin bag in the retard bus.”
    “Aphrodite, stop sayin’ retard!” Stevie Rae shouted at her. “I swear you need to check out www.r-word.com. Maybe you’d learn that some people get their feelin’s hurt by the r-word.”
    Aphrodite blinked several times and then scrunched her forehead. “A Web site? Seriously.”
    “Yes, Aphrodite. Like I have tried to tell you a bazillion times, using the r-word is demeaning and just plain mean.”
    Aphrodite sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a rant: “What about having a site for the c-word—as in cunt, which demeans half of the world ? Or, wait, no. Let’s keep it the r-word site only make the r-word rape, which does more than just hurt upper middle class mommies’ feelings. Or—”
    “Seriously.” I stepped between them. “We get it. Can we go back to Shaylin and the True Sight issue?”
    “Yeah, whatever,” Aphrodite said, flipping back her hair.
    “Aphrodite’s mean, Z, but she makes a good point,” Erin said.
    I glared at Shaunee who only nodded enthusiastically, but didn’t chime in. My head felt like it was going to explode. “Ah, hell,” I said, throwing up my hands in frustration. “I can’t remember what we were saying before the retard part.”
    “Information about True Sight is on the bus,” Rephaim said, surprising all of us. He smiled shyly. “I didn’t really understand much of the rest of the conversation. I also got that Aphrodite is mean, but I already knew that.”
    Beside me Stark turned a bark of laughter into a cough.
    I sighed.
    “Okay, let’s get on the bus and get back to the depot. Aphrodite and Damien, meet me in the kitchen with the advanced handbook.” I paused and glanced at Stevie Rae, who was still holding Rephaim’s hand. “You wanna join us after, um, you know, the sun rises and such?”
    “Z, you don’t have to tippie-toe around it. Yes, Rephaim’s gonna change into a bird when the sun comes up, and I’d like to be with him ’til then.” She glanced up at Rephaim who was smiling down at her like it was his birthday and she was some