House of Night 09 - Destined

theirs,” Aphrodite said. “I heard them talking about it in art class.”
    I looked at Stevie Rae. Her face had gone real white. “We’ll all be with you,” I said. “And Thanatos is a powerful vampyre, a member of the High Council. She’s not gonna let anything happen.”
    “Shekinah was Leader of the High Council, and she got killed her first day here, remember?” Stevie Rae said.
    “That was by Neferet and not some douche-bag red fledgling guy,” I said.
    “The girls are on my nerves, too,” Aphrodite said. “That Nichole bitch needs to have her hair pulled out by the roots, which are probably a different color than the rest of that mess on her head.”
    “I hate it when I agree with you,” Stevie Rae said.
    “Well, bumpkin, even you can be right sometimes.”
    “Can we stop now and eat the rest of our spaghetti?” I said. “There’re only two more hours to get through, then we can go back to the depot and we’ll have all weekend to figure this stuff out.”
    “That’s a good idea,” Damien said. “Next hour I’m checking out books and files on some of the questions we’ve been trying to answer. I got permission from Professor Garmy to go to the media center during Spanish class. I’m really good at conjugating verbs, and that’s what she’s focusing on today.”
    “Ugh,” I said. Everyone (besides Damien) at the table nodded in agreement to my conjugating ugh, even though the Twins seemed out of synch and Erin kept giving Shaunee looks that went from annoyance to confusion and back again.
    And that pretty much summed up the rest of the day: confusing, annoying, and just plain ugh.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    Zoey
    “I like his horse,” I said to Lenobia.
    “I like his horse, too,” Lenobia said, even though she sounded like she hated to admit it.
    We were standing in the corral, a little ways from the group that was clustered around Travis and his giant Percheron, Bonnie. The cowboy had been demonstrating to a very attentive audience of fledgling guys (and Darius and Rephaim and Stark) how to use a lance and a sword from horseback.
    “So,” Johnny B said, “Is that all she can do? Just, like, lope or whatever back and forth in a straight line?”
    From on top of Bonnie the cowboy looked about a zillion feet tall. Currently, he had a long lance in his hand and I wondered for a second if he was going to skewer smart aleck, muscle-brained Johnny B. But Travis just tilted his hat back, rested the lance on his hip, and said, “My girl can do everything a smaller horse can do. She has all the gaits: walk, trot, lope, gallop.” He glanced over at Lenobia and his easygoing smile turned wry. “Well, Bonnie can’t turn as quick as a quarter horse. She can’t run as fast and as long as a Thoroughbred. But she can tear up a trail with the best of ’em. Don’t forget that she can carry me, a pile of armor and weapons, and pull down a house. All at the same time. Underestimating her would be a mistake.” He shot another look at Lenobia and added, “But then underestimating females in general isn’t a good idea, boy.”
    I covered my laugh with a cough.
    Lenobia looked at me. “Don’t encourage him. He’s been holding fledgling court all day. The girls want to date him. The boys want to be him. He’s making my head hurt.”
    “So you like him a little?”
    I was wincing from Lenobia’s frosty stare when Travis raised his voice and called, “Well, you’d have to ask the professor over there about that, but I’d be all for a little field trip.”
    Huh? Field trip? My ears perked up. “We go on field trips?”
    “Not since we’ve been battling evil we haven’t,” Lenobia said under her breath. Then she raised her voice and started toward Bonnie and her cowboy saying, “I’m sorry, Travis, I wasn’t listening. What is it you’re asking?”
    “One of the kids wanted to see Bonnie in action on a trail ride. I’d be happy to take some of ’em out with me and a few horses on a clear night. I grew up outside Sapulpa and know the old oil paths on the ridges there like the back o’ my hand.”
    I saw Lenobia sucking in a breath and was sure she was getting ready to blast the cowboy into the stratosphere, when Ant, the littlest of the red fledgling kids, reached way up and, looking starstruck, patted Bonnie on her nose saying, “Wow! A trail ride? Like cowboys used to do? That’d be awesome.” With obvious adoration in his eyes, he gazed at Lenobia. “Professor Lenobia,