House of Night 09 - Destined

That’s it. I’m totally okay. The end.”
    “Can’t he hide them wings inside one of the long black goth/cowboy coats?” Kramisha asked.
    “I don’t think so. They’d probably hang out of the bottom of it. Plus, he’d look, like, deformed and all humpy and probably call all sorts of unwanted attention to himself,” Damien said.
    “Seriously. The unwanted attention would be wearing something that’s totally circa 1999 and unattractive,” Aphrodite said absently as she pawed through the Miss Jackson’s bag at her feet.
    “Well, whether it’s fashion or fear, logically speaking, I suppose he does need Shaunee to get the laptop for him,” Damien concluded.
    “He said that he wished me well?” was the first thing Rephaim asked after Shaunee had made her big Kalona announcement to all of them.
    “Yeah.” Shaunee smiled at Rephaim.
    “Kalona also had information about Aurox, or at least he had an idea of where we should begin in finding out his origin,” Darius said. “Zoey, I think—”
    “My mom could have been the sacrifice. I know.”
    Shaunee blinked and then felt like she was gonna be sick. She hadn’t even thought of Z’s mom when Kalona had been talking about the sacrifice of someone close to them! Jack was the first person who had popped into her mind, and then there had been all that other stuff to think about. She shook her head and interrupted something Darius was saying about rituals and such.
    “Z, I’m really sorry.”
    Zoey’s face was like a question mark. “You don’t need to be sorry. You just told us what happened. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “Yeah, I did. I didn’t even think about your mom being killed a few days ago. I was thinking about my own dad stuff and everything. I’m really sorry,” she repeated.
    Zoey’s smile was as friendly and forgiving as it always was. “That’s okay, Shaunee. It’s not your fault that what’s going on with Rephaim and Kalona has you upset.”
    “Yeah, Shaunee. We’re all trying to do the best that we can. Sometimes that’s not so easy,” Stevie Rae said, taking Rephaim’s hand in hers. “Thanks for standing up for Rephaim and caring. I ’preciate it.”
    “As do I,” Rephaim said.
    “Oh. Hey. No big thing. Yeah, I just—” Shaunee began, but Erin interrupted her in what sounded almost like a sarcastic play on their usual finish-each-other’s-sentence habit.
    “Yeah, I just gotta go put away the loot I got from Miss Jackson’s and hang the new bead curtain I got from Pier 1. Later, everyone.” Erin scooped a bunch of bags from the floor and hurried from the kitchen.
    Totally confused, Shaunee watched her leave, feeling like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry or scream.
    “Go on.” Zoey had come up beside her and was speaking quietly while Damien and Darius started to discuss the difference between cleansing and funeral rituals, and if there was a way that either of them could maybe be tweaked to turn into a tell-us-who-killed-her ritual.
    “What?”
    “Go on and talk to Erin. If anyone has any more questions about what happened I’ll come find you. I don’t want this to mess up your friendship,” Z said, glancing at Stevie Rae. “BFF’s are super important. We all need to remember that.”
    “Okay, thanks.” Shaunee slipped from the room and hurried down the tunnel toward the very cool tunnel room she shared with her Twin. But she needn’t have hurried. Erin was loaded down and just a few yards from the kitchen she’d dropped an entire giant Pier 1 bag.
    “Hey, Twin,” Shaunee said as she bent to pick up a shiny pillow. “It looks like a glitter explosion happened out here.”
    Erin didn’t smile. She took the sequinned pillow from Shaunee’s hands and crammed it back into an already bulging bag, saying, “I got this under control.”
    Shaunee touched Erin’s shoulder, which felt hard and cold and lifeless. “Wait, Twin, what is it? Why are you so pissed?”
    “You didn’t even tell me you cared so much about your dad. You just kept it from me,” Erin said, jerking her shoulder from Shaunee’s touch.
    “No, I didn’t.” Shaunee shook her head, feeling like Erin had just smacked her. “I tried to say stuff to you, but you were all, ‘hey, that’s in the past, Twin, let’s shop’ so I gave up. Don’t you remember?”
    “Okay, yeah, whatever. What is the big deal? I just don’t get it! We’ve been best friends since we were both Marked— on the same day. Everything