Hunted

gold card power.”
    I vaguely heard Erik join the discussion. All of my attention had become focused on one short poem that was written in black on a blood-red poster. “You wrote that one, too?” I asked, not caring that I was interrupting their discussion of whether they liked Robert Frost better than Emily Dickinson.
    “I wrote all a’ them,” she said. “I always did like writin’, but since I was Marked I been doing it more and more. They just come to me. I been hopin’ I can write more than poems. I like ’em and all, but poets, they don’t make no money. See, I researched careers at Central Library, too, ’cause, you know, it stay open late. Anyhow, them poets don’t make—”
    “Kramisha”—I cut her off—“when did you write that one?” My stomach felt funny and my mouth had gone dry.
    “I wrote all them in the past few days. You know, since Stevie Rae got us our sense back. Before that I didn’t think much ’bout anything ’cept eatin’ humans.” She smiled apologetically and lifted one shoulder.
    “So you wrote that one—the one in black—in the past couple of days?” I pointed at the poem.

    Shadows in shadows
    He watches through
    dreams
    Wings black as Africa
    Body strong as stone
    Done waiting
    The ravens call.

    Jack gasped as he read it for the first time.
    “Oh, Goddess!” I heard Erik say under his breath as he, too, read the poem.
    “That’s easy. It’s the last one I wrote—just yesterday. I was . . . ” Her words ran out as she understood our reactions. “Shit! It’s ’bout him!”

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    CHAPTER EIGHT

    “What made you write it?” I asked, still staring at the black words.
    Kramisha had sat down heavily on her bed, all of a sudden looking almost as exhausted as Stevie Rae. She was shaking her head back and forth, back and forth, making her orange and black hair dance against her smooth cheeks. “It just come to me, like all the stuff I write do. Things just come into my head, and then I write it down.”
    “What did you think it meant?” Jack asked, patting her arm gently, a lot like he patted Duchess (she was curled up by his feet).
    “I didn’t really think ’bout it. It come to me. I write it. That’s all.” She paused, glanced up at the poster board, and then looked quickly away, as if what she saw scared her.
    “Are these all poems you’ve written in the days since Stevie Rae Changed?” I shifted my attention to the other poems. There were several haiku.

    Eyes watching always
    Shadows in shadows they wait
    A black feather falls
    First accepted, loved
    Then betrayed—spit in the face
    Vengeance sweet like dots

    “Sweet, blessed Nyx.” Erik’s shocked voice came from behind me, kept low for my ears alone to hear. “They’re all about him.”
    “What does ‘sweet like dots’ mean?” Jack was asking Kramisha.
    “You know—dippin’ dots. I love me some dippin’ dots,” she said.
    Erik and I moved around Kramisha’s room. The more I read, the tighter the knot my stomach curled into.

    They done
    Wrong
    Like ink from a busted pen
    Thrown away ’cause of someone else
    Used up
    But he come back
    Dressed in night
    Fine as a king
    With his queen
    The wrong
    Made right
    So right

    “Kramisha, what were you thinking about when you wrote this one?” I asked her, pointing at the last one I’d read.
    She shrugged that one shoulder again. “I guess I thought ’bout how we out of the House of Night, but we shouldn’t be. I mean, I know it’s best for us underground, but it just don’t feel right that only Neferet know about us. She a wrong kind of High Priestess.”
    “Kramisha, would you do me a favor and copy down all of these poems?”
    “You think I messed up, don’t you?”
    “No. I do not think you messed up,” I assured her, hoping I was being guided correctly by my instincts and wasn’t just chasing bats in the darkness again. “I think you’ve been given a gift from Nyx. I just want to be sure we use your gift in the right way.”
    “I think she’s Vamp Poet Laureate material, and a major improvement over our last one,” Erik said.
    I looked up at him sharply, and he shrugged and grinned. “It was just a thought, that’s all.”
    Okay, even though it made me uncomfortable to think about Loren, especially when Erik had been the one to bring him up, I felt the rightness of what he was saying down deep in my gut, which said more about Kramisha’s true nature than my exhausted guessing and my apparently