Marked

(probably one of the boogers he liked to go spelunking after) and I saw the white of thick bandages that were wrapped around his wrists. What the…?
    A terrible, crawly feeling worked its way up my spine. Enyo and Deino were standing not far from me, talking animatedly to the girl they'd called Pemphredo. I walked over to them and waited till there was a lull in the conversation. Pretending that my stomach wasn't trying to squeeze itself to death, I smiled and nodded in the general direction of Elliott.
    "What's that kid doing here?”
    Enyo glanced at Elliott and then rolled her eyes. "He's nothing. Just the refrigerator we used tonight.”
    "What a loser," Deino said, dismissing Elliott with a sneer. "He's practically human," Pemphredo said in disgust. "No wonder all he's good for is a snack bar.”
    My stomach felt like it was being turned inside out. "Wait, I don't get it. Refrigerator? Snack bar?”
    Deino the Terrible turned her haughty, chocolate-colored eyes on me. "That's what we call humans―refrigerators and snack bars. You know―breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
    "Or any of the meals in between," warlike Enyo practically purred.
    "I still don't―" I started, but Deino interrupted me.
    "Oh, come on! Don't pretend that you couldn't tell what was in the wine, and that you didn't love the taste of it.”
    "Yeah, admit it, Zoey. It was obvious. You would have downed the whole thing―you wanted it even more than we did. We saw you licking it off your fingers," Enyo said, leaning forward all into my personal space as she stared at my Mark. "That makes you some kind of freak, doesn't it? Somehow you're fledgling and vamp, all in one, and you wanted more of that kid's blood than just a taste.”
    "Blood?" I didn't recognize my own voice. The word "freak" kept echoing round and round in my head.
    "Yes, blood," Terrible said.
    I felt hot and cold at once and looked away from their knowing faces, and right into Aphrodite's eyes. She was standing across the room from me talking to Erik. Our eyes locked and slowly, purposefully, she smiled. She was holding the goblet again, and she raised it in an almost imperceptible salute to me before taking a drink from it and turning back to laugh at something Erik had just said.
    Holding myself together, I made a lame excuse to Warlike, Terrible, and the Wasp, and walked calmly from the room. The instant I closed the thick wooden door of the rec hall behind me I ran like a crazy blind person. I didn't know where I was going, except that I wanted to be away.
    I drank blood―that horrid Elliott kid's blood―and I'd liked it! And worse, the delicious smell had been familiar because I'd smelled it before when Heath's hands had been bleeding. It hadn't been a new cologne I'd been drawn to; it had been his blood. And I'd smelled it again in the hall yesterday when Aphrodite had slit Erik's thigh and I had wanted to lick up his blood, too.
    I was a freak.
    Finally, I couldn't breathe and I collapsed against the cool stone of the school's protective wall, gasping for air and puking my guts up.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    Shakily, I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth and then stumbled away from the puke spot (I refused to even consider what I puked up and how it must have looked) until I came to a giant oak that had grown so close to the wall that half of its branches hung over the other side of it. I leaned against the tree, concentrating on not getting sick again.
    What had I done? What was happening to me?
    Then, from somewhere in the limbs of the oak I heard a meow. Okay, it wasn't really your normal, average, catlike meow. It was more like a grumpy, "me-eeh-uf-me-eef-uf-snort.”
    I looked up. Perched on a limb that was resting against the wall was a small orange cat. She was staring at me with huge eyes and she definitely looked disgruntled.
    "How did you get up there?”
    "Me-uf," she said, sneezed, and inched her way along the branch, clearly trying to get closer to me.
    "Well, come on kitty-kitty-kitty," I coaxed.
    "Me-eeh-of-ow," she said, creeping forward about half one of her little paw lengths.
    "That's it, come on, baby girl. Move your little tiny paddies this way." Yes, I was displacing my freak-out and channeling it into saving the cat, but the truth was that I couldn't think about what had just happened. Not now. It was too soon. Too fresh. So the cat was an excellent distraction. Plus, she looked familiar. "Come on baby girl, come on…" I kept up a conversation