Revealed

life. But it feels weird and sad to know my dad’s body is over there by the wall.”
    I nodded and linked my arm with hers, wanting to reassure her with touch, even though I knew she wasn’t usually a toucher. “I totally understand what you mean. When my mom died it hadn’t mattered that she’d been mean to me for years, and picked the step-loser over me. All that mattered was that I’d lost my mom.”
    “She was hugging me while she cried,” Aphrodite said, sounding young and broken. “I can’t remember the last time she hugged me.”
    I couldn’t think of anything to say in response to that, so I just stood there with Aphrodite, holding tightly to her, and listening to her mom’s sobs while the sound of police sirens got closer and closer.
    I was glad to see Detective Marx again, even though the circumstances were what Stark later called a complete and total cat herd. Marx, at least, wasn’t a vampyre-hating human. He had nice brown eyes, and I remembered how they lit up when he’d told me about his twin sister and how even after she’d been Marked and gone through the Change, the two of them had still kept in contact. It was nice to know that at least one cop in Tulsa wasn’t going to open the doors to a human lynch mob because Stark’s red vamp mojo ran out super fast, and Aphrodite’s mom was definitely in a pro-lynch mob state of mind.
    “Arrest them!” Mrs. LaFont hurled the words at the detective. “Arrest all of them! A vampyre did this, and a vampyre should pay for it.”
    “Ma’am, whoever is responsible should pay for this crime, which is why I’m going to thoroughly and carefully investigate your husband’s murder. I will find who did this. I give you my word on it. But I cannot, and will not, arrest every vampyre at this school.”
    “Thank you, Detective. As High Priestess here I agree with and appreciate your professionalism, as well as your integrity.” I was super relieved to hear Thanatos’s authoritative voice. “Please be assured we will cooperate fully with your investigation. We, too, want the mayor’s killer to be found and brought to justice, as we do not believe a vampyre to be responsible for this tragedy.”
    “My husband’s throat was ripped out and his blood was sucked from his body! That is a vampyre attack.” Mrs. LaFont’s eyes slitted at Thanatos. Her voice was filled with venom.
    “It certainly looks like a vampyre attack,” Thanatos agreed. “Which is the first reason to doubt that a vampyre committed this crime. Why would a vampyre kill the mayor of Tulsa at the House of Night during one of our open houses, and leave his body at our front gate to be discovered by humans as well as vampyres? It makes no sense.”
    “You prey on humans.
That
makes no sense!”
    “Ladies, please, arguing does not help,” Detective Marx tried to intercede, but Mrs. LaFont ignored him.
    “Do you deny that you are intimately allied with Death?” She snapped the question at Thanatos.
    “My Goddess-given affinity is, indeed, an affinity for death. I have a gift that enables me to help the spirits of the dead find their way to the Otherworld.”
    “Is that what you were doing with my husband? Seducing and trapping him? Helping him find his way to a fictitious vampyre otherworld?” Her voice got louder and louder with each question she hurled at Thanatos.
    “Of course not, Mrs. LaFont. I had nothing to do with your husband’s death.” Thanatos turned to Detective Marx. “You may question any of the people who were at the open house tonight. I was always in view of the public. Even when tragedy struck and one of our fledglings rejected the Change and died, I remained accessible to our faculty and our students.”
    “A fledgling died here tonight as well?” the detective asked.
    Thanatos nodded. “She will be missed.”
    “Why are you asking her about the fledgling? Everyone knows they could drop dead at any second. That’s normal for their kind. My husband was
killed by a vampyre.
That is not normal!”
    “If a vampyre did kill my father, I can promise you that vampyre isn’t part of this school!” Aphrodite suddenly said. Then, when everyone was staring at her, she bit her lip and looked away uncomfortably.
    “Are you saying you know who killed your father?” Aphrodite’s mom sounded like she was entering Crazy Town again.
    Aphrodite swallowed hard and then surprised me by blurting: “The only vampyre I know who would do something like this is