Revealed

remembered how her face had burned with embarrassment and anger, until Chloe had looked up into her eyes.
    Then Neferet’s world had changed. She relived the thrill of it—of
knowing
what was within the cat’s mind. She didn’t hear actual words—cats don’t think in words. She heard emotions, and the emotions told stories. Chloe beamed mischief. Her belly was full and warm and she was sleepy. But most important, the cat looked into her eyes with love and loyalty and joy, and chose Neferet as her own for life.
    Pandeia, longtime High Priestess in St. Louis, had not called her a simpleton. Nor had she mocked Neferet when the young fledgling had gone to her, holding a sleeping Chloe, and describing with breathless wonder the dream images she could pull from the little feline’s mind.
    “And, High Priestess, I can touch your cat’s mind, too!” Neferet had gushed, pointing to the vampyre’s plump calico lazing on the windowsill. “She is happy, very happy, because she is pregnant!”
    The High Priestess’s smile had almost outshined the cook’s mocking. “Dear Neferet, Nyx has granted you a wonderful affinity, a special attachment to cats, the animal most closely associated with our Goddess. Nyx must value you highly to award you such a gift.”
    The glorious day faded and Neferet’s experience changed. Months passed as quickly as the Tsi Sgili’s rapid heartbeat.
    She was still a fledgling, but older. Her council was valued—first because of her connection to the felines that roamed freely at the House of Night as companions of the fledglings and vampyres. Then because though her affinity had begun with cats, soon it had become apparent that Neferet was able to touch people’s minds almost as easily as she did cats’.
    Images lifted from the past, one after another, dizzying in their speed:
    “Neferet, it would be helpful if you came to town with me. I need to know if the town is growing restless again at the thought of our full moon rituals,” her High Priestess had asked.
    She had gone with Pandeia, opening herself to the onslaught of fear and hatred and envy that the local humans directed at the High Priestess, though they either simpered and tipped their hats to her, or averted their eyes and pretended not to see her.
    Neferet began to loathe going to town.
    “Neferet, the human Consort of our new professor seems sad; it would be helpful if you could tell me if he wishes to leave, but is fearful to ask,” Pandeia had asked at another time.
    Neferet had slipped within the man’s mind. The human hadn’t been sad. He had been unfaithful to his vampyre, and had been sneaking away during the daylight hours while she slept to gamble and whore on riverboats.
    The professor had sent him away and quickly forgotten him, moving on to another, more loyal Consort within a fortnight.
    But Neferet had found it hard to forget what she had touched within the man’s mind. Lust and envy—greed and desire. It had sickened her.
    Seeing how much their High Priestess valued her counsel, others came to her, always seeking the answers hidden beneath the masks of others.
    As Neferet relived the experiences, she felt the resentment that had begun within her then. They were all so needy! Even the High Priestess.
    “Neferet, tell me if that Son of Erebus Warrior thinks I’m truly beautiful…”
    “Neferet, I want to know if my roommate is telling me the truth about…”
    “Neferet, tell me…”
    “Neferet, I want…”
    “Neferet, why does…?”
    The Tsi Sgili shivered, though still she did not awake as experience after experience, memory after memory, assaulted her so rapidly that they bled into one another, becoming a collage of need and greed, desire and betrayal, lies and lust.
    Darkness saved her. As when she had been Emily, she was drawn to the night-blooming gardens of Tower Grove. The most shadowy places in her House of Night were familiar friends to her. There she could disappear, calling the night to her, so that others looked right over and past her, and never seeing…
    Chloe understood. She was intelligent and precocious, and no matter what insipid thought Neferet had overheard, she found a way to make her smile. She whispered to the cat the feelings she was learning never to say aloud—never to show to other fledglings—never, ever to reveal to any vampyre.
    “I hate it when Pandeia asks me to listen in to a human’s mind, especially a male human,” young Neferet had told her purring