Revealed

hateful words with more poison. “You always know when it is dawn. You could stay until just before the sun rises, and then leave. I’ll wait the rest of the time with her. Erin would appreciate it.”
    “I thought you said I was just the last in a long list of anybodies,” he said.
    “I shouldn’t have said that—it was mean of me, and it’s not right to fight over Erin’s pyre. Dallas, I’m sorry.”
    His laugh was sarcastic. “You’re not sorry, you’re
weak.
Erin knew that when she left you. Just like I knew it when I left Stevie Rae.”
    “You didn’t leave Stevie Rae. Stevie Rae fell in love with Rephaim. She left you, and you couldn’t handle it. That’s when you turned to Darkness, and you’re still turned there.”
    “Fuck Stevie Rae! Fuck all of you! Your friends are the reason Erin’s dead!” Dallas yelled, taking a threatening step toward her.
    Shaunee lifted one hand. A wall of heat channeled through her, crackling between them. Shielding his face with his arm, Dallas staggered away. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done! You’ll all pay for what you’ve done!”
Stark
    “That kid is gonna be hurtin’ for certain tomorrow,” Stark said as he came into Zoey’s old dorm room. There were only ten minutes or so until dawn, and he felt dragged to the ground by weariness deep within him.
    “That took you forever. I was really getting worried you wouldn’t be back before sunrise,” Zoey said, sitting up in bed and putting down the book she’d been reading.
    “Yeah, sorry. I couldn’t just leave him all messed up like that.” He smiled at Z and went over to the sink. “Is Shaunee okay?”
    Zoey looked annoyed at the question. “Yeah, she seems fine. Well, she’s sad and all, but that’s normal. She’s staying with the pyre until after the sun rises. I guess Dallas came by and made some kind of stupid scene, which is totally like him, but Shaunee handled it.”
    “You didn’t think you needed to stay with her?”
    “Shaunee? At the pyre?” Zoey frowned at him.
    “Yeah. You are her High Priestess.”
    “Well, technically, as long as we’re stuck here at the House of Night, Thanatos is her High Priestess, not me. And Shaunee said she told Thanatos she wanted to stay by the pyre by herself. Thanatos respected her wishes—I figured I should, too. Do you have a problem with that?”
    Stark cupped water in his hands, rinsing soap out of his face while he tried to figure out how to talk to Z. She’d been so damn touchy since the whole thing on the balcony had happened showing that Aurox was Heath and Heath was Aurox. It made him feel like he was living with a porcupine!
    “No,” he finally said. “No problem with it at all. Z, I wasn’t trying to fight with you. I just wanted to know about Shaunee.”
    “Erin’s funeral’s over. Shaunee’s fine. That’s about it. I want to know what really happened with Aurox and those human boys. I couldn’t tell what the hell Heath was talking about.”
    Stark’s stomach tightened. “You mean Aurox.”
    “Yeah, Aurox.” Zoey frowned. “That’s what I said. So, what’s going on?”
    Stark was too tired to argue with her, so he ignored her Freudian slip, even though it made his heart hurt. “Two guys somehow found a hole in the school’s wall—not very far from here, actually. They were drinking and looking for hot vampyres.” That’s about it.” He repeated her words, pulled his shirt off, and started to brush his teeth.
    “Stark, seriously? You’re leaving out massive details.”
    He shrugged, and spoke through the toothbrush, hoping she’d get the clue and stop with the interrogation. “No big deal. I used my red vamp superpowers to make them believe I was a cop and that they got lucky. I didn’t haul them to jail, charge them with public intoxication, and call their parents. And they think the House of Night is on my patrol, so I’ll be looking for them every night from here on out, which means they won’t be back.”
    “Well, that’s good.”
    She didn’t say anything else for as long as it took him to finish brushing his teeth and get in bed, but he knew from the way she was chewing her lip and scrunching her forehead that she had lots more to say. Plus, he could feel her tension. He could always feel her tension. He realized he should rub her shoulders and try to get her to relax, but he couldn’t quite get past the
reason
for her tension.
    Aurox was Heath. Zoey loved Heath.
    And that hurt