Tempted

fledglings.”
    “I’m their High Priestess,” she said quietly, pleading with her eyes for me to understand. “They’re my responsibility. While you’re gone, before you have to go down there and do something awful to them, I can try once more to reach them—to get them to turn back to their humanity.”
    “Stevie Rae—”
    “Zoey! Listen to me! It’s a
choice
. I made the right one. Stark made the right one. The kids here are all on the right path, too, and we used to be bad. Like you said, you know how horrible it used to be for us, but that’s changed. We’re different now because we’re choosing to be different. I can’t help believing that those other kids can choose good, too. Just let me try.”
    “I don’t know. What if they hurt you?”
    Stevie Rae laughed, and her short blond curls bounced around her shoulders. “Ah, heck, Z! They can’t hurt me. They’re
inside
the earth. If they try anything with me I can call on my element to kick their butts, and they know it.”
    “Maybe they were meant to die, and that’s why they can’t get their humanity back,” I said softly.
    “I can’t believe that, at least not yet.” Stevie Rae went to her old bed and sat across from me, just like she used to before our world started to explode around us. “I want to go with you. I really do. Heck, Z, you’re in more danger than I am! But I have to do the right thing, andthat’s to try to reach those other kids and give them one more chance. Do you understand?”
    “Yeah, I do. It’s just that I’ve really missed you and I wish you were coming with me.”
    Tears filled Stevie Rae’s eyes. “I’ve missed you, too, Z. It’s been horrible keeping stuff from you. I was just so scared you wouldn’t understand.”
    “I know what it’s like to keep secrets. It sucks.”
    “Seriously, that’s an understatement,” she said. “We’re still best friends, right?”
    “We’ll always be best friends,” I said.
    Grinning, she launched herself at me and we hugged so hard that Nala woke up, grumbling at us like she was someone’s mom.
    Heath chose that instant to burst back into the room. Arms filled with food, he stopped and stared. “Yes! I have died and gone to girl-on-girl heaven!”
    “Ohmygoddess!” I said.
    “Heath, you are nasty as roadkill—stinky, disgusting, middle-of-the-summer-opossum roadkill.”
    “Eesh, that’s disgusting,” I said.
    “Well, that’s your boyfriend.”
    “But I brought food,” he said.
    “Fine, you’re forgiven,” I said.
    “Hey, just so you know, I’m sleepin’ right here in my old bed. So there won’t be any groping and making out going on because I’m not cool with that.” Stevie Rae was talking to Heath, but I answered.
    “Uh, I have two words for girls who make out with their boyfriends with other girls in the room: Not okay. So you don’t need to worry about that stuff going on over here.” I patted my bed. “Heath is going to be good because we already talked about how our relationship is based on more than sex. Right, Heath?”
    Stevie Rae and I skewered him with our eyes.
    “Right. Sad and tragic, but right,” he admitted reluctantly.
    “Good. Let’s eat, then I’ll help Z pack, and then we can get some sleep. Finally,” Stevie Rae said.

    I was just drifting off to sleep, snugly curled into Heath’s strong, familiar arms when it hit me:
Heath really couldn’t come with us
.
    “Heath,” I whispered. “We gotta talk.”
    “Changing your mind about that no-making-out thing?” he whispered back.
    I elbowed him.
    “Ow, what?” he said.
    “I don’t want you to get mad, but you really can’t go with me to Italy.”
    “The hell I can’t.”
    “Your parents will never let you miss that much school.”
    “We’re on winter break.”
    “No, you
were
on ice storm break. The storm’s clearing up. You’ll be back at school in a day or so,” I said.
    “Then I’ll make up my homework when I get back.”
    I tried a different tactic. “You’ve gotta stay here and focus on your grades. It’s your last semester before you go to college. If you mess up your grades now, you mess up your scholarship.”
    “Look, this is simple. Broken Arrow has that online grade book thing, remember?”
    “How could I forget something as totally annoying as my parental units being able to gawk at my grades and assignments every single day?” Then I clamped my mouth shut because I realized what I’d said.
    “See! I can get my