P.C. Cast - Awakened

Kramisha raised her brows. “Okay, first, don’t say ‘girlfriend.’ You sound like that chick in that old movie, Clueless. The one the blonde and Stacey Dash reformed into somethin’ popular. Not. Good. Second, you can’t run off right now ’cause I got to give you—”

“Kramisha!” Shaking her head, Stevie Rae backed away from the purple sheet of paper Kramisha had started to hand to her. “I am just one person! I cannot handle anythin’ else right now other than the shit storm I’m already caught in—excuse my French. But you gotta keep your future-telling poems to yourself. At least till Z gets here, gets settled, and helps me be sure Damien isn’t gonna hurl himself off the top of the closest high building.”

Kramisha gave her a narrowed-eye look. “Too bad you ain’t just one person.”

“What in the Sam Hill do you mean? ’Course I’m one person. Jeeze Louise, I wish there was more than one of me. Then I could keep an eye on Damien, be sure Dragon doesn’t go totally postal, pick up Zoey from the dang airport on time and figure out what’s goin’ on with her, get some dang thing to eat, and start to deal with the fact that Neferet is up to something of massive cat-herding proportions tonight at Jack’s funeral. Oh, and maybe one of the me’s could take a long bubble bath and listen to my Kenny Chesney while I read the end of A Night to Remember. ”

“ A Night to Remember ? You mean that Titanic story I read last year in Lit class?”

“Yeah. We’d just started it when I died and un-died, so I never got to finish it. I kinda liked it.”

“Here. I’ll help ya out. THE SHIP SINKS. THEY DIE. The end. Now can we please move on to somethin’ more important?” She lifted the piece of purple paper again.

“Yes, hateful, I do know what happens, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good story.” Stevie Rae tucked an annoying blond curl behind her ear. “You say I don’t tell good lies? Okay, here’s the truth. My mama would say I got too dang much on my plate right now to get even one more forkful of chicken-fried stress, so let’s lay off the poem stuff for a while.”

Totally surprising Stevie Rae, Kramisha took a big step into her personal space, and then grabbed her by the shoulders. Looking straight into her eyes, she said, “You ain’t just one person. You a High Priestess. A red High Priestess. The only one they is. That means you gotta deal with stress. Lots of it. ’Specially right now when Neferet is creatin’ all kinds of crazy messes.”

“I know that, but—”

Kramisha squeezed her shoulders hard, and cut in saying, “Jack is dead. They’s no tellin’ who’s next.” Then the Poet Laureate blinked a couple of times, her smooth brown brow furrowing, leaned forward, and took a giant noisy sniff of the air right next to Stevie Rae’s face.

Stevie Rae pulled out of her vise grip and stepped backward. “Are you sniffing me?”

“Yes. You smell weird. I noticed it before. When you was in the hospital.”

“So?”

Kramisha studied her. “So, it reminds me of somethin’.”

“Your mom?” Stevie Rae said with forced nonchalance.

“Don’t even go there. And while I’m thinkin’ a’ it, where is you goin’?”

“I’m supposed to be helping Aphrodite get stuff to feed Damien’s cat and Duchess. Then I have to pick up Z from the airport and let her know that Neferet has decided to step aside and let her light Jack’s funeral pyre. Tonight.”

“Yeah, we all heard ’bout that. It don’t seem right to me.”

“Zoey lighting Jack’s fire?”

“No, Neferet lettin’ her.” Kramisha scratched her head and her yellow wig moved from side to side. “So, here’s the thing: let Aphrodite take care of the Damien stuff right now. You need to go out there”—she paused and waved one long, gold-fingernailed hand vaguely at the trees that ringed the House of Night campus—“and do that communing-with-the-earth-green-glowy-thing you do. Again.”

“Kramisha, I don’t have time to do that.”

“I ain’t done yet. You need to recharge your business before all hell breaks loose. See, I’m not real sure Zoey is gonna be up for what might be happenin’ tonight.”

Instead of brushing Kramisha and her bossy self aside, Stevie Rae hesitated and thought about what she was saying. “You could be right,” she said slowly.

“She don’t want to come back. You know that, right?” Kramisha said.

Stevie Rae hitched her shoulders. “Well, would you? She’s been through a lot.”

“I don’t think I would, that’s why I’m sayin’ this to you, ’cause I do understand. But Zoey ain’t the only one of us who’s been through a lot lately. Some of us is still goin’ through a lot. We all have to learn to take care of our business and deal.”

“Hey, she’s comin’ back—she is dealing,” Stevie Rae said.

“I ain’t just talkin’ ’bout Zoey.” Kramisha folded the purple piece of notebook paper in half and handed it to Stevie Rae, who took it reluctantly; when she sighed and started to unfold it, Kramisha shook her head. “You don’t need to read it in front a’ me.” Stevie Rae looked up at the Poet Laureate with a question mark on her face. “Look, right now I’m gonna talk to you like a Poet Laureate to her High Priestess, so you need to listen up. Take this poem and go out to the trees. Read it there. Think about it real good. Whatever it is you have goin’ on, you need to make a change. This is the third serious warnin’ I’ve got ’bout you. Stop ignorin’ the truth, Stevie Rae, ’cause what you do don’t just affect yourself. Are you hearin’ me?”

Stevie Rae drew in a deep breath. “I’m hearing you.”

“Good. Go on now.” Kramisha started to walk into the dorm.

“Hey, would you explain to Aphrodite that I had somethin’ to do, so I’m not comin’ in?”

Kramisha looked over her shoulder at Stevie Rae. “Yeah, but you’ll owe me dinner at Red Lobster.”

“Yeah, okay. I like the Loobster,” Stevie Rae said.

“I’m gonna order anything I want.”

“Of course you will,” Stevie Rae muttered, sighed again, and headed for the trees.

Stevie Rae wasn’t entirely sure what the poem meant, but she was sure Kramisha was right—she needed to stop ignoring the truth and make a change. The hard part was, she wasn’t sure she could find the truth anymore, let alone know how to change stuff. She looked down at the poem. Her night vision was so good she didn’t even have to move out from under the shadows beneath the old pin oaks that framed the Utica Street side of the campus and the side road that led to the entrance of the school.

“Haiku is always so dang confusin’,” she muttered as she reread the three-line poem again:

You must tell your heart

The cloak of secrets smothers

Freedom: his to choose

It was about Rephaim. And her. Again. Stevie Rae plopped her butt down at the base of the big tree and let her back rest against its rough bark, taking comfort from the sense of strength the oak exuded. I’m supposed to tell my heart, but what do I tell it? And I know keeping this secret is smothering me, but there’s no one I can tell about Rephaim. Freedom is his to choose? Hell yeah, it is, but his daddy has such a hard grip on him that he can’t see that.

Stevie Rae thought how ironic it was that an ancient immortal and his half-bird, half-immortal son had what was basically an old-school version of the same abusive daddy/son relationship a zillion other kids she knew had with their jerk daddies. Kalona had been treating him like a slave and making him believe messed-up stuff about himself for so long that Rephaim didn’t even realize how wrong it was.