P.C. Cast - Burned

Zoey’s friends were clustered around one big table that was overflowing with books, pop cans, crumpled bags of chips, and one humongous tub full of red licorice whips. Stark thought they look tired but totally wired on sugar and caffeine. As he and Aphrodite walked up, Jack was holding up a large leather book and pointing to an illustration.

“Check it out—this is a copy of a painting of a Greek High Priestess named Calliope. It says she was also the Poet Laureate after Sappho. Doesn’t she look exactly like Cher?”

“Wow, that’s insane. She does look just like young Cher,” Erin said.

“Yeah, before she started wearing those white wigs. What the hell’s up with that?” Shaunee said.

Damien gave the Twins a look . “There is nothing wrong with Cher. Absolutely. Nothing.”

“Uh-oh,” Shaunee said.

“Stepped on a gay nerve,” Erin agreed.

“I had a Cher Barbie doll. I loved that doll,” Jack said.

“Barbies, herd of nerd? Seriously? You’re supposed to be saving Z, remember?” Aphrodite said, shaking her head in disgust and curling up her lip at the licorice whips.

“We’ve been at it all day. We’re just taking a little break. Thanatos and Darius went out for more food,” Damien said. “We have made some headway, but I’ll wait until they get back to report everything.” He waved at Stark, and his “hi” was echoed by the other kids.

“Yeah, don’t be so judgmental, Aphrodite. We’ve been working hard, you’ll see.”

“You’re talking about dolls,” Aphrodite said.

“ Barbies ,” Jack corrected her. “And just for a second. Plus, Barbies are cool and an important part of American culture.” He nodded in emphasis and clutched the “Cher” portrait to his chest. “Especially celebrity Barbies.”

“Celebrity Barbies would only be important if they had interesting accoutrements you could buy with them,” Aphrodite said.

“Accoutre-whats?” Shaunee said.

“You sound like you swallowed a French guy and are trying to spit him out,” Erin said, and the Twins giggled.

“Left and right brain—listen up. Interesting accoutrements equals cool stuff, like unusual accessories,” Aphrodite said, picking delicately at a chip.

“Okay, if you don’t know anything about Barbies, your mother seriously hated you,” Erin said.

“Not that we don’t understand that,” Shaunee added.

“ ’Cause everyone who even had one Barbie knows you can buy stuff for them,” Erin finished.

“Yeah, cool stuff,” Jack agreed.

“Not cool by my definition,” Aphrodite said with a superior smirk.

“What’s cool by your definition?” Jack asked, making Shaunee and Erin groan.

“Well, since you asked—I’d say it would be cool if Barbie made a Barbra Streisand doll, but you’d have to buy her fingernails and nose separately. And her fake nails would come in lots of different color choices.”

There was a shocked silence, and then Jack, sounding awed, whispered, “That would be cool.”

Aphrodite looked smug. “And how about a bald Britney Spears doll that had extras like an umbrella, a fat suit, weird wigs, and, of course, optional panties.”

“Eww,” Jack said, and then giggled. “Yeah, and a Paris Hilton doll that had an optional brain.”

Aphrodite raised her brow at him. “Don’t go all crazy. There are some things even Paris Hilton can’t buy.”

Stark stood there, dumbfounded, and when they all burst into giggles, he thought his brain was going to explode.

“What the hell is wrong with all of you?” he yelled at them. “How can you laugh and joke like this? You’re focusing on toys when Zoey is days away from dying!”

Into the shocked silence, Thanatos’s voice sounded abnormally loud. “No, Warrior. They’re not focusing on toys. They’re focusing on life and being among the living.” The vampyre stepped from the doorway, where she and Darius had been silently observing the kids. Darius followed her, placing a tray filled with sandwiches and fruit in the middle of the table. He then joined Aphrodite’s side of the wooden bench. “And take it from someone who knows more than a little about death—focusing on life is what you should do if you want to keep drawing breath in this world.”

Damien cleared his voice, calling Stark’s glare to him. Unruffled, the fledgling met his eyes, and said, “Yeah, that’s just one of the things we learned from all the studying we’ve been doing.”

“While you were sleeping ,” Shaunee murmured.

“And we weren’t ,” Erin added.

“So, what we found out from our research,” Damien broke in before Stark could say anything to the Twins, “is that whenever a High Priestess suffered such a shock that her soul shattered, her Warrior didn’t seem to be able to stay alive.”

Barbies and bickering Twins forgotten, Stark’s face was a question mark as he stared at Damien and tried to make sense of what he was hearing. “Do you mean the Warriors all dropped dead?”

“In a way,” Damien said.

“Some of them killed themselves so that they knew they could follow their High Priestesses to the Otherworld and continue to protect them there,” Thanatos took up the explanation.

“But it didn’t work because none of the High Priestesses returned, right?” Stark said.

“Correct. What we know from Priestesses who, through their affinity for spirit, have journeyed to the Otherworld is that those lost High Priestesses couldn’t bear the death of their Warriors. Some of them were able to heal their souls in the Otherworld, but they chose to remain there with their Warriors.”

“Some of them healed,” Stark said slowly. “What happened to the High Priestesses who didn’t?”

Zoey’s friends shifted uncomfortably, but Thanatos’s voice remained steady. “As you learned yesterday, if a soul remains shattered, the person becomes Caoinic Shi’, a being that will never rest.”

“It’s like a zombie, without the eating people part,” Jack said softly and then shuddered.

“That can’t happen to Zoey,” Stark said. He’d sworn to protect Zoey, and if he had to, he would follow that Oath into the Otherworld to be sure she didn’t become some kind of horrible zombie thing.

“But even though the end result was the same, not all of the Warriors killed themselves to follow their High Priestesses,” Damien said.

“Tell me about the others,” Stark said. Unable to sit, he paced back and forth in front of the table.

“Well, it was pretty obvious that no Warrior or High Priestess returned when the Warrior killed himself, so we found records of Warriors who had done lots of different things to try to get themselves into the Otherworld,” Damien said.

“Some of them were crazy—like one who starved himself until he was delirious, then he kinda left his body,” Jack said.

“He died,” Shaunee said.

“Yeah, the story was gross. He did lots of screaming and was hallucinating and stuff about his High Priestess and what she was going through before he actually croaked,” Erin said.

“You. Are. Not. Helping,” Aphrodite told them.

“Some of the Warriors did drugs to put themselves in a trancelike state, and they actually managed to get their spirits to leave this world,” Damien continued, while the Twins rolled their eyes at Aphrodite. “But they couldn’t enter the Otherworld. We know because they came back to their bodies long enough to tell witnesses that they’d failed.” Damien stopped there, glancing at Thanatos.

She took up the story. “Then the Warriors died. Each of them.”

“Failing to protect their High Priestesses killed them,” Stark said, his voice completely expressionless.