P.C. Casr: Chosen

I shrugged. "I've been practicing. It's really just concentration and control. You'd know that if you'd been practicing, too."

A flash of pain crossed Stevie Rae's gaunt face so quickly that I wondered if I'd really seen or just imagined it. "The elements have nothing to do with me now."

"That's crap, Stevie Rae. You have an affinity for earth. You had it before you died, or whatever," I faltered over how awkward it was to be talking to undead dead Stevie Rae about being dead. "That kind of thing just doesn't go away. Plus, remember the tunnels? You still had the affinity then."

Stevie Rae shook her head and her short blond curls, the ones that weren't all nappy and dirty, bounced, reminding me of how she used to look. "It's gone. Whatever I once had died with the part of me that was human. You need to accept it and move on. I have."

"I'll never accept it. You're my best friend. I'm not going to move on."

Suddenly Stevie Rae hissed a nasty, feral sound, and her eyes blazed blood red. "Do I look like your best friend?"

I ignored the way my heart was beating around inside my chest. She was right. What she had become was absolutely not like the Stevie Rae I'd known. But I wouldn't believe that she was all the way gone. I'd seen glimpses of my best friend in the tunnels and that meant I couldn't give up on her. I felt like crying, but instead I pulled myself together and forced my voice to sound normal.

"Well, hell no, you don't look like Stevie Rae. How long has it been since you've washed your hair? And what are you wearing?" I pointed at the sweat pants and oversized shirt that were covered by a long, nastily stained black trench coat like the ones those freaky goth kids like to wear even when it's a hundred degrees outside. "I wouldn't look like me if I was dressed like that either." I sighed and took a couple steps closer to her. "Why don't you just come with me? I'll sneak you back into the dorm. It'll be easy— practically no one's there. Neferet's not there," I added, and then hurried on (I doubted if either of us wanted to talk about Neferet just then—hell, if ever). "Most the teachers are on winter break and the kids are taking short trips to see their families. Absolutely nothing is going on. We won't even be bothered by Damien and the Twins and Erik 'cause they're pissed at me. So you can take a long, soapy shower, and I'll get you some real clothes, then we can talk." I was looking into her eyes, so I saw the longing that filled them. It lasted only an instant, but I knew it had been there. Then she looked quickly away.

"I can't come with you. I have to feed."

"That's no problem. I'll get you something to eat from the dorm kitchen. Hey, I'll bet I can find a bowl of Lucky Charms," I smiled. "Remember, they're magically delicious—and have absolutely no nutritional value at all."

"Like Count Chocula does?"

My smiled widened into a relieved grin as Stevie Rae took up the thread of our old argument about which of our personal favorite breakfast cereals was the best. "Count Chocula has coco-flavored goodness. Coco is a plant. It's healthy."

Stevie Rae's eyes met mine. Hers weren't glowing red anymore, and she also wasn't trying to hide the tears that were filling them and flowing down her cheeks. I automatically moved to hug her, but she stepped back.

"No! I don't want you to touch me, Zoey. I'm not who I was. I'm dirty and disgusting."

"Then come back to the school with me and wash up!" I pleaded. "We'll figure this out—I promise."

Stevie Rae shook her head sadly and wiped at her eyes. "There's no figuring this out. When I said that I'm dirty and disgusting I didn't mean on the outside. What you see on the outside of me isn't half as nasty as what I'm really like on the inside. Zoey, I have to feed. That's not eating cereal or sandwiches and drinking brown pop. I have to have blood. Human blood. If I don't—" She paused and I saw a terrible shudder move through her body. "If I don't, the pain is a gnawing, burning hunger that I can't stand. And you need to understand that I want to feed. I want to tear open human throats and drink that warm blood so filled with terror and anger and pain that it makes me dizzy." She paused again, this time breathing heavily.

"You can't really want to kill people, Stevie Rae."

"You're wrong. I do."

"You say that, but I know there are still parts of my best friend inside you, and Stevie Rae wouldn't be comfortable spanking a puppy, let alone killing someone." I hurried on when she opened her mouth to disagree with me. "What if I can get you human blood so that you don't have to kill anyone?"

In that horrid emotionless tone she said, "I like the kill."

"Do you also like to be filthy and smelly and disgusting-looking?" I snapped.

"I don't care about how I look anymore."

"Really? What if I said I could get you a pair of Roper jeans, cowboy boots, and a nice long-sleeved, tuck-in shirt that is very crisply ironed?" I saw the flicker in her eyes and knew I'd managed to touch the old Stevie Rae. My mind rushed around, trying to come up with the right thing to say while I still had some piece of her listening. "So here's the deal. Meet me tomorrow at midnight—no, wait. Tomorrow's Saturday. No way things will be settled down enough by midnight for me to sneak out. So make it three a.m. at the gazebo on the Philbrook grounds." I paused for a second to grin at her. "You remember the place, right?" Of course I knew she definitely remembered where I meant. She'd been there with me before, only that night she'd been trying to save me, and not the other way around.

"Yes. I remember." She clipped the word in that same cold, flat voice.

"Okay, so meet me there. I'll have your outfit with me and I'll also have blood. You can eat, or drink, or whatever, and change your clothes. Then we can start to figure this out." I added to myself that I'd also have soap and shampoo and do some conjuring of water so the girl could wash up. Eesh, she smelled as terrible as she looked. "Okay?"

"There's really no point."

"Can you please let me decide that for myself? Plus, I haven't told you the horrors of my birthday yet. Grandma and I had a nightmare scene with my mom and step-loser. Grandma called the step-loser a turd monkey."

A laugh burst out of Stevie Rae that sounded so much like her old self that my vision got all blurry with the tears I had to frantically blink away.

"Please come," I said, my voice rough with emotions. "I've missed you so much."

"I'll come," Stevie Rae said. "But you'll be sorry."

On that not-so-positive note, Stevie Rae whirled around and then dashed down the alley, disappearing into its dark stinkyness. Much more slowly, I got in my Bug. I was sad and restless and had way too much thinking to do to head straight back to the school, so instead I drove to the twenty-four-hour IHOP that was in south Tulsa on Seventy-first Street, ordered a big chocolate milk shake and a stack of chocolate-chip pancakes, and did my thinking while I did some serious stress eating.

I guess it had gone okay with Stevie Rae. I mean, she had agreed to meet me tomorrow. And she hadn't tried to bite me, which was a plus. Of course, the whole trying-to-eat-the-street-person was highly disturbing, as was the totally gross way she looked and smelled. But underneath all of that hateful crazy undead girl exterior I swear I could still sense my Stevie Rae, my best friend. I was going to hold tight to that and see if I could coax her back into the light. Figuratively speaking anyway. I think the actual light bothers her even more than it bothers me or adult vamps. Which figured. The gross undead dead kids were definitely vamp stereotypes. I wondered if she'd burst into flame if sunlight touched her. Crap. That would definitely be bad, especially since we're meeting at 3:00 a.m., which was only a couple hours before dawn. Crap again.