Hidden (House of Night Novels) (16 page)

He held me out at arm’s length, looking up and down my body like he was checking for wounds. “What happened? Why are you freaked and running like a crazy person?”

I frowned at him. “I’m not a crazy person.”

“Well, you were running like one. And inside here”—he pressed a finger against my chest over my quieting heart—“you were definitely feeling whacked.”

“Old magick.”

His eyes widened. “The bull?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I looked through the Seer Stone at the tree. You know, the
tree,
by the east wall.”

“Why in the hell would you do that?”

“Because Thanatos told me I needed to practice with the stupid Seer Stone in case it could somehow be used to fight Neferet.”

“So you saw something that came after you?”

“Well, no. Yes. Kinda. I saw some creepy things inside something that looked like a tornado whirlpooling up from the middle of the tree. Stark, they were seriously the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen. And they smelled bad. Really, really bad. Actually, they almost made me puke. I did gag, which was when they noticed me, but before they could do anything this bright light zapped them.” I paused, thinking through my panic. “Actually, the zapping light was kinda like Sookie’s fairy-light-thing. Do you think there’s any chance I’m a fairy?”

“No, Z. Focus.
True Blood
is fiction. This is the real world. What happened after the zapping light?”

“I don’t know. I ran.” I glanced around us and noticed that I’d run all the way along the inside of the wall and I was almost at the stables. “I ran a really long way.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Except that you grabbed me. Goddess, I thought I was having a heart attack.”

“So you were scared. That’s it?”

I frowned at him again. His voice was kind, but his expression was strained, like he was trying to choose between shaking me, or kissing me. “Well,” I said slowly. “Yeah, but I was
really
scared.”

His grip on my shoulders turned into a giant, squashing bear hug. I felt his body relax. He let out a long breath that ended up being a chuckle. “You scared the bejezzus out of me, Z.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled against his chest, wrapping my arms around him again and squeezing him back. “Thanks for finding me and being totally ready to save me.”

“You don’t have to say sorry. I’m your Warrior—your Guardian—it’s my job to save you. Even though you’re usually pretty good at saving yourself.”

I leaned back so I could see his eyes. “I’m a job?”

His lips tilted up in his cocky, half grin. “Full time. Totally. No benefits and no days off, either.”

“Seriously?”

“Okay, no.” His cocky grin got wider. “I do remember getting some sick days when an arrow burned me and a few more when a crazy Scotsman cut me up. So, I take that back. I get benefits. They’re just crappy ones.”

“You’re so fired!” I would’ve smacked him, but I didn’t want to take my arms away from around his shoulders.

“You can’t fire me. I signed up for life.” Stark’s smile faded from his lips, but remained in his eyes. “You’re my Priestess, my Queen,
mo bann ri
. I’ll never leave you. I’ll always protect you. I love you, Zoey Redbird.” He bent and kissed me so tenderly that I felt the truth of his commitment deep in my soul.

When his lips finally left mine I looked up at him. “I love you, too,” I said. “And you know you don’t have to be jealous of a dead guy, right?”

He touched my cheek. “Right. Sorry ’bout that last night.”

“That’s okay. And, um, speaking of—there’s something you need to know.”

“What?”

I took a big breath and blurted, “Last night at the end of the ritual I looked through the Seer Stone at Aurox and I saw Heath. That’s why I didn’t let you and Darius hurt him.”

I felt the tension level in Stark’s body shoot back up to the Danger! Red Alert! range.

“Is that why you were calling Heath in your sleep last night?” He sounded more hurt than pissed.

“No. Yes. I don’t know! I was telling you the truth. I don’t remember what I was dreaming, but it makes sense that Heath was on my mind after seeing him when I looked at Aurox.”

“That bull thing is
not
Heath. How can you even think that?”

“It’s not that I’m thinking it. It’s what I
saw
.”

“Zoey, look, there has to be an explanation for what you saw.” He took a step back. My arms slid down from around his shoulders.

“That’s why Thanatos wants me to practice looking through the Seer Stone, so I can figure out how it works.” I felt cold and alone without his arms around me. “Stark, I’m sorry. I didn’t
want
to see Heath in Aurox. I don’t want to see or say or do anything that would hurt you. Ever.” I was blinking hard, trying to keep from bursting into tears.

Stark ran his hand through his hair. “Z, please don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” I said, and then hiccupped a little sob and backhanded a tear that had somehow escaped from my eye.

Stark reached into his jeans’ pocket and pulled out a crumpled tissue. He stepped close to me again, and wiped the second tear that had followed the first escapee. Then he kissed me, softly, handed me the tissue, and pulled me back into his arms.

“Don’t worry, Z. Heath and I made peace in the Otherworld. I’d be glad to see him again.”

“Really?” I had to step out of his arms long enough to blow my nose.

“Well, yeah. Glad to see him again, but not as glad for you to see him again.” His honesty made both of us smile. “And I know you wouldn’t hurt me on purpose. But, Z, that bull thing is
not
Heath.”

“Stark, I knew Aurox had something to do with old magick from the first time I saw him. He made me feel weird as hell.” I hated telling him, but he deserved nothing less than honesty from me.

“Of course he made you feel weird. He’s a creature of Darkness! And, yeah, he’s old magick. He was created by the nastiest kind of that shit when Neferet killed your mom as a sacrifice. I’d worry about you if he
didn’t
make you feel weird.”

I let out a deep breath. “Well, I guess that does make sense.”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet if we work on it together we can figure out why that stone showed you Heath last night.” When I just chewed my lip he kept on, like he was reasoning aloud. “Think about it, Z. What all have you seen through the stone?”

“Well, on Skye I saw those old sprites—the elementals.”

“Were they like the things you saw today?”

I shuddered. “No, not at all. The elementals were unearthly, mysterious, strange, but in a good way. What I saw today was grotesque and terrifying.”

“Okay, except for just now at the tree, and last night at the ritual, has the Seer Stone shown you anything else since we’ve been back from Italy?”

I met his gaze. “Yes. You.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Zoey

“Me? Z, you’re not making any sense,” Stark said.

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that it kinda felt like I was creeping on you when I did it because you were sleeping, and I only did it because it was back when you were having trouble sleeping, and it was actually mostly an accident, so I never said anything to you, and now it seems like I could have made the whole thing up,” I finished in a rush.

“Zoey, I can listen in on your emotions. That’s way more creeper-like than you peeking through a stone at me while I’m asleep. Plus, you’re right. My sleep had been really jacked up. I don’t blame you for checking me out with the stone. Just tell me what you saw.”

“I saw a shadow over you. I remember thinking that it looked like a ghost Warrior. You opened your hand and the Guardian Sword appeared. Then the ghost-shadow guy grabbed it and it turned into a spear. I think it was bloody. It scared me, so I called spirit and chased the thing away. You woke up then and we uh…” My face felt hot. “Well, we made love and I forgot about it.”

“Z, I like to think I’m good in bed and all, but even so, how the hell could you forget about seeing a ghost guy with a spear hanging out over me?”

“Seriously, Stark. Right after that we walked into what Stevie Rae called one hot mess of bullpoopie here at the House of Night.
I was busy
.” I crossed my arms and glared at him. “Wait, I didn’t totally forget about it. I told Lenobia about the shadow guy.”

“Great, so a professor knows but I didn’t know.”

“You do now.”

“Well, what did Lenobia say about it?”

“Basically she told me to keep my eyes open here in the real world, versus gawking through the stone, which is what I did until last night when I saw Heath,” I said.

“Look through it at me again.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Fine.” I lifted the Seer Stone, took a deep breath, and peeked through it at him.

“Well? How do I look?”

“Grumpy.”

“And?”

“Annoying.”

“Nothing else?”

“Maybe kinda cute. But only maybe.” I put the stone back under my shirt. “Totally just you. I didn’t think I’d see anything. The stone wasn’t hot.”

“It gets hot?”

“Yep, sometimes.” I chewed my lip and thought about it. “That’s actually why I looked through it at you the first time. It got warm.”

“Was it warm when you looked through it at Aurox?” he asked.

“No, but I knew I had to look through it. It was like I was compelled to,” I said. “And it’d been warm before when Aurox was around.”

“Fucking old magick. It’s a pain in the ass,” he said. “You’d think there’d at least be a playbook that had the rules for it listed somewhere, but no.”

“I should call Sgiach. I mean, she gave me the stone. She deals with old magick. Maybe she’d be able to give me some guidelines.”

He gave a little snort. “Didn’t you ask her for that on Skye?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“If I remember right, she didn’t give you any real answers.”

“You remember right. She did say that she thought the only old magick left on this earth was on Skye.”

“She was wrong,” Stark said.

“Yeah, definitely.”

“You know what I think?”

Stark moved close to me again and put his arm around me. I rested my head against his shoulder and slid my arm around his waist and said, “That I’m Crazy Town?”

He grinned and kissed my forehead. “You’re not Crazy Town. You’re Crazy Metropolis. Hell, Z, you’re Crazy Universe. But I like me some crazy.”

“Now you sound like Stevie Rae.” We smiled at each other, relaxing back into the foundation of our relationship—our commitment to each other—our belief in each other. “So, what were you going to say? What do you think?”

“I think that I’m done with deciding what I’m going to do because of what other people say. Especially adult other people who hand us mysteries, or drop us off in the middle of a shitstorm without giving us any real help,” he said.

“Yeah, I get that. I’ve been feeling like that since Neferet lost her mind and I was the only one who knew it.”

“Okay, so, let’s figure this old magick stuff out ourselves. Z, you have an affinity for all five elements. No one can even remember the last time that happened. You’re a different kind of fledgling—a different kind of High Priestess. You’re a young warrior queen, and I’m your Guardian. Together there’s nothing we can’t take on.” His cocky smile was back. “We took on the Otherworld and won.”

“Yeah, except for the part about you dying and all,” I reminded him.

“Just a small detail. It turned out okay.”

I squeezed him, pressing myself against his strong side. “It turned out better than okay.” He kissed me and I drew strength from his taste and his touch and his love. Maybe Stark was right. Maybe there wasn’t anything we couldn’t take on together. I sighed happily and snuggled against him.

“Let’s go to the stables.” Stark jerked his chin forward at the long building not far from us.

“I guess we should. I’ll bet Erin’s there. Even from here I can see it looks soggy.”

“Actually, I haven’t seen Erin in a while.” Stark shrugged. “Maybe that’s because the stables are really better off than you’d think. Most of the damage was from smoke. All that really burned was a bunch of hay and bedding and one stall.”

“Persephone’s fine, right?” Twining my fingers through his, we started walking slowly toward the stables, letting our arms and hips brush against each other.

“She’s good. All of the horses are good. Well, except Bonnie. She’s acting pretty nervous. Lenobia put her in a turn-out with Mujaji to settle her down. Apparently the two of them get along. Which reminds me, a bunch of fledglings said they saw Lenobia kissing Travis before the EMTs took him away,” Stark said.

My eyes got giant. “Seriously? I can’t wait till Aphrodite and Stevie Rae hear that!”

Stark chuckled. “Stevie Rae already has—via Kramisha, who is telling everybody.” He bumped my shoulder with his. “All that time you spent at the tree made you miss out on some good gossip.”

I looked up at him, confused. “All that time? I was only there for, like, a minute.”

Stark stopped. “What time do you think it is right now?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. I’d have to look at my phone, but we got to Thanatos’s room at seven-thirty. We were probably there half an hour or less, so it couldn’t be any later than eight-thirty-ish.”

“Zoey, it’s eleven-thirty. We only have time to meet everyone at the stables and then go to Dragon’s funeral pyre.”

All of my insides went cold. “Stark, I lost more than three hours!”

“Yeah, you did, and I don’t like it. Give me your word that you won’t look through that damn stone again unless I’m with you.”

I was freaked enough not to argue with him. “You got it. I’m totally giving you my word. I’m not looking through that thing unless you’re with me.”

His shoulders relaxed and he gave me a quick kiss. “Thanks, Z. Something that can steal time from you is Not Good.” He gave the last two words special emphasis. “I know Sgiach said old magick could be good or bad, but I don’t care which one it is if it takes without asking.”

“I know. I know.” We’d starting walking again, but I kept a tight hold on his hand. “No wonder I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. I’d been stuck standing there, staring at those disgusting, smelly things for
hours.
” I shuddered.