Tempted (32 page)

“Yuck,” Heath and I said at the same time.

“So is that okay? Would you do that?”

“Yeah, Stevie Rae, no problem.” Heath hugged me and gave me a sloppy kiss on my forehead before bounding out of bed. At the door he grinned back at Stevie Rae and said, “But next time you want to talk to Zo alone, all you have to do is say so. I’m human and I play football, but I’m really not stupid.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” she said.

He winked at me and took off.

“Goddess, he has a lot of energy,” I said.

“Z, I can’t go with y’all to Italy,” Stevie Rae blurted out with no preamble whatsoever.

“What? You have to! You’re earth. I need the whole circle there.”

“You’ve circled without me before. Aphrodite can step in if you help her.”

“She can’t be earth. It zaps her,” I said.

“But I know you’ve given her spirit before, and it worked fine. Just give her spirit again.”

“Stevie Rae, I need you.”

My BFF bowed her head and looked completely defeated. “Please, please don’t say that.
I have to stay.
I don’t have any choice. The red fledglings need me even more than you do.”

“Not any more they don’t,” I said earnestly. “They’re here at the school, with a whole bunch of adult vamps. Even if the adult vamps are acting all weird, their presence will be enough to keep your kids from rejecting the Change.”

“It’s not just that. It’s not just them.”

“Oh, no! Stevie Rae, you are
not
still thinking about those bad 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, and
that’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 assignments online. I’ll stay caught up. You can even help me. Or, better yet, Damien can help me. No offense, Zo, but I think he’s a better student than you are.”

“I
know
he is, but that’s beside the point. Your parents will never let you go.”

“They can’t stop me. I’m eighteen.”

“Heath, please. I already feel bad enough about all the poo I’ve brought into your life. Don’t make me responsible for screwing up your last semester of school, getting you grounded until you leave for college,
and
putting your life in danger.”

“I’ve told you before I can take care of myself,” he said.

“Fine, let’s compromise. Call your parents when we get up and ask
them if you can come to Italy with me. If they say yes, then you come with me. If they say no, you stay here and get your butt back to class.”

“Do I have to tell them about Kalona and that stuff?”

“I don’t think it’s smart for the general public to know there’s a fallen immortal and a crazy ex–High Priestess trying to take over the world. So, no, you don’t have to tell them that part.”

He hesitated and then said, “Okay, I can live with that.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Good, because I’ll be listening to the whole conversation so you won’t be able to bullpoopie me.”

“You know that’s not a real word, Zo.”

“It’s
my
real word. Go to sleep, Heath.”

He tightened his arms around me. “I heart you, Zo.”

“I heart you, too.”

“I’ll keep you safe.”

I fell asleep with Heath’s arms around me and a smile on my face, my last conscious thought was about how strong he felt and that I’d have to tell him I really appreciated how buff he’d been keeping himself.

My next thought was not conscious and it was totally not soothing:
What in the hell am I doing on the roof of this castle again?

It was the same castle rooft op; there was no doubt about it. The orange trees were filled with fat fruit that scented the cool breeze. In the center was the same fountain shaped like a naked woman with water cascading from her raised hands. Seeing her twice, I realized why she looked familiar. She reminded me of Nyx, or at least of one of the faces I’d seen the Goddess wear. And then I remembered what I’d learned about this place—that it was the ancient site of the original Vampyre High Council, so it totally made sense that the fountain would look like our Goddess. I wanted to sit beside it and breathe deep the smell of citrus and the sea air. I didn’t want to turn where my gut was telling me to turn—and see who I knew I was going to see. But, like the snowball down the mountain, I couldn’t seem to control the avalanche that was happening to me, so I turned in the direction my soul was leading me.

Kalona knelt by the edge of the castle’s toothlike roof. His back was to me and he was on his knees. He was dressed, or rather,
un
dressed, like he’d been the last time we’d been here—he had on jeans and that was it. His dark wings spread down around him, leaving only his bronze shoulders visible. His head was bowed, and he didn’t seem to know I was there. As if I couldn’t stop them, my feet moved toward him, and as I approached, I realized that he was kneeling exactly where I’d been standing when I’d flung myself off the rooftop.

I wasn’t far from him when I saw his shoulders tense. His wings rustled and then his head lifted and he glanced over his shoulder.

He was crying. Tears made wet paths down his face. He looked crushed, broken, completely defeated. But the instant he saw me his expression changed. His face was suff used with such incredible joy that my breath literally caught at his incomparable beauty. He stood, and with a shout of happiness strode toward me.

I thought he would pull me into his arms, but at the last second he checked himself so that he only lifted one hand as if he was going to touch my cheek, but his fingers stopped short of my skin, hesitated there for an instant, and then, without touching me, his hand dropped back to his side.

“You came back.”

“Dreams aren’t real. I didn’t die,” I said, though it was hard for me to speak.

“The realm of dreams is part of the Otherworld; don’t ever underestimate the power of what happens here.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand and, surprising me again, gave an embarrassed little chuckle. “I must seem foolish to you. I knew you weren’t dead, of course. Yet it still felt so real—so horribly familiar.”

I stared at him, not knowing what to say. Not knowing how to react to this version of Kalona—the version who looked and acted more like an angel than a demon. He reminded me of the Kalona who had surrendered to A-ya, willingly giving himself to the trap of her embrace with a vulnerability that still haunted me. It was such a contrast from the last time I’d been here, when he’d been in super-seduction mode, all groping me, and . . .

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Just exactly how can I be here again? I’m not sleeping alone, and I don’t mean I’m with one of my girlfriends. Or rather, friends who are girls,” I corrected hastily. “I’m sleeping in the arms of the human guy I’ve Imprinted. He and I are definitely more than friends. You shouldn’t be able to get in here.” I pointed to my head.

“I am not inside your head. You have never called me into your dreams. I draw your essence to me. The invasion was mine, not through any invitation of yours.”

“That’s not what you said before.”

“I lied to you before. I am speaking the truth to you now.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason I was able to draw you here through your sleep even though you are in the arms of another. This time—for the first time—my motives are pure. I am not attempting to manipulate you. I am not attempting to seduce you. And I will speak only truth to you.”

“How can you expect me to believe that?”

“Whether you believe it or not does not change the nature of truth. You are here, Zoey, when you should not be. Is that not proof enough for you?”