“This was the first thing that really made me heart the House of Night,” I said happily as I ladled a gihugic pile of spaghetti onto my plate. “Psaghetti! For breakfast! I love our cafeteria.”
“When you say psaghetti you sound like you’re six years old,” Stark said, bumping my shoulder before he asked the cook to give him the other breakfast choice, the traditional (and boring) scrambled eggs and bacon.
I went to the drink bar and filled up my glass with brown pop—fully leaded—with caffeine—calling back to him, “Not six—nine. That’s when I made up the psaghetti madness song.” I cleared my throat and launched into “Pa-sghe-ti, pa-sghe-ti!” and even did the psaghetti dance on my way to our booth. I was just thinking that maybe the day wouldn’t be so bad. After all, it had started with a shoulder rub and psaghetti! But just as Stark was sliding in next to me I heard a deep, masculine voice echoing my psaghetti madness song.
I didn’t need to look at the cafeteria line to know who was singing. All I needed to do was look at Stark’s face. He’d been grinning at my psaghetti celebration, but that happiness had disappeared from his face, leaving instead a tense, serious expression that made him look frustrated and pissed.
“How old were you when you met Heath?” Stark asked.
“Nine,” I said. It made me feel miserable and helpless, but my gaze wouldn’t stay on Stark’s face. It was drawn to the guy who was still singing my song while he heaped psaghetti on his plate.
I wondered if it would have helped if Aurox hadn’t been so cute. He did a dorky guy version of the dance I’d just done as he headed over to the drink bar.
Nope, I decided, feeling my stomach do the weird butterfly thing it used to do when Heath would walk into a room. Aurox could have looked like a troll and he’d still make my stomach do flip-flops because he shared Heath’s soul.
“Good morning!” Damien came in with Shaunee, Stevie Rae, and Rephaim, who waved and said hi to Stark and me as they hurried to get in line and fill their plates.
They didn’t seem to notice that Stark and I didn’t say anything in return.
“Hey there, Aurox. Wanna sit with us?” I heard Damien give him a cheery invite.
“Sure, that would be great,” Aurox said.
“Awesome—Z and Stark are already at the table. It’s that one over there.” Damien pointed at us, which is when his happy-schmappy expression slid away, and was replaced by an uh-oh look. “Um, that is if there’s enough room and it’s okay with Z and Stark, and, um…” Damien trailed off uncomfortably, his cheeks getting pink.
“Fuck!” Stark said under his breath so that I was the only one who heard him. Then he sat up a little straighter and called, “Yeah, no problem. We got room for Aurox.”
When Aurox sat down directly across from me I focused on shoveling psaghetti into my face.
“So, where’d you learn that song?” Stark shocked the bejezzus out of me by asking Aurox.
“What song?” Aurox answered around a mouthful of noodles.
“Never mind,” Stark muttered.
The long, uncomfortable silence wasn’t broken until Damien and the rest of our group smooshed into the booth.
“Have y’all seen Aphrodite today?” Stevie Rae asked.
I looked up then to see everyone shaking their heads.
“Or Darius?” she added.
More head shaking.
“Crap,” I said. “I need to go check on her. It’s not like her to hermit in her room.”
“Yeah,” Stevie Rae agreed. “She calls breakfast the beginning of the day’s fashion parade. You know she actually told me once that she could predict which girls were going to turn into their fat, flabby mammas by how much makeup they wore to breakfast?”
“That girl is super crazy,” Shaunee said.
“Is wearing a lot of makeup to breakfast good or bad?” Damien asked.
“I have no clue,” Stevie Rae said. “I try to quit listenin’ if Aphrodite talks too long. She kinda hurts my ears.”
“Is her prediction about the girls part of her prophetic gift?” Aurox asked.
I couldn’t help laughing with everyone else. Well, everyone except Stark. Instead of laughing he was stabbing his scrambled eggs like he was trying to kill them.
“No,” Stevie Rae answered Aurox. “It’s part of her hateful gift, which we’re pretty sure wasn’t given to her by Nyx.”
“Oh, sorry,” Aurox said, looking sheepish. “That was probably a stupid thing to ask.”
“Hey, no worries, roomie,” Damien said, smiling kindly at him. “Aphrodite baffles all of us.”
“Roomie?” I heard myself asking. “You guys are sharing a dorm room?”
“Yes,” Aurox said, meeting my gaze for the first time. “Damien offered, and I did not want to be alone, nor did I wish to share a room with a stranger. The others, well, I often find them staring at me oddly.”
“That would be because you can change into a bull.” Stark’s voice was emotionless.
“I suppose you are correct,” Aurox said. He dropped his gaze from mine and went back to eating.
“Yeah, well, that brings up a subject Stark and I were talking about earlier,” I began.
“Yeah, we were talking when we woke up. Together. In the same bed. Right, roomie?” Stark put special emphasis on the word.
My friends threw worried looks from Stark to Aurox. I frowned. “Stark, everyone knows you and I are sleeping together.”
“Just wanted to be sure,” Stark said, attacking his eggs again.
“Anyway,” I went on, feeling my cheeks getting warm. “Stark and I were saying that it’s important to be sure our red fledglings and vampyres”—I managed to smile at Stevie Rae—“have someplace super safe to sleep until we can get back to our tunnels.”
“Rephaim and I were talkin’ ’bout that when he came back to me and Shaunee’s room after dusk,” Stevie Rae said. “I’m thinkin’ the same thing y’all are—we need to explore the school and find somewhere less aboveground for the kids.”
“And you, too, right?” I asked.
Stevie Rae shared a look with Rephaim before she said, “Well, no. I’m gonna keep roomin’ with Shaunee.”
“Even though I tried to talk her out of it,” Rephaim said.
“Hey, you know I’ll be okay by myself, don’t you?” Shaunee said quickly. “Last night was tough, but I’m better today. I’ll miss her, but I know my Twin’s in a wonderful place. She even said it before she died—her feelings were finally unfrozen. In a weird way I’m glad for her.” Shaunee blinked back tears, but she also smiled.
“I know, but unless we can find a basement-like place here that has an easy exit and entrance for, well, a bird, you’ve got me as a roomie until we go home to the depot tunnels,” Stevie Rae said.
“I remember Dragon saying something about there being storage for old shields and swords in the school’s basement,” Damien said. “So, there has to be something down there that’s at least watertight enough to house Dragon’s precious old weapons. You know he wouldn’t let that stuff be put anywhere it would rust out and get messed up.”
“Well, at least that’s good news. I’ll feel better with all the red fledglings and vamps underground during the day. It just seems that you guys are so exposed otherwise,” I said. Uneasily, I remembered Stevie Rae’s close calls with sunlight and how fried even a small bit of it could make her and Stark and the rest of them. There were new powers that came with being a new type of vampyre, but there was also a pretty intimidating list of new stuff that could kill them.
“I understand what you’re saying, Z, but there is another way to look at the red fledgling housing issue,” Damien said. “I know they rest better if they’re underground, and safe from the sunlight, and a basement would be good for that, but they’d also all be together in a place that most likely only has one entrance and exit. That may not be such a good thing.”
Stark’s brows lifted. “Damn, Damien, you’ve got a point. At the depot we can’t get trapped because there are so many ways to get in and out of those tunnels. Z, if those kids are going to spend the time from sun up to sun down in a basement, I think you and I and Stevie Rae need to sleep somewhere away from that group.”
“Sounds like there’s more than one way to be exposed. You guys are right. We can’t all be someplace we can be trapped, and I’m thinking that the two of you, especially,” I nodded to Stevie Rae and Stark, “need to be separated from the main group of fledglings. If something happens we’re going to need the power of fully Changed red vampyres to help your fledglings.” I sighed. “But I also don’t like the idea of all those fledglings being unprotected down there while they sleep. Wonder if we could talk Darius and Aphrodite into moving down there with them?”
Shaunee snorted. “Aphrodite in a basement? Not unless you get a designer in there to fancy it up for her.”