Loved (House of Night Other World #1)(7)

Stark intercepted my hand. “They’re fine. Nothing’s happened to them.”

I realized my hand was shaking when he took it in both of his. “You can’t know that,” I said, feeling frantic. “I’m calling them. All of them. Now.”

Stark blew out a long breath and then reluctantly said, “You can’t. They’re in the air.”

“Huh? What do you mean? What’s going on?”

“Z, what’s today’s date?”

I frowned at him. “I don’t know. Um. The twenty-third. Of December. I think.”

“Yeah. It’s the twenty-third. What’s tomorrow?”

“The twenty-fourth.” And then I knew what was going on. “OMG, are they surprising me for my birthmas?”

“Well, they were surprising you. And I kept the damn thing secret for months.” He shook his head. “Aphrodite’s gonna kill me.”

“Wait, for real? They’re coming here for my birthday?” Even Kalona’s weird visit and ominous message couldn’t dampen the flutter of happiness that lifted inside me. “All of them?”

“All of them.”

I jumped up and down, giggling. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. You didn’t think your circle was going to ignore your eighteenth birthday, did you?”

I lifted my shoulders. “I’m pretty used to my birthmas being a disaster of smooshed holidays, so yeah—I did.”

“I hate that your birthday has always been so crappy,” he said. “I really wanted to change that for your eighteenth.”

“Hey, there were little bits of good with the crappy. Grandma always gave me something cool, and my little brother, Kevin, used to sneak me silly little things he made or got from the Dollar Store because my mom’s awful husband, the step-loser, used to only give me Jesus-themed gifts because, you know, the baby Jesus’ birthday is the only one that should be celebrated in December.”

“Oh, right, of course,” Stark said sarcastically.

“But it’s awesomesauce that my friends are surprising me! And well-timed awesomesauce, at that. I can give Neferet’s stupid journal to Damien. He’ll love studying it, and I can already hear him lecturing us about making it required reading and such for all House of Night students—a cautionary tale or whatever.”

“That’s probably a good idea. So, where is it?”

“You’re not gonna like this part.”

“Just this part? When it comes to Neferet, I don’t like any part,” he said.

“Neferet hid the journal in the floorboards under our bed,” I said.

Stark’s jaw clenched and unclenched before he spoke. “You’re right. I don’t like that part. At all.”

I sighed, giving our giant four-poster bed a long look. Stark and I had designed it ourselves. The tall posters were carved to look like four trees, their branches joining above us like a living canopy. “I wonder if it’s as heavy as I remember it being.”

“Well, as Stevie Rae would say, let’s get ’er done.”



“That thing was way heavier than I remembered it.” I wiped sweat from my face and tried to peek over Stark’s shoulder. He was on his knees using a pocketknife to dislodge the thick wooden panel in the floor that had made the ominously hollow sound as we’d knocked over every square inch beneath our bed.

“Uh, Z, you don’t remember the bed being heavy because the Sons of Erebus Warriors and I hauled the thing up here and put it together to surprise you. I remember how heavy it was.”

“Oh, well, that would be why then. OMG, there it is!” I gasped as Stark pulled a bundle that was wrapped in an old linen cloth from the hidden floor cubby. I held out my hands and he passed it gingerly to me, like it was an unexploded bomb. Carefully, I unwrapped it and found a worn, brown leather journal. The slender book was longer than it was wide. Its faded cover was unadorned, except for the very center. There, in surprisingly easy-to-read cursive, were the words “Emily Wheiler’s Journal,” which were marked through with an ominous X. Beside them, in the same handwriting, only much bolder, much darker, was the new title: Neferet’s Curse.

“Looks like we found the right book,” Stark said. This time it was his turn to peek over my shoulder.

“Looks like it,” I said.

Neither of us moved.

“Uh, you gonna open it?” he asked.

“I wish I didn’t have to.” I looked up from the journal to meet his concerned gaze. “How about we get breakfast first? Everything seems better after a big bowl of Count Chocula.”

“And brown pop?”

“Breakfast of champions,” I agreed, pulling on my sweat pants that were decorated with fat orange tabby cats.

“I’d usually say we shouldn’t procrastinate about this, but you’re right. It’s gonna read like a horror story, and that’ll be better on a full stomach. Plus, I need coffee. Now.”

I brushed my teeth and stuck my hair up in a messy ponytail, glad that one of the first rules I’d proposed when I’d officially become High Priestess of our new Council was to relax the dress code of the professors’ dining hall. Holding the journal carefully, I beat Stark to the door and opened it. Aphrodite fell forward, barely catching herself in time to not knock me over.