Awakened (House of Night #8)(40)

"Hey, uh, Stevie Rae. Is Damien okay?"

"Well, what do you think, Erik? His boyfriend who he loved just died in a real horrible way. No, he's not okay. But he is sleepin'. Finally."

"You know, you don't have to be like that. I really am worried about him, and I cared about Jack, too."

Stevie Rae took a good look at Erik. He did look like crap, which was totally unusual for pretty-boy Erik. And he'd obviously been crying. Then she remembered that he'd been Jack's roommate, and also had been real sweet about standing up for Jack when that ass**le Thor tried to pick on him for being g*y. "Sorry," she said, touching Erik's arm. "I'm just upset 'bout all this, too. I got no reason to be a B to you. Here, I'll start over." She took a breath and smiled sadly. "Damien's sleepin' right now, but he's not okay. He'll be needin' friends like you when he wakes up. Thanks for askin' and thanks for bein' here for him."

Erik nodded and squeezed her hand briefly. "Thanks back at you. I know you don't like me much, what with the stuff that went down between Zoey and me, but I really am Damien's friend. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help." Erik paused, glancing up and down the hallway, as if to be sure they were alone, and then he took a step closer to Stevie Rae and lowered his voice. "Neferet had something to do with this, didn't she?" Stevie Rae's eyes widened in surprise. "What makes you say that?"

"I know she's not what she pretends to be. I've seen her be her real self, and it's not pretty."

"Yeah, well, you're right. Neferet's real self isn't pretty. But just like me you saw that she was right in front of us when Jack died."

"Still, you think she's behind this." It wasn't a question, but Stevie Rae nodded a silent yes answer.

"I knew it. This House of Night sucks. I was right to say yes to the L.A. House of Night."

Stevie Rae shook her head. "So that's it? That's what you do when you know somethin' evil is happening? You run away."

"What can one vampyre do against Neferet? The High Council reinstated her; they're on her side."

"One vampyre can't do much. A whole bunch of us joining together can."

"A few kids and a vamp here and there? Against a powerful High Priestess and the High Council? That's insanity."

"No, what's insanity is steppin' aside and lettin' the bad guys win."

"Hey, I have a life waiting for me--a good one, with a kick-ass acting career, fame, fortune, all that stuff. How can you blame me for not wanting to get mixed up in the Neferet mess?"

"You know what, Erik? All I'm gonna say to you is this: evil wins when good folks do nothing," Stevie Rae said.

"Well, I'm technically doing something. I'm leaving. Hey, did you ever think about this--what if all the good folks leave and evil gets bored playing all by itself and goes home, too?"

"I used to think you were the coolest guy I'd ever met," she said sadly. Erik's blue eyes glinted with humor and he beamed his one-hundred-watt smile at her. "And now you know I am?"

"Nope. Now I know you're a weak, selfish boy who's gotten almost everything he ever wanted just 'cause of his looks. And that's not cool at all." She shook her head at his stunned look and began walking away. Over her shoulder she called back, "Maybe someday you'll find somethin' you care about enough to stand up for."

"Yeah, and maybe someday you and Zoey will figure out it's not really your job to save the world!" he shouted after her.

Stevie Rae didn't so much as glance back at him. Erik was a tool. The Tulsa House of Night would be better without his weak butt dragging them down. The going was going to get really tough, and that meant the tough needed to get going--and the sissies needed to get gone. Just like John Wayne, it was time to rally the troops.

"And, hell no, it's not weird that my troops include a Raven Mocker," Stevie Rae muttered to herself as she hurried out to the parking lot and Z's Bug. "I'm not really gonna rally him. I'm just gonna get info from him. Again." Purposefully, she shut her mind to what had happened between her and Rephaim last time she'd "just needed information from him."

"Hey, Stevie Rae, you and me gotta--" Not pausing in her rush to the car, Stevie Rae held up a hand and cut Kramisha off. "Not now. I don't have time."

"I'm just sayin' that--"

"No!" Stevie Rae shouted her frustration at Kramisha, who stopped and stared at her.

"Whatever it is you want to be sayin' to me, it can keep. I don't like soundin' mean to you, but I have things I have to do and exactly two hours and five minutes until the sun comes up to do them in." Then she left Kramisha standing in her dust as she jogged the final few feet to the Bug, started it, put it into gear, and practically peeled out of the student parking lot. It took her exactly seven minutes to get to the Gilcrease grounds. She didn't drive the car up there. The ice storm had been cleaned up and the electric gate was working again, so everything was shut up tightly. Stevie Rae pulled the Bug off the side of the road behind a big tree. Automatically cloaking herself with the power she filtered from the earth, she went directly to the ramshackle mansion.

The door was no problem. No one had bothered to relock it yet. Actually, as she made her way through the old house and up to the rooftop, she detected very little change from the last time she'd been there.