Burned (House of Night #7)(59)

He kept stealing glances at her when he thought she wouldn't notice. She appeared healthy and totally recovered from her brush with Darkness. Actually, she looked strong and whole and completely normal.

But, as he was all too aware, appearances could easily deceive.

Something was wrong - or at the very least, something about the debt she'd paid Light made her uncomfortable.

Rephaim was so busy trying to be stealthy about studying her that he almost ran into the tree she'd stopped beside.

She looked at him and shook her head. "You're not foolin' me. You feel too crappy to be sneaky, so stop gawking at me. I'm fine. Jeeze, you're worse than my mama."

"Have you talked to her?"

Stevie Rae's frown deepened. "I haven't exactly had a lot of free time the past couple days. So, no, I haven't talked to my mama."

"You should."

"I'm not gonna talk about my mama right now."

"As you wish."

"And you don't need to use that tone with me."

"What tone?"

Instead of answering him, she said, "Just sit down and be quiet for a change and let me think about how I'm supposed to help you." Like she was demonstrating, Stevie Rae sat down, cross-legged, with her back against the old cedar tree that wept ice and fragrant needles all around them. When he still didn't move, she made an impatient noise and motioned to the space in front of her. "Sit," she ordered.

He sat.

"And now?" he asked.

"Well, give me a minute. I'm not real sure how to do this."

He watched her twirl one of her soft blond curls around her finger and scrunch up her forehead for a while, and then he offered, "Would it help to think about what you did when you tripped that annoying fledgling who thought he could challenge me?"

"Dallas isn't annoying, and he thought you were attacking me."

"Good thing I wasn't."

"And why is that?"

Even through the pain in his body, her tone amused him. She knew very well that puny fledgling had been no threat to him, even in his weakened condition. Had Rephaim been attacking her, or anyone else, the impotent youth couldn't have stopped him. Still, the boy had been Marked by a red crescent, which meant he was one of her subjects, and his Stevie Rae was nothing if not fiercely loyal. So Rephaim bowed his head in acquiescence, and said only, "Because it would have been inconvenient if I'd had to defend myself."

Stevie Rae's lips curved up in the hint of a smile. "Dallas really did think he was protecting me from you."

"You don't need him." Rephaim spoke the words without thinking. Stevie Rae's gaze met his and held.

He wished he could read her expressions more easily. He thought he saw surprise in her eyes, and maybe a faint glint of hope, but he also saw fear - of that he was sure. Fear of him? No, she'd already proven she wasn't afraid of him. So the fear had to be within, of something that wasn't him but that he'd triggered. Not knowing what else to say, he added, "As you said before, I could not swat a fly. I was certainly no threat to you."

Stevie Rae blinked a couple of times, as if clearing away too many thoughts, and then she shrugged, and said, "Yeah, well, I've had one heck of a time convincing everybody back at the House of Night that it was just a weird coincidence that you dropped from the sky at the same time Darkness manifested, and that you weren't attacking me. Them knowing there's a Raven Mocker still in Tulsa has made it super hard for me to get away from school alone."

"I should leave." The words made him feel strangely empty inside.

"Where would you go?"

"East," he said without hesitation.

"East? You mean like all the way east to Venice? Rephaim, your daddy's not in his body. You can't help him by goin' there right now. I think you can help him more by stayin' here and working with me to bring both Zoey and him back."

"You don't want me to leave?"

Stevie Rae looked down as if studying the earth they sat on. "It's hard for a vampyre to have the person she's Imprinted with too far away from her."

"I'm not a person."

"Yeah, but that didn't stop us from Imprinting, so I'm thinkin' the rules still apply to you and me."

"Then I'll stay until you tell me to go."

She closed her eyes as if the words had hurt her, and he had to force himself to remain still and not reach out to comfort her, to touch her.

Touch her? I want to touch her?

He crossed his arms over his chest in a physical denial of the shocking thought.

"Earth," he said, his voice sounding too loud in the silence that had fallen between them. She looked up at him then with a question in her eyes. "You called it before, when you tripped the red fledgling. You called it to open so that you could escape from the sunlight on the rooftop. You called it to close the tunnel behind me at the abbey. Can you not simply call it now and make your request of it?"

Her gentle blue eyes widened. "You're right! Why am I makin' it so hard? I've done it like a zillion times for other stuff. There's no reason why I can't do it for this." She held her hands out, palms up. "Here, grab hold."

It was too easy for him to unfold his arms and press his palms to hers. He looked down at their joined hands, and he suddenly realized that, except for Stevie Rae, he'd never touched a human for any reason except violence. Yet there he was, touching her again - gently - calmly.