Redeemed (House of Night #12)(3)

But it was too late for wishes. Turning back time is only a fantasy. Superman isn’t real.

I didn’t sleep. It was night, and night had become my day. Right now I should be at school with my friends, living my life, having what was (for me) a normal “day.” Instead I lay there, hugging myself. I should have been smarter. I should have been stronger. I should have been anything except a selfish brat.

Hours later I heard the slot in the door open again, and when I turned over I saw that someone had taken away my untouched tray. Good. Maybe the smell would go away, too.

I had to pee, but I didn’t want to. Didn’t want to use the bare toilet sticking out of the wall in the middle of the room. I stared at the corners of the walls where they met the ceiling. Cameras.

Was it legal for wardens to watch prisoners pee?

Did the regular rules even count with me? I mean, I’d never heard of a fledgling or a vampyre being put on trial in human court, or going to human prison.

I don’t have to worry about that. I’ll drown in my own blood way before I go to trial.

Weirdly enough, that thought was a comfort, and as the light in the hallway came on, I fell into a restless, dreamless sleep.

It seemed like ten seconds later when the slot in the door banged open and another aluminum tray sloshed into my cell. The noise jolted me awake, but I was still groggy, still trying to fall back to sleep—until the scent of eggs and bacon had my mouth watering. How long had it been since I’d eaten anything? Ugh, I felt terrible. Blearily, I got up and walked the six steps to the door, picking up the tray and carrying it carefully back to my rumpled bed.

The eggs were scrambled and super runny. The bacon was beef jerky hard. There was coffee, a carton of milk, and dry toast.

I would have given almost anything for one bowl of Count Chocula and a can of brown pop.

I took a bite of the eggs, and they were so salty they almost made me choke.

But instead of choking, I began to cough. Within that terrible cough I tasted something, something metallic and slick and warm and weirdly wonderful.

It was my own blood.

Fear rocketed through me, making me weak and dizzy and nauseous. It’s happening so soon? I’m not ready! I’m not ready!

Trying to clear my throat, trying to breathe, I spit out the eggs, ignored the pink tinge in the runny yellow, put the tray on the floor, and curled up on the bed, wrapping my arms around myself and waiting for more coughing and more blood—a lot more blood. My hands were shaking as I wiped fresh wetness from my lips.

I was so scared!

Don’t be, I told myself as I tried to stifle a really awful cough. You’ll see Nyx soon. And Jack. And maybe even Dragon and Anastasia.

And Mom!

Mom … I suddenly wanted my mother with a terrible, heartsick longing.

“I wish I wasn’t alone,” I whispered in a gravelly voice into the hard, flat mattress.

I heard the door open, but I didn’t roll over. I didn’t want to see the horrified expression of a stranger. I closed my eyes tight and tried to pretend I was at Grandma’s lavender farm, sleeping in my bedroom there. Tried to pretend the egg and bacon smell was her cooking, and my coughing was just a cold keeping me home from school.

And I was doing it! Oh, thank you, Nyx! Suddenly I swear I could smell the scents that always lingered around Grandma, lavender and sweetgrass. That gave me the courage to speak quickly, before my voice was drowned in blood, to whoever was there. “It’s okay. This is what happens to some fledglings. Just please go away and leave me alone.”

“Oh, Zoeybird, my precious u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya, do you not know by now that I will never let you be alone?”

CHAPTER TWO

Zoey

I thought she was part of my dying hallucination, standing there at the door of my cell, dressed in a purple linen shirt and worn jeans, with one of her many picnic baskets in the crook of her arm, but as soon as I turned to face her, she rushed to me, sitting on the edge of my bed and enveloping me in her arms and in the scent of my childhood.

“Grandma! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” I sobbed into her shoulder.

“Shhh, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya, I am here.” She rubbed a soft circle in the middle of my back.

My coughing had temporarily eased, so I said in a rush, “It’s selfish of me, but I’m so glad you are. I don’t want to die all by myself.”

Grandma pulled back from me enough to take my shoulders in her hands and give me a stern shake. “Zoey Redbird, you are not dying.”

Tears spilled down my cheeks. I ignored them and wiped at the corner of my mouth, holding my trembling fingers out to her so that she could see the blood.

She barely glanced at the proof I was trying to show her. Instead she opened her picnic basket and took out a red and white checked napkin and began dabbing at my tears and my nose, just like she had when I was a little girl.

“Grandma, I know you love me more than anyone in the world,” I said, trying (unsuccessfully) not to cry. “But you can’t stop my body from rejecting the Change.”

“You are correct, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya, I cannot. But they can.” She nodded to the doorway behind me.

I turned and saw Thanatos and Lenobia, Stevie Rae, Darius, and Stark—my Stark—all clustered in the doorway. Stevie Rae was bawling so hard I wondered how I hadn’t heard her.

Stark was crying, too, but silently.