Chapter Fourteen

Rephaim

He'd been circling the Mayo building, dreading landing and facing Kalona and Neferet, when he felt Stevie Rae's call. He knew it was her instantly. He recognized the feel of the earth as the power lifted from the ground below and wrapped itself around the air currents to find him.

She calls you ...

It was all the prompting Rephaim needed. No matter how angry she was at him. No matter how much she hated him--she was calling him. And if she called, he would answer. In his heart he knew, no matter what, he would always try to answer.

He remembered Stevie Rae's last words to him. ... When you decide your heart matters as much to you as it does to me, come find me again. It should be easy. Just follow your heart ...

Rephaim shut off the part of his mind that told him he couldn't be with her--couldn't care about her. They'd been apart more than a week. He'd felt every day of that week as if it had been an eon in itself. How had he ever thought he could stay completely away from her? His very blood cried to be with her. Even facing her anger was better than nothing. And he needed to see her. Needed to find a way to warn her about Neferet. And about Father, too.

"No!" he shouted into the wind. He couldn't betray his father. But I can't betray Stevie Rae, either, he thought frantically. I'll find a balance. I'll find a way. I must. Not sure exactly what he was going to do, Rephaim stilled his seething thoughts and concentrated on following the ribbon of glowing green back to Stevie Rae as if it were his lifeline. Stevie Rae

She was waiting for him with such concentrated intensity that Stevie Rae had no trouble sensing when Rephaim drew near the Gilcrease. When he dropped gracefully from the sky she was standing, looking up, watching for him. She'd meant to be totally cool. He was the enemy. She was supposed to remember that. But the instant he landed their eyes locked and, breathlessly, he said, "I heard your call. I came."

That was all it took. Just the sound of his wonderful, familiar voice. Stevie Rae hurled herself into his arms and buried her face in the feathers at his shoulder. "Ohmygoodness, I've missed you so much!"

"I've missed you, too," he said, holding her tightly to him.

They stood there like that, trembling in each other's arms, for what seemed to her a very long time. Stevie Rae drank in the scent of him--that amazing mixture of immortal and mortal blood that beat through his body--that linked them in Imprint and, therefore, also beat throughout her own body.

And then, quite suddenly, like it had occurred to each of them at once that they couldn't do what they were doing, Stevie Rae and Rephaim broke the embrace and took a step away from each other.

"So, uh, you've been okay?" she asked him.

He nodded. "I have. And you? You're safe? You weren't hurt when Jack was killed today?"

"How did you know Jack was killed?" Her voice was sharp.

"I felt your sadness. I came to the House of Night to be sure you were okay. That's when I saw you with your friends. I-I heard the boy crying for Jack." He hesitated over the words, trying to choose them carefully, honestly. "That and your sadness told me he was dead."

"Do you know anything about his death?"

"Maybe. What kind of boy was Jack?" "Jack was good and sweet, and might have been the best of all of us. What do you know, Rephaim?"

"I know why he died."

"Tell me."

"Neferet owed Darkness a life debt in payment for entrapping my father's immortal soul. The debt had to be paid by the sacrifice of someone who was an innocent, incorruptible by Darkness."

"That was Jack; she killed him. It's frustrating as all get-out 'cause it looks like Neferet didn't! She was talkin' to the school's High Council, right in front of me, when Jack's accident happened."

"The Tsi Sgili fed him to Darkness. She need not have been present. She needed only to have marked him as her sacrifice and then let loose the threads of Darkness to follow through with the actual killing. She didn't have to witness the death."

"How do I prove she was responsible?"

"You cannot. The deed is over. Her debt is paid."

"Damn it! I'm so dang mad I could spit nails! Neferet keeps gettin' away with all of this awful crap. She keeps winnin'. I don't understand why. It's not right, Rephaim. It's just not right." Stevie Rae blinked hard, forcing back tears of frustration.

For a moment, Rephaim touched her shoulder and she allowed herself to lean into his hand, to take comfort in the contact with him. Then he pulled back from her and said, "All that anger. All that frustration and sadness. I felt it from you earlier tonight, too, and I thought--" He hesitated, obviously trying to decide whether to keep speaking.