Stevie Rae drew in a deep breath. "I'm hearing you."

"Good. Go on now." Kramisha started to walk into the dorm.

"Hey, would you explain to Aphrodite that I had somethin' to do, so I'm not comin' in?"

Kramisha looked over her shoulder at Stevie Rae. "Yeah, but you'll owe me dinner at Red Lobster."

"Yeah, okay. I like the Loobster," Stevie Rae said.

"I'm gonna order anything I want."

"Of course you will," Stevie Rae muttered, sighed again, and headed for the trees.

Chapter Seventeen

Stevie Rae

Stevie Rae wasn't entirely sure what the poem meant, but she was sure Kramisha was right--she needed to stop ignoring the truth and make a change. The hard part was, she wasn't sure she could find the truth anymore, let alone know how to change stuff. She looked down at the poem. Her night vision was so good she didn't even have to move out from under the shadows beneath the old pin oaks that framed the Utica Street side of the campus and the side road that led to the entrance of the school.

"Haiku is always so dang confusin'," she muttered as she reread the three- line poem again:

You must tell your heart

The cloak of secrets smothers

Freedom: his to choose

It was about Rephaim. And her. Again. Stevie Rae plopped her butt down at the base of the big tree and let her back rest against its rough bark, taking comfort from the sense of strength the oak exuded.

I'm supposed to tell my heart, but what do I tell it? And I know keeping this secret is smothering me, but there's no one I can tell about Rephaim. Freedom is his to choose? Hell yeah, it is, but his daddy has such a hard grip on him that he can't see that.

Stevie Rae thought how ironic it was that an ancient immortal and his half- bird, half-immortal son had what was basically an old-school version of the same abusive daddy/son relationship a zillion other kids she knew had with their jerk daddies. Kalona had been treating him like a slave and making him believe messed-up stuff about himself for so long that Rephaim didn't even realize how wrong it was. Then of course it was equally messed up that she was where she was with Rephaim--Imprinted and bound to him because of a debt she promised the black bull of Light.

"Well, not really just 'cause of a debt," Stevie Rae whispered to herself. She'd been drawn to him way before that. "I l-like him." She stumbled over the words, even though the night was silent and only the listening trees were present. "I wish I knew if that's 'cause of our Imprint or 'cause there really is something, someone inside him worth liking."

She sat there, staring up at the spiderweb of winter-bare boughs over her head. And then, because she was spilling her guts to the trees, she added, "The truth is I shouldn't ever see him again." Just imagining Dragon finding out that she'd saved and Imprinted with the creature who had killed Anastasia made her feel like she wanted to puke.

"Maybe the freedom part of the poem means that if I stop seein' him, Rephaim will choose to leave. Maybe our Imprint will fade away if we stay apart."

Just the thought of that made her want to puke, too. "I really wish someone would tell me what to do," she said morosely, resting her chin on her hands. As if in answer to her, the night breeze brought her the sound of someone sobbing. Frowning, Stevie Rae stood up, cocked her head, and listened. Yep, someone was definitely bawling their eyes out. She didn't really want to follow the sound. The truth was, she'd had more than enough bawling lately to last for quite some time, but the cries were so heartbreaking, so deeply sad, that she couldn't just ignore it--that wouldn't be right. So Stevie Rae let the crying lead her up the little road that ended at the big, black iron gate that was the main entrance to the school.

At first she didn't understand what it was she was seeing. Yeah, she could tell the crying person was a woman, and she was outside the House of Night gate. As Stevie Rae got closer she could see that the woman was kneeling in front of the gate, just off to the right side of it. She'd leaned what looked like a big funeral wreath made of plastic pink carnations and green stuff against the stone pillar. In front of that she'd lit a green candle and, as she continued to cry, she was pulling a picture out of her purse. It was when the woman brought the picture to her lips to kiss it that Stevie Rae's eyes found her face.

"Mama!"

She'd barely whispered the word, but her mom's head came up and her eyes instantly found Stevie Rae.

"Stevie Rae? Baby?"

At the sound of her mama's voice, the knot that had been building inside Stevie Rae's stomach suddenly dissolved, and she ran to the gate. With no other thought except getting to her mama, Stevie Rae scaled the stone wall easily, landing on the other side.