"Maybe you should go home and make it right," Grandma said. Then, when she saw my startled look she added, "I mean, make the birthmas present issue right, not the Heath and Erik issue."

"Oh, good. Yeah, I should do that." I paused, thinking about what she had just said. "You know, it really has turned into my home."

"I know." She smiled. "And I'm glad for you. You're finding your place, Zoeybird, and I'm proud of you."

Grandma had walked me back to where I'd parked my vintage VW Bug, and hugged me good-bye. I'd thanked her for the great presents again, and neither of us had mentioned my mother. There are just some things it doesn't do any good to talk about. I'd told Grandma I was going back to the House of Night to make things right with my friends, and I'd meant to. But instead I found myself driving downtown. Again. For the past month every night I could make a lame excuse or sneak out by myself, I'd been haunting the streets of downtown Tulsa. Haunting... I snorted to myself. That was an excellent word to use for me searching for my best friend, Stevie Rae, who had died a month ago, and then become undead. Yes, it was as weird as it sounded.

Fledglings died. We all knew that. I'd witnessed the death of two of the three who had died since I'd been at the House of Night. Okay, so everyone knew we could die. What everyone didn't know was that the last three fledglings who had died had resurrected, or come alive again, or ... hell! I suppose the easiest way to describe it is that they had become the stereotype for vampyres: the walking undead who were bloodsucking monsters with no humanity left within them at all. And they smelled bad, too.

I knew because I'd been unlucky enough to see what I had at first thought were the ghosts of the first two dead fledglings. Then human teenagers started being killed, and it had looked like someone was trying to set up a vampyre as the killer. That sucked, especially since I'd known the first two boys who had been killed, and the police's attention turned on me for a little while. What sucked even worse was when Heath had been the third human taken.

Well, I couldn't let him be killed. Plus, we'd kinda sorta accidentally Imprinted. With Aphrodite's help I'd figured out how to follow the Imprint to Heath. The police thought that then I'd rescued a pretty messed-up Heath from a human serial killer.

What had I really discovered?

My undead best friend and her disgusting minions. I'd gotten Heath out of there (the "there" had been the old downtown Prohibition tunnels under the abandoned Tulsa depot) and confronted Stevie Rae. Or what was left of her.

See, one problem was that I didn't believe all of her humanity had been destroyed, like it appeared to have been with the other undead and very nasty ex-fledglings who had been trying to chomp on Heath. The second problem was Neferet. Stevie Rae had told me that Neferet was behind their undeadness. I knew it was true because Neferet had put a really awful spell on Heath and me right before the police had showed up. It was supposed to make us forget everything that had happened in the tunnels. I think it worked on Heath. It had only worked on me temporarily. I'd used the power of the five elements to break through mine. So, long story short. Since then I'd been worried about what the hell I was going to do about: one, Stevie Rae; two, Neferet; three, Heath. It might seem that it helped that none of my three worries had been around during the past month, but it didn't.

"All right," I said aloud, "it's my birthday, and an exceedingly crappy birthday it has been, even for me. So, Nyx, I'm going to ask for only one birthday favor from you. I want to find Stevie Rae." I added a hasty

"Please." (As Damien would remind me, when speaking to one's goddess it was best to be polite.) I hadn't really expected any kind of answer, so when the words roll down your window kept drifting around and around my mind, I thought they were the lyrics to a song on the radio. But my radio wasn't on, and the words had no music with them-plus, they were inside my head and not inside my radio. Feeling more than a little nervous I rolled down my window.

It had been unusually warm all week. Today the high had been almost sixty, which was weird for December, but it was Oklahoma, and weird was just another word for Oklahoma weather. Still, it was close to midnight and the night had definitely cooled off. Not that that bothered me. Adult vamps don't feel the cold with the same intensity as humans. No, it isn't because they are cold, dead, pieces of walking reanimated flesh (eesh, that might be what Stevie Rae is, though). It's because their metabolism is way different than humans. As a fledgling, especially one who is more advanced than most kids who have only been Marked for a couple of months, my resistance to the cold was already way better than a human kid's. So the cool air rushing into my Bug didn't bother me, which was why it was strange that I suddenly started to sneeze and felt kinda creepy. Ugh, what was that smell? It was like a musty basement and egg salad that hadn't been refrigerated soon enough and dirt all mixed together to make a disgusting whiff of something that was nastily familiar.