"What?" Erin said.

"Z, why are you so awake?" Shaunee said.

"Yeah, it's not healthy to be perky so early," Erin said.

"Exactly, Twin. Each person has only so much perkiness. If they use it up early in the day, then it's gone and you're left with grumpiness," Shaunee said.

"I'm not perky. I'm busy." Thankfully, that stopped their lecture. "I'm going to go to the library to research some ritual stuff." That wasn't a lie. They just assumed I was talking about the coming Full Moon Ritual when I was actually talking about a ritual to make poor undead-dead Stevie Rae un-undead. "While I'm doing that, I want you guys to find Damien and Erik and tell them that we're going to meet under the tree by the wall at-" I glanced at my watch. "It's five thirty right now. I should be done with my research by seven-ish. So how about we meet at seven fifteen?"

" 'Kay," the Twins said.

"But how come we're meeting?" Erin said.

"Oh, sorry. Erik is going to be representing earth tomorrow." I swallowed around the sudden clog in my throat. The Twins looked equally sad. Clearly, none of us had really gotten over Stevie Rae, even those of us who believed she was dead. "Erik thought that it might be a good idea to practice casting a circle before the actual ritual. You know, what with all the rest of us having elemental affinities and him not. I thought it was a good idea, too."

"Yeah ... sounds good ...," the Twins mumbled.

"Stevie Rae wouldn't want us to mess up a ritual because we're missing her," I said. "She'd be all Y'all better act right and not make big ol' butts outta yourselves." My twang made the Twins smile.

"We'll be there, Z," Shaunee said.

"Good, then we'll go watch 300 after that," I said.

That really made them grin.

"Oh, and would you two be sure that all the elemental candles are there?"

"Will do, Z," Erin said.

"Thanks, guys."

"Hey, Z," Shaunee called across the room when I was almost out the door. I paused and looked back at them.

"Nice boots," Erin said.

I grinned and held out one foot. I was wearing jeans, but they were the kind that rolled up to just under my knees, which meant that everyone had a clear view of the sparkling Christmas trees that adorned the side of each boot. I was also sporting Damien's snowman scarf, which really was soft as a cashmere dream. A couple of girls sitting on the love seat closest to the door made noises like they thought the boots were cute, too, and I saw the Twins share a smug, told-ya-so look.

"Thanks, the Twins gave them to me for my birthday." I said, loud enough for Shaunee and Erin to hear. They blew me kisses as I went out the door.

I munched my granola bar and headed to the media center in the main school building. Surprisingly, I was feeling okay about the Full Moon Ritual. Sure, it would be weird not having Stevie Rae represent earth, but I'd be surrounded by my friends. It was still us, even if we were short one of us. The school was even more deserted today than it had been during the past month, which made sense. It was Christmas, and even though fledglings have to stay in physical contact with adult vamps, we are allowed to stay off campus for up to a full day. (There's some kind of pheromone vamps secrete that semi-controls the physical Change taking place within us and allows us to complete the metamorphosis into adult vamps, or at least allows some of us to do that. The rest of us die.) So lots of kids were spending Christmas with their human families.

As I'd expected, the library was deserted. I didn't need to worry about it being locked up and alarmed like a typical school. Vamps, with their psychic and physical powers, didn't need locks to make us act right. Actually, I wasn't for sure what they did when a fledgling did something typically teenage and moronic. Rumor had it that the vamps would banish the miscreant (hee-hee, "miscreant," that was one of Damien's vocab words) for varying periods of time. Which meant the kid could get really sick-as in drowning in his own disintegrating bodily tissues and dying.

All in all, it was best not to piss off the vampyres. Naturally, I'd made an enemy of the most powerful High Priestess at our school. Sometimes being me was good-like when Erik was kissing me or when I was hanging with my friends-but mostly being me was a big ball of stress and angst. I searched the musty old books in the metaphysical section of the library (as you can probably imagine, at this particular library it was a big section). It was slow going because I'd decided not to use the computer catalogue search engine. The last thing I needed was to leave an electronic trail that screamed: Zoey Redbird is trying to find information about fledglings that die and have been reanimated as bloodsucking fiends by a High Priestess who is an evil control freak with some kind of as-yet-unknown Master Plan! No. Even I knew that would not be a good idea.