I looked at him.

He swallowed his mouthful of spaghetti. "Father was here."

"What? Kalona? Here?" Stevie Rae's voice almost squeaked the words. Kids at the nearest tables sent us curious glances.

"That's right," Aphrodite said, raising her voice and looking typically annoyed. "Barcelona is where all the best shoe shopping is-not here. Get a clue, bumpkin." Then she tilted her head down and whispered, "Not a good idea to say much about this in public-which means as in anywhere but the tunnels."

"Rephaim, are you okay?" Stevie Rae asked in a much quieter voice.

"Yes. I wasn't alone. Zoey was with me," he answered softly.

Stevie Rae blinked in surprise. "Z?"

"He's right. I was with him the whole time. It's okay. Well, as okay as it can be when He Who Cannot Be Named is involved," I whispered.

"Oh for shit's sake. This isn't Hogwarts," Aphrodite said.

"Wish it was," Erin said.

Then Shaunee did something that shocked me worse than Kalona's visit. She didn't echo her Twin. Instead, in a very small, very un-Twin-like voice she said, "You still care about him. Don't ya?"

Rephaim nodded once, just a little.

"Twin? Hogwarts?" Erin said, looking a little lost.

"Twin, this is more important." Shaunee's eyes found Rephaim again. "Dads are important."

"I didn't know you were close to your daddy," Stevie Rae said.

"I'm not," Shaunee said. "That's why I understand how important they are. Not having one who pays any attention to you doesn't mean you don't wish they were different."

"Huh," Erin said, still looking befuddled. "I didn't know that bothered you, Twin." Shaunee shrugged and looked uncomfortable. "I don't like to talk about it much."

"Was he mean?" Erin asked Rephaim.

Rephaim glanced at me. "No, not very."

"I think Aphrodite is right. We need to talk about this when we don't have to worry about being overheard. Right now let's finish lunch and then everyone needs to go to their mailboxes and check for schedule changes, that includes the red fledglings," I said.

"Dall as's group already got theirs," Aphrodite said. "I heard them talking about it in art class." I looked at Stevie Rae. Her face had gone real white. "We'll all be with you," I said. "And Thanatos is a powerful vampyre, a member of the High Council. She's not gonna let anything happen."

"Shekinah was Leader of the High Council, and she got killed her first day here, remember?" Stevie Rae said.

"That was by Neferet and not some douche-bag red fledgling guy," I said.

"The girls are on my nerves, too," Aphrodite said. "That Nichole bitch needs to have her hair pulled out by the roots, which are probably a different color than the rest of that mess on her head."

"I hate it when I agree with you," Stevie Rae said.

"Well, bumpkin, even you can be right sometimes."

"Can we stop now and eat the rest of our spaghetti?" I said. "There're only two more hours to get through, then we can go back to the depot and we'll have all weekend to figure this stuff out."

"That's a good idea," Damien said. "Next hour I'm checking out books and files on some of the questions we've been trying to answer. I got permission from Professor Garmy to go to the media center during Spanish class. I'm really good at conjugating verbs, and that's what she's focusing on today."

"Ugh," I said. Everyone (besides Damien) at the table nodded in agreement to my conjugating ugh, even though the Twins seemed out of synch and Erin kept giving Shaunee looks that went from annoyance to confusion and back again.

And that pretty much summed up the rest of the day: confusing, annoying, and just plain ugh.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Zoey

"I like his horse," I said to Lenobia.

"I like his horse, too," Lenobia said, even though she sounded like she hated to admit it.

We were standing in the corral, a little ways from the group that was clustered around Travis and his giant Percheron, Bonnie. The cowboy had been demonstrating to a very attentive audience of fledgling guys (and Darius and Rephaim and Stark) how to use a lance and a sword from horseback.

"So," Johnny B said, "Is that all she can do? Just, like, lope or whatever back and forth in a straight line?" From on top of Bonnie the cowboy looked about a zill ion feet tall. Currently, he had a long lance in his hand and I wondered for a second if he was going to skewer smart aleck, muscle-brained Johnny B. But Travis just tilted his hat back, rested the lance on his hip, and said, "My girl can do everything a smaller horse can do. She has all the gaits: walk, trot, lope, gall op." He glanced over at Lenobia and his easygoing smile turned wry.