And they hated me for it.

But it was so much more than them hating me. The most frightening, most unbelievable part of it was that they had begun to hate Nyx.

"I have to get him out of here." I spoke the words out loud, making them an oath. "No matter what, Kalona will leave this House of Night."

I walked slowly toward the stables, and not just because I'd left my last class early so I had time to kill before sixth hour and Equestrian Studies began. I walked slowly because I was going to slip and fall on my butt if I wasn't extremely careful. My luck I'd break something and have to deal with a cast or two along with everything else.

Someone had put a sand and salt mixture on the sidewalk, but it had little effect on a storm that just kept coming. Wave after wave of freezing rain fell, making the world look like a giant cake with crystal icing. It was still beautiful, but in an eerie, dreamlike way. As I slipped and slid and struggled the few yards I had to cross from the drama classroom to the stables, I realized there was no way the six of us were going to be able to walk out of here, not to mention the mile or so we'd have to go to get to the Benedictine Abbey on the corner of Lewis and Twenty-first.

I wanted to sit down in the middle of the cold, wet, slippery mess and burst into tears. How was I going to get us out of here? I needed the Hummer, but I couldn't cloak it. That left only escape on foot, which wasn't fast enough under normal circumstances. During an ice storm that coated the streets and sidewalks of midtown Tulsa with ice and darkness, it was not just slow but impossible.

I was almost at the entrance to the stables when I heard the mocking crooak from the branches of the huge old oak that stood sentry outside the building. My first reaction was to slip and slide quickly to the door and get inside. I actually started to hurry, and then my anger caught up with me. I stopped, drew a deep breath to center myself, and ignored the the bird thing's terrible human eyes staring at me and causing the little hairs on the back of my neck to lift. "Fire, I need you," I whispered, sending my thoughts south, to the direction ruled by that element's flames. Almost instantly I felt heat brush against my skin and there was a waiting, listening quality to the air around me. I turned and looked up into the ice-crusted branches of the proud old oak.

Instead of a Raven Mocker, a terrible, spectral image of Neferet clung to the center of the tree where the massive first branches began to spread. She radiated darkness and evil. There was no breeze, but her long hair was lifting around her, as if the strands had a life of their own. Her eyes glowed a nasty scarlet, more rust than red. Her body was semi-transparent; her skin shimmered with an unearthly light.

I focused on the one thing that allowed my terror to thaw enough for me to speak--if her body looked transparent, then she really wasn't there.

"Don't you have more important things to do than spy on me?" I was glad my voice didn't shake. I even raised my chin and glared at her.

"You and I have unfinished business." Her mouth didn't move, but I heard her voice echo eerily around us.

I mimicked one of Aphrodite's haughty sneers. "Okay, so maybe you don't have anything better to do than spy on me. I, on the other hand, am way too busy to be bothered by you."

"Once again you need a lesson in respecting your elders." As I watched, she began to smile, and her wide, beautiful mouth stretched and stretched and stretched until, with a horrible gagging sound, spiders exploded from that gaping maw and her image broke apart into hundreds and hundreds of seething, multilegged creatures.

I sucked air for a huge scream, and had already started scurrying backwards, when I heard a rustling of wings and a Raven Mocker landed in the crotch of the tree. I blinked, expecting him to be overrun with spiders, but they shimmered and then seemed to soak into the night and disappear. There was only the tree, the Raven Mocker, and my lingering fear.

"Zzzzzoey," the creature hissed my name. Obviously this was one of the bottom-feeding Mockers whose ability to speak wasn't nearly as refined as Rephaim's. "You ssssmell like ssssummer." It opened its dark beak and I saw the forked tongue that flicked out hungrily, like it was tasting my scent.

Okay. Enough was enough. Neferet had scared the bejeezus out of f zfwide, beame. And now this...this...bird boy was going to try to bully me, too? Oh. Hell. No.

"Alright, I am sick and tired of you freaks and the way you and your daddy and nasty Neferet think you can take over everything."

"Father ssssays, find Zzzzzoey, and I find Zzzzzoey. Father ssssays, watch Zzzzzoey. I watch Zzzzzoey."

"No. No. No! If I wanted a pain-in-the-butt dad to follow me around and check up on me, I'd call the Step-loser. So to you, your daddy, the rest of your bird-boy brothers, and even to Neferet, I say: Get. Off. My. Back!" I lifted my hands and flung fire at him. He screeched and took off, flapping wildly and flying erratically out of the tree and away from me as fast as he could go, leaving behind the scent of singed feathers and silence.