I felt my head shake back and forth. "But how could that happen? Was he by the target?"

"He was nowhere near it. He was standing not more than ten paces from me to my right. We were separated only by the white linen tarp. I was facing forward when I aimed and shot, but that didn't matter. The arrow went through his chest." He grimaced with the pain the memory still caused him. "It was so fast, everything went blurry. Then I saw his blood spatter the white linen that separated us, and he was dead."

"But Stark, maybe it wasn't you. Maybe it was some kind of weird magical fluke."

"That's what I thought at first, or at least that's what I hoped. So I tested my gift."

My stomach clenched. "Did you kill someone else?"

"No! I tested it on things that weren't alive. Like there was a freight train that used to go by the school every day about the same time. You know, one of those old-time- looking ones, with the big black engine and the red caboose. They still come through Chicago a lot. I printed off a picture of the caboose and put it on a target on the school grounds. I thought about hitting the caboose and shot."

"And?" I prompted when he didn't say anything. "The arrow disappeared. Only temporarily, though. I found it again the next day when I waited by the track. It was sticking in the side of the real caboose."

"Holy crap!" I said.

"Now you see." He walked over to me so that we were standing very close. His eyes captured mine with that unique intensity of his. "That's why I had to tell you about me, and that's why I needed to know if you were strong enough to protect the people you care about."

My stomach, already clenching, flipped over. "What are you going to do?"

"Nothing!" he shouted, causing Duchess to whine again and Nala to pause in her purr/rub and stare up at him. He cleared his throat and made an obvious effort to pull himself together. "I don't mean to do anything. But I didn't mean to kill Will, and I did."

"You didn't know about your powers then, and you do now."

"I suspected," he said softly.

"Oh," was all I could think to say.

"Yeah," he said, pressing his lips tightly together before he continued. "Yeah, I knew there was something weird about my gift. I should have listened to my gut. I should have been more careful. But I didn't and I wasn't, and Will is dead. So I want you to know the real deal about me in case I mess up again."

"Hang on! If I understand what you're saying, then only you can know what you're really aiming at 'cause it's happening inside your head."

He snorted sarcastically. "You'd think so, wouldn't you, but that's not how it works. One time I thought it was perfectly safe for me to do a little practice shooting. I went to the park that was next to our House of Night. No one was around to distract me; I made sure of that. I found a big old oak and set up a bull's-eye in front of what I decided was the center of the tree."

He was looking at me like he expected a response, so I nodded. "You mean like the middle of the trunk?"

"Exactly! That's what I thought I was aiming at--something that was the center of the tree. But do you know what the center of a tree is sometimes called?"

"No, I really don't know too much about trees," I said lamely.

"Neither did I. I looked it up afterwards. The ancient vampyres, the ones with earth affinities, called the center of the tree its heart. They believed that sometimes animals, or even people, could represent the heart of a particular tree. So I shot, thinking about hitting the center or heart of the tree." He didn't say any more; he just stared down at his bow.

"Who did you kill?" I asked softly. Without actually thinking about it, I lifted my hand and rested it on his shoulder. I'm not even sure now why I touched him. Maybe it was because he looked like he needed the touch of another person. And maybe it was because, despite his admission and the danger he represented, I was still drawn to him.

He covered my hand with his, and his shoulders drooped. "An owl," he said brokenly. "The arrow just burst out of its chest. It was perched on one of the top inside branches of the oak. It screamed all the way to the ground."

"The owl was the heart of the tree," I whispered, fighting the insane urge I had to pull him into my arms to comfort him.

"Yeah, and I killed it." He looked up and met my eyes then. I thought I'd never seen a gaze so haunted by regret, and as the two animals at his feet comforted him and, at least for Nala, acted way more intuitively than usual, the thought flitted through my mind that Stark might very well have more gifts than just hitting whatever he aimed at, but I used some sense and didn't say anything. Like he needed more gifts to worry about? Stark kept talking. "See? I'm dangerous, even when I don't mean to be."