"My attitude!" I thought Mom was going to launch into one of her tirades about "why are you always picking on me," but instead she surprised me by taking a deep breath and then looking me straight in the eyes. "I don't mean to hurt your feelings, Zoey."
For a moment she looked like her old self, like the mom she'd been before she'd married John Heffer and turned into the Perfect Stepford Church Wife, and I felt my heart squeeze. "You do hurt my feelings, though, Mom." I heard myself say.
"I'm sorry," she said. Then she held her hand out to me. "How about we try this birthday thing again?"
I put my hand in hers, feeling cautiously hopeful. Maybe there was part of my old mom left inside her. I mean, she'd come alone, without the step-loser, which was pretty darn close to a miracle. I squeezed her hand and smiled. "Sounds good to me."
"Well, then, you should open your present and then we can eat cake," Mom said, sliding over the box that sat next to the as yet untouched cake.
"Okay!" I tried to keep the enthusiasm in my voice, even though the present was wrapped in paper covered with a grim nativity scene. My smile held until I recognized the white leather cover and gold-tipped pages. With my heart sinking down into my stomach, I turned the book over to read: The Holy Word, People of Faith Edition printed in expensive gold leaf cursive across the cover. Another glittering of excess gold caught my eye. Across the bottom of the cover it read, The Heffer Family. There was a red velvet bookmark with a gold tassel stuck inside the front pages of the book and, trying to buy time so I could think of something to say other than "this is a truly awful present," I let the pages fall open there. Then I blinked, hoping what I was reading was just a trick of my eyes. No. It was really there. The book had opened to the family-tree page. In the weird back-slanted left-handed writing that I easily recognized as belonging to the step-loser, my mom's name linda heffer had been penned in. A line had been drawn attaching it to john heffer, with the date of their marriage off to the side. Underneath their names, written in as if we had been born to them, were the names of my brother, my sister, and me.
Okay, my bio dad, Paul Montgomery, had left us when I was just a kid and had promptly disappeared from the face of the earth. Once in a while a pathetically small child-support check would arrive from him with no return address, but other than those rare instances, he hadn't been part of our lives in upward of ten years. Yes, he was a crappy dad. But he was my dad, and John Heffer, who seriously hated my guts, was not.
I looked up from the bogus family tree and into my mom's eyes. My voice sounded surprisingly steady, calm even, but inside I was a big mess of emotions. "What were you thinking when you decided on this for my birthday present?"
Mom seemed annoyed at my question. "We were thinking that you'd like to know that you're still part of this family."
"But I'm not. I haven't been for a long time before I was Marked. You know that and I know that and John knows that."
"Your father most certainly does not"
I held up my hand to cut her off. "No! John Heffer is not my father. He's your husband, and that's all he is. Your choicenot mine. That's all he's ever been." The wound that had been bleeding inside me from the time my mother had walked up broke open and hemorrhaged anger throughout my body. "Here's the deal, Mom. When you bought my present you were supposed to be picking something you thought I might actually like, not something your husband wanted crammed down my throat."
"You don't know what you're talking about, young lady," my mother said. Then she glared at Grandma. "She gets this attitude from you."
My grandma raised one silver brow at her daughter and said, "Thank you, Linda, that might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Where is he?" I asked my mom.
"Who?"
"John. Where is he? You didn't come here for me. You came here because he wanted you to make me feel bad, and that's not something he'd miss. So where is he?"
"I don't know what you mean." Her eyes flicked around guiltily, and I knew I'd guessed right.
I stood up and called down the sidewalk, "John! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
Sure enough, a man detached himself from one of the stand-up tables that were situated at the opposite end of the sidewalk near the Starbucks entrance. I studied him as he walked up to us, trying to understand what my mother had ever seen in him. He was a totally unspectacular guy. Average heightdark, graying hairweak chinnarrow shouldersskinny legs. It wasn't till you looked in his eyes that you saw anything unusual, and then what was reveled was an unusual absence of warmth. I'd always thought it was weird that such a cold, soulless guy would constantly spout religion.
He reached our table and started to open his mouth, but before he could speak I tossed my "gift" at him.
"Keep it. It's not my family and it's not my beliefs," I said, looking him squarely in the eyes.
"So you're choosing evil and darkness," he said.
"No. I'm choosing a loving goddess who has Marked me as her own and gifted me with special powers. I choose a different way than you. That's all there is to it."
"As I said, you choose evil." He rested his hand on my mom's shoulder, like she needed his support to be able to sit there. Mom covered his hand with hers and made sniffling sounds.
I ignored him and focused on her.
"Mom, please don't do this again. If you can accept me, and if you really want to see me, then call and we'll meet. But pretending you want to see me because John tells you what to do hurts my feelings and isn't good for either of us."
"It is good for a wife to submit unto her husband," John said.
I thought about mentioning how chauvinistic and patronizing and just plain wrong that sounded, but instead I decided not to waste my breath and said, "John, go to hell."
"I wanted you to turn away from the evil," Mom said, crying softly.
My grandma spoke up. Her voice was sad but stern. "Linda, it is unfortunate that you found and then bought completely into a belief system that insists as one of its basic tenants that different means evil."
"What your daughter has found is God, no thanks to you," John snapped.
"No. My daughter has found you, and it is sad but true that she never liked to think for herself. Now you're doing her thinking for her. But here's a little independent thought that Zoey and I would like to leave with you," Grandma continued speaking as she handed me my lavender plant and first edition of Dracula, and then grabbed my elbow and pulled me to my feet. "This is America, and that means you don't have the right to think for the rest of us. Linda, I agree with Zoey. If you can find some sense in that head of yours and want to see us because you love us as we are, then give me a call. If not, I don't want to hear from you again." Grandma paused and shook her head in disgust at John. "And you, I don't ever want to hear from again, no matter what."
As we walked away, John's voice whipped out at us, sharp and cutting with anger and hatred. "Oh, you'll hear from me again. Both of you will. There are many good, decent, God-fearing people who are tired of tolerating your evil, who believe enough is enough. We won't live side by side with worshippers of darkness for much longer. Mark my wordswait and seeit is time you repented "
Thankfully, we were soon beyond hearing his rant. I felt like I was going to cry until I realized what my sweet old grandma was muttering to herself.
"That man is such a damn turd monkey."
"Grandma!" I said.
"Oh, Zoeybird, did I call your mother's husband a damn turd monkey out loud?"
"Yes, Grandma, you did."
She looked at me, her dark eyes sparkling. "Good."
CHAPTER 4
Grandma tried to save the rest of my birthday celebration. We walked across Utica Square to the Stonehorse Restaurant, where we decided to have some decent birthday cake. Which meant Grandma had two glasses of red wine and I had a brown pop and a huge, gooey slice of devil's food cake. (Yes, we enjoyed the irony.)
Grandma didn't try to make it all better by fabricating some crap about my mom not meaning it she'd come aroundjust give her timeblahblahblah. Grandma's way more practical and tons cooler than that.
"Your mom's a weak woman who can only find her identity through a man," she said as she sipped her red wine. "Unfortunately, she chose a really bad man."
"She'll never change, will she?"
Grandma touched my cheek gently. "She might, but I honestly doubt it, Zoeybird."
"I like it that you don't lie to me, Grandma," I said.
"Lies don't fix things. They don't even make things easier, at least not in the long run. Best to tell the truth and then clean up an honest mess."
I sighed.
"Honey, do you have a mess you need to clean up?" Grandma asked.
"Yeah, but unfortunately it's not an honest one." I gave Grandma a sheepish smile and told her about my disastrous birthday party.
"You know, you're going to have to straighten out this boyfriend issue. Heath and Erik are only going to put up with each other for about this long." She held up her fingers, measuring out roughly an inch's worth of "this long."
"I will, but Heath was in the hospital for almost a week after that whole serial killer thing that I saved him from, and then his parents jetted him off to the Cayman Islands for their Christmas vacation. I haven't even seen him in a month. So I really haven't had the chance to do much about the Heath and Erik issue." I focused on scraping the bottom of my plate instead of looking at Grandma. The "whole serial killer thing" was utter b.s. I'd saved Heath, but it hadn't been from something as simple as a crazy human. I'd saved him from a group of creatures that my best friend, the undead Stevie Rae, had been (and probably still was) leader of. But I couldn't tell Grandma that. I couldn't tell anyone that, because behind it all was the High Priestess of the House of Night, my mentor, Neferet, and she was way too psychic for my own good. She can't seem to read my mind, at least not very well, but I tell someoneshe reads his or her mindwe're all in a lot of trouble.
Talk about stress.
"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, orhell! 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.