I started to move toward the door to put away the brushes when Persephone sighed again, and, with a very satisfied grunt, curled her long legs under her and plopped down in the middle of her straw-filled stall.
“So, you were serious about that nap, huh?” I turned to the door and then hesitated. “Why the hell not? Maybe some rest will help me snap out of this terrible mood.” I dropped the brushes and went to Persephone. The sweet mare barely opened an eye when I curled up with her, just behind her front legs, resting against her warm belly. “I’m probably not going to actually sleep, though. I haven’t been getting much sleep lately,” I told her through a giant yawn. Then I put my head on her shoulder, closed my eyes, and went straight to sleep.
* * *
Knock! Knock! Knock! Someone was banging on my door.
My door? Wait. I’m in the stables with Persephone. Are they banging on my stall door?
I lifted my head. Dark—it was really, really dark. How could it be that dark in the stables?
Knock! Knock! Knock!
“Okay, okay! I’m coming!” I said.
I said? But I didn’t say anything.
A light clicked on and I jumped in shock.
I wasn’t in the stables. I was in the dorm. In my old room, but it only kinda looked like my old room. My stuff was there, but the twin bed on the other side of the room was empty. Stevie Rae was nowhere. None of her stuff was there, either. It was like she didn’t exist.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
“Hey, I’m getting dressed! Sheesh! Hang on!”
I watched a version of myself pull on jeans and a black-and-gold Broken Arrow Tigers sweatshirt.
What the hell?
I felt super dizzy and sick, and then my confusion started to clear when I saw that my body was almost completely transparent, and I was hovering a little above the bed.
Then I got it! Ohhh, I’m asleep. This is a dream—a dream about fledgling me. Which actually made sense. I mean, I was so stressed out that I was hiding in the barn, napping with my horse, pretty much wishing I was a carefree fledgling. No big surprise I was dreaming that I was a fledgling again.
Only I wasn’t the fledgling. I was the observer of me, the fledgling.
Okay, so, fine. Dreams are freaky. I looked around the semifamiliar room as “Zoey” hurried to the door. If Kalona shows up—again—I’m waking up this time. Right away.
Dream Zoey paused in front of the little mirror over the sink and tried to smooth back her bed head, and I got my first good look at her face.
Wait, that’s wrong. This fledgling Zoey has a regular Mark, like all the other fledglings.
But, again, I rationalized that that wasn’t a big deal. I mean, if I was dreaming about escaping stress by being a fledgling, I definitely didn’t want to be the only fledgling with a colored-in Mark. Again.
Dream Zoey opened the door a crack. I saw her body jerk in surprise, and then she stepped back so that she could open the door all the way—to reveal Neferet standing in the hallway.
“Ah, hell! Run! This is a sucky dream!” I shouted.
But Dream Z didn’t hear me—neither did smarmy Dream Neferet.
“High Priestess! Hello. I, um, would you like to come in?” Dream Zoey asked lamely.
“No! Don’t let her into your room!” But, again, neither of them heard me.
“Oh, no, my dear. I am sorry to wake you, as the sun hasn’t quite set yet, but I’m afraid you have a rather distraught visitor,” said Dream Neferet with sickeningly fake niceness.
“F off, Neferet!” I yelled. Of course they didn’t hear me, so I sighed and waited to see what dream weirdness would happen next—and I seriously reconsidered my anticussing stance.
“A distraught visitor? I’m sorry, High Priestess, but I don’t understand.”
“It’s your stepfather. He’s rather …” Neferet paused and grimaced in obvious dislike, “insistent that you speak with him. He mentioned something about your immortal soul.”
“Oh, ugh! Him,” Dream me said, and I echoed the thought. Just tell her to tell him to go away and never come back!
But Dream Zoey seemed younger and nicer than me—or maybe just younger and more naïve. “Okay, I’ll talk to him.”
“Excellent. I will escort you to him and remain with you. He really is an unpleasant man.”
“Yeah, he sure is, and thanks for staying with me.”
Neferet motioned for Dream Zoey to follow her, which she did even though I was yelling, “No, don’t go!”
And when Dream Z closed the door I felt myself float after her and right through the closed door.
“Okay, this is the weirdest dream I’ve ever had,” I spoke aloud to myself as I drifted after Dream me and Neferet, who were chatting nonchalantly together like Dream Neferet was actually a decent High Priestess and Dream Zoey was just a newly Marked fledgling—kinda like when I’d first been Marked and Neferet had seemed like a mother to me.
I’d been very wrong about that, but this was just a dream. It was supposed to be strange.
And the House of Night looked strange too. It seemed somehow darker and emptier than my always-busy, never-sleeping school. In the year since my friends and I had taken over, we’d expanded the human/fledgling program so much that there was usually something going on at all hours.
Not so here. Everything was silent, and the fading light of the setting sun did nothing to alleviate the sense of gloom.
“Um, aren’t we going the wrong way?” My dream-self’s question pulled my attention back to her and I saw that Neferet had led Dream Zoey out a back door of the school, instead of toward the administrative offices in the front of the main building.
“Oh, I apologize. I should have explained. Your stepfather refuses to enter campus. One of the Warriors discovered him lurking outside the east wall.” Neferet paused and gave my dream-self a big, pretend smile. “That didn’t sound very charitable of me. I should have chosen another word than lurk.”
Dream Zoey’s cheeks blazed pink and she shook her head in disgust. “No, that’s the perfect word. And I’m the one who needs to apologize. Again. My stepfather is awful. A total religious hypocrite, filled with hate and judgment.” Dream me shuddered. “Getting Marked and being able to move away from him was a relief. I’ll talk to him and be sure he doesn’t come back here and bother you or any other vampyre.”
“Oh, my dear, please do not worry about a human man being a bother. That’s nothing new. That’s what human men seem to do best—bother their betters.”