“I hate that movie,” I said. “It goes on, like, forever.”
“And it’s racist,” Shaunee added.
“Everything back then was racist,” Damien said, sotto voce.
“Please don’t use that word. It makes you sound like a peasant.” Aphrodite walked slowly into the room, holding on to Darius’ arm.
“Racist?” Damien said.
“Pussy,” Aphrodite said.
“Ohmygoodness. Your eyes.” Stevie Rae went to Aphrodite and touched her face gently. “You just had a vision. Are you okay?”
“I will be. And it’s good to see you, too.”
“Wait, that’s why the surprise was foiled?” Damien said. “Aphrodite had a vision.” His eyes met mine. “And it’s bad enough that we all needed to get here right away.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“On the good-bad scale, with there being for-real unicorns discovered as good, and Kenny Chesney permanently losing his voice as bad—how bad is it?” Stevie Rae asked.
“It’s Kenny-Chesney-was-never-born, off-the-scale bad.” Stark said.
“We all need to sit down,” I said as Lenobia and Kramisha entered the room with the Poet Laureate closing the Council Chamber door firmly behind them.
“Ah, hell,” Stevie Rae whispered, sounding disconcertingly like me.
7
Zoey
“Okay, so you guys all have copies of the poem Kramisha brought to me just as I was waking up from the Kalona dream.” I’d quickly explained the dream to everyone while Kramisha passed out copies of her prophetic poem.
“I think we all also need copies of Neferet’s journal,” Lenobia said. She was officially part of our school’s High Council and not the North American Council, but we all respected her wisdom—so she was always invited to our meetings. “Let us read it carefully. Kalona has a point. If we have to fight Neferet again, knowledge will be our second greatest power.”
“Second greatest?” Stark asked.
Lenobia smiled seraphically. “Why, Stark, I’m surprised you have to ask.” Her distinctive gray eyes found mine. “Zoey Redbird, what is our greatest power?”
“Love,” I said automatically. “Always, love.”
“Indeed,” Lenobia said.
“May I ask something?” Rephaim raised his hand like a good little student.
“Of course. And you don’t have to raise your hand,” I said.
“Are you sure Father visited you in Capri?”
“Well, yeah. I’ve been there before, and he’s been there before—I mean, in my dreams. Believe me, those visits are seared into my memory.”
“Because of their negative nature?” Rephaim asked.
I cleared my throat, uncomfortable with the memories this conversation was unearthing. “Yes. Because of their negative nature.”
“And it was Father who caused the negative parts of the old dreams?”
“Rephaim, if you have something to say, just say it. I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” I said.
“I don’t mean to offend,” he said, looking as uncomfortable as I felt.
“Oh, for shit’s sake! We don’t have time for tiptoeing around each other’s feelings. Just get to the point, Bird Boy,” Aphrodite said.
He glanced from Aphrodite to me, and I nodded. “Then here’s my point: Father visits my dreams often, but never in a place from the past that has negative associations for him. I asked him about it once—why he only enters my dreams when they’re set in new places where he and I have not been before. He said that he cannot bear to relive any memory from when he was lost to Darkness.”
“Wait, you’re telling me that over the past year Kalona has never, not once visited you in a dream in a place where he had done something bad?” A really awful fear frosted up my spine.
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Rephaim said. “With the addition that Father explained it to me. His exact words were …” He paused, thinking, then he quoted Kalona, “Son, I will never revisit the past. I cannot bear the remembrance of what I allowed Darkness to do.”
“Rephaim, can you, um, call Kalona or something and ask him why he visited me on Capri, even though that place was definitely from a time he was filled with Darkness?” I asked.
Rephaim grinned, suddenly boyish. “I don’t call him. I send prayers to him.”
“Just a moment. Are you likening Kalona to a god to whom you pray?” Damien said. “That doesn’t feel right to me.”
“Father is definitely not a god, but he did die. Damien, do you not believe our dead loved ones can hear our prayers?”
I watched Damien’s face blanch white, and then flush a bright, happy pink. “I’d always hoped so, but …” Damien left his chair and went to Rephaim, hugging him as he said, “Thank you so much for that.” He smiled and wiped his eyes, returning to his place at the round table.
Stark, Aphrodite, Darius, and I stared mutely at Damien’s happy expression. I knew what my friends were thinking, and I hated, hated that I had to be the one to take that joy from him.
But, like I’d said earlier. We aren’t kids anymore. We’re the High Council. Adulting often sucks—right now it super sucked.
“So, after the Kalona dream and Kramisha’s prophetic poem, Stark, Aphrodite, Darius, and I decided we needed to go to Woodward Park and be sure nothing weird was going on with Neferet,” I said. “Aphrodite, fill them in on what you found when we cut through the rose gardens.”
Aphrodite quickly recounted her talk with the old rose-garden guy, describing the bizarre black roses and their tendril-like canes.
“That is highly disturbing,” Lenobia skewered Aphrodite with her sharp gaze. “My guess is you had a vision not long after that.”
“Smart lady,” Aphrodite said. Then she looked to me. I nodded.
“All right. Here’s what I saw. Damien, I want to say that I’m sorry about this first.”
“About what?” Damien asked.
“About how hard this is going to be for you.” Aphrodite’s gaze flicked to mine and I nodded. She sighed and continued. “I’m going to tell it like I felt it. I’m not sugarcoating anything.”
“Blame me,” I said. “This is too important for any details to be lost, even if not losing them hurts you.”
“I don’t like where this is going,” Damien said.
Without me asking them to, Stevie Rae, Shaunee, and Shaylin got up from their places around the table and went to Damien. They surrounded him, physically and emotionally, with the elements they embodied as well as their love.
Damien drew a deep breath. “All right. I’m ready now. Go ahead, Aphrodite. What did your vision show you?”