Betrayed

"Ah, Zoey, there you are." Neferet smiled at me with her usual warmth. "These gentlemen need to speak with you. I believe we can step into the library. This shouldn't take more than a mo­ment." Neferet regally gestured for the suits and me to follow her as she swept from the big main room (with everyone gawking openmouthed at us) to the little side room we called the dorm library, but was actually more of a computer room with some comfortable chairs and a few shelves filled with paperbacks. There were only two girls at the row of computers, and with a quick command Neferet got rid of them. They scurried out and she closed the door behind them, then she turned to face us. I glanced at the clock over the computer. It was 7:06 A.M. on Satur­day morning. What was going on?

"Zoey, this is Detective Marx"—she pointed at the taller of the two men—"and Detective Martin from the homicide division of the Tulsa Police Department. They wanted to ask you a few ques­tions about the human boy who was killed."

"Okay," I said, wondering what kind of questions they could possibly want to ask me. Hell, I didn't know anything. I hadn't even known him that well.

"Miss Montgomery," Detective Marx began, but he was cut neatly off by Neferet.

"Redbird," she said.

"Ma'am?"

"Zoey legally changed her last name to Redbird when she be­came an emancipated minor upon entrance to our school last month. All of our students are legally emancipated. We find it helpful with the unique nature of our school."

The cop gave a short nod. I couldn't tell whether he was an­noyed or not, but I guessed by the way he kept looking at Neferet the answer was not.

"Miss Redbird," he continued, "we have received information that you are acquainted with Chris Ford and Brad Higeons. Is this true?"

"Yeah, I mean yes," I hastily corrected. Clearly this wasn't a good time to sound like a silly teenager. "I know … well, knew both of them."

"What do you mean by knew?" Detective Martin, the shorter cop, said sharply.

"Well, I mean that I don't hang out with human teenagers any­more, but even before I was Marked I didn't see Chris or Brad much." I wondered what he was so uptight about, and then I real­ized that because Chris was dead and Brad was missing that my talking about them in the past tense probably sounded really bad.

"When was the last time you saw the two boys?" Marx asked.

I chewed my lip, trying to remember. "Not for months—since the begi

"So you weren't with either boy?"

I frowned. "No. I was kinda dating the Broken Arrow quarter­back. That's the only reason I knew any of those Union guys." I smiled, trying to lighten things up. "People think Union players hate BA players. It's not really true. Most of them grew up to­gether. A bunch of them are still friends."

"Miss Redbird, you've been at the House of Night for how long?" the short cop asked as if I hadn't tried to be pleasant.

"Zoey has been with us for almost exactly one month," Neferet answered for me.

"And in that month did either Chris or Brad visit you here?"

Totally surprised, I said, "No!"

"Are you saying no human teenagers have visited you here at all?" Martin fired the question quickly.

Caught off guard I sputtered like a moron and I'm sure looked completely guilty. Thankfully, Neferet saved me.

"Two friends of Zoey's did see her during her first week here, although I do not believe you'd call it an official visit," she said with a smooth, adult smile aimed at the detectives that clearly said kids will be kids. Then she nodded encouragement at me. "Go ahead and tell them about your two friends who thought it'd be fun to scale our walls."

Neferet's green eyes locked on mine. I'd told her all about Heath and Kayla climbing the wall with the ridiculous idea of busting me out. Or at least that had been Heath's idea. Kayla, my ex-best friend, had just wanted me to see that she'd staked a claim on Heath. I'd told Neferet all of that, and more. How I'd kinda accidentally tasted Heath's blood—until Kayla had caught me and totally lost her mind. Staring into Neferet's eyes I knew as sure as if she'd said the words aloud that I was to keep the little blood-tasting incident to myself, which was more than okay with me.

"There really wasn't much to it, and it was a whole month ago. Kayla and Heath thought they'd sneak in and bust me out." I paused to shake my head like I thought they were totally crazy, and the tall cop jumped in with, "Kayla and Heath who?"

"Kayla Robinson and Heath Luck," I said. (Yeah, Heath's last name really is Luck, but the only thing he was particularly lucky about is not getting picked up DUI.) "Anyway, Heath is kinda slow sometimes, and Kayla, well, Kayla's really good at shoes and hair, but not so good at common sense. So they hadn't really thought out the whole 'Hey, she's turning into a vampyre and if she leaves the House of Night she'll die' issue. So I explained to them that not only did I not want to leave, I couldn't leave. And that was about it."

"Nothing unusual happened when you saw your friends?"

"You mean when I went back to the dorm?"

"No. Let me rephrase the question. Nothing unusual hap­pened when you saw Kayla and Heath?" Martin said.

I swallowed. "No." Which wasn't actually a lie. Apparently it's not unusual for fledglings to experience a vampyre's bloodlust. I shouldn't so early in my Change, but my Mark shouldn't be filled in and I shouldn't have the added decorative tattooing of an adult vamp either. Not to mention the fact that no other fledgling or vamp had ever been Marked on the shoulder and back like I had. Okay, I'm not exactly a normal fledgling.

"You didn't cut the boy and drink his blood?" The short cop's voice was like ice.

"No!" I cried.

"Are you accusing Zoey of something?" Neferet said, stepping closer to me.

"No, ma'am. We're simply questioning her to try and get a clearer idea of the dynamics of the friends of Chris Ford and Brad Higeons. There are several aspects of the case that are rather unusual and …" The short cop rambled on and on while my mind raced.

What was going on? I hadn't cut Heath; I'd scratched him. And I hadn't done it on purpose. And "drinking" his blood wasn't ex­actly what I'd done—it was more like I lapped it up. But how the hell did they know anything about it? Heath wasn't very bright, but I didn't think he'd run around telling people (especially not detective people) that the chick he had the hots for drank blood. No. Heath wouldn't have said anything, but—

And I knew why they were asking me questions.

"There's something you should know about Kayla Robinson," I said suddenly, interrupting the short cop's boring tirade. "She saw me kiss Heath. Well, actually Heath kissed me. She likes Heath." I looked from one cop to the other. "You know, she really likes Heath, as in wants to date him now that I'm out of the way. So when she saw him kiss me she got pissed and started yelling at me. Okay, I admit I didn't act very mature. I got pissed back at her. I mean, it's just wrong when your best friend goes after your boyfriend. Anyway"—I fidgeted, like I was embarrassed to admit what I was telling them—"I said some mean stuff to Kayla that scared her. She freaked out and left."

"What kind of mean stuff?" Detective Marx asked.

I sighed. "Something like if she didn't go away I'd fly off the wall and suck her blood."

"Zoey!" Neferet's voice was sharp. "You know that's inappro­priate. We have enough problems with image without you fright­ening human teenagers on purpose. Little wonder the poor child spoke to the police."

"I know. I'm really sorry." Even though I understood Neferet was playing along with me, I still had to work at not cringing away from the power in her voice. I glanced up at the detectives. Both of them were staring at Neferet with wide, startled eyes. Huh. So, up until then she'd only shown them her gorgeous public face. They had no idea what kind of power they were dealing with.