Hunted

While Jack pulled Duchess over to him and had a very serious conversation with her about keeping her nose off things, I stared at the piles of stuff. “Huh. Who knew all this was here?”

“Aphrodite,” Kramisha said as she filled our arms with terry cloth. “She paid for it. Or her mama’s gold card money did. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff you can order from Pottery Barn if you got unlimited credit. It’s made me decide once and for all on my future career.”

“Really? What do you want to do?” Jack asked. Duchess sitting politely beside him, he held his arms out to be filled with towels and robes.

“I’m go

“Yeah, I guess. I have seen store people kiss the Twins’ butts,” Jack said. “Their families have money, too.” He whispered the last part like it was a big secret, which it wasn’t. Everyone knew the Twins’ parents were rich. Okay, not Aphrodite rich, but still. They’d bought me boots for my birthday that cost almost $400. That’s definitely rich to me.

“Well. I decided I like me some butt-kissing. So I’m go

“Yep,” he said.

We walked down the tu

“This here’s my room.” Kramisha saw me staring at the amazing material masquerading as a door, and she smiled. “It’s a curtain from Pier One. They don’t deliver, but they do take unlimited gold cards.”

“It’s a great color,” I said, thinking how moronic it was for me to be imagining booger monsters in every shadow when the place had been Pier One–decorated.

“Thanks. I like me some color. It’s an important part of decoration. Wa

“Yeah,” I said.

“Definitely,” Jack said.

Kramisha looked from Jack to Duchess. “She potty trained?”

Jack bristled. “Of course. She’s a perfect lady.”

“She better be,” Kramisha grumbled, then she pulled the curtain to the side and made a graceful flourish with her free hand. “You may enter my space.”

Kramisha’s room was about twice the size of Stevie Rae’s. She had two lanterns and a dozen scented candles lit, which gave the fresh paint smell a hint of citrus. She’d obviously recently painted the round cement walls a bright lime color. Her furniture was dark wood—bed, dresser, nightstand, and bookcase. She didn’t have any chairs, but piled around the room were huge satin pillows in bold purples and pinks, which matched the linens on her bed. On said bed were half a dozen books, with bookmarks in them or lying open, like she was in the middle of reading all of them at the same time. I noticed that they, along with the books in the bookcase, had Dewey Decimal stickers on their spines. Kramisha noticed me noticing.

“Central Library downtown. They stay open real late on weekends.”

“I didn’t know the library let you check out this many books at the same time,” Jack said.

Kramisha fidgeted. “They don’t. Not technically. Not ’less you do a little this and a little that with they minds. I’ll give ’em back soon as I can get to Borders and buy my own,” she added.

I sighed and added “committing library theft” to the list in my head of things the red fledglings needed to be encouraged to stop doing, and as I made the mental addition I also chastised myself. Kramisha definitely looked guilty about ripping off library books. Would a kid who still had monstrous tendencies be worried about petty theft? No, no, hell no, I told myself, automatically wandering over to the bed to read some of the titles. There was a huge copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, as well as an illustrated hardback of Jane Eyre, which was piled on top of a book called The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee. There was also a hardback edition of Dragon-flight by A

I swear my retinas started to burn with the heat of the scene.

“Book porn. I like it,” Erik said from over my shoulder.

“Um, they some of my research.” Kramisha quickly plucked the book from my fingers, shooting Erik a smooth look. “And from what I seen out there, you don’t need no help.”

I felt my face get hot again and sighed.

“Hey, cool poetry,” I heard Jack say. Glad for the distraction, I looked up to see Jack pointing at several posters neatly hot-glued to Kramisha’s green walls. They were filled with poetry, all written in the same curling script in different colors of fluorescent Magic Markers.

“You like it?” Kramisha said.

“Yeah, it’s great. I really like poetry,” Jack said.

“They mine. I wrote ’em,” Kramisha said.

“Are you kidding? Man, I thought they were from a book or something. You’re really good,” Jack said.

“Thanks, I told you I’m go

I vaguely heard Erik join the discussion. All of my attention had become focused on one short poem that was written in black on a blood-red poster. “You wrote that one, too?” I asked, not caring that I was interrupting their discussion of whether they liked Robert Frost better than Emily Dickinson.

“I wrote all a’ them,” she said. “I always did like writin’, but since I was Marked I been doing it more and more. They just come to me. I been hopin’ I can write more than poems. I like ’em and all, but poets, they don’t make no money. See, I researched careers at Central Library, too, ’cause, you know, it stay open late. Anyhow, them poets don’t make—”

“Kramisha”—I cut her off—“when did you write that one?” My stomach felt fu

“I wrote all them in the past few days. You know, since Stevie Rae got us our sense back. Before that I didn’t think much ’bout anything ’cept eatin’ humans.” She smiled apologetically and lifted one shoulder.

“So you wrote that one—the one in black—in the past couple of days?” I pointed at the poem.

Shadows in shadows

He watches through

dreams

Wings black as Africa

Body strong as stone

Done waiting

The ravens call.

Jack gasped as he read it for the first time.

“Oh, Goddess!” I heard Erik say under his breath as he, too, read the poem.

“That’s easy. It’s the last one I wrote—just yesterday. I was…” Her words ran out as she understood our reactions. “Shit! It’s ’bout him!”