"The rest of those undead kids have red tattoos like yours?"

She shrugged and looked uncomfortable. "Well, sorta. I'm the only one with a finished tattoo, which I'm guessin' means I've Changed. But the outlines of the blue crescent moon on their foreheads have now all turned to red. They're still fledglings. They're just, well, a different kind of fledgling."

Wow! I sat there, speechless, trying to take in the ramifications of what Stevie Rae was saying. It was utterly amazing that there was now a whole new type of fledgling, which, of course, meant there was a whole new type of adult vampyre, and for a moment it excited me. What if it also meant that everyone who got Marked would make some type of Change, so no more fledglings would have to die! Or at least not permanently. They'd just turn into red fledglings. Whatever that meant.

Then I remembered how awful those other kids had been. They'd killed teenagers. Horribly. They'd tried to kill Heath. I was the only thing that had saved him. Hell, they would have killed me if I hadn't used my affinity with the five elements to save both of us. I also remembered the flash of red I'd seen in Stevie Rae's eyes earlier and the meanness that had looked so out of place on her face, but seeing her now, sounding and acting like herself, it was easy to convince myself I'd been wrong--that I'd imagined or exaggerated what I'd seen.

I mentally shook myself and said, "But Stevie Rae, those other kids were awful."

Aphrodite snorted. "They're still awful and living in an awful disgusting place. And, yes, they're still awful rude, too."

"They're not out of control like they used to be, but they're also not what you'd call normal, either," Stevie Rae said.

"They're disgusting throwaway kids, that's what they are," Aphrodite said. "Like redheaded stepchildren."

"Yeah, some of them have problems and aren't exactly the most popular kids ever, but so what?"

"I'm just saying that it would be easier to figure out what we're going to do about you if we only had you to deal with."

"It's not always about what's easiest. I don't care what we have to do, or what I have to do. I'm not gonna let Neferet use those other kids," Stevie Rae told her firmly.

And what Stevie Rae said clicked. I shivered in horror as my gut told me my terrible new thought was right. "Oh my god! That's why Neferet did whatever she did to make the dying kids come back as undead dead kids. She wants to use them in the war she's declared against humans."

"But, Z, kids have been undying for a while now, and Professor Nolan and Loren were only just killed, so Neferet has only just declared the whole guerrilla war thing," Stevie Rae said.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't. What I was thinking was too awful to speak out loud. I was afraid that the syllables of the words would turn into separate little weapons, and if I put them together, they would join to destroy all of us.

"What is it?" Aphrodite was watching me too closely.

"Nothing." I shifted the words in my mind so that they became something bearable. "It's just that this whole thing makes me think that Neferet has been hoping there would be a reason to fight the humans for a long time. I really wouldn't be surprised if she did create the undead dead kids to be her private army. I saw her with Elliott not long after he was supposed to have died. It was disgusting how much control she had over him." I shivered, remembering only too clearly how Neferet had ordered Elliott around and how he had bowed and scraped in front of her, and then lapped up the offering of her blood in a disgusting and way-too-sexual manner. Watching it had been entirely nasty.

"That's why I have to go back to them," Stevie Rae said. "They need me to care about them and show them that they can Change, too. When Neferet finds out about the difference in their Marks, she'll still try to control them and keep them--well, let's just say, not so nice. I think they can be okay again, like I'm okay again."

"What about the ones who were never okay? Remember the Elliott kid Zoey was just talking about? He was a loser alive and he's a loser undead. He'll still be a loser if he manages to Change into a red whatever." Aphrodite gave an exaggerated, long-suffering sigh when Stevie Rae glared at her. "The point I'm trying to make is that they weren't normal to begin with. Maybe there's nothing for you to save about them." "Aphrodite, you don't get to pick who's worth saving and who's not. I may have been a pretty normal kid before I died, but I'm not exactly normal now," Stevie Rae said. "And I was worth saving!"