"Bleck! Aphrodite and her flirting is so nasty. But, more importantly, nuns?" Stevie Rae blinked in confusion. "And they know we're fledglings and stuff?"

I guessed she was referring to herself with the and stuff comment, so I nodded. (Well, I certainly wasn't going to try to explain to the nuns about red vamps.) "Yep. Apparently they're okay with us 'cause they think Nyx is just another form of the Virgin Mary. Plus it seems nuns are not into judging others."

"Well, I like the whole not-judging part, but Nyx and the Virgin Mary? Ohmygoodness, that is the weirdest thing I've heard in a long time."

"Which must make it majorly weird, 'cause I imagine being dead and then undead you heard some very weird stuff," I said.

Stevie Rae nodded solemnly and said, "So weird that, like my daddy would say, it'd knock a buzzard off a meat wagon."

I shook my head, grinned, and threw my arms around her. "Stevie Rae, you crazy kid, I've missed you!"

Chapter Sixteen

Our big hug was broken up by an annoying waterfall of Aphrodite giggles tumbling down the hall from the cat room to us. Stevie Rae and I rolled our eyes together.

"What did you say she was doin' back there, and with who?"

I sighed. "We were only allowed to leave campus with an escort from the Sons of Erebus, so this warrior named Darius--"

"He must be hot if Aphrodite is makin' such a fuss over him."

"Yeah, he's definitely hot. Anyway, Darius said he'd escort me and Aphrodite. She said she'd keep him busy so that we could talk."

"Bet that's a real hardship for her," Stevie Rae said sarcastically.

"Please--we all know she's kinda skanky," I said.

"Kinda?"

"I'm trying to be nice," I said.

"Oh, right. Okay. Me, too. So she's keeping this hot warrior busy so me and you can talk."

"Yeah, and--"

Two more raps on the window had Stevie Rae and me looking up at Sister Mary Angela, who said, "Less talk--more work!" loud enough for us to hear her through the glass.

Stevie Rae and I nodded briskly like we were scared of her. (Uh, who isn't scared of nuns?)

"You go through the box and pull out all of those little grayand-pink polka-dotted mice--the ones stuffed with catnip--and hand them to me. I'll keep clicking them into the inventory thing," I said, holding up the weird gun-looking apparatus the nun had taught me how to work. "We'll talk while I count cat toys."

"Okey-dokey." Stevie Rae began pawing through the big brown UPS box.

"So what were you saying about some news?" I asked, clicking off the mice she handed me like I was a shooter at one of those back-in-the-day arcade games.

"Oh, yeah! You will not believe it! Kenny Chesney is comin' in concert to the new BOK Arena!"

I looked at her. And looked at her some more. And then some more. Without saying anything.

"What? Ya know I love me some Kenny Chesney."

"Stevie Rae," I finally managed. "With all of the crap going on, I do not know how you can take time to obsess about one country music dork."

"You take that back, Z. He is so not a dork."

"Fine. I take it back. You're the dork." "Fine," she said. "But when I figure out how to get Internet access down in the tunnels so I can get tickets online, do not ask me to get one for you."

I shook me head at her. "Computers? Down in the tunnels?"

"Nuns? At Street Cats?" she countered with.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, point made. Stuff is very weird right now. Let's start over. How have you been? I've missed you."

Stevie Rae's frown was instantly replaced by her dimpled grin. "I've been just fine. How 'bout you? Oh, and I've missed the heck outta you, too."

"I've been confused and stressed," I said. "Hand me some of those purple feather toys. I think we're all done with the gray-and-pink mice."

"Well, there're lots of purple feathers, so we're set for a while." She started handing me the long freaky-looking toys. (I definitely wasn't going to get one of those for Nala--she'd probably blow up like a big puffer fish at it.) "So, what kind of confusion and stress? The normal stuff or new-and-improved stress stuff?"

"New and improved, of course." I met Stevie Rae's eyes and, keeping my voice really low, said, "Last night a fledgling named Stark died in my arms." I paused while Stevie Rae flinched, as if what I'd just said had hurt her physically. But I had to continue. "Do you have any idea if he'll come back?"