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smelling) the past month. She looked like Stevie Rae again, before my best friend's body had rejected the Change and she'd died almost exactly one month ago, and then, somehow, come back from the dead. But she'd been different—broken. Her humanity had been almost completely lost, and she wasn't the only kid it had happened to. There was a pack of nasty undead dead kids lurking around the old Prohibition tunnels beneath Tulsa's downtown abandoned depot. Stevie Rae had almost become one of them—mean, hateful, and dangerous. Her Goddess-given affinity with the element earth was all that had helped her retain any bit of herself, but it hadn't been enough. She'd been slipping away. So, with the help of Aphrodite (who had also been given an affinity for the element earth), I'd cast a circle and asked Nyx to heal Stevie Rae.
    And the Goddess had, but during that healing process, it seemed like Aphrodite had had to die to save Stevie Rae's humanity. Thankfully, that hadn't been true. Instead of dying, Aphrodite's Mark had disappeared as Stevie Rae's Mark had miraculously been colored in and expanded, showing that she had completed her Change into vampyre. Except to add to the general confusion, Stevie Rae's tattoo hadn't appeared in the traditional color of sapphire, as all adult vampyre Marks are colored. Stevie Rae's Mark was bright scarlet—the color of new blood.
    "Uh, hello. Earth to Zoey. Anybody home in there?" Aphrodite's smart-alecky voice cut through my mental babble. "Better check your BFF. She's kinda losing it."
    I blinked. Even though I'd been gawking at Stevie Rae, I hadn't been seeing her. She was standing in the middle of the room—what used to be our room up until a month ago, when her death had completely and utterly changed everything forever—staring around her with big tear-filled eyes.
    "Oh, honey, I'm sorry." I hurried to her and gave Stevie Rae a hug. "It must be hard for you to be back here." She felt stiff and odd in my arms, and I pulled away a little so that I could look at her.
    The expression on her face chilled my blood. The teary-eyed shock had been replaced by anger. I wondered for an instant why her anger looked familiar—Stevie Rae rarely got pissed. And then I realized what I was recognizing. Stevie Rae looked like she had before I'd cast the circle and she'd been given back her humanity. I took a step away from her.
    "Stevie Rae? What's wrong?"
    "Where's my stuff?" Her voice, like her face, was just plain mean.
    "Honey," I said gently. "The vamps take a fledgling's stuff away when she, uh, dies."
    Stevie Rae turned narrowed eyes on me. "I'm not dead."
    Aphrodite moved so that she was standing beside me. "Hey, don't get all mental on us. The vamps think you're dead, remember?"
    "But don't worry," I said quickly. "I made them give me back a bunch of your things. And I know where the rest of your stuff is. I can get it all back if you want it."
    And just like that, the meanness vanished and I was looking at my best friend again. "Even my lamp made outta a cowboy boot?"
    "Even that," I said, smiling at her. Hell, I'd be pissed, too, if someone had taken all my stuff.
    Aphrodite said, "You'd think if someone died, at least their shitty non-fashion fashion sense would change. But no. Your bad taste is fucking immortal."
    "Aphrodite," Stevie Rae told her firmly, "you really should be nicer."
    "And I say whatever to you and your countrified Mary Poppins outlook on life," Aphrodite said.
    "Mary Poppins was British. Which means she wasn't countrified," Stevie Rae said smugly.
    Stevie Rae sounded so much like her old self that I gave a little happy shout and threw my arms around her again. "I'm so darn glad to see you! You're really okay now, aren't you?"
    "Kinda different, but okay," Stevie Rae said, hugging me back.
    I felt an amazing wash of relief that drowned out the kinda different part of what she'd said. I guess I was just so glad to see her, whole and herself again, that I had to hold that