Burned (House of Night #7)

Zoey

"Zo, you have to wake up. Please! Wake up and talk to me."

The guy's voice was nice. I knew he was cute before I opened my eyes. Then I did open my eyes and smiled up at him 'cause I had definitely been right. He was, as my BFF Kayla would say, "a hottie covered with awesome sauce." Okay, yum! Even though my head was kinda fuzzy, I felt warm and happy. My smile turned into a grin. "I'm awake. Who are you?"

"Zoey, stop playing around. It's not funny."

The kid frowned down at me, and I realized all of a sudden that I was lying across his lap in his arms. I sat up fast and scooted a little away from him. I mean, yeah, he was super cute and all, but being in some stranger's lap was pretty much outside my comfort zone.

"Uh, I'm not trying to be funny."

His cute face went all still and shocked. "Zo, are you telling me you really don't know who I am?"

"Okay, look. You know I don't know who you are. Even though I know it sounds like you know me." I paused, confused by all the "knows."

"Zoey, do you know who you are?"

I blinked. "That's a silly question. Of course I know who I am. I'm Zoey." It's a good thing the kid was cute because obviously he wasn't the brightest Crayola in the pack.

"Do you know where you are?" His voice was gentle, almost hesitant.

I looked around. We were sitting on some really nice soft grass beside a dock that led out to a lake that looked like glass in the gorgeous morning sunlight.

Sunlight?

That was wrong.

Something was wrong.

I swallowed hard and met the guy's gentle brown eyes. "Tell me your name."

"Heath. I'm Heath. You know me, Zo. You'll always know me."

I did know him.

Flashes of him blinked through my memory like fast-forwarded DVDs: Heath telling me my hacked-off hair looked cute in third grade - Heath saving me from that giant spider that fell on me in front of the entire sixth grade - Heath kissing me for the first time after the football game in eighth grade - Heath drinking too much and pissing me off - me Imprinting with Heath . . . and then Imprinting again, and finally me watching as Heath -

"Oh, Goddess!" My memories coalesced and I remembered. I remembered.

"Zo" - he pulled me back into his arms - "it's okay. It's going to be okay."

"How is it going to be okay?" I sobbed. "You're dead!"

"Zo, babe, it's just what happens. I wasn't really scared, and it didn't even hurt too much." He rocked me slowly and patted my back as he spoke to me in his calm, familiar voice.

"But I remember! I remember!" I couldn't stop myself from unattractively snot crying. "Kalona killed

you. I saw it. Oh, Heath, I tried to stop him. I really, really did."

"Shhh, babe, shhh. I know you did. There was nothing you could have done. I called you to me, and you came. You did good, Zo. You did good. Now you have to go back and stand up to him and Neferet. Neferet killed those two vamps from your school, that drama teacher you had and that other guy."

"Loren Blake?" Shock was drying my tears, and I wiped my face. Heath, as usual, pulled a wad of Kleenex out of his jeans pocket. I stared at them for a second and then surprised both of us by cracking up. "You brought nasty used Kleenex to heaven? Seriously?" I giggled.

He looked offended. "Zo. They so aren't used. Well, at least not much."

I shook my head at him and gingerly took the wad, wiping my face.

"Blow your nose, too. You have snot. You always have snot when you cry. That's why I always have Kleenex."

"Oh, be quiet! I don't cry that much," I said, momentarily forgetting he was dead and all.

"Yeah, but when you do, you snot a lot, so I need to be prepared."

I stared at him as reality smacked me again. "Then what happens when you're not there to give me snot rags?" A sob escaped from my throat. "And - and not there to remind me what home is like, what love is like? What being human is like?" I was bawling again, big-time.

"Oh, Zo. You'll figure that all out on your own. You have lots of time. You're a big-deal vamp High Priestess. Remember?"

"I don't want to be," I told him with complete honesty. "I want to be Zoey and be here with you."

"That's just part of you. Hey, maybe it's part of you that needs to grow up." He spoke gently in a voice that sounded suddenly too old and wise for my Heath.

"No." As I said the word, I saw a skittering, inky darkness slide past the edge of my vision. My stomach tightened, and I thought I caught the sharp shape of horns.

"Zo, you can't change the past."

"No," I repeated, and looked away from Heath, peering into what had just moments before been a beautiful, bright meadow framing a perfect lake. This time I definitely saw shadows and figures where there had been nothing but sunlight and butterflies before.

The darkness within the shadows scared me, but the figures that were also within them drew me like bright things draw babies. Eyes flashed within the intensifying gloom, and I caught a good look at one pair of them. I felt a jolt of recognition. They reminded me of someone . . .

"I know someone out there."

Heath took my chin in his hand and forced me to look from the shadows to him. "Zo, I don't think it's a good idea for you to gawk around here. You just need to make up your mind to go home and then click

your heels together, or do some kind of High Priestess extra-special-zapping-magick-stuff and get back to the real world where you belong."

"Without you?"

"Without me. I'm dead," he said softly, stroking the side of my cheek with fingers that felt all too alive.

"I'm supposed to be here; actually, I kinda think this is just the first step of where I'm supposed to be.

But you're still alive, Zo. You don't belong here."

I pulled my face from his hand and lurched away from him, standing up and shaking my head, making my hair fly around me like a crazy woman. "No! I won't go back without you!"

Another shadow caught my eye from what was now a dark, writhing mist that surrounded us, and I was sure I saw the sharp glint of pointed horns. Then the mist boiled again, and a shadow took on a more human form, peering at me from out of the darkness. "I know you," I whispered to the eyes that were so much like mine, only they looked older and sadder - a lot sadder.

Then another shape took her place. These eyes met mine, too, only they weren't sad. They were taunting and blue, but that didn't erase their familiarity.

"You . . ." I whispered, trying to pull myself from Heath's arms, which were holding me tightly against his body.

"Don't look. Just pull yourself together and go home, Zo."

But I couldn't stop looking. Something inside compelled me. I saw another face framed by eyes I knew - and this time I knew them well enough that the knowledge lent me strength, and I pulled away from Heath, turning him so he could see where I pointed into the gloom. "Holy crap, Heath! Look at that.

It's me!"

And it was. The "me" froze as we stared at each other. She was probably about nine years old, and she blinked up at me in terrified silence.

"Zoey Look at me." Heath wrenched me around, holding my shoulders in a grip that I knew would cause bruises later. "You have to get out of here."

"But that's me as a kid."

"I think all of them are you - pieces of you. Something's happened to your soul, Zoey, and you gotta get out of here so that it can get fixed."

Suddenly I felt dizzy and sagged in his arms. I don't know how I knew, but I did. The words I spoke were as true and as final as his death. "I can't leave, Heath. Not unless all those pieces of me are me again. And I don't know how to make that happen - I just don't know!"

Heath pressed his forehead against mine. "Well, Zo, maybe you should try using that annoying mom voice you used on me when I drank too much and tell them to, I dunno, to stop all this bullpoopie and get back inside you where they belong."

He sounded so much like me that he almost made me smile. Almost.

"But if I'm back together, I'll have to leave here. I can feel it, Heath," I whispered to him.

"If you don't put yourself back together, you won't ever leave here because you're gonna die, Zo. I can feel that."

I looked into his warm, familiar eyes. "Would that be so bad? I mean, this place seems a lot better than the mess that's waiting for me back in the real world."

"No, Zoey." Heath sounded pissed. "It's not okay here. Not for you."

"Well, maybe that's 'cause I'm not dead. Yet." I swallowed and admitted, only to myself, that saying it out loud did sound kinda scary.

"I think there's more to it than that."

Heath wasn't looking at me anymore. He was staring over my shoulder, and his eyes had gone all big and round. I turned around. The writhing figures that looked uncomfortably like bizarre, unfinished versions of me were hovering in and out of the black mist, milling and chattering and basically acting weirdly super nervous. Then there was a flash of light that turned into a huge set of dangerous, pointed horns, and with a terrible flapping noise, something descended on that end of the meadow, causing those spirits, those ghosts, those incomplete pieces of me to begin to scream and scream and scream while they scattered and disappeared before it.

"What happens now?" I asked Heath, trying - unsuccessfully - to keep the terror from my voice as we started backing across the meadow.

Heath took my hand and squeezed. "I don't know, but I'll be here with you through all of it. And right now," he whispered in a voice filled with tension, "don't look behind you, just come with me and run !"

For one of the few times in my life, I didn't argue with him. I didn't question him. I did exactly what he said. I held on to Heath and ran.