Ok everyone. I know it's been a year, but I have finally decided to write a sequel to Scared. This story takes place ten years in the future at a new House of Night that Zoey and her friends helped create. Again this story follows up Scared which was a sequel to my story An Endless Circle which was written in response to Hunted. So this storyline only follows the Cast's through Hunted.

Disclaimer: I do not own the House of Night. The House of Night belongs to PC and Kristin Cast.

I walked through the silent. The only sound was the clacking noise my boots made on the stone floor and the flickering of the flames in the oil lamps, casting a dim light around the hall. My stomach turned uncomfortably, my intuition warning me something wasn't right. The problem was my intuition had been telling me the same thing for the last month without actually pointing me in the direction of whatever was causing my unease. I had cast circles, and performed rituals, but received no answer other than the turning deep in my gut that I had learned to accept as a silent warning from Nyx.

I turned the corner, running my fingers against the smooth stone wall. Nothing stirred. Not that I was expecting that it would exactly. It was the middle of the day which meant that my students were sound asleep. I wished sleep had come to me that easy, but I had barely lain down before the familiar tickle on my skin touched the back of my neck and my stomach turned uncomfortable.

"Find anything?" Damien asked, startling me out of my thoughts. "Sorry I didn't mean to scare you, Z." He said propping Jack up who was half asleep and leaning against Damien's shoulder.

"You didn't," I tried to lie, pushing a strand of hair from my face in a lame attempt at normality.

"Right," Erin said, walking into view, a look of mischief in her eyes.

"That's why you nearly jumped on that statue," Shaunee finished for here, pointing to the marble representation of the elements one of my students had made for the school.

I smiled, ignoring her comment. My friends hadn't changed much in the last ten years. Their appearance was exactly the same, well if you didn't count the change to their Marks. I really hadn't been sure what to expect when each of them made it through the change, but I should have guessed that their Marks would resemble their affinities and they did. Erin's Marks resembles raindrops entwined with gently rolling waves, showing waters many forms. Shaunee's Marks sparked and blazes switching from smooth lines of a flame to the explosive energy in an inferno. Damien's Marks were surprising. Though winds true form cannot be seen there was no denying that that was exactly what his Marks represented. They started out twisting and turning reminding me of leaves caught up on a fall breeze, but soon turned more jagged and angular like the wind of a winter blizzard.

The appearance of my friends wasn't the only thing that had stayed the same. Sometimes it felt as if we were all still just students at the House of Night instead of running one. Shaunee and Erin were both still boy crazed, obsessed with fashion and finishing each other's sentences. Damien and Jack were still together and Damien still annoyed the poopie out of the twins by correcting their grammar and Stevie Rae continually tried to keep the peace between us adding a "be nice ya'll" to the conversation every now and then. And Aphrodite…

"Figures, I'd be the only one working," Aphrodite said, her high heeled shoes announcing her presence long before her words did. She stopped just short of us, flipping her long blonde hair and turning to gaze up and Darius as she sontinued. "I swear if it wasn't for us this school wouldn't get anything done."

"Please," Erin started.

"Just please, with your I'm the human and I'm still more amazing than you speech," Shaunee finished for her. "If I have to hear that line one more time, I'm gonna find a way to make you a little less perfect."

"Our Heels shoved up her…"

"Enough," I said, cutting Erin off before this could go any further.

"Bet she wouldn't see that one coming," Shaunee whispered under her breath. "Even with the her prophetic visions."

"I know you don't want me to come over there and kick the crap out of you two," Aphrodite snarled.

"Bring it!" Shaunee said, snapping her fingers and causing every flame in the hall to crackle.

"Did I not say enough?" I asked Stark when he appeared at my side.

"You know my offer to shoot them all still stands," Stark said, eyeing his bow and arrows.

I smirked. While I had learned to handle my friends bickering, Stark was a little less patient which actually worked out well. We had a kind of good cop bad cop thing going. I would ask nicely and then stark would get medieval on them when they didn't listen to their High Priestess. Not that I couldn't keep them in line myself and had told him so more than once.

His response? You have enough on your plate, Zoey, without having to deal with their petty bullshit too. I'll take care of them, you just handle everything else.

Tonight however I was in no mood to just let Stark handle it. My stomach turned apprehensively again and I felt my impatience growing.

"I said that's enough," I said again, using the voice of the High Priestess to get their attention. "We have enough to worry about without you all waking the students with your bickering," I continued once I had their attention. Aphrodite and the twins were still glaring at each other, but at least they had stopped their screaming. "Now, did anyone notice anything out of the ordinary?"

Damien and Jack exchanged looks and I noticed the others in the group shuffling uncomfortably.

"What?" I asked, starting to get irritated.

Darius hesitated. "Priestess, we know that you believe that there is some sort of dark force emanating, but as every day for the last month, we've found nothing."

"What are you saying, Darius?" I asked, bringing my fingers up to massage my temples.

"Z, I think what Darius is trying to say is that maybe the feeling you're getting isn't what you think," Damien said tip-toeing around the issue. "Jack and I didn't find anything out of the ordinary."

"Just like every other time we've searched the grounds," Shaunee said, as if my asking them to patrol had become some sort of troublesome chore.

I shot her a look. "We're supposed to protect our fledglings no matter what."

"Yes, we are," Darius agreed.

"But there's nothing here to protect them from," Damien added, treading gently again.

I wished he wouldn't. It only made it that much harder for me to yell at them. Did they think I wasn't getting just as frustrated as them? I knew my intuition. I knew when I was receiving a warning. I knew when something wasn't right and something definitely wasn't right. Yet, I couldn't place it. Like the rest of my friends, I had found nothing out of place, nothing that even suggested that there was trouble. That only made me more paranoid.

"Fine, go back to your apartments," I said heading for the large oak doors at the end of the hall.

"Zoey," Damien tried again. "It's not that we don't believe you."

"Just that searching the grounds is a waste of time," I said, looking over my shoulder. "I got the message, Thanks." I pushed through the doors aware that most my friends were staring at my back and that Stark, Aphrodite and Darius had followed me.

"Zoey," Stark said, catching up to me as I moved from the student dorms to the stairs that led to the lower level recreation rooms. All of us had been a part of designing this particular House of Night and as former students we had decided that both the girls and guys dorms should be connected by a recreation room filled with games, television, tables, and couches. Not that there wasn't a common room in both the dormitories, but the recreation room had more to do. The other thing we had decided was that we only wanted three buildings. The first building was for the dormitories. The second was the actual school which contained the classes, library, and both and indoor and outdoor gymnasium. Third was Nyx's temple and the staff apartments which of course had separate entrances. The buildings formed a triangle with a courtyard in the middle.

"Zoey," Stark said again, putting a hand on my arm when I kept walking.

"Something is wrong, Stark. I know something is wrong," I said, pulling my arm away and turning to face them.

"No one is saying that they disagree with you," Stark said. "We just can't locate whatever it is that you're feeling."

I sighed, shaking my head in frustration before looking to Aphrodite. "And there was nothing out on the grounds."

"Just a couple of students trying to sneak back in. As if they really thought I was stupid enough not to notice. I was the queen of sneaking out and I did a hell of a lot more than go buy a bag of chocolates. Which let me just say if you're going to buy candy you can at least get the expensive European kind. A Hersey bar, who even eats Hersey's chocolate anymore?"

"Anyone who doesn't want to pay an arm and a leg for something that's only going to last two seconds," Stark suggested.

"Yes, we all know how you feel about quantity versus quality," Aphrodite said, emphasizing the word quality while scanning is clothing.

"Maybe it is nothing," I said, ignoring their conversation. "Maybe I am just over analyzing it."

"Your intuition has never been wrong before Priestess," Darius commented.

"But as you've all pointed out, there's nothing out there. No bad guys, no boogey monsters, just sleeping students." I turned to go waiting until Stark had taken cover before pushing open the door. Normally he would have been underground with the rest of the red fledglings, but had willingly offered to sleep in the student dormitories as an extra precaution. He probably wasn't really needed there. We had enough warriors guarding the grounds, but Stark trusted my gut.

My stomach clenched uncomfortably again and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck seemed to stand up on end as I pushed open the doors that led outside. I shivered against the frigid November air, observing once again the strange sensation it left me with. It had been a long time since I had felt the cold this intensely. Not since I was a human. Yet, with each breeze the cool air seemed to seep under my skin.

"Nyx," I whispered into the fall air. There was no answer, just another slow turning in my gut. Something was definitely wrong here.