Alright so I'm really sorry that my chapters are being spaced out, so yeah. Unfortunately I don't have an excuse this time so all I've
got to say is that the next chapter is going to be out really soon and that I've already got chapters 15-17's outines so yea! Okay on
that note, on with the story!
Disclaimer: P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast own it all.
The Test of Truth
I stared at her stunned for a moment. I had no idea what she meant but apparently it wasn't anything good. Damien's jaw was clenched so tightly that I thought he was going to crack his teeth. Of course, as soon as he saw my reaction to his expression he immediately tried to calm himself. Zoey looked back and forth between us, seeming to understand the exchange she tried to explain whatever I had missed.
"Your affinity. It's totally clear now that you have one!" She was almost shouting in all of her excitement but then Damien just had to go and say something that made her look as if she had just been kicked.
"What about the shadow creature…thing?" Why, oh why, did he have to bring that up again? Zoey had been happy and excited a second ago and now she looked depressed and serious. Again I felt a surge of guilt at causing her distress on only my first week here. Shouldn't new room-mates be kind and shy instead of hogging all of the attention and pushing burdens on to their dorm partners? God I was getting sick of myself. I still didn't think I even had an affinity, but it had made Zoey happy for a little while so I would try whatever would keep her happy as long as it didn't cause me bodily harm… Zoey was about to start talking but I beat her to it before she could ruin her own joy.
"Damien I probably just imagined the whole thing. I was alone so there was no one else to see it there. For all we know my mind could've created the shadow creature because of my over-active imagination or out of fear." I hoped that he would just let it go but he locked eyes with me, and gave me a look that said he didn't believe a word that had just left my mouth. I stared right back at him and while Zoey was looking his way I stared pointedly at the back of her head, trying to tell him with my eyes that I cared whether or not Zoey was happy or upset. I had only known her for a week but we were already close and, I didn't know about her, but it was like we were sisters to me. We both had the same likes and dislikes, we listened to the same music, had the same interests, and our opinions were freakishly close to being exactly the same.
He looked to Zoey's face after he figured out where I was looking and I guess that he got the message because he let me off but when he looked back at me I could read in his expression that he was going to talk to me later- alone so I could tell him about everything. Zoey was just two seconds slow of seeing out little exchange. She looked back to Damien then and she saw that whatever had been going on was over. I changed the subject. Evasive action was always the best when you didn't want to keep talking.
"So what now?" She gave me a confused look. "I meant what are we going to do about my 'affinity'?" I hoped that no one could hear the quotation marks around affinity. It was already painfully obvious to Damien that I didn't actually think that I had an affinity. I could see him rolling his eyes from my peripheral vision. Zoey's expression was clear again and she went into a description of what she thought we could do to test my "affinity". Again, I tuned most of it out after about two minutes. Damien was trying to get my attention. Knowing him he was able to listen to what Zoey was saying AND have a conversation through our eyes. I think that after a while Zoey got that we weren't really listening to what she was saying because she turned to face Shaunee and Erin. Usually she would be mad that we were basically ignoring her but she knew that what we had to "talk" about and she also knew that there was no way I was getting out of affinity testing this time. Therefore I would be involved in the planning at some time very soon anyway.
Damien had a weird expression on his face as we read each others eyes. He had this look that was really more like a few looks all mixed into one. He was concerned, scared, confused, and nervous all in one. My stomach was aching. It was a gut-wrenching pain, like my stomach was twisting inside of me. The only time that Damien wore that look was when he was seriously scared for one of his friend well being. I had seen it a whole bunch of times while I was dating some guys. Everyone knew that High School relationships rarely lasted over a few weeks and there was nothing really serious, but all the same, breakups were hard to deal with. He would always be there for me at the end of a breakup and he would have the very same expression. Concern was always the most evident emotion on his face. I was glad that I had him.
Although I had, had Jasmin she just wasn't as good as it as Damien. As I was thinking about this I realized that Damien and Jasmin had never met and that they probably never would. Damien had left before I met them, he probably hadn't even thought about me until I came to the House of Night. That thought just made my stomach hurt more. It may sound stupid but, it physically hurt to think that Damien had never thought about me in all of the months that we hadn't seen each other. I know that I had thought about him at least once every day. I had missed him like crazy! I never actually thought about my two best friends meeting. It was difficult to imagine. I guess it was because before, it would have been impossible. Humans were rarely allowed into the House of Night, and human teenagers were allowed in even less often. The most important thing to the head Vamps was the safety of the fledglings. For the same reason, fledglings weren't allowed out of the House of Night unless they wore cover up over their Marks. They had a special cover up that was given to each student. It was self-adjusting so one type fit all of the fledglings' complexions. It was actually really cool. Teenagers, in general, could be immature and careless. If any came to the House of Night then a fight would probably break out.
It would have been impossible to visit Damien. Maybe that was why Jasmin hadn't come to see me. But that still didn't explain why she hadn't called or sent me a text message. Maybe she thought that now I was a freak… NO! I immediately pushed that thought out of my mind. She was always there for me. Even when I came into consciousness she was there for me, she hadn't left my side for the entire time that I had been out. I looked at Damien again. He was still wearing that expression. It says a lot about your true friends when, even if they haven't seen you for months, they can do exactly the right thing to help you come back to the real world. Damien was my true best friend. What did that make Jasmin? She had always been there for me but Damien was too… If anyone could hear the babble that was taking place in my head right now they would think that I was crazy.
I looked towards Shaunee and Erin and I figured out that Zoey had finished talking. She was staring expectantly at the Twins. She was waiting for an answer, I was guessing that she had told them all about her plans on how to test me for my affinity and she was waiting for them to give some input. They looked dumbstruck. Either they couldn't have anything to say or they didn't know how to respond. I was suddenly glad that I hadn't listened to Zoey's speech. The torrents of information she had unleashed on Shaunee and Erin was enough to make them speechless. Apparently Damien hadn't been paying attention to the conversation after all because he had on the same incredulous face as me. Zoey noticed that we were paying attention again and she searched between our faces to see if we accepted all of her planning. Her face fell.
"Well, we can try something different if you guys don't want t-," I cut her off there because even though I hadn't heard more than a couple pieces of the plans that she had come up with I knew that she was just beating herself up over nothing. Her ideas were always good and if she was using her intuition then she probably got the right idea of how to 'test' me.
"Zoey I'm sure that it's going to help figure out what my 'affinity' is." I tried to reassure her but she had known that Damien and I hadn't been listening, therefore my input was hallow and there was really no reassurance to it. She gave me a small smile.
"Thanks for trying, but seriously if you guys have any other ideas then you should tell us- if it's gonna help, put it out there!" She was trying to get us to contribute some ideas, but unfortunately my head was as hallow as that last reassurance. The Twins had mirror looks of doubt on their faces even though they were trying to hide them. Damien spoke up just as the silence was becoming deafening.
"Zoey, were going to try your idea and, even if it doesn't work we'll come up with something else." He was trying his hand at reassurance as well. Fortunately, he was better at it than I was. I nearly rolled my eyes at the thought of using some method to find an affinity that didn't actually exist, but I could just imagine the look of hurt crossing Zoey's face. I sighed.
"So there's really no way that I'm getting out of this, huh?" I hadn't meant it to be funny, but they laughed at my reluctant tone.
"Of course your not getting out of it, we wouldn't pass up an opportunity like this," Shaunee stated.
"That would be almost as bad as passing up a pair of fabulous boots," Erin chimed in."
"Or saying no to dates with Cole and T.J.!" Of course Shaunee would mention boys.
"Oh, it would be a Damn shame to pass those up, Twin!" Erin was nearly hyperventilating at the very thought of passing up dates with their latest infatuations. I sighed again.
We decided that we would go down to the huge rec. room, that the Daughters of Night held their Full Moon Rituals in, the next night almost as soon as dinner was over with. It was already late when we had gotten here and now it was nearly 2 in the morning. It wasn't the best time for Damien to be in the girls' dorm rooms. We talked a little while longer, but it was mainly gossip. At around 2:20am they had gotten around to explaining how to get to the Rec. room to me. I was glad that Damien had brought it up or else I would have totally forgotten.
"So basically you follow the wall from the Dining Hall and go past a big Oak tree and you'll see the Rec. ro-" I cut him off right there, almost immediately after he had said "Oak" I got the weirdest feeling in my stomach, but it wasn't one of the old feelings that I used to get. This felt like a sharper jab. My intuition spiked and I knew that it had something to do with my visit to the Spirit World and meeting Nyx.
"Wait, is the Oak tree really old and the branches curve into the tree instead of away from it?" I asked it hesitantly, although I had no reason to be. Zoey looked away from the conversation that she was having with the Twins. She looked more intrigued than she had in the last twenty minutes.
"Yeah," she said, "it's over by the East side of the school. In fact it's right next to the East wall." She went on to say. I just sat there. Even though I knew that it had something to do with the Spirit World trip the only connection that I could come up with was the fact that I had spoken with Nyx under an old Oak tree by a wall. Something clicked then. The tree was important to Nyx and the powers of the Vampyres from this school. The comprehension must have been clear in my eyes because Zoey came over and sat next to me.
"What is it?" she asked. I had never actually told her how I got to the Spirit World. I had only said what Nyx and I had said to each other while I was there. I was surprised that I had been so preoccupied lately that I had forgotten to fill her in on ever detail. I stared blankly into space until I could feel Zoey shaking my shoulders- bringing me back to the real world. I didn't know why the trees location was connected to our plans but that Oak tree was the same one that the creature, thing, had attacked me next to and it was the same tree that Nyx and I had sat under in the spirit world, which could only mean that Nyx was near the school at almost all times! I was trying to think this through but, like most of my epiphanies, it was interrupted.
I don't think I looked scared, just surprised, but Damien was getting weird about all of this again.
"Lela?" that was strange, he sounded scared.
"Yes?" I asked in, what I hoped, was a neutral tone, while on the inside I was in shock. I could feel that much but I still wasn't afraid of the situation. My head was starting to hurt but that sometimes happens when I'm trying to hard to hide crazy emotions from my friends. I could remember when I would get headaches from trying to calm myself for Jasmin's sake. I looked back to Damien and the others. At first they looked confused and then startled.
"What?" Looks like I wasn't being neutral after all. They just stared at me in awe. They were looking at my eyes but not seeing past them; I could tell that they weren't really trying to read my expression, it was more like they were trying to decipher why something was different, I didn't feel different at all. I looked around to all of their faces. Zoey just stared at me, they didn't even make an attempt to conceal their gawking. I could feel a thick tension settling in the room.
"Was it just me or did anyone else see that?" she asked quietly.
"Nope saw it too." Damien said in a fascinated voice. Oh great (heavy on the sarcasm) more riddles!
I sighed dramatically, "What are you guys going on about now?" I asked in an exasperated tone. They looked at me like I was crazy, again. This time Shaunee broke the stunned silence first.
"It's your fuckin' eyes!" My hand automatically traveled to my face. Good God, what now? Erin handed me a mirror. As I peered into it I only had one thought,
As if I haven't gone through enough drama in the past week…
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