Hunted by P. C. Cast

just come into my head, and then I write it down.”
    â€œWhat did you think it meant?” Jack asked, patting her arm gently, a lot like he patted Duchess (she was curled up by his feet).
    â€œI didn’t really think ’bout it. It come to me. I write it. That’s all.” She paused, glanced up at the poster board, and then looked quickly away, as if what she saw scared her.
    â€œAre these all poems you’ve written in the days since Stevie Rae Changed?” I shifted my attention to the other poems. There were several haiku.
    Â 
    Â Â Â Â Â 
Eyes watching always
    Â Â Â Â Â 
Shadows in shadows they wait
    Â Â Â Â Â 
A black feather falls
    Â 
    Â Â Â Â Â 
First accepted, loved
    Â Â Â Â Â 
Then betrayed—spit in the face
    Â Â Â Â Â 
Vengeance sweet like dots
    Â 
    â€œSweet, blessed Nyx.” Erik’s shocked voice came from behind me, kept low for my ears alone to hear. “They’re all about him.”
    â€œWhat does ‘sweet like dots’ mean?” Jack was asking Kramisha.
    â€œYou know—dippin’ dots. I love me some dippin’ dots,” she said.
    Erik and I moved around Kramisha’s room. The more I read, the tighter the knot my stomach curled into.
    Â 
    Â Â Â Â Â 
They done
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
Wrong
    Â Â Â Â Â 
Like ink from a busted pen
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
Thrown away ’cause of someone else
    Â Â Â Â Â 
Used up
    Â Â Â Â Â 
But he come back
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
Dressed in night
    Â Â Â Â Â 
Fine as a king
    Â Â Â Â Â 
With his queen
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
The wrong
    Â Â Â Â Â 
Made right
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
So right
    Â 
    â€œKramisha, what were you thinking about when you wrote this one?” I asked her, pointing at the last one I’d read.
    She shrugged that one shoulder again. “I guess I thought ’bout how we out of the House of Night, but we shouldn’t be. I mean, I know it’s best for us underground, but it just don’t feel right that only Neferet know about us. She a wrong kind of High Priestess.”
    â€œKramisha, would you do me a favor and copy down all of these poems?”
    â€œYou think I messed up, don’t you?”
    â€œNo. I do
not
think you messed up,” I assured her, hoping I was being guided correctly by my instincts and wasn’t just chasing bats in the darkness again. “I think you’ve been given a gift from Nyx. I just want to be sure we use your gift in the right way.”
    â€œI think she’s Vamp Poet Laureate material, and a major improvement over our last one,” Erik said.
    I looked up at him sharply, and he shrugged and grinned. “It was just a thought, that’s all.”
    Okay, even though it made me uncomfortable to think about Loren, especially when Erik had been the one to bring him up, I felt the rightness of what he was saying down deep in my gut, which said more about Kramisha’s true nature than my exhausted guessing and my apparently overactive imagination were telling me. Nyx obviously had her hand on this kid.
What the hell. I’m the only High Priestess we have. I can make a proclamation
. “Kramisha, I’m going to make you our first Poet Laureate.”
    â€œWhaaaaat?! Are you kiddin’? You kiddin’, ain’t ya?”
    â€œI’m not kidding. We’re a new kind of vamp group. We’re a
civilized
new kind of vamp group, and that means we need a Poet Laureate. You’re it.”
    â€œUm, I agree and everything with you, Z, but doesn’t the council have to vote on a new Poet Laureate?” Jack said.
    â€œYep, and I have my Council down here with me.” I realized Jack had been talking