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improvement, because then her lips covered her teeth. "Go away, Zoey," she said. Her voice was cold and flat, making what used to be a sweet Okie accent sound like rough trailer trash, but she'd said my name, which was all the encouragement I needed.
    "I'm not going anywhere until we talk. So let go of that street person—eesh, Stevie Rae, she probably has lice and who knows what else—and let's talk."
    "If you want to talk you'll have to wait till I'm done eating." Stevie Rae cocked her head to the side in a movement that looked insectile. "Don't I remember that you Imprinted your little human boy toy? Looks like you have a taste for blood your own self. Want to join me in a bite?" She smiled and licked her fangs.
    "Okay, nasty, just nasty! And for your information Heath is not my boy toy. He's my boyfriend, or one of them anyway. I sucked his blood kinda sorta by accident. I was going to tell you about it, but you died. So, no. I do not want to bite that person. I don't even know where she's been." I gave the poor, wide-eyed, matted-hair woman a weak smile. "Uh, no offense, ma'am."
    "Good. More for me." Stevie Rae began to bend back over the woman's throat.
    "Stop it!"
    She looked over her shoulder at me. "Like I said, go away, Zoey. You don't belong here."
    "Neither do you," I said.
    "That's just one of the many things you're wrong about."
    When she turned back to the woman, who was now crying and repeating "please, oh please" over and over, I took a couple of steps forward and raised my hands over my head. "I said let her go"
    Stevie Rae's answer was to hiss and open her mouth to chomp the woman's neck. I closed my eyes and quickly centered myself. "Air, come to me!" I commanded. Instantly my hair began to lift in the breeze that surrounded me. I circled one hand in front of me, imagining a mini-tornado. I opened my eyes as I flicked my wrist and tossed the power of air toward the crying homeless woman. Exactly as I'd imagined it, the whirling air surrounded her, and hardly rustling one hair on Stevie Rae's very nappy head, it picked up her victim and carried her down the alley, letting go of her only when she reached the safety of a streetlight. "Thank you, air," I murmured, and felt the breeze brush my face caressingly before it dissipated.
    "You're getting good at that."
    I turned back to Stevie Rae. She was watching me with an obviously leery expression, as if she thought I was going to conjure another tornado and suck her up into oblivion.
    I shrugged. "I've been practicing. It's really just concentration and control. You'd know that if you'd been practicing, too."
    A flash of pain crossed Stevie Rae's gaunt face so quickly that I wondered if I'd really seen or just imagined it. "The elements have nothing to do with me now."
    "That's crap, Stevie Rae. You have an affinity for earth. You had it before you died, or whatever," I faltered over how awkward it was to be talking to undead dead Stevie Rae about being dead. "That kind of thing just doesn't go away. Plus, remember the tunnels? You still had the affinity then."
    Stevie Rae shook her head and her short blond curls, the ones that weren't all nappy and dirty, bounced, reminding me of how she used to look. "It's gone. Whatever I once had died with the part of me that was human. You need to accept it and move on. I have."
    "I'll never accept it. You're my best friend. I'm not going to move on."
    Suddenly Stevie Rae hissed a nasty, feral sound, and her eyes blazed blood red. "Do I look like your best friend?"
    I ignored the way my heart was beating around inside my chest. She was right. What she had become was absolutely not like the Stevie Rae I'd known. But I wouldn't believe that she was all the way gone. I'd seen glimpses of my best friend in the tunnels and that meant I couldn't give up on her. I felt like crying, but instead I pulled myself together and forced my voice to sound normal.
    "Well, hell no, you don't look like Stevie Rae. How long has it been since