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Well, I mean me dying a second time. And none of those things happened. So we can stop it.” She looked up at Aphrodite. “Right?”
    Aphrodite fidgeted uneasily.
    “Ah, hell,” I said for a second time. Then I forced myself to talk around the big lump of fear that had lodged in the middle of my throat. “There’s something different about the vision you had of me, isn’t there?”
    “It could be because I’m human,” she said slowly. “It’s the only vision I’ve had since turning back into a human, so, yeah, it doesn’t seem too wrong that it would feel different than the ones I had when I was a fledgling.”
    “But?” I prompted.
    She shrugged and finally met my eyes. “But it did feel different.”
    “Like how?”
    “Well, it felt more confusing—more emotional—more jumbled up. And I literally didn’t understand some of what I saw. I mean, I didn’t recognize the horrible things that were seething around in the darkness.”
    “Seething?” I shivered. “That doesn’t sound good.”
    “It wasn’t. I was seeing shadows inside shadows inside darkness. It was like ghosts were turning back into living things, but the things they were turning back into were too terrible for me to look at.”
    “You mean like not human or vampyre?”
    “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
    Automatically I rubbed my hand, and a skittering of fear slithered through my body. “Ah, hell.”
    “What?” Stevie Rae said.
    “Tonight there was something that, well, kinda attacked me when I was walking from the stables to the cafeteria. It was some kind of cold shadow thing that came from the darkness.”
    “That can’t be good,” Stevie Rae said.
    “You were alone?” Aphrodite asked, her voice sounding flintlike.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Okay, that’s the problem,” Aphrodite said.
    “Why? What else did you see in your vision?”
    “Well, you died a couple different ways, which is not something I’ve ever seen before.”
    “A—a couple different ways?” It just kept getting worse and worse.
    “Maybe we should wait awhile and see if Aphrodite has another vision that’ll make things clearer before we talk about this,” Stevie Rae said, sitting next to me on the bed.
    I didn’t look away from Aphrodite’s eyes, and I saw there a reflection of what I already knew. “When I ignore visions, they come true. Always,” Aphrodite said with finality.
    “I think some of it might already be happening,” I said. My lips felt cold and stiff, and my stomach hurt.
    “You’re not gonna die!” Stevie Rae cried, looking upset and totally like my best friend again.
    I slipped my arm through Stevie Rae’s. “Go ahead, Aphrodite. Tell me.”
    “It was a strong vision, filled with powerful images, but it was totally confusing. Maybe because I was feeling it and seeing it from your point of view.” Aphrodite paused, swallowing hard. “I saw you die two ways. Once you drowned. The water was cold and dark. Oh, and it smelled bad.”
    “Smelled bad? Like one of those nasty Oklahoma ponds?” I said, curious despite the horror of talking about my own death.
    Aphrodite shook her head. “No, I’m almost one hundred percent sure it wasn’t in Oklahoma. There was too much water for that. It’s hard to explain how I can be so sure, but it just felt too big and deep to be something like a lake.” Aphrodite paused again, thinking. Then her eyes widened. “I remember another thing about the vision. There was something close by the water that looked like a
real
palace on an island all its own, which means tasteful old money, probably European, and not some tacky upper middle class version of oooh-I-have-money-let’s-go-buy-an-RV.”
    “You’re seriously a snob, Aphrodite,” Stevie Rae said.
    “Thank you,” Aphrodite said.
    “Okay, so you saw me drown near a real palace on a real island maybe in Europe. Did you see anything else that might be in the least bit helpful?” I asked.
    “Well, besides the fact that you felt