A House of Night Novel
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Paperback
320 pages
ISBN-10: 0312360266
ISBN-13: 9780312360269
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EXCERPT
Chapter One
Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse I saw the
dead guy standing next to my locker. Kayla was talking
nonstop in her usual K-babble, and she didn’t even notice
him. At first. Actually, now that I think about it, no one
else noticed him until he spoke, which is, tragically, more
evidence of my freakish inability to fit in.
“No, but Zoey, I swear to God Heath didn’t get that drunk
after the game. You really shouldn’t be so hard on him.”
“Yeah,” I said absently. “Sure.” Then I coughed. Again. I
felt like crap. I must be coming down with what Mr. Wise, my
more-than-slightly-insane AP biology teacher, called the
Teenage Plague.
If I died, would it get me out of my geometry test tomorrow?
One could only hope.
“Zoey, please. Are you even listening? I think he only had
like four—I dunno—maybe six beers, and maybe like three
shots. But that’s totally beside the point. He probably
wouldn’t even have had hardly any if your stupid parents
hadn’t made you go home right after the game.”
We shared a long-suffering look, in total agreement about the
latest injustice committed against me by my mom and the Step-
Loser she’d married three really long years ago. Then, after
barely half a breath break, K was back with the babbling.
“Plus, he was celebrating. I mean we beat Union!” K shook my
shoulder and put her face close to mine. “Hello! Your
boyfriend—”
“My almost-boyfriend,” I corrected her, trying my best not to
cough on her.
“Whatever. Heath is our quarterback so of course he’s going
to celebrate. It’s been like a million years since Broken
Arrow beat Union.”
“Sixteen.” I’m crappy at math, but K’s math impairment makes
me look like a genius.
“Again, whatever. The point is, he was happy. You should give
the boy a break.”
“The point is that he was wasted for like the fifth time this
week. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to go out with a guy whose
main focus in life has changed from trying to play college
football to trying to chug a six-pack without puking. Not to
mention the fact that he’s going to get fat from all that
beer.” I had to pause to cough. I was feeling a little dizzy
and forced myself to take slow, deep breaths when the
coughing fit was over. Not that K-babble noticed.
“Eww! Heath, fat! Not a visual I want.”
I managed to ignore another urge to cough. “And kissing him
is like sucking on alcohol-soaked feet.”
K scrunched up her face. “Okay, sick. Too bad he’s so hot.”
I rolled my eyes, not bothering to try to hide my annoyance
at her typical shallowness.
“You’re so grumpy when you’re sick. Anyway, you have no idea
how lost-puppy-like Heath looked after you ignored him at
lunch. He couldn’t even . . .”
Then I saw him. The dead guy. Okay, I realized pretty quick
that he wasn’t technically “dead.” He was undead. Or unhuman.
Whatever. Scientists said one thing, people said
another, but the end result was the same. There was no
mistaking what he was and even if I hadn’t felt the power and
darkness that radiated from him, there was no frickin’ way I
could miss his Mark, the sapphire-blue crescent moon on his
forehead and the additional tattooing of entwining knot work
that framed his equally blue eyes. He was a vampyre, and
worse. He was a Tracker.
Well, crap! He was standing by my locker.
“Zoey, you’re so not listening to me!”
Then the vampyre spoke and his ceremonial words slicked
across the space between us, dangerous and seductive, like
blood mixed with melted chocolate.
“Zoey Montgomery! Night has chosen thee; thy death will be
thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice.
Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!”
He lifted one long, white finger and pointed at me. As my
forehead exploded in pain Kayla opened her mouth and
screamed.
When the bright splotches finally cleared from my eyes I
looked up to see K’s colorless face staring down at me.
As usual, I said the first ridiculous thing that came to
mind. “K, your eyes are popping out of your head like a
fish.”
“He Marked you. Oh, Zoey! You have the outline of that thing
on your forehead!” Then she pressed a shaking hand against
her white lips, unsuccessfully trying to hold back a sob.
I sat up and coughed. I had a killer headache, and I rubbed
at the spot right between my eyebrows. It stung as if a wasp
had bit me and radiated pain down around my eyes, all the way
across my cheekbones. I felt like I might puke.
“Zoey!” K was really crying now and had to speak between wet
little hiccups. “Oh. My. God. That guy was a Tracker—a
vampyre Tracker!”
“K.” I blinked hard, trying to clear the pain from my head.
“Stop crying. You know I hate it when you cry.” I reached out
to attempt a comforting pat on her shoulders.
And she automatically cringed, and moved away from me.
I couldn’t believe it. She actually cringed, like she was
afraid of me. She must have seen the hurt in my eyes because
she instantly started a string of breathless K-babble.
“Oh, God, Zoey! What are you going to do? You can’t go to
that place. You can’t be one of those things. This can’t be
happening! Who am I supposed to go to all of our football
games with?”
I noticed that all during her tirade she didn’t once move any
closer to me. I clamped down on the sick, hurt feeling inside
that threatened to make me burst into tears. My eyes dried
instantly. I was good at hiding tears. I should be; I’d had
three years to get good at it.
“It’s okay. I’ll figure this out. It’s probably some . . .
some bizarre mistake,” I lied.
I wasn’t really talking; I was just making words come out of
my mouth. Still grimacing at the pain in my head, I stood up.
Looking around I felt a small measure of relief that K and I
were the only ones in the math hall, and then I had to choke
back what I knew was hysterical laughter. Had I not been
totally psycho about the geometry test from hell scheduled
for tomorrow, and had run back to my locker to get my book so
I could attempt to obsessively (and pointlessly) study
tonight, the Tracker would have found me standing outside in
front of the school with the majority of the 1,300 kids who
went to Broken Arrow’s South Intermediate High School waiting
for what my stupid Barbie-clone sister liked to smugly call
“the big yellow limos.” I have a car, but standing around
with the less fortunate who have to ride the buses is a timehonored
tradition, not to mention an excellent way to check
out who’s hitting on who. As it was, there was only one other
kid in the math hall—a tall thin dork with messed-up teeth,
which I could, unfortunately, see too much of because he was
standing there with his mouth flapping open staring at me
like I’d just given birth to a litter of flying pigs.
I coughed again, this time a really wet, disgusting cough.
The dork made a squeaky little sound and scuttled down the
hall to Mrs. Day’s room clutching a flat board to his bony
chest. Guess the chess club had changed its meeting time to
Mondays after school.
Do vampyres play chess? Were there vampyre dorks? How about
Barbie-like vampyre cheerleaders? Did any vampyres play in
the band? Were there vampyre Emos with their guy-wearinggirl’s-
pants weirdness and those awful bangs that cover half
their faces? Or were they all those freaky Goth kids who
didn’t like to bathe much? Was I going to turn into a Goth
kid? Or worse, an Emo? I didn’t particularly like wearing
black, at least not exclusively, and I wasn’t feeling a
sudden and unfortunate aversion to soap and water, nor did I
have an obsessive desire to change my hairstyle and wear too
much eyeliner.
All this whirled through my mind while I felt another little
hysterical bubble of laughter try to escape from my throat,
and was almost thankful when it came out as a cough instead.
“Zoey? Are you okay?” Kayla’s voice sounded too high, like
someone was pinching her, and she’d taken another step away
from me.
I sighed and felt my first sliver of anger. It wasn’t like
I’d asked for this. K and I had been best friends since third
grade, and now she was looking at me like I had turned into a
monster.
“Kayla, it’s just me. The same me I was two seconds ago and
two hours ago and two days ago.” I made a frustrated gesture
toward my throbbing head. “This doesn’t change who I am!”
K’s eyes teared up again, but, thankfully, her cell phone
started singing Madonna’s “Material Girl.” Automatically, she
glanced at the caller ID. I could tell by her rabbit-in-theheadlights
expression that it was her boyfriend, Jared.
“Go on,” I said in a flat, tired voice. “Ride home with him.”
Her look of relief was like a slap in my face.
“Call me later?” she threw over her shoulder as she beat a
hasty retreat out the side door.
I watched her rush across the east lawn to the parking lot. I
could see that she had her cell phone smashed to her ear and
was talking in animated little bursts to Jared. I’m sure she
was already telling him I was turning into a monster.
The problem, of course, was that turning into a monster was
the brighter of my two choices. Choice Number 1: I turn into
a vampyre, which equals a monster in just about any human’s
mind. Choice Number 2: My body rejects the Change and I die.
Forever.
So the good news is that I wouldn’t have to take the geometry
test tomorrow.
The bad news was that I’d have to move into the House of
Night, a private boarding school in Tulsa’s Midtown, known by
all my friends as the Vampyre Finishing School, where I would
spend the next four years going through bizarre and
unnameable physical changes, as well as a total and permanent
life shake-up. And that’s only if the whole process didn’t
kill me.
Great. I didn’t want to do either. I just wanted to attempt
to be normal, despite the burden of my mega-conservative
parents, my troll-like younger brother, and my oh-so-perfect
older sister. I wanted to pass geometry. I wanted to keep my
grades up so that I could get accepted into the veterinary
college at OSU and get out of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. But
most of all, I wanted to fit in—at least at school. Home had
become hopeless, so all I was left with were my friends and
my life away from my family.
Now that was being taken away from me, too.
I rubbed my forehead and then messed with my hair until it
semi-covered my eyes, and, with any luck, the mark that had
appeared above them. Keeping my head ducked down, like I was
fascinated with the goo that had somehow formed in my purse,
I hurried toward the door that led to the student parking
lot.
But I stopped short of going outside. Through the side-byside
windows in the institutional-looking doors I could see
Heath. Girls flocked around him, posing and flipping their
hair, while guys revved ridiculously big pickup trucks and
tried (but mostly failed) to look cool. Doesn’t it figure
that I would choose that to be attracted to? No, to be fair
to myself I should remember that Heath used to be incredibly
sweet, and even now he had his moments. Mostly when he
bothered to be sober.
High-pitched girl giggles flitted to me from the parking lot.
Great. Kathy Richter, the biggest ho in school, was
pretending to smack Heath. Even from where I was standing it
was obvious she thought hitting him was some kind of mating
ritual. As usual, clueless Heath was just standing there
grinning. Well, hell, my day just wasn’t going to get any
better. And there sat my robin’s egg–blue 1966 VW Bug right
in the middle of them. No. I couldn’t go out there. I
couldn’t walk into the middle of all of them with this thing
on my forehead. I’d never be able to be part of them again. I
already knew too well what they’d do. I remembered the last
kid a Tracker had Chosen at SIHS.
It happened at the beginning of the school year last year.
The Tracker had come before school started and had targeted
the kid as he was walking to his first hour. I didn’t see the
Tracker, but I did see the kid afterward, for just a second,
after he dropped his books and ran out of the building, his
new Mark glowing on his pale forehead and tears washing down
his too white cheeks. I never forgot how crowded the halls
had been that morning, and how everyone had backed away from
him like he had the plague as he rushed to escape out the
front doors of the school. I had been one of those kids who
had backed out of his way and stared, even though I’d felt
really sorry for him. I just hadn’t wanted to be labeled as
that-one-girl-who’s-friends-with-those-freaks. Sort of ironic
now, isn’t it?
Instead of going to my car I headed for the nearest restroom,
which was, thankfully, empty. There were three stalls—yes, I
double-checked each for feet. On one wall were two sinks,
over which hung two medium-sized mirrors. Across from the
sinks the opposite wall was covered with a huge mirror that
had a ledge below it for holding brushes and makeup and
whatnot. I put my purse and my geometry book on the ledge,
took a deep breath, and in one motion lifted my head and
brushed back my hair.
It was like staring into the face of a familiar stranger. You
know, that person you see in a crowd and swear you know, but
you really don’t? Now she was me—the familiar stranger.
She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color that could
never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown, but my
eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had
my hair—long and straight and almost as dark as my grandma’s
had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger
had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth—
more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors. But
my face had never been that pale. I’d always been olive-ish,
much darker skinned than anyone else in my family. But maybe
it wasn’t that my skin was suddenly so white . . . maybe it
just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of
the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle
of my forehead. Or maybe it was the horrid fluorescent
lighting. I hoped it was the lighting.
I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong
Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of
wildness . . . as if I belonged to ancient times when the
world was bigger . . . more barbaric.
From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a
moment—just an instant—I forgot about the horror of not
belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep
inside of me the blood of my grandmother’s people rejoiced.
Copyright © 2007 by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast. All rights
reserved.
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