Page 133 of Lost

“That doesn’t really surprise me.” I glanced at my brother and then blurted what I hadn’t told anyone. “I saw Neferet kill her.”

“Her?”

“Me her. Other Zoey. Your sister over here.”

“What? How?”

“I don’t know how, but she reached me through a dream. That Zoey let me watch what Neferet did to her.” I shuddered and wiped my suddenly wet palms on my jeans. “It was awful, Kev. But fast. She didn’t suffer. And in the dream vision thing, she looked right at me and told me I needed to get over here and help you defeat Neferet.”

“Damn, that musta been horrible.”

I nodded. “Yep. Even worse than my sucky funeral.”

That lightened the mood and made him chuckle. “Hey, you will be happy to know that Heath and a whole group of us walked out of your sucky funeral when they did their call for us sinners to come forward and accept Jesus Christ as our savior crap.”

“They turned my funeral into an event to proselytize?”

“Pros… what?”

“Kev, you really gotta read more and increase that vocab of yours. Proselytize—save, redeem, preach to recruit—in other words, to convert people to the way they believe.”

“Oh. Yep. That’s what they did. And that’s when a big group of us walked out.”

“Well, that was nice of you. Thanks. Uh, where did they bury me?”

“Floral Haven. They cremated you. You have a little drawer-like cubby thing that says your name on it—Zoey Heffer.”

“Oh. My. Goddess! ZoeyHeffer!That isnotmy name.”

“Exactly what I told Mom. The step-loser overruled me. He said he was paying for it, so it would say what he wanted it to say.”

“I’d like to slap that bastard’s face.”

“Get in line. Hey! Want to go do that? I can use my cool red vampyre mind-control thingy on him and you could slap him as much as you want. I could even zap Mom into being nice to us. Temporarily.”

“Did she come see you after you were Marked?” I asked.

“No, but, you know—the red fledgling thing is scary.”

“Okay, I get that. But how about this—did she come see me after I was Marked? Even once before I died?”

He shook his head. “Not that I know of, and I’m pretty sure I would’ve known, because she and the step-loser would’ve argued about it.”

“Yeah, they always thought we couldn’t hear them because their room was on the other side of the house.”

“They were wrong.”

“Massive parenting fail on their part,” I said.

“So, wanna go?”

I didn’t need to give it any more thought. “Nope. But thanks for asking. They’ll just hurt my feelings, and they did enough of that in my world. I don’t need it in this world too.”

“Okay, I get it. How about Heath?”

“Heath?” My stomach clenched.

“Yeah, Heath. Your childhood and teenagehood—and I’m pretty sure if you had lived he would’ve been your adulthood—sweetheart. You know he’s alive here. He lives in Headington Hall on the OU campus. He’s super easy to find because he’s a big-deal quarterback.”