Last time, things really heated up when Zoey met a vampyre lady with sweet boobs. She’s Neferet, the High Priestess of the House of Night. That sounds like a professional vampyre job. Also, there were Native Americans and prophecies and ancient Cherokee goddesses oh my! [Matthew says: If I had to guess what my main complaint with Marked was going to be, “there are too many plots to keep track of” would not have been towards the top of my list.]
Chapter 7
Neferet takes Zoey on a tour of the cave school. We can only hope that this is the only tour necessary. She explains the hours of operation which, as I’m sure you could guess, all take place during the night because vampyres. Zoey is shocked that classes end at three in the morning! Woah. [Matthew says: I get that she’s in shock and all, but you’d think she might have been less surprised about that one. This would be like if when we studied abroad in England, we were shocked they didn’t start classes with the pledge of allegiance.]
Neferet’s cat Skyler is introduced, and we learn a little more about Zoey’s horrible step-father:
I carefully scratched Skylar’s ears like Neferet had been doing. “I like cats,” I said softly. “I used to have one, but when my mom got remarried I had to give it to Street Cats to be adopted. John, her new husband, doesn’t like cats.”
This is the first time I’ve felt genuine outrage about anything John’s done and not just laughed at the absurdity of it.
I guess this book is trying to assert its independence from other vampire/vampyre books, [Matthew says: Aside from being a “vampyre” book] because apparently in this universe “cats have always been closely allied to vampyres” and this is something that is taught in history classes. This is what our valuable tax dollars are going towards! [Matthew says: Thanks, Obama.]
Okay, actually I already knew that. In World History with Mr. Shaddox (better known as Puff Shaddy, but don’t tell him [What the fuck does this even mean? Is this a reference to both Eminem and P.Diddy? I googled this term to make sure I wasn’t missing something and Google was like, “Uh…are you trying to look up the Powerpuff Girls or Puff Daddy? Are you suffering from brain damage?”) we learned that in the past cats had been slaughtered because it was thought that they somehow turned people into vampyres. Yeah, okay, talk about ridiculous. More evidence of the stupidity of humans…the thought popped into my mind, shocking me by how easily I’d already started thinking of “normal” people as “humans,” and therefore something different than me. [It all happened so fast.]
We also learn that high priestesses get gifts from the goddess Nyx. The one Zoey met! I’m not sure if this is going to be important, so I’ll include a snippet:
like reading minds or having visions and being able to predict the future. Or the affinity can be for something in the physical realm, like a special connection to one of the four elements, or to animals. I have two Goddess gifts. My main affinity is for cats; I have a connection with them that is unusual, even for a vampyre. Nyx has also given me unusual powers of healing.”
Man if the goddess was going to give me an “affinity” I’d feel really cheated if I had to continually dress up the fact that my superpower was just having a special connection to cats. Even Aquaman’s powers were slightly more exciting and versatile than this.
How does she go about justifying this when people are like, “So…you can talk to cats?”
“Well, no, I have a special connection to them. It’s unusual!”
“Isn’t that pretty useless?”
“No no! Because I can sense if the liter box needs changing, which is a valued skill among vampyres!”
I just played with a cat five minutes ago and came back to update this post to inform everyone that I’ve clearly been blessed by Nyx as well. The cat walked me all the way back to my dorm! If that’s not a connection, I don’t know what the fuck is.
Neferet gets an urgent phone call, so she tells Zoey to go find a nearby bench. Instead, Zoey finds two teenage vampyres engaged in sexy times. What a daring piece of literature! Vamypres and blow jobs in one chapter!
Creepily enough, though, as I read on it becomes apparent that this attempted blow job is against the guy’s wishes.
“No!” He snapped, putting his hands on her shoulders and trying to push her away from him.
“Oh, quit pretending?” she laughed again, a mean, sarcastic sound. “You know we’ll always be together.”
[…]
Cut it out!” He was still pushing at her shoulders. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you’re really starting to piss me off. Why can’t you understand? We’re not doing this anymore. I don’t want you.”
“You want me! You’ll always want me!” She unzipped his pants.
I thought his pants were already unzipped. Man, Zoey is terrible at telling stories.
It only gets more confusing when the guy spots Zoey and appears to get an erection when they meet eyes:
The guy’s eyes lifted. He saw me.
And then something truly bizarre happened. I could feel his touch through our eyes. I couldn’t look away from him. The girl in front of him seemed to disappear, and all there was in the hallway was him and me and the sweet, beautiful smell of his blood.
“You don’t want me? That’s not how it looks now,” she said with a nasty purr in her voice.
So I guess this is how we were introduced to Zoey’s romantic interest? [Matthew says: Is that what happened? I had no idea what was going on. This is another good example of how this story is told in overlapping literally-happening, spiritually-happening, and figurative language all at the same time and you don’t know if Zoey’s talking about a real blow job, a figurative blow job, or a Cherokee ancestor spirit world blow job of the soul.] I gotta say it surpasses that of the other books we’ve done here. At least Zoey wasn’t the one falling on her knees this time unlike Eva and Ana.
Zoey runs away and waits for Neferet. She takes this precious time to give us her opinion on blow jobs:
Yes, I was aware of the whole oral sex thing. I doubt if there’s a teenager alive in America today who isn’t aware that most of the adult public think we’re giving guys blow jobs like they used to give guys gum (or maybe more appropriately suckers). [Is Zoey completely insane? What the fuck is she even talking about?] Okay, that’s just bullshit, and it’s always made me mad. Of course there are girls who think it’s “cool” to give guys head. Uh, they’re wrong. [Are they?] Those of us with functioning brains know that it is not cool to be used like that. [What a powerful woman.] [Matthew says: A good percentage of women can’t achieve orgasm from penetrative sex. So, yeah, enjoy being on your high horse of no oral sex. Additionally, see how that’s very clearly a figurative horse and not a real horse.]
Okay, so I knew about the whole blow job issue. I’ d definitely never seen one. [Wait! I thought she’d just unzipped his pants. DID IT OR DID IT NOT HAPPEN?!?!]
Neferet shows up and finishes the tour. Zoey gets to see all her new classmates hanging out and the school itself. She is in awe, and then spends ages telling us how all adult vampyres are sexy. It confuses me because Zoey keeps implying that she’ll mature into an adult vampyre, but that goes against all my understandings of what it means to be a vampyre. [Matthew adds: And what it means to be mature.]