by Jayme Morse
Nightshade Vampire Academy Book 1
Copyright © by Jody Morse and Jayme Morse
All rights reserved.
Nightshade Vampire Academy Book 1 is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are products of the authors’ imaginations or have been used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons or locations is coincidental and not intended by the authors.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Jody Morse and Jayme Morse.
Click here to visit Jody & Jayme’s Facebook fan page for updates about the Paranormal Academy series.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Prologue
Riley
I was about to learn three important life lessons.
1. Don’t talk to ghosts.
2. Don’t trust ghosts.
Which brings me to the most important rule:
3. Don’t step foot in graveyards, where there are probably a bajillion ghosts.
But I didn’t know any of that as we headed into the graveyard specifically so that we could talk to a ghost.
I didn’t know that everything that would happen that night would change my life forever. I didn’t know I was going to end up at Nightshade Vampire Academy all because of a spirit board, a candle, and one stupid ghost.
If only I’d known then what I knew now. If only I’d known that you shouldn’t make deals with the dead.
But the thing was, I would have done it all over again, without any hesitation.
Which sounded completely crazy because I almost died.
But then he saved my life.
Sort of.
Chapter 1
Riley
This isn’t real.
That was all I could think as I watched the little glass indicator move around on the old wooden Ouija board.
My friends were totally moving the indicator. They had to have been, because I barely even had my fingertips on it.
“Do you want to ask it something, Riley?” my best friend, Jordan, asked me after the indicator came to a stop.
“I’m not sure. I’m still thinking of a good question,” I said.
She looked deep in thought as she nodded and ruffled her long chestnut brown hair, tossing it all over to one shoulder.
“It’s hard. I feel like I have so much I want to talk to him about, and I don’t know where to even start.”
Her voice cracked a little and her chocolate brown eyes had a sheen to them.
“Start anywhere,” our other best friend, Drew, said as he reached over and gave her hand a squeeze.
Was I a terrible person for not being as sad as Jordan was?
If I was being honest, I hadn’t even wanted to be here in the first place. I’d wanted to stay at Dylan’s birthday party. It was a house party Jordan threw every year in his memory. It would have been his twenty-first birthday if he hadn’t died in that horrible accident a few years ago.
Instead of staying, we had left the party to come to the graveyard so that Jordan could try to communicate with her dead brother. We were sitting on a plush red blanket that we’d spread out between Dylan’s headstone and a really creepy looking crypt. I sat with my back turned towards the stone steps that led to the dark crypt door that was covered in cobwebs.
It was probably the worst timing, because there was a full moon, and I had a secret I was keeping from my friends. Well, I might have been keeping more than one secret from them, but this one was probably the biggest. This secret was one that the full moon would reveal if I wasn’t careful.
It was one that the whole paranormal world would have killed me over if I let it out.
But I didn’t have to worry about my friends ever finding out… as long as we didn’t stay outside under the moon past midnight.
Still, I wasn’t the most comfortable being out here. My whole body was aching, but I knew it was worth it. Jordan needed this.
“We need a really good question. One that only my brother would know the answer to. That way we can confirm that we’re really talking to him,” Jordan said with a sniffle.
We sat there for a moment as we thought about it. Jordan’s Bluetooth speaker was playing what she thought had been Dylan’s favorite song, Closer by The Chainsmokers, on repeat. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it wasn’t.
The moon was bright tonight—it lit up the graveyard so well that it looked like morning would be approaching soon, even though it was still before midnight.
I glanced around our surroundings, as if the other headstones or the wind-blown oak trees would give me an idea. Except, they kind of did.
“I’ve got one,” I said. “Ask it who my next boyfriend will be.”
I wasn’t expecting to get the name of my next boyfriend. All I wanted to do was try to annoy Dylan. Wouldn’t my dead secret ex-boyfriend have been jealous about me dating someone else? No other ghost would have cared about my future love life more than he would have.
Drew snorted. “We’re trying to talk to Jordan’s brother, not the Genie from Aladdin.”
“Whatever,” I joked before putting my fingers back on the indicator. “I’m curious.”
I stretched a little while I waited for them to join me, not that it helped me with the pain I was in. I just had to suck it up until it was time to leave.
“Me, too,” Jordan said with a shrug. “Why not?”
“Fine, but then can we ask about my next boyfriend after this?” Drew asked with a smirk that revealed his dimples.
“Sure. Or maybe we can just find you a magic lamp,” I suggested.
“You stole my joke,” Drew said, shooting me a playful glare.
“Dylan, who will my next boyfriend be?” I asked the spirit board once all of our hands were back on the indicator.
A tiny red spark shot off from the ring I wore on my middle finger. It was a simple silver band that featured an oval jade gemstone.
“Ouch!”
Startled, I pulled my hands back and rubbed the spot on my finger that was now sore.
The spark had landed on the word “NO” on the Ouija board and started to burn.
Jordan quickly blew the flame out. The word NO was gone for good.
“That was… weird,” Jordan said, shooting me a look.
“Really freaking weird,” I muttered under my breath.
“What was that?” Drew asked, his golden-brown eyes wide.
I shone my iPhone’s flashlight on my red, swollen skin. The shock from the ring had left a welt all the way around my finger. The gemstone had shattered, allowing green liquid to leak onto my fingers.
Or… it had shattered. As I stared at it, the liquid started to travel along my finger, back up to the ring.
After a few moments, the gemstone was whole again. It didn’t even look like it had ever been broken.
I blinked hard. I had to have been losing it. The
re was no way that was possible.
I was convinced now that we really were talking to Dylan.
Then I realized something.
“You guys, this is really freaky. That’s Dylan’s ring,” I told them.
“What do you mean?” Jordan asked with a frown. “I’ve never seen him wear it before.”
I thought back to Dylan. How he looked, how he smelled. I tried to picture him. It had only been a few years, but I’d already lost the memory of him. I wasn’t sure if I even remembered his voice. The one thing that had always remained constant about him was the necklace. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him without that silver chain.
“I don’t know if he ever wore it on his hands. He always wore it on a chain around his neck,” I told her.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “How did you end up with it?”
The unspoken part of her sentence sliced the air between us. What she had really wanted to ask was, “How did you end up with it instead of me?”
“He gave it to me as a friendship ring,” I lied, even though it was kind of the truth… if you wanted to be technical, anyway. A girlfriend is a friend. But I didn’t want to tell them the whole truth. I couldn’t tell them now, years after Dylan’s death, that we’d secretly dated behind their backs. It was better to just let it remain a secret.
“Can I see it?” she asked, holding her hand out to me.
I hesitated. I never took that ring off. Not even to shower. And I hadn’t ever let anyone else touch it before now, either. It was too personal.
“I’ll give it back,” she said with an eye roll.
“Why do you want to touch it? That thing shocks people. I’m not touching it,” Drew said with a shake of his head. A few strands of his black slicked back hair fell onto his forehead.
“It’ll be fine. It’s not shocking me anymore,” I said.
I didn’t believe that it would ever shock Jordan. Dylan shocked me with it because he didn’t want me talking about other guys—he wasn’t going to shock his sister through the ring.
“Is it weird that sparks are shooting off of the ring Dylan gave you while we’re trying to communicate with him? Like, is it a sign that he’s really here?” Jordan asked.
“It is weird. That’s why I mentioned it,” I explained as I dropped it onto her palm.
Or tried to.
Instead of falling onto Jordan’s skin, the ring hovered inches above her hand. The silver ring glowed a bright shade of red as it rested in the air.
“Yup, that thing is definitely haunted,” Drew said as he scooted away from us a little.
Jordan tried grabbing it with her other hand, only to find that the ring wouldn’t let her grab it. It was almost as though her hands were the opposite ends of magnets.
“This is so weird,” Jordan murmured, entranced by the effect the ring was having on her hands.
Drew reached out for the ring. It pulled back away from him before falling onto the blanket.
“Where the hell did Dylan get that thing, Riley? That is not normal,” Drew insisted.
“I don’t know. Dylan never mentioned where,” I replied.
I wasn’t sure why, but it made me feel so… special. It felt good to know that Dylan’s ring only wanted me to wear it. It made me feel like he had wanted it to be that way—like he had somehow planned it that way, so that no one could ever take it away from me.
Picking it back up, I shone the flashlight over the ring to see if there was a brand name imprinted on it.
I read the word printed in cursive on the inside of the ring.
“It has the word Moonstrike on it,” I said.
“I’ve never heard of that brand before,” Jordan replied with a frown.
“I don’t think it’s a brand,” Drew said as he pointed towards the sky. “There’s a full moon tonight. And the ring struck Riley like a little lightning bolt.”
“It did,” Jordan agreed.
There was a fearful look in her chocolate brown eyes.
“I’m sure that’s just a coincidence,” I said, even though I didn’t know if I fully believed that.
His idea made sense. It made so much more sense than anything else we could have come up with.
“You say coincidence, I say I’m on to something,” Drew said with a shrug.
“Even if you’re on to something, all it does is leave me with more questions. Why does a ring exist that shocks people beneath the moonlight?” I asked.
My finger was still sore and I didn’t want to risk another ring injury so soon after the first one, so I placed the ring into the buttoned pocket of my light blue denim jacket.
“And why would Dylan have had his hands on a ring like that? It sounds like something out of the show The Vampire Diaries. Or Supernatural, or some other show like that,” Jordan added.
“I really don’t want to be thinking about anything paranormal while we’re sitting in a graveyard,” I said.
“Except ghosts. Since we’re here to talk to our favorite ghost,” Drew called out in a singsong voice as he glanced in every direction of the cemetery. “Dylan, if you’re here, show us another sign.”
“Shh,” Jordan said as she slapped his arm. “You’re going to get us kicked out of here.”
“I’m just making sure Dylan can hear us,” he said with a shrug.
A cool breeze blew from behind me. Goosebumps rose all over my body. Ghosts. It had to have been graveyard ghosts, because the crypt would have blocked any wind.
“There’s your sign,” Drew said with a shiver as he tried wrapping his corner of the blanket around himself.
“Dylan, was that really you?” Jordan called softly into the wind.
A squeaking noise came from the center of the blanket.
We looked down at the spirit board to see that the indicator had landed on YES.
Chapter 2
Riley
Ghosts aren’t real. Once someone died, they were just gone.
And yet… a part of me gave into the hope that this whole thing really was real. I wished that we really were communicating with Dylan through the Ouija board, that he wasn’t just gone forever.
We were pretty deep into a bottle of vodka, and the letters that the indicator was picking out spun through my head.
“Let go,” Jordan whispered to Drew when she noticed that I didn’t even have my hands on the indicator.
Jordan let go, too, and the three of us watched the indicator move around on the board by itself.
This was getting way too spooky for me. I finished the rest of my apple-flavored Vodka Sprite and then filled my red Solo cup back up, because if it was up to me, I would have been hightailing it out of the cemetery.
“Dylan wants us to light a candle,” Jordan said as she pieced the Ouija letters together for us.
“Nope. That’s where we draw the line,” Drew replied with a shake of his head. “Haven’t you two ever seen Hocus Pocus? Nothing good comes from a candle.”
“I second that,” I slurred, pointing at Drew.
Jordan rolled her eyes. “Would you both just chill? We’re not going to light the Black Flame Candle. We’re just going to talk to my brother. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
She was right, because ghosts aren’t real. And even if they were real, they couldn’t hurt us. Because they were dead.
She started pulling thick white candles from her tote bag and setting them between us, forming a circle with them.
“Look at you with all those candles. Do you always carry candles around with you? Is your purse like a magician’s hat?” Drew asked, poking his head into her tote bag. “What else is in there? Do you have snacks?”
“No. I put them in my purse for tonight. We were supposed to have had a séance tonight, but I couldn’t find a good medium to use. Using an Ouija board was our last resort,” Jordan explained. She turned to him. “Do you have a lighter?”
“Of course I do,” Drew said as he dug around in his pocket for it.
“Jorda
n, once we light this candle, we can unlight it. Are you sure you really want to do this?” he asked as he held the lime green lighter out to her.
“Absolutely,” she replied.
“Alright,” he said with a sigh as he handed it to her.
She started lighting the candles.
“Jordan.”
I must have had way too much of that apple flavored vodka. I put my red Solo cup down and glanced around at my friends. We stared at each other with wide eyes, unsure of what to do. That made all of the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Jordan had practically jumped into Drew’s arms. She was clinging to him, digging her nails into his black leather jacket.
Even she was afraid now.
“Is it time to run?” Drew asked us.
I nodded, but before Jordan could answer, we heard the voice again.
“Jordan.”
Ghosts. Aren’t. Real.
At least, that’s what I’d always believed before tonight. Before we had crossed paths with one. As much as I tried to convince myself that ghosts were still nothing but a myth, the ghoulish voice that had just spoken to us was making me think otherwise.
I wasn’t even sure why I’d held onto the idea that they weren’t real. My wings felt like they were about to sprout at any second. If I existed, of course ghosts could exist, too.
“I miss you, Jordan,” the haunted voice echoed around us.
My eyes met Jordan’s as a feeling of dread filled the pit of my stomach.
Mascara-colored tears were trickling down her cheeks as she said, “I miss you, too.”
“Then help me come back.”
The voice sounded less like a ghost now. It was becoming more human-like.
“Come back?” Her eyes lit up in the candlelight, enchanted by the idea that she could have her brother back. “How can we bring you back to life?” she asked.
“The more important question is what will we be bringing back to life?” Drew said, asking the exact question I was wondering about.
Jordan glared at him. “My brother.”
“But is your brother going to look like a zombie?” I asked, suddenly dreading this whole idea.
I didn’t want to tarnish the memory of him by reviving what was now probably a very decayed-looking corpse. And what if he had… turned evil? Call me crazy, but it was possible, wasn’t it? I’d seen enough horror movies to know that you should just let the dead stay dead.