by Jayme Morse
Jordan pressed her lips together while she considered it.
“Exactly our point, Jordan. None of us have any idea of what we’ll be bringing back to life. My vote is that we don’t do it. It’s the worst idea we’ve had in a while. What’s your vote, Riley?” Drew asked, his golden-brown eyes hovering over mine.
“She doesn’t have to vote,” Jordan protested. “I’ve already made my decision. I’m doing it with or without you guys. It doesn’t matter to me if you stay or go. Dylan would do it for me, so I’m going to do it for him.”
Drew’s eyes met mine again and I knew it was because we were silently agreeing to stay.
“Okay,” I said.
“Good. We need Riley,” that creepy voice spoke again.
“Why do you need me?” I asked.
I wasn’t sure why, but that made me feel even more nervous.
“You know why,” the ghost explained.
“Riley? What’s he talking about?” Jordan questioned.
“Um. I think it might have something to do with the ring,” I replied, leaving out the fact that it probably had more to do with our secret relationship. Dylan probably wanted me to stay since he’d had such a close connection to me when he was alive. “It belonged to him. In movies, ghosts always get attached to personal objects.”
“I’m alive and I’m attached to personal objects, too,” Drew said with a shrug.
“How long will this take?” I asked my friends, stupidly thinking that they’d have some idea.
As if any of us had ever brought someone back to life before.
“It will be instant,” the ghost replied.
“Instant,” Jordan replied quietly. “One second Dylan will be dead, and the next he will be alive. How will we explain his reappearance to everyone? To my family? To our school?”
“We’ll worry about that after it happens. Let’s just do this and get it over with. But don’t say we didn’t warn you if it does happen to go bad,” Drew replied, nervously running his tan hand through his black hair. “There’s a good possibility we might be about to start the zombie apocalypse.”
“I need to take a break first,” I said as I stood up, unable to handle the pain in my back any longer.
I needed to stretch my wings out. They felt so cramped.
I could feel my shoulder blades burning and itching where my wings wanted to protrude through my skin.
If only I knew then that at the end of the night my life would change forever… and, for once, my wings would have nothing to do with it.
Chapter 3
Riley
As I tried to step off of the blanket, I found that I couldn’t. I walked along the edge of the blanket, finding that I couldn’t step foot on the grass from any angle that I’d tried.
Drew started laughing. “What are you doing, Riley?”
“I don’t know. I’m stuck.”
“What do you mean stuck?” Jordan asked, sounding alarmed as she stood up.
“You’re not stuck. People don’t get stuck like that,” Drew said with a wave of his hand.
“Would it really be the weirdest thing that has happened all night?” Jordan asked pointedly.
“True. I knew this whole thing was a bad idea,” Drew said with a sigh.
They didn’t even know the half of how weird the night had been.
“Maybe it’s the candles,” I suggested as I stooped down and blew one of the candles out. “Maybe because we formed a circle with the candles, we have to break the circle to get out.”
“How do you know so much about witchy things?” Jordan asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Ghosty things,” Drew corrected.
I tried to play it off with a shrug. “I watch a lot of movies.”
What they didn’t know was that faeries sometimes used candles, too.
I watched as the candle lit itself again.
“What are these? Trick candles?” As I knelt down to blow it out again, the voice spoke to us.
“I can’t let you leave,” the voice spoke to us again.
My heart started to pound in my chest as I realized we were trapped.
“Ever?” Jordan’s voice squeaked as she asked.
“Oh, I knew it. I knew something bad was going to happen. We’re going to die here, aren’t we? We’re going to be stuck on this little blanket for the rest of our lives, until we die a slow, painful, boring death,” Drew said dramatically.
“Would you stop making it worse?” I asked, shooting him a glare.
I needed to stay calm and he seriously wasn’t helping with that.
“You won’t come back if you leave,” the voice explained.
“Yes, we will. We promise we will come back,” Jordan said, glancing around at us. “Right, guys?”
“Yeah,” I said, even though I wasn’t so sure if I wanted to do this anymore.
“Promise,” Drew agreed. The tone of his voice told me he was feeling the same hesitation I felt.
I didn’t want to help Dylan if he was going to hold me hostage and force me to help him whether I wanted to or not. But then again… could I blame him? I probably would have done the same thing if I was him. If I was afraid that this was my one and only chance to be around my friends again, I would have trapped them, too.
“I don’t believe you,” the voice told us.
“Okay. We’ll stay,” I told him.
“But not forever,” Drew quickly added, shooting me a worried glance.
“We obviously won’t stay forever,” I agreed. “I just meant that I’ll take my break after we’re done helping you, Dylan.”
My wings would just have to get over the fact that they needed to stay hidden inside my body. I hoped they would cooperate. My wings were the last thing I needed to explain to my friends while we were stuck in a tiny circle together.
“Perfect,” the voice replied. “Let’s get started.”
“What do you need us to do?” Jordan asked.
Drew reached for my hand and squeezed it, letting me know he was just as nervous as I felt.
I had the worst feeling about this whole thing. And I knew the two of us had been right: we never should have come to the graveyard tonight. We should have convinced Jordan that it was a pointless idea, that Oujia boards were fake, that we wouldn’t be able to talk to Dylan anyway.
Then we wouldn’t have been in the position we were in now.
“I need blood.” The voice sounded so urgent.
“Blood?” Jordan asked, raising her eyebrows. “What kind of blood?”
“Human blood,” it replied. “Slice yourselves and let your blood drip into the flames. Then I’ll let you go.”
Drew squeezed my hand even tighter.
“Promise?” Jordan asked.
“Of course,” the voice replied.
Slice yourselves. I shuddered at Dylan’s choice of words. It sounded like such a cold thing to say. It sounded so heartless and uncaring that it was hard to believe it was my Dylan that was speaking to us.
Death had really changed him.
I worried that even if we brought him back to life, he’d never be the same again.
And, honestly, I wasn’t sure if I wanted him back.
He’d never be the same guy that I could talk to about my bad days—because nothing could compare to his bad days that he’d spent all alone in his coffin. He’d probably always rub it in my face that he’s had it worse than I’d had, which was understandable. But it wasn’t what I needed.
He wouldn’t be the guy that had been so gentle with me. The one that gave me forehead kisses and told me that everything was going to be okay in the end. The one that cuddled with me while we talked about our futures.
I didn’t want him to be that anymore.
Because he was now the guy that just wanted my blood.
*
We chose the same candle to slice our hands over. The only object sharp enough that we had between the three of us was Drew’s pocket knife.
And e
ven though it didn’t affect me that much since I had fae blood and they didn’t, it was still kind of gross.
Jordan gasped as Drew cut her hand and squeezed it over the flame for her.
After a few drops fell onto the flame, they handed the knife to me.
“This is ridiculous,” Drew muttered under his breath.
“It’s not so bad,” Jordan tried reassuring me. “It only hurts a little.”
I nodded. I wasn’t that worried about the pain. I was more worried about my fae blood entering their blood streams. I was new to the whole faerie world. I wasn’t sure if it would make them grow wings like me, or if it wouldn’t even affect them. Either way I didn’t want to risk it. That was the real reason I had asked to go last.
“Can you do it?” I asked Drew and held both the knife and my hand out for him.
I turned my head away so that I wouldn’t get queasy at the sight of my own blood.
Jordan held my other hand reassuringly as I winced at the pain. Sticky wetness started trickling down my hand.
“Uh,” Drew said, his voice sounding surprised.
“What?” I asked, my stomach folding into even more knots than there already were.
I glanced down at my hand.
Oh shit.
That was new.
His golden-brown eyes met mine questioningly, and I knew that he’d noticed.
How wouldn’t he have noticed?
My blood was purple.
And it wasn’t just a dark purple shade that could have easily been mistaken for dark red blood. No, it was full-on violet purple with shimmery silver mixed in.
Looking at it didn’t even make me feel queasy at all. My blood was so… pretty.
“Aren’t you curious?” I asked him.
“Super curious,” Jordan agreed after she peeked at what we were looking at. “Why does your blood look like that?”
I ignored her with a shrug of my shoulders.
Truthfully, I was dying to tell someone the truth about me. I just wasn’t allowed to. Being one of the only faeries I knew was hard. Lonely, even. And we weren’t even sure how the rest of the night was going to go. I had a bad feeling that something even worse was still going to happen. I just wasn’t sure what could have been worse than being trapped—possibly forever—in a graveyard by your old boyfriend. Screw the faerie police’s rules.
A thought nagged at the back of my mind: I couldn’t take it back after I said it. Once it’s out there, it’ll stay out there. And who knows who else would find out the truth about me?
Drew shrugged. “I am curious, too. But it’s still not the weirdest thing that’s happened all night. I’m really not sure if I can handle any more weirdness tonight. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
“If we get out of this situation by tomorrow,” I grumbled.
If I didn’t get out of here by midnight, I was screwed. The faerie police would arrest me and my life would pretty much be over if anyone found out I was a faerie.
Instead of saying anything to reassure me like he normally would, he just turned my hand over and helped me add my blood to the candles’ flame. Glittery purple smoke rose from the flame.
I clasped my hands together so that they wouldn’t notice that I was already healing.
“Hmm,” the voice that had been quiet for a while finally spoke again. “Fae blood.”
“Fae blood?” Drew asked, raising his black eyebrows. “That’s what you are? A… faerie?”
Dylan had never known that I was a faerie.
My breath hitched in the back of my throat.
“Guys… this isn’t Dylan,” I said quietly, even though I knew the ghost could hear me no matter how loudly I spoke.
“What do you mean? Of course it is,” Jordan protested.
The crypt door flew open and a gust of wind rushed out, startling all of us. We turned to find a dark figure descending the stairs.
“Was Dylan buried in a crypt?” I asked pointedly, knowing that Dylan’s gravestone was right behind us.
“No…” Jordan said, shaking her head slowly.
“If that’s not Dylan… then who the hell did we just resurrect?” Drew asked.
Chapter 4
Riley
I was frozen in fear as the guy stepped into view. It confirmed that I was right. The guy wasn’t Dylan.
It didn’t matter that my legs felt like Jell-O, anyway. We were sitting ducks. We couldn’t have run away from him even if we wanted to.
His resurrection cleared up any misconceptions I’d had about reviving Dylan, though. This guy didn’t have decaying skin. He didn’t look terrifying, like one of the zombies from The Walking Dead. The only hint that he’d even been dead was his tattered clothing. He was wearing a generic black suit that looked dusty and well-worn, so I had no way of knowing how long he’d been dead.
And even though every part of my brain was telling me to run away, I really didn’t want to.
I wasn’t sure who the guy we had resurrected was, but he was easily the most breathtaking guy I’d ever laid eyes on.
His medium golden-brown hair was on the longer side—a few small strands of it hung in his forehead, touching his nose. His skin was an intense shade of gold that complimented his hair. Even though he was still standing on the steps, I could tell that he was so much taller than I was.
There was something so strange, something so mysterious, about his eyes. It could have been the poor lighting, but it looked like they were a dark shade of red.
He was staring back at me just as intensely as I was staring at him, and it didn’t feel uncomfortable. I didn’t feel shy, like I normally would have. It felt comfortable—like I was sharing a gaze with someone I’d known my whole life.
I just couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t more afraid of him. Every part of me knew I should have been scared shitless. We had just brought him back from the dead. But his presence felt so calming, for some reason.
Ugh. What was wrong with me?
A former ghost was holding us hostage and I was crushing on him already?
Move over, Belle. If this guy let it happen, we were about to become the next Beauty and the Beast.
Except he was the furthest thing from a Beast, and I sure as hell wasn’t a Beauty.
There was no way he’d ever be as interested in me as I was in him with my boring blonde hair, green eyes, and average body.
He used to be a ghost, I had to remind myself. And on top of that, he tricked us.
But whatever. I didn’t blame me for crushing on him so hard. I’d never seen too many attractive guys in person. Our high school didn’t really have too many cute ones. He was even hotter than all of my celebrity crushes. Zac Efron, Robert Pattinson, or Penn Badgley had nothing on my ghost boy.
“Thank you,” the guy said with a grin as he came to stand in front of us, his teeth sparkling under the moonlight.
Thank you? Had I somehow said all of that out loud without realizing it?
“For bringing me back to life,” he added with a wink at me that made me want to melt.
Ex-ghosts must have had the ability to read minds. That was the only explanation I could come up with for that wink. That, or he just thought that I thought that he was incredibly sexy. Not that he would have been wrong.
He slipped his suit jacket off and tossed it down onto the stone steps, revealing his hard, muscular arms.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, shooting us a sheepish smile as he pulled his white undershirt off over his head.
I was greeted with an eyeful of strong-looking abs.
“We don’t mind at all,” I said, maybe a little too quickly.
Drew nudged me with his elbow and gave me a look that told me to cool it. To stop falling head over heels for the used-to-be-dead guy.
I just couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t sure what had gotten into me.
I knew exactly what I wanted to get into me, I thought to myself as I eyed his naked chest.
“I’ve been we
aring that outfit for a century,” the guy went on.
“You must have died young,” I said dumbly, before I could stop myself.
The guy glanced over at me sharply, before softening his gaze.
“I was young when I went into the coffin,” he said with a nod. I could’ve been mistaken, but it seemed like he was choosing his words carefully. “But I am very much alive. I was never a ghost.”
“Do you prefer the word ‘spirit’?” Drew asked.
The guy shook his head. “I’ve yet to die.”
I stared at him. He’d survived 100 years in a coffin, but he had never died? Then again, that did explain the fact that he showed no signs of decaying. But how the hell was that even possible?
I was dying to ask him a question. I wanted to ask him what he was, but I was afraid to find out the answer to it.
I was afraid that I already knew what the answer was.
“I suppose you’re wondering what I am,” the guy said, looking straight at me.
I wasn’t just imagining it. My mind was completely made up. It seriously felt like he could hear my thoughts.
He looked straight at me, nodded, and then glanced up at the moon and breathed deeply as he stretched his muscular body out.
Oh my god. He really had heard everything. And he had confirmed it for me.
If I was a mind reader, I would have kept that top secret. So why was he willing to tell me?
Then his eyes fell onto Jordan, who was hiding behind me and Drew.
“Please don’t be afraid of me.”
“Okay,” Jordan replied as she moved to stand beside me.
I raised my eyebrows at her.
Knowing Jordan, she normally would have told him that she wasn’t afraid or something.
The fact that she had changed her demeanor so easily just because the guy told her to was odd, to say the least.
“Do you have an idea of what I am yet?” the guy asked as he redirected his attention to me. “I’ll give you a hint. I can compel people to do any little thing I want.” He sucked his teeth. “You know, something like forcing them to cut their palms and help me escape from my coffin.”