Crush

by Tracy Wolff

  Praise for Tracy Wolff’s Crave

  ★“The generation that missed Twilight will be bitten by this one. Recommended first purchase.”

  —SLJ, starred review

  “Crave is about to become fandom’s new favorite vampire romance obsession.”

  —Hypable

  “Throw in some deadly intrigue to mingle with the dark secret Jaxon bears, and you’ve got a recipe for YA vampire success in Crave.”

  —Bustle

  “The first in a series, this ends with lots of drama, action, and a dramatic reveal. A satisfyingly engrossing read.”

  —Teen Librarian Toolbox

  “Wolff has a masterpiece on her hands. It’s as simple as that.”

  —Vocal.Media

  “My favorite February read…it’s full of suspense and interesting characters that keep you turning until the last page!”

  —Aurora Dominguez, Frolic’s YA expert

  “[C]raving something fun to read, slightly dark and romantic…couldn’t put it down!”

  —Natalie Morales, NBC

  “Wolff exquisitely delivers girl power, romance, and a swoon-worthy hero.”

  —Lynn Rush, New York Times bestselling author

  “Brings gripping tension teeming with a blend of action and teenage angst. Crave is beautifully descriptive with amazing pacing and wonderfully sinister settings.”

  — #1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan

  “Crave sucked me into its dangerous—but oh so delicious—world. Suffice it to say: I have a new book boyfriend!”

  —Pintip Dunn, New York Times bestselling author of Dating Makes Perfect

  “I’m having the best book hangover. Filled with danger, humor, and heart, Crave proves that vampires are definitely back!”

  —New York Times bestselling author J. Kenner

  “Intricately crafted, deeply romantic, and with an ending that blew me away. I can’t wait for the next installment.”

  —Victoria Scott, author of the Fire & Flood series

  “Funny, smart, and compelling—Tracy Wolff’s Crave is an addictive masterpiece!”

  —Emily McKay, national bestselling author of Storybound

  “Full of intrigue and mystery and with a sizzling romance, Crave is my new paranormal obsession!”

  —Mary Lindsey, author of Haven

  “Crave will consume you…and leave you aching for more.”

  —A. K. Wilder, author of Crown of Bones

  “This is a stay glued to your seat, forget about the rest of the world, sleep is overrated book.”

  —Read Your Writes Book Reviews

  “An addictive and fun paranormal read that had me giggling and swooning big time! If you’re like me and love a good vampire romance, definitely gotta read this one!”

  —Books and a Cup of Joe

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 Woke Up Like This

  2 So…What Did I Miss?

  3 Sleeping Beauty’s Got Nothing on Me

  4 Turns out the Sixth Sense Is Actually Human Sacrifice

  5 Gargoyles Are the New Black

  6 Vampire Roulette Isn’t the Same Without the Blood

  7 What I Don’t Know Will Hurt Me…and Everyone Else

  8 Put a Little Love on Me

  9 Livin’ on a Hope-Induced Hallucination

  10 One Giant Pain in my Ass

  11 Just Call Me Stone-Coldhearted

  12 #FactionFightClub

  13 Sucker Punch Me One More Time

  14 She-Nanigans

  15 Let’s All Play Find the Homicidal Maniac

  16 Nothing Wrong with Being a Little Horny

  17 Tunnel Vision

  18 I Think I Had Amnesia Once…or Twice

  19 Caught Red-Handed

  20 Karma’s a Witch’s Cousin

  21 Keep Your Enemies Close, Unless They Bleed a Lot

  22 Family Is My Favorite F-Word

  23 Saturday Morning Cartoons Never Prepared Me for This

  24 Go Smudge Yourself

  25 And the Blackouts Just Keep on Coming

  26 Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law

  27 When the Evil Within Really Needs to be the Evil That’s Out, Out, Out

  28 Sometimes Girls Just Wanna Take Charge

  29 I’m Too Sexy for My Coat…and So Is Everyone Else

  30 Winner Winner Bloodletter’s Dinner

  31 Welcome to the Ice Age

  32 One Person’s Reality Is Another Person’s Total Mind F*ck

  33 It’s Hard to Pick My Battles When My Battles Keep Picking Me

  34 This Place Isn’t Big Enough for the Both of Us

  35 I’m Going to Wash That Psychopath Right Out of My Hair

  36 DIY Exorcism

  37 Sweet Dreams Are Made of Anything But This

  38 Take Me Under Your Dragon Wing

  39 Salem WTF Trials

  40 Survival Is So Last Year

  41 Turns Out the Devil Wears Armani

  42 Ben & Jerry Are the Only Two Guys I Want to Fight Over

  43 Even Homicidal Maniacs Have Their Limits

  44 Two Heads Aren’t Better than One

  45 Leave Your Daddy Issues at the Door

  46 Gargoyles Need a Little Glamour, Too

  47 Are you Bloodstoned?

  48 Win, Lose, or Die

  49 Teamwork Makes the Dream Work…(or it Gives You Nightmares)

  50 It’s Getting Crowded Under the Bed

  51 Get Your Magic On

  52 Come on Baby, Light My Candle

  53 Everybody Wants to Rule the World

  54 Who Needs a Magic Carpet When Your Bestie’s a Dragon?

  55 Ain’t Nothing but a Wing Thing

  56 Just Shut Up and Dance

  57 Pulling all the (Heart) Strings

  58 Always Look on the Bite Side

  59 Two Vampires Too Many

  60 Paranormal Telenovelas Are a Lifestyle Choice

  61 The Monster Mash-Up

  62 Gravity Bites

  63 There Aren’t Enough Happy Thoughts in the World

  64 Pardon My Existential Crisis

  65 No Exit: A Biography

  66 Frenemies Are Forever

  67 Talk Darcy to Me

  68 The Truth Hurts

  69 To Bite or Not to Bite

  70 When the Devil Comes Up to Denali

  71 Revenge of the Body Snatched

  72 Welcome to the Paranormal Jungle

  73 Live and Let Love

  74 A Whole New Kind of March Madness

  75 Now You See Me, Now You Don’t

  76 From Jock to Cock-a-Doodle-Doo

  77 Comet Me, Baby

  78 Talk About a Bone to Pick

  79 Talk About a Trust Fall

  80 A Gargoyle’s Guide to Antigravity

  81 One Hundred Percent That Witch

  82 Ride or Die

  83 Sometimes Homecoming Really Does Mean Coming Home

  84 Two Vampires, a Witch, and a Werewolf Walk into a Boneyard…

  85 Dust and Dragon Bones

  86 Grace Under Fire

  87 All the Right Moves

  88 Subconsciously Yours

  89 Bend Till You Break

  90 Fire and Bloodstone

  91 Family Feud Has Nothing on Us

  92 Is It Really a Throw Down if it Makes You Want to Throw Up?

  93 Betrayal Is a Four-Letter Word

  94 Some Days the Glass Really Is Half Empty

  95 Second Star to the Right and Straight On Till Siberia

  96 Get Fanged

  97 Another One Bites the Dust

  98 Fly by Night

  99 With B
aited Breath

  100 Carpe Slay-Em

  101 Heaven on My Mind

  102 We Are the Monsters

  103 Going Through the Potions

  104 Because We Could Not Stop for Death

  105 Fall from Grace

  106 Stone Hearts Can Be Broken

  107 I Never Asked for This Anyway

  108 Pom-Poms and Pompadours

  109 Where Do Broken Bonds Go?

  110 Heeeeeeeeere’s Hudson

  111 Talk About a Power Trip

  112 It’s High Noon and Justice Doesn’t Serve Itself

  113 A Match Played in Hell

  114 Fake It Till You Break It

  115 He Totally Deserved That

  116 Death By Ice Cube Is No Way to Start an Obituary

  117 Raining Cats and Dragons

  118 Stop Dragon my Wings Around

  119 Gargoyle Girls Do It with Grace

  120 Fee, Fi, Fo, F*ck

  121 And the Crowd Goes Wild

  122 You’re So Jelly

  123 It All Comes Crashing Down

  124 Long Time, No Sea

  125 Between a Rock and a Hard Place

  126 Amazing Grace—Hudson—

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Afterlife of the Party, by Marlene Perez

  Crown of Bones, by A.K. Wilder

  Dating Makes Perfect, by Pintip Dunn

  Escaping Eleven, by Jerri Chisholm

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Tracy Deebs-Elkenaney. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  10940 S Parker Road

  Suite 327

  Parker, CO 80134

  rights@entangledpublishing.com

  Entangled Teen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Edited by Liz Pelletier and Stacy Abrams

  Cover design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes and Bree Archer

  Cover artwork by

  Sebastian Janicki/Shutterstock,

  xpixel/Shutterstock,

  s-ts/Shutterstock,

  Renphoto/Gettyimages

  Interior design by Toni Kerr

  ISBN 978-1-68281-578-6

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-68281-585-4

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition September 2020

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Elizabeth Pelletier and Emily Sylvan Kim

  The two most kick-ass women in the business

  There’s no one I want to take this journey with more than you

  1

  Woke Up Like This

  Being the lone human in a school for paranormals is precarious at the best of times.

  At the worst of times, it’s a little like being the last chew toy in a room full of rabid dogs.

  And at average times…well, at average times, it’s honestly pretty cool.

  Too bad today is most definitely not an average day.

  I don’t know why, but everything feels a little off as I walk down the hall toward my Brit Lit class, the strap of my backpack clutched in my hand like a lifeline.

  Maybe it’s the fact that I’m freezing, my whole body trembling with a cold that has seeped all the way to my bones.

  Maybe it’s the fact that the hand clutching my backpack is bruised and sore, like I got into a fight with a wall—and most definitely lost.

  Or maybe it’s the fact that everyone, and I mean everyone, is staring at me—and it’s not in that “best of times” kind of way.

  Then again, when is it ever?

  You’d think I’d have gotten used to the staring by now, since it kind of comes with the territory when you’re a vampire prince’s girlfriend. But nope. And definitely not okay when every vampire, witch, dragon, and werewolf in the place is stopping to stare at you with their eyes wide and their mouths gaping even wider—like today.

  Which, to be honest, really isn’t a very good look for any of them. I mean, come on. Aren’t I supposed to be the one weirded out in this equation? They’ve known all along that humans exist. It’s only been about a week since I found out the monster in my closet is real. As are the ones in my dorm room, my classes…and sometimes in my arms. So shouldn’t I be the one walking around with my mouth wide open as I stare at them?

  “Grace?” I recognize the voice and turn with a smile, only to find Mekhi gawking at me, his normally warm brown complexion more waxy than I’ve ever seen it.

  “Hey, there you are.” I shoot him a grin. “I thought I was going to have to read Hamlet all by myself today.”

  “Hamlet?” His voice is hoarse, and the hands that fumble the phone out of his front pocket are anything but steady.

  “Yeah, Hamlet. The play we’ve been reading for Brit Lit since I got here?” I shuffle my feet a little, suddenly uncomfortable as he continues to stare at me like he’s seen a ghost…or worse. This definitely isn’t typical Mekhi behavior. “We’re performing a scene today, remember?”

  “We’re not rea—” He breaks off mid-word, thumbs flying over his phone as he sends what his face says is the most important text of his life.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, stepping closer. “You don’t look so good.”

  “I don’t look so good?” He barks out a laugh, shoves a trembling hand through his long, dark locks. “Grace, you’re—”

  “Miss Foster?”

  Mekhi breaks off as a voice I don’t recognize all but booms through the hallway.

  “Are you all right?”

  I shoot Mekhi a “what the fuck?” look as we both turn to find Mr. Badar, the Lunar Astronomy teacher, striding down the hall.

  “I’m fine,” I answer, taking a startled step back. “I’m just trying to get to class before the bell rings.” I blink up at him when he stops directly in front of us. He’s looking a lot more freaked out than an early-morning hallway exchange warrants. Especially since all I’m doing is talking to a friend.

  “We need to find your uncle,” he tells me as he places a hand under my elbow in an effort to turn me around and guide me back in the direction I just came from.

  There’s something in his voice, less than a warning but more than a request, that gets me walking through the long, lancet-arched hallway without complaint. Well, that and because the normally unfazed Mekhi scrambles to get out of our way.

  But with each step I take, the feeling that something isn’t right intensifies. Especially when people literally stop in their tracks to watch us go by, a reaction that only seems to make Mr. Badar more nervous.

  “Can you please tell me what’s going on?” I ask as the crowd parts right in front of us. It’s not the first time I’ve seen the phenomenon—once again, I do date Jaxon Vega—but it is the first time I’ve seen it happen when my boyfriend is nowhere around. It’s beyond weird.

  Mr. Badar looks at me like I’ve grown a second head, then asks, “You don’t know?” The fact that he sounds a little frantic, his deep voice taking on an incredulous edge, ratchets up my anxiety. Especially since it reminds me of the look on Mekhi’s face when he reached for his phone a couple of minutes ago.

  It’s the same look I see on Cam’s face as we sweep by him standing in the doorway of one of the Chem classrooms. And Gwen’s. And Flint’s.

  “Grace!” Flint calls to me, bounding out of the classroom so he can walk alongside Mr. Badar and me. “Oh my God, Grace! You’re back!”

  “Not now, Mr. Montgomery,” the tea
cher snaps, his teeth clicking together sharply with each word.

  So definitely a werewolf, then…at least judging by the size of that canine I see peeking from beneath his lip. Then again, I guess I should have figured it out by the subject he teaches—who’s more interested in the astronomy of the moon than the creatures who occasionally like to howl at it?

  For the first time, I wonder if something happened this morning that I don’t know about. Did Jaxon and Cole, the alpha werewolf, get into it again? Or Jaxon and another wolf this time—maybe Quinn or Marc? It doesn’t seem likely, since everyone has been giving us a wide berth lately, but why else would a werewolf teacher I’ve never met before be so panicked and single-minded in his determination to get me to my uncle?

  “Wait, Grace—” Flint reaches out for me, but Mr. Badar blocks his hand from connecting.

  “I said not now, Flint! Go to class!” The words, little more than a snarl, come from low in his throat.

  Flint looks like he wants to argue, his own teeth suddenly gleaming sharply in the soft chandelier lighting of the hallway. He must decide it’s not worth it—despite his clenched fists—because in the end, he doesn’t say anything. He just kind of stops in his tracks and watches us walk by instead…just like everyone else in the corridor.

  Several people look like they want to approach—Macy’s friend Gwen, for example—but a low, warning growl from the teacher, who’s pretty much marching me down the hallway now, and the whole group of them decides to keep their distance.

  “Hold on, Grace. We’re almost there.”

  “Almost where?” I want to demand an answer, but my voice comes out sounding raspy.

  “Your uncle’s office, of course. He’s been waiting on you for a long time.”

  That makes no sense. I just saw Uncle Finn yesterday.

  Unease slides across the back of my neck and down my spine, sharp as a razor, causing the hairs on my arms to tingle.

  None of this feels okay.

  None of this feels right.

  As we turn another corner, this time into the tapestry-lined hallway that runs in front of Uncle Finn’s office, it’s my turn to reach into my pocket for my phone. I want to talk to Jaxon. He’ll tell me what’s going on.

  I mean, this can’t all be about Cole, right? Or about Lia. Or about—I yelp as my thoughts crash into what feels like a giant wall. One that has huge metal barbs sticking out of it that poke directly into my head.