SHATTERED: SECRET SOCIETY OF SOULS, BOOK 1

by K. C. RILEY

  Missing the Ball ended up being the best thing that could have happened to me. Josie and Cassie got what they wanted. And so did I. Jake. As I rested my head against his chest, a dragonfly flew over and settled on his shoulder. I couldn’t help but feel that somehow the dragonfly was Mom’s spirit, like she was telling me that Jake was one of the good guys.

  At some point, waltzing turned into one big pillow fight of laughing and chasing each other around the coffee table, until Jake was back on the couch with me curled up in the nook of his arm. His body was warm and electrical. We stared into each other’s eyes until Jake leaned in and our lips met. Nothing had changed. Kissing Jake was still like kissing the universe.

  I flew through time and found myself back in the tunnel of angels. The White Sun was so close, I could touch it. But before I knew it, it had touched me. Light exploded in my head, opening my eyes to things I couldn’t see before.

  I was back on the side of the road the night of Zander’s party. The girls drove off, and I was alone. It was dark and raining. Someone called out Daughter of Cain. Witch. I turned to look and they shot me. But this time, I could see his face. The man that shot me was Cassie’s father. He was in a black hoodie. It was him. It had to be. His skin was fair, his hair, dark blond, his eyes, blue, and he had the same birthmark on the left side of his forehead that was in Cassie’s picture of her parents. I also saw the face of the guy that healed me. Jake.

  I broke the kiss in angst. “It was never in my head. It was you. How could you let me think I was crazy?”

  Jake knew exactly what I meant. The expression on his face confirmed it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I pushed myself off of him onto my knees. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was trying to protect you. You were going through so much.” Jake said, “Would you really have believed me?”

  He had a point. But still. “What happened to the guy?”

  “He won’t be hurting you ever again.” Jake locked his fingers and hand into mine. “I will never let anyone hurt you.”

  Someone came in and cleared their throat from behind us, a waiter holding a tray with a note on it. And what did Jake mean by he won’t be hurting you ever again? I shivered at the thought of Jake killing someone.

  “Lizzy Maverick?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  The waiter handed me the note. “There’s a call for you in the main library. I was told that it’s urgent.”

  My first thought was Headmaster Wheeler and that I had been busted. I then checked Cassie’s phone. There were no messages from her or Josie. “I better go take it.”

  “I can go with you.” Jake reached for my hand.

  It was one thing to wrap my head around Jake being an angel, one that healed me. And yet a whole other process to digest getting shot by Cassie’s father. Not to mention, Jake possibly having killed Cassie’s dad to protect me.

  “No,” I said pulling away. There was a lot more to talk about as my mind spun out of control. “It’s okay. I’ll be back. I promise.”

  “You better.”

  Sir Isaac’s portrait stared at me from over the fireplace. I looked around the library for a landline. What was the waiter talking about? I was about to leave when I noticed a dinner tray, the fancy kind with the silver cover on top. A tingly sensation snaked up the back of my neck. I reached my hand out to lift the lid. Some part of me wanted to know what was underneath. Another part of me didn’t. I listened to the latter and placed the cover back down when the door slammed shut on its own.

  Out of nowhere, a wind swirled through the room and a voice spoke through the cyclone that encased me. Ezra’s voice. “It’s time Lizzy.”

  Like hell it was. I ran to the door and tried to twist the knob. It was no use. Whatever Ezra had in store for me, I wanted no part of it.

  “It’s time, granddaughter,” he said again.

  “What do you want from me?” I yelled out.

  “Open your eyes and ears to the truth.” The wind in the room came to a stop.

  And in the silence, the sound of a phone rang from somewhere in the room. It was faint, but there.

  “Open your eyes.”

  I tried the knob again. The ringing wouldn’t stop, and Ezra wasn’t letting me out.

  “Fine,” I hollered.

  I followed the sound to a wall adorned in blood-red drapes and put my ear to the wall. The ringing was coming from the other side. Not sure what to do, I pressed my hands against the wall as though a magic door would appear. It didn’t. But something did catch my eye, the golden-thread cords that gleamed and hung on the side of the draping. It couldn’t be that easy, I thought. But it was.

  I tugged on the cord, and a door in the wall slid open. The smell of sulfur and seaweed erupted from the doorway as a dim light lit the darkness from within. With a hand at my nose and the other at my stomach, I stepped inside.

  Somewhere, a phone continued to ring. The place was some kind of cellar or a basement. Stone stairs ran down the side of the wall. Old light bulbs on a cord swung and dangled from the ceiling here and there. The veins of light that glowed from them were just enough to not fall in the dark. I steadied myself close to the wall and descended. The blasted ringing got louder and was driving me nuts.

  My shoes crunched on the dirt floor at the bottom of the stairs. It was a weird setup for a cellar. A muddy shovel lay on the ground by a pool of murky water, with seaweed and claw marks in the dirt like something had crawled out of it.

  An old rotary phone rang from the floor. I bent down to answer it. As soon as I reached out, the ringing stopped. With a deep breath, I picked up the entire base. A line from the phone jack ran directly into the murky pool of water. With a short tug, the cut line came out.

  My heart leaped from my chest when the phone rang on its own, and I dropped it to the floor. I took the entire thing and slung it into the water, where it bubbled down to the bottom.

  There were other things scattered around the pool of darkness. Pieces of paper with magical symbols and the name Norah on them. Who was Norah? There were also burnt candles, and two opened books. The first was opened to something called Conjured, a spell for giving life to the deceased spirit of a witch. One of the ingredients called for was a phone to connect to the spirits on the other side, the one I threw in the pool. I could only have guessed the spirit of the deceased witch was, Norah. I plucked a smudged picture from the dirt, a photo of three teenagers. Two of them I recognized. I turned it over. There were names written on the back. Serene, Jonas, & Norah.

  None of it made sense. Again, who the hell was Norah? And what did she have to do with my mother and Jonas? And why on earth would Mrs. Ellington need the spirit of a dead witch?

  I picked up the other book and found the answer. It was opened to a spell for raising the dead of a loved one. The main ingredient needed? It could only be performed by the resurrected spirit of a dead witch. Of course it did.

  More photos had been laid out on the ground with scattered herbs and the bones of some small animal. The framed photos were pictures of Mrs. Ellington. She was younger, but it was her. She was in the arms of some guy that clearly made her extremely happy. One of the frames was inscribed, To my dearest husband, Reginald. Love always, Wynona.

  Open your eyes, Ezra said. Well, they were opened.

  It was all starting to make sense even though it wasn’t, the stench of the rotting seaweed and flesh that had haunted me since my mom’s accident. And the phone call that spooked her.

  Mrs. Ellington was trying to raise her husband from the dead. Somewhere along the way, the witch she brought back to do it killed my Mom and attacked me in the alley. The question was why?

  Goosebumps tracked up and down my arms. Wynona, Mrs. Ellington, was dangerous and so was the thing she brought back from the dead. But, who was I going to tell? Who would believe me? Trembling, I placed everything back like I had found it and dashed up the stairs. I closed the hidden panel behind me
and was about to leave to tell Jake what Mrs. Ellington had been up to when the doorknob twisted.

  Voices came from the other side of the door. Something inside of me urged me to hide. Trust your instincts. And I did. In a panic, I ran and hid behind the couch that was in front of the fireplace. There was nowhere else to go, and there was no way I was going back down in the cellar.

  Someone entered the room.

  “You’re naughty.” A young woman’s voice giggled.

  “I bet you say that to all the guys,” I heard.

  I knew that voice.

  “Only the ones with sweet southern accents,” she replied.

  “How do you feel about a little kiss?” It was freaking Kai. It had to be.

  That douche. Here I thought he was in trouble. That something bad happened to him. Was this why he didn’t want me to come to the dance?

  Not seeing what was going on was driving me crazy. I had to take a peek to confirm.

  “Just a little one, I suppose will be all right,” the girl teased.

  She moaned, but it was off. Either someone was suffocating a goose, or she was struggling to break free. I climbed up and peeped over the couch. Kai was in a lip lock with a woman in a catering uniform. Her body shriveled up against his lips as her arms flailed about like brittle sticks. She was moaning to free herself even though it was clear...it was too late.

  My stomach churned as the taste of bile lurched up into the back of my throat. Kai continued sucking the life out of her until he reached her vocal cords. With the sound of a crack and a pop, the moaning stopped.

  Mortified, I forced myself back down into the couch and floor where I prayed Kai hadn’t seen me from across the room. I listened past the pounding of my heart. A door opened. There was shuffling and the sound of something being dragged. The same door creaked shut. Footsteps then turned toward my direction. Crap. He was coming for me. I was done for. My hands shook out of control. I cupped them over my mouth as each of his steps sounded closer.

  His feet stopped. Paranoia said he had to be scanning the room because he knew I was there.

  The next steps he took were slow and methodical like he was taunting me, daring me to come out of hiding, and no way in hell was that happening.

  Kai’s feet came to a halt again. The silence in his lack of movement was overshadowed by the insane ticking of a clock. One that was apparently counting down the moment of my death. What had been one of the best nights of my life—other than jumping off a castle into the arms of an angel—instantly turned into a nightmare.

  I couldn’t understand what had happened to Kai. The guy I had breakfast with a week ago was sweet and kind, not some maniac paranormal life force sucking killer. There was no way the two were the same. There had to be a logical explanation. Explanation or not, if Kai got any closer, I was dead.

  The floorboard creaked from where Kai stood. I held my breath as I clenched for the worst. Where was Casper when I needed him? Where was Mom? Where was Jake?

  I counted down the moments to my death. Matters only worsened when the clock on the mantle struck twelve. It sounded just like the grandfather clock from my dreams.

  Before my eyes, the number twelve morphed into the number thirteen and something burned into my wrist to the point of tears, a symbol. Not only that, the map in my head turned on. Everything went from color to black and white. I could feel and see the tower of blue flames pulling me toward it. What the hell was I going to do? The 13th HR from Mom’s note. That’s what she meant. I was about to ascend. But there was one major problem. I didn’t have the amulet.

  At the sound of the clock striking thirteen, Kai’s next footstep turned against the grain of the wooden floor and picked up speed as he walked back to the other side of the room. The sound of the main door opened and then closed. I let out a deep sigh of relief, almost assured that the coast was clear. Almost. I was still too scared to peek over the couch and instead stayed put a couple minutes longer, just in case he decided to come back.

  I finally gathered the courage to get up. The first thing I should have done was run for help, but I needed to know for myself what Kai had done.

  There was another door in the room, the one I heard him drag her body into. I was about to reach for it when it creaked open. It was a small utility closet stuffed with brooms, cleaning rags, and the body of the young woman. My heart sank. Her skin clung to her bones like dried leather. Mummified cheeks caved into her jaw, and cataract gray eyes bulged to the top of her head. Her body looked like Hannah’s after her ascension.

  I ran out of the room and down the main hall to get help. I turned the corner, and something grabbed my mouth and nose from behind.

  My body felt groggy, hungover. I tried to move my hands, but I couldn’t. Still lost somewhere in waking consciousness, I tried to make out the dark, blurry image that sat across from me. Everything was still in black and white. And I could still feel the pull of the amulet calling me. My eyes slowly came into focus. It looked like Meghan with her hands behind her back, and her head slumped over.

  “What’s happening? Where am I?” I moaned.

  Meghan lifted her head. “Oh, look. Sleeping beauty is awake, lovely.”

  “And why are my hands tied?”

  Meghan shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Tied hands and feet. Back of an old dirty van. What do you think?” Meghan’s words were slurred like she’d been drinking. “I’m sure it’s called a kidnapping, you twit.”

  I struggled to free my hands in the dark. My mind was still fuzzy. The more alert I became, the more her words made sense. And the more her words made sense, the more I panicked. We were in the back of a moving van with both our hands and feet tied. Meghan was still in her gown from the dance. In what light I could make out from the back window, I noticed a slumped body next to her on the floor, Jake. My mind raced to only moments earlier with Kai. What had he done? Better yet, what was he going to do?

  Fear struck through me like a live wire. Even though I couldn’t see who was driving, I knew he was the one behind it.

  “Jake,” I whispered. “Wake up.”

  Kai must have known I was in the room all along and decided to get rid of the final piece of evidence, me. But if that was true, why kidnap Meghan and Jake? What did he want with them?

  “Jake, come on. Please. Wake up.”

  He didn’t budge. Deep breaths.

  “Oh, shut up already,” Meghan scoffed. “I should have let you put that dress on just so I could have ripped it from your back. I saw the two of you dancing in the parlor, dancing with him like he belonged to you. Like he was yours.”

  “You really want to do this now? We need to focus and find a way out of this.” I would have gone into a full-on panic attack, but Meghan’s bitching kept pulling me out of it.

  “Always in the way like a scab under my foot that won’t dry up and fall away,” she continued.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “No shit.”

  I tried squirming my wrists and ankles out of the ropes. “Jake, wake up.”

  “Jake, wake up,” Meghan mocked again. “I’m sick of you getting everything you want while playing the victim.”

  “What? That’s not true.” Don’t let her get to you.

  “Look at me, poor ditzy Lizzy, whine, whine, whine. Jake, please, please, save me from a tub of fucking water. Oh wait, there was no water, just psycho you. You should have offed yourself in that institution.”

  Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

  “You still haven’t figured it out yet, have you?” Meghan did that thing with her eyes where they turned black. But it was different this time. It was almost as if she couldn’t keep them that way. It was like they were fizzling out. “Damnit. I had everything before you got here. Power. Real power.” There was a look of crazy in Meghan’s eyes, but then again, there was always a look of crazy in Meghan’s eyes. “I should have gotten rid of you the first night Jake laid eyes on you. The shove at the café, the mirror at the gown
store, making you drop your phone? I could have done so much more. But Jake stopped feeding on me, for you.”

  “Feeding? What are you talking about?”

  “Jake feeds on human blood, you idiot. Mines to be exact. Well, at least he used to before you got here. He needs it to stay alive. And I was the main course. Have been for the past two years between him and Riley. Being fed on by not one, but two Fallen Angels comes with certain perks, abilities. I can’t believe he let you reduce him to nothing more than a dog scavenging for rabbits and squirrels.”

  Every word Meghan said rang through my body. I thought about the first morning I went for a run on the trails at school, the sense of being chased by something wild...hungry. And then running into Jake who came out of nowhere. I remembered Meghan’s words in the mirror at Jean’s boutique, I know he’s tasted your blood. I couldn’t speak and wasn’t sure who or what to believe anymore. What kind of angel drinks human blood? And if that was true, why didn’t he tell me?

  Probably for the same reason he never told me I got shot and was healed by a Fallen. I never would have believed him. Was I disappointed in the lies and secrets? Yeah, but I had so many of my own. None of what Meghan said changed how I felt about him. I was in love with Jake. And I knew he would never hurt me, regardless, of whatever he was.

  “So now you’re quiet. What a waste,” Meghan continued.

  The light that peeked through the back window illuminated her mangled mess of hair and runny mascara in the black and white colors that surrounded us. It only intensified the shadows of disgust etched in her face. The more I tried to ignore her and focus on breaking free, the more she dug into my skin. If I ever had powers, where were they now?

  The blue flames from the tower of the map in my head grew stronger, brighter. It’s time granddaughter, Ezra said.