I bit down on his finger, my body jerking forward as a wave of heat coursed through my veins. The fire burst out of me, engulfing me in a heat so intense that red welts danced in front of my vision.
I flailed in the heart of the fire, losing myself in its wild hunger. When I found myself again, I’d collapsed against Quinn’s shoulder. Trey trailed his fingers down my bare arm, raising the hairs on my skin. Both of them grinned like Cheshire cats.
“See, Hazy?” Quinn murmured. “I told you we’d make you purr.”
No one but me noticed the small things. In homeroom the next morning, Courtney had plastered on her makeup much thicker than usual. The next day, both she and Tillie were back to wearing their hats. Amber didn’t show up for class at all.
To the rest of the world, these things meant little. But to me, they were everything.
They meant my revenge plan was working. Which was nice, but I wasn’t satisfied. I needed to do something bigger, something that tipped the balance of power in this school.
The only problem was, it was hard to think of ways to hurt the undead, to give them a taste of their own medicine. Especially without breaking my vow and revealing their secret to Greg and Andre. Unlike the scholarship students they tormented, the rich kids of Miskatonic Prep had nothing left to lose.
But maybe I could find the chink in their armor.
Two days later, I’d had to run back to my room for my history book, and I was late for class. I bounded back up the stairs just as the second bell rang. The last straggling students cleared out of the corridor, leaving me alone in the fancy dormitory. I took my time, scanning the notice-boards along the walls, searching for ghosts.
It didn’t take me long to find them. Beside Amber’s door was pinned a photograph of her with her arms around two identical smiling little girls, all three of them with perfect blonde pigtails. Sisters. On his notice-board, Derek stood beside an old man with a bushy grey beard, holding up an enormous fish. Creepy would-be rapist John Hyde-Jones had a picture of him and an older man wearing dirty overalls and sitting in the chassis of a car. Every board I stopped to look at held at least one image or note from the world outside, from a life before Derleth Academy.
How had I never noticed these before?
Because I’d been looking only at the guys. Trey never pinned anything on his notice-board. Occasionally, a girl would pin a love note there, begging for a date, but they never stayed there long. Ayaz had a rotation of drawings – mostly funny cartoons about the teachers and stuff that went on around the school, but sometimes dark things – visions I recognized from the dreams of the Great Old God. I’d never actually been inside Quinn’s room, so I hadn’t looked at his.
I paused in front of Quinn’s door, running my fingers over the single image he’d hung there. It was his mother. She sat on one of those white Cape Cod porch swings with the ocean crashing behind her, a book open across her knee. She smiled a beautiful smile, but her amber eyes – Quinn’s eyes – pooled with a sadness that reached out from the paper and punched me in the gut.
Voices echoed down the corridor. I wrenched myself away, turning toward the classroom wing, when I realized the voices were coming from Courtney’s room.
I crept across the corridor on the balls of my feet and flattened my body against the wall. Courtney’s door was open a crack. If I leaned out a little, I could see a sliver of the interior.
“It won’t stop falling out,” Courtney sobbed, lying across her bed with her head in her hands. Beside her, Tillie picked up a brush and pulled clumps of hair from the teeth.
Feeling bold, I leaned forward and gave the door a tiny push. It swung open another couple of inches, giving me more of a picture. Courtney rolled over, her face twisted in misery as she raked her fingers through her hair. She let out a strangled scream as her hand came away holding a clump of hair.
“Maybe we’re sick,” Tillie said, scratching at her cheek, where a large patch of hard, scaly skin had taken up residence on her face. She looked like she was transforming into a lizard person.
“Or maybe whatever they did to us is coming undone?” Amber offered up. She sat on the floor, her back against the bed, examining her own scaly arms. “Maybe it’s like, our bodies returning to their natural state—”
“Don’t say that!” Courtney sat up, her eyes ablaze. “I’m not going to be a walking corpse or going back to my grave. I refuse! They promised us everlasting youth and beauty – that was the trade-off for being trapped in this horrible place. Our bargain had no expiration date!”
“Do you think if we went to Ms. West, she’d let us out of the deal?” Amber asked, her voice hopeful. I wondered if she was thinking about those two twin girls in her picture.
“Of course not. You can just un-dead-ify yourself. We are what we are, so we should at least get something out of it.” Courtney scratched a patch of scaly skin on her arm. “Ow. I can’t believe this. Why isn’t this happening to anyone else?”
“Tell your mother,” Tillie said. “Ms. West will have to care if she makes a fuss.”
“I’m not talking to that bitch!” Courtney’s shriek rattled the windows. I heard a thump as she slid off the bed. “I’m going to have another shower. Maybe I can exfoliate the skin away.”
Tillie and Amber moved toward the door. I bolted for the main dormitory entrance, passing through onto the skyway just as they emerged in the hall. As I hurried to homeroom, I couldn’t help the wide grin that spread across my face.
Greg had done a perfect job. The shampoo, face wash, and body lotion he’d created looked and smelled exactly like the real thing. Without laboratory analysis, there would be no way to know they’d been formulated to cause exactly this effect.
I had Courtney exactly where I wanted her.
It was time to move on to phase three. And I was beginning to understand what I had to do if I wanted these spoiled, rich, dead kids to pay.
Chapter Eighteen
Under the library’s stained glass window, I slid into a seat opposite Ayaz. He’d already spread several books across the table and had one open in front of him, a handful of notes jotted down. But he wasn’t reading the book. Instead, he shaded a drawing of a girl in a flowing dress standing beneath a gnarled tree. I leaned forward, trying to get a good look at the picture. The girl had long, midnight hair. Was it meant to be Zehra—
Ayaz saw me looking and shoved his pad under one of the books.
“Hey,” I said.
He grunted in reply.
“She wasn’t wearing a dress. She had warm leggings and hiking boots. Much more sensible than what I’d been wearing,” I added, remembering my ruined velvet dress and torn stockings.
Silence.
Rage radiated off Ayaz. I could practically see waves of it bending space-time around him, sucking all the happiness out of the air into a black hole of misery.
What’s he so pissed about? This was the first time we’d spoken since the movie night when he’d seen me with Trey and Quinn. Before that, we’d been reading through our stack of occult books together almost every evening, but Ayaz hadn’t invited me to his room since. He avoided me in class and the dining hall. Finally, it was only when Dr. Morgan remarked that we seemed stalled on our research project about the Salem witches that he’d grunted out an invitation to study in the library during our free period.
If it was any other guy, I’d say he was jealous. But this can’t be about Trey and Quinn. Ayaz has no claim on me. He only kissed me in the grotto so we could talk about his sister without anyone overhearing.
Besides, he’s sleeping with the Deadmistress.
Even though it was an amazing kiss… it didn’t mean anything. So what was he so pissed about? Was it about Zehra? We hadn’t talked about her again since the grotto. Maybe he wished I’d got more from her, that I hadn’t let her disappear so quickly?
“If we’re going to study together, we have to actually speak,” I said.
“Fine.” Without looking up, he
tossed a book across the table. “Dr. Morgan thinks we need to do some more work on the section of our project about the evolution of witchcraft. He suggested we look into the spiritualism movement. Here’s a book. Make some notes.”
“You don’t want to—”
“Fuck no.”
Fine. I flipped open the book and started reading, but I couldn’t concentrate with Ayaz fuming across the table. I leaned across and tapped the top of his page until he emitted a low, warning growl.
“Are you mad at me about something?”
“Nope.” He didn’t look up from his books.
“So you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or what?”
Ayaz slammed his book shut. “I want to get a good fucking grade on this project, and I’m not going to let some gutter whore scholarship student ruin it for me.”
The comment stung. I bit back a retort. Don’t take it personally. He’s doing exactly what you do, exactly what a bully does – lash out because he’s upset.
Ayaz grabbed another book. Seizing my chance, I yanked the picture out from under his stack and thrust it in his face. “Are you angry about her?” I demanded. “Because I saw her and you didn’t? I didn’t ask her to rescue me from the cave.”
He tore the paper from my hand. “Twelve years I thought she was dead,” he growled. “She never bothered to let me know otherwise, but she seeks you out?”
“Maybe there’s a reason she hasn’t been able to get to you.”
“I won’t know, will I?” he said bitterly. “You never bothered to ask her.”
Is he blaming his bad mood on me? “I was a little busy trying not to die. Maybe instead of sitting around moping, you go back to the cave and look for her. While you’re there, maybe you could tell me about that sigil I saw and why it burst into flame?”
Ayaz glanced over his shoulder. Three tables over, a couple of juniors had their heads bent in their textbooks, no doubt trying to listen to every word we said. “We can’t do this here.”
“Fine.” I flipped a page in the book and started reading about mediums and seances. I quickly discovered this book wasn’t exactly a history of the occult. It was a history of the Spiritualism movement that started in the late Victorian era. The author exposed the frauds that had been used to trick people into believing they were communicating with the dead. Back in the 40s, there was a famous Scottish medium named Helen Duncan, who claimed to produce the spirits of the dead during her seances by excreting a slimy substance called ‘ectoplasm’ from her mouth and nose. The Secret Service started investigating her after she spoke with the spirit of a deceased sailor who revealed he’d been killed when a German U-boat sank the battleship HMS Barham. This statement was true – the HMS Barham had indeed been sunk by a U-boat. however for strategic reasons the War Office were keeping the tragedy a secret. They needed to know how this medium was threatening the war effort.
During their investigations, it was discovered Helen was swallowing cheesecloth and other items and then regurgitating them on command to create the illusion. In 1944 she became the last ever person to be imprisoned under the 1735 Witchcraft Act.
The book included pictures of Helen sitting in her seance chair, with what was very obviously bits of cheesecloth coming out her nose and mouth. One of the bits had a rubber glove stuck on the end, and sometimes there were also doll heads or cut-out faces from photographs stuck on the cloth. I couldn’t believe people would fall for something so stupid, and yet according to the author, even now Helen still had her believers. The book stated:
In the darkened seance room, where attendees had already entered a state of mind where they expected to meet with strange visitations, where they longed to alleviate grief with news from the hereafter, and at the hands of a master manipulator, even the cheapest parlor tricks could appear supernatural…
That gives me an idea…
I was trapped in this school with a bunch of revenants or edimmu or ghosts or whatever. I was well past the point where I thought any of this was faked. Sure, the boys could have planted those tombstones, but no one could have faked the hatred pouring from the Great Old God’s hellish prison, or the horrific visions that haunted my dreams.
But these undead had ghosts of their own. I thought of Courtney’s photograph burning a hole in the bottom of my bag, of Amber’s sisters, of Quinn’s mother and her sad eyes. I remembered all the scholarship students in the files in Ayaz’s room, their faces crossed out with jagged marks.
I’d been looking for the perfect way to get revenge on all of them, to hit them where it would really hurt. Maybe, with the help of a few friendly ghosts, I’d finally found it—
“You don’t need to study anymore, you already know everything,” an insouciant voice interrupted my thoughts.
Trey’s hand trailed across the page. I slammed the book shut and shoved it into my bag. I didn’t want either of them to get an inkling of what I was planning. “I’m studying and Ayaz is ignoring me,” I said. Trey’s cruel expression gave nothing away, which usually meant he was about to throw down something brutal. “What do you want?”
“Get out of here,” Trey said to Ayaz. “I need to speak to Hazel.”
“We’re busy.” Ayaz didn’t look up, but his voice dripped with acid.
With a sweep of his hand, Trey sent all the books flying off the table. Thump, thump, thump. They landed on the floor. The two junior students got up and rushed for the exit.
Ayaz flung his chair back and rose, shoving himself up in Trey’s face so they were nose to nose. Fury flew between them as they hurled unspoken abuse at each other. At any moment I expected lasers to shoot out of their eyes. Finally, Ayaz shoved Trey in the chest, pushing him aside as he strode out of the library.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Did you do something to Courtney?” Trey growled, slamming his palms down on the table, leaning over me in a way that would have been intimidating if he didn’t smell so damn good.
“I haven’t touched her, or any of the other Queens,” I smirked, leaning back in my chair and flicking a pen between my fingers. It was technically true.
A vein in Trey’s neck throbbed. “She hasn’t left her room in four days. Apparently, there’s something wrong with her skin.”
“Woe is her.”
“This isn’t funny,” Trey hissed. “If she finds out it was you, she could—”
“She can’t touch me, remember?” I flicked my Eldritch Club tattoo at him. “Relax. Stop acting like you’re about to go Kanye West on me. Just tell me what the problem is.”
Trey’s shoulders sagged. He moved to stand at the window, peering out one of the clear panels at the school grounds below. He looked like he was about to launch into another tirade at me when something caught his eye. He leaned forward, squinting through the glass. “Shit.”
“What is it?” I joined Trey at the window. His hand snaked out to rest on the small of my back. The fingers sought my skin, trembling a little.
A black car circled the fountain out front before pulling to a stop directly in front of the steps. Ms. West stood ready to meet the visitors. Dark windows hid whoever was inside, but I knew from Trey’s stiffened body that he knew exactly who it was.
The door opened. A dress shoe so shiny I could’ve done my makeup in it stomped on the cobbles, followed by a second. The driver slammed the door and I finally got a look at our visitor.
Vincent Bloomberg II.
Chapter Nineteen
“What’s he doing here?” I asked. “There’s no Eldritch Club meeting.”
From the back of the car, Damon Delacorte stepped out and held the door open. A woman slid out. I recognized her instantly by her slanted green eyes, the cascade of platinum blonde locks, and a feline body that looked ready to pounce. Gloria Haynes, fashion designer to the stars.
Courtney’s mother.
Why was she here now, the new money fashion designer, with two of the most senior members of the Eld
ritch Club in tow? It couldn’t be good.
Trey’s face had gone bone white. I moved toward him, reaching out to touch his shoulder. He jerked away.
“Trey?”
Trey spun around on his heel and stalked out. I shoved my books into my satchel and followed him. He stalked down the hall, tossing a freshman against a locker when he didn’t jump out of the way fast enough. He reached the atrium and pounded down the steps just as the three adults stepped through the main doors.
Closer now, I got a good look at their faces. Was it just the light in the atrium, or did they all three look a little older, a little saggier, with wisps of grey through their perfect hair?
“Dad.” Trey stood in front of his father, his back rigid – a soldier standing to attention.
Vincent brushed past his son. “Go back to class, Trey. I’m not here for you. I have business with the headmistress.”
“Class is over for the day.” Trey grabbed his father’s elbow, forcing the man to turn to face him. “Dad, what’s going on? Why are you here? I wasn’t told about any Eldritch Club business—”
Trey’s dad yanked him forward, pressing his lips against Trey’s ear. I leaned over the balcony, but I had no shot at hearing what was said. All I could see was the the definite streak of grey hair near Vincent’s temple and the terror that flickered for a moment in Trey’s eyes. He blinked, and they went back to being cold blue orbs.
Two thick arms wrapped around me. Quinn’s tongue ran over my ear. “What a nice surprise,” he whispered. “I was just coming to find you at the library. Are you done studying boring books? Do you want to study my cock instead—”
I shoved him away. “That line worked on Courtney? I didn’t think my opinion of her could get any lower.”
“You cut me, Hazy.” Quinn leaned over the railing, just as the door to Headmistress West’s office shut on the visitors. “What happened?”
“Courtney’s mom, Trey’s dad, and your dad are here.”
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