I tugged the knife free, feeling the reassuring weight of it in my palm. Slowly and silently, I rolled over in the bed, covering my body in the vines, camouflaging myself in the wasteland of a garden that once was. I bent my head toward the edge of the bed and peered over the edge – listening, watching.
Voices talking. Laughing. Kids sprawled around the grotto, passing a liquor bottle and bags of chips between them. I recognized monarchs. Courtney, John, Tillie, Amber. Nancy shifted uncomfortably in her spot sandwiched between Paul and Barclay. And…
Ayaz.
He lounged against a broken pillar, the same one Quinn had braced me against during our wild boning (boning? Urgh, Quinn said the worst things sometimes) the other night. Courtney snuggled under Ayaz’s arm, looking like she belonged there. My fingers tightened around the knife, fantasizing about sticking it into Courtney’s neck.
With his free hand, Ayaz held a pipe to his lips and took a deep drag before passing it to John. His features transfixed me until I caught the topic of conversation.
“…Mommy says that the entire institution burned down,” Courtney drawled, her long red nails clawing at Ayaz’s arm as she tried to twist around to kiss his cheek. “Can you believe it? The official story is faulty wiring, but no one believes that. Hazel was so obviously deranged, and her mother died in a fire. She could have killed so many people! I don’t feel safe knowing she’s out there somewhere.”
That bitch. She had a part in locking me up, and now she’s over there feeding Ayaz more lies. The urge to wrap my fingers around Courtney’s throat and squeeze crept all the way up my arms.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Ayaz said in a bored voice. “She probably died in the blaze.”
“We’d know about it if she was dead. Aren’t you afraid she might come after you?” Courtney twirled her fingers through his hair. “She had all those delusions about being in love with you, remember? She might be coming back to claim you as her own. She’d probably threaten me because I got you now.”
“She wouldn’t dare,” Ayaz growled, and the venom in his voice turned my stomach. No matter what happened now, I knew that Ayaz believed in this version of events. He was lost to me.
“We should get back to class,” Tillie punched Ayaz playfully in the arm. “I won’t have my salutatorian status ruined because you lot wanted to get high.”
Nancy snorted. “I don’t know why you guys still care who gets top of class. It’s not as if it matters.”
“It’s a matter of pride, Nancy – a concept you obviously don’t understand. All the weed in the world won’t ruin Ayaz’s chances,” Courtney rested her head on Ayaz’s shoulder and beamed up at him in a way that made me want to gag. “Now that Trey’s lost his points, you’re miles ahead of everyone. You’ll be the first scholarship student to make valedictorian. And they say this school’s not progressive.”
Of course. With Trey and I out of the picture, Ayaz would be next in line for the top of the class, and Tillie after him. Much good it would do him – there was nowhere to go after he graduated except back to repeat the year over with new scholarship students to torment.
The monarchs packed up their things and disappeared back up the steps. Ayaz wrapped his arm around Courtney’s tiny waist, allowing her to lean against him, to brush her lips against his neck in a way that made my blood boil. Halfway up the steps, Ayaz paused, his shoulders tensed. He turned back, casting his dark eyes over the pleasure gardens.
I dropped my head and flattened myself against the bottom of the bed, hoping my covering was enough to hide me from his gaze. I counted my pounding heartbeat in my ears until I reached five hundred. Nothing. Not a sound. I dared to raise my neck just enough to peer over the side of the flower bed. The stairs were empty.
Ayaz was gone.
I was alone again.
I wasted no time in untangling myself from the weeds and racing down to the cemetery. The waves crashed against the cliffs below, shooting a salty spray through the air that razed my skin. I ducked into the protective shade of the trees. Here, the roar of the ocean disguised the crunching of my footsteps through the fallen leaves and vines that choked the ground. I swung the gate open and slipped inside.
I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly. All I knew was that these kids had supposedly perished in a fire and then climbed out of their own coffins, alive-but-not-alive. The edimmu. The revenants. The dead who had not been properly buried.
But Ms. West had raised a cadaver to life in the hospital morgue. Deborah had seen her do it. So why bury the bodies? What did that achieve?
Maybe there was some clue here. Maybe I could find the answers we so desperately needed.
I’d only ever been to the cemetery at night before, and it loomed with memories of the guys telling me what they were, what happened to them. In the daylight, the toppling rows of graves appeared less sinister – almost jaunty, like the teeth of the children in my grade school whose parents couldn’t afford braces. I dropped to my knees in front of one stone, brushing aside the weeds choking it. My fingers traced the faded lettering.
QUINN DELACORTE
The same boy whose body had seared mine against a pillar died twenty years ago. I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. Quinn walked and spoke and smiled like a normal, living person. He felt pain. He desired. He loved. How could he not have a soul?
And how could his parents do this to him? Damon was a horrible human being, so I could understand his part. But surely his mother hadn’t wanted her son to become undead? How hard did Elena fight it? Was the care she showed for Quinn now only her way of assuaging her guilt?
My fingers scraped the stone beside it, faltering on Trey’s name, and then on Ayaz.
It was too painful to stare at their names. My chest cracked open, and out poured my treacherous doubts and my deepest fears. I might lose them. I might have already lost them.
No, don’t think about it. Focus on what you came to do.
I tore myself away, heading to the next row, pulling back the weeds to reveal more names. There was Courtney, her stone wreathed in carved flowers, and Tillie’s name written in gothic script. Beside her lay Nancy, and behind her Barclay and John Hyde-Jones. There were all the monarchs of the school and all their followers – gravestones chosen with great care for kids who were so unwanted their own parents sacrificed them to a god.
In that moment, I felt something I’d never expected to feel for the likes of Courtney and John Hyde-Jones. They attacked me and my friends because we had something they didn’t – life and love. I thought they had everything, that they couldn’t possibly know what it was like to go hungry or to not know if your mother would come home in a body bag. But for all their riches, they had so much less than I.
I might have been the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, the daughter of a whore, but I had been loved.
A tear rolled down my cheek. Surprised, I let it topple off the edge of my chin onto the back of my hand, staring at that tiny, perfect droplet as it reflected the grey light.
Mom.
Memories burned behind my eyes – Mom dancing with me before the club opened, her bright eyes shimmering as she looped a feather boa around my tiny shoulders, Mom counting out the wads of dollar bills she stashed around the house to give me enough money to go on a school field trip, Mom buying me a Big Mac and fries and watching me eat it all with hungry eyes, never taking a single bite even though she hadn’t eaten in two days, either.
Mom, crying alone in her bed at night when she thought I couldn’t hear. Her proud smile when I topped the class list every year. Hiding her bruised face behind a veil after one of her boyfriends beat her.
If she had the chance to obtain power from the god, to pull herself out of the life she’d been given, she never would have taken it, never in a million years. She would keep dancing on tables because everything she did, she did for me.
The guilt and grief that I’d buried under layers of rage bubbled to the surface, raw and
primal. I rocked back on my heels, still staring at that tear as it wobbled on my hand.
I hadn’t cried for her. Because crying meant admitting what I’d done.
And if I admitted it, if I owned it, then I probably deserved to be behind the walls of Dunwich. I shouldn’t be here, free, trying to save other lives like I was Mother-fucking-Theresa.
“Fuck.” I wiped my hand across my dripping nose and damp eyes. This wasn’t what I came to do. I was supposed to be looking for answers, not wallowing in self-pity.
These kids deserved answers. They deserved someone who cared.
Overcome by the neglect of the cemetery, by a desperate need to do something, I stood up, wiping my hands on my jeans. I moved back to Trey’s stone, my hands clawing at the weeds choking it, tearing them from the ground and tossing them away. Dirt burrowed under my fingernails as I scraped at the leaves, uncovering the curve of the stone and the carved border beneath, the ridge where the stone had been set into the earth.
There. That at least looked like someone cared…
Wait a second… what’s that?
I knelt in the dirt, bending low and twisting my head around to get a better view. My fingers traced the lines. Yes, it was definitely there. I wasn’t imagining it.
I’d never noticed it before because the leaf litter was so deep, but there was a sigil carved into the bottom of Trey’s stone.
My heart pounding, I scrambled over to Quinn’s grave and tugged away the weeds. His had the same sigil, carved so low it might never be noticed.
I rushed around the cemetery, my hands raw from pulling up the weeds, my nails breaking from scraping at cold stone. But I had my answer. Every single gravestone included the same crude sigil. I didn’t know what it meant, but it had to have something to do with whatever Ms. West had done to them.
I dug around in my pocket for the cellphone Deborah had given me. I snapped a couple of pictures. I didn’t have any bars to send it, so I shoved the phone back into my pocket. I’d probably have better luck back at the school.
If the graveyard itself is some kind of ritual space, then maybe there are other signs of the ritual as well. I stood up and stepped toward the fence marking the boundary, then froze.
Hazel.
A voice whispered my name on the wind. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
“Hazel.”
No. Not the wind. A person, standing right behind me.
Loretta.
Chapter Twenty
My breath hitched. My hands curled into fists, but there was no point running. Or attacking. Loretta was one of them now, one of the edimmu. I could hurt her, but she’d keep on coming.
I had my fire, but I didn’t want to use it on her. Not unless I had to.
So I kept my hands at my sides and turned toward the gate. She stood just inside, one tiny hand clutching the iron post, the other shoved into the pocket of her skirt. I studied her, resplendent in her immaculately-tailored Derleth uniform, her once-unruly frizzy hair now tamed and lacquered into place. I’d never been able to understand her. Even now I didn’t know if she was friend or foe.
How is this was going to play out?
“Loretta, hi.” I kept my tone light, friendly. “How’d you find me?”
“I was reading in a corner of the garden when I saw you hide in the flower bed. You got up after the others left, but you didn’t see me. I followed you here.” Her eyes didn’t leave mine, not even to flicker over the gravestones of her classmates.
“Did they erect a gravestone for you?” I searched the rows for a newer-looking stone, but it was hard to see in the gloom of the trees. “Or is a permanent marker for Miskatonic Prep students only?”
Loretta folded her arms across her chest. “I heard you were placed in Dunwich Institute. That’s a cutting-edge facility – some of the most revolutionary medical procedures for treating mental illness have come from there.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s a real swell place.” My voice dripped with scorn. “You should visit one day. I’m going to make it my vacation spot.”
“I heard you burned it to the ground.” I wasn’t sure if she was accusing me or congratulating me.
“Probably an exaggeration, but I haven’t been back to check.” I sucked in a breath. If there was one person at this school that could help me, it would be her. “Loretta, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Greg’s missing.”
“Of course I noticed.” Her voice took on an edge I didn’t like.
“I think Ms. West might have him. She used to have a laboratory in the old icehouse. She might have taken you there when she…” I wasn’t sure how to say it. “Changed you. But it’s not there now. Do you have any idea where she might have moved it?”
“If I knew, do you think I’d be standing here talking to you about it?”
I bit back a mean response. The truth was, Loretta never wanted to take action, not even when Greg was the one being bullied. “If you hear or see anything, can you let Andre know? That way you don’t even have to talk to me. I just want to find Greg before she…”
Loretta’s eyes blazed. “You made a deal, didn’t you? So she can’t hurt him.”
“If I know anything from my time in Dunwich, it’s that Hermia West knows how to loophole her way to getting exactly what she wants. I don’t know how you know about my bargain, unless she told you. Unless you’re working with her. Are you going to tell your pal Courtney I’m back? Or Ms. West?”
Loretta didn’t answer. Instead, she stepped toward me. “I haven’t decided. It all depends on why you came back.”
“I know you don’t like me, but I want to help you. To help everyone.” I gestured to the graves. “I think there might be a way to reverse all this, to give them all back their lives. But what I really, really want right now is to find Greg.”
“Why don’t I like you?” The faintest hint of a smile played on her lips. Ice crept down my back. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Loretta smile.
“Huh?”
“Tell me why I don’t like you, since you’re such an expert on my feelings.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything, but okay, sure. You don’t like me because you think I made things worse for you. I drew attention to myself, and you suffered for it. You don’t like me because I always tried to stand up for myself and for others, but you just rolled over and took their cruelty. You wanted to be more like me. You were jealous.”
Loretta snorted. I was beginning to hate that sound. “Of course you’d think that.”
“Fine. You tell me why you didn’t like me.” I shrugged. Why has she surprised me just to talk about this? “Or not. I really couldn’t care less.”
“But that’s not true. You do care. That’s your problem. You pretend you’re so above everyone, you’ve had such a hard life that nothing could possibly affect you. But everything you do is about getting attention and making people see you.” Loretta mocked me in a high-pitched voice. ‘I’m amazing Hazel! Notice me! Love me!’”
I sighed. “That’s why you don’t like me, then?”
“I never liked you because you don’t learn anything. You thought you could get what you want because you stamp your feet and you scream the loudest.”
“It’s better than doing nothing.” I swept my arm across the tombstones. “How can I just pretend this didn’t happen? How can I wait for them to hurt Greg and Andre? I’m trying to give all our classmates back their futures. Your future.”
“By sneaking around school and poking at their graves?” Loretta sneered. “I bet they sure are glad Amazing Hazel is on the case.”
“Fine. Then help me. Work with me. Tell me about the ceremony Ms. West used to give your soul to the god and bring you back from the dead. Tell me what happened!”
“You’re Hazel Waite. You know everything,” Loretta shot back. “You tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know.” My hands balled into fists again. “I don’t know anything, and that’s the whole
problem. I know that all the students are trapped on the school grounds, but I don’t know what that means. I don’t know why you seem to be different, why you were allowed back into class. All I know is that it was supposed to be me they took away, but instead, you disappeared and you returned the next day, but you were changed.”
“Was I changed?” Loretta asked. “Or did you just never bother to get to know me?”
“I…” I didn’t know how to answer that.
“Was I in fact exactly the person I’d always been, except that I had a new haircut and better fitting clothes and different friends? Was it in fact that you know so little about me that you couldn’t even tell?”
My mouth opened and closed. I couldn’t comprehend what Loretta was saying. It sounded like she was saying that she hadn’t been turned by the god. But then why did she go away and come back? Why did she suddenly become friends with Courtney? Why…
Fuck.
“You’re not an edimmu?” I managed to choke out.
Loretta smiled without mirth. “I’m still alive, just like you. No thanks to you, either, since it was your boyfriends who tried to have me sacrificed when it should have been you.”
They hadn’t been my boyfriends then, and I wasn’t even sure they were my boyfriends now. But I wasn’t going to split hairs with Loretta over that. Trey had given me his points so that I wouldn’t be sacrificed, but that had put Loretta next on the soul-stealing block. Only it turned out her soul was intact. “But why would the god spare you?”
“Because you and I are the same. The god doesn’t want to drain us of our life. He wants to study us. We fascinate him.”
“We do?”
“Of course. He wants to understand us. Because we’re the murderers. The only ones he’s ever met.”
“Loretta, what the fuck—” But I couldn’t ask her any more questions.
She had vanished. Again.
Possessed: A reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 3) Page 13