Possessed: A reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 3)

by Steffanie Holmes

  I would be… happy.

  Again, it tested the word, unsure what it truly meant. “And then maybe you could go home?”

  I do not know. It is possible.

  “You have taken the souls of some of my friends. They’re people I care about. You know this feeling?” I drew up from within me images and sensations of Trey and Quinn and Ayaz – their kisses, their secret smiles, their broken hearts. The god groaned as I drew him into my head through my dreams and showed him the depth of what I felt for the guys.

  I know it. Their souls were given to me some time ago – but there was little for me to enjoy. They didn’t know pain like the others that came later. When you show me your feelingsss, I have a… feeling of my own. It’s not pleasant. I don’t want it.

  “I don’t want you to have it, either. Because you took their souls, my friends are prisoners, too. I want them to be free. Can you give their souls back?”

  I do not have that ability. But my wardens… they are masters of the energy that sustains me. They can manipulate and make new what has been destroyed. They woke me from my death-sleep. They may have that answer.

  “I believe you.” I balled my hands into fists. “If I find a way, will you help me? It might hurt you, but then we could all be free.”

  I will. I will free your… friends, if you tell me how. My servants will remain with you. They will do your bidding. They will keep you safe while you search. On one condition.

  “Whatever you want.”

  You will join with me. Your soul would be my companion.

  Fuck.

  Um, what?

  I opened my mouth to reply, to tell the god thanks but no thanks, but the darkness grabbed me, dragging me backward. I fell through the ground, toppling over myself until I slammed into something hard.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Did I just agree to that?

  Did I just agree to spend eternity with a cosmic soul-eating deity?

  “Hazy!” Quinn’s voice was frantic, his eyes wild with fear as he shook me like a near-empty ketchup bottle. My head wrenched, slamming into the stone and sending a jolt of pain through me. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  I rubbed the back of my head where it had hit the wall. It was nothing on the screams of the god. “Of course.”

  My gaze flicked between the two of them – Trey’s cruel mouth twisted in concern, Quinn’s eyes so wide and innocent.

  Innocent.

  They were innocent. Not like me.

  I knew when I entered Derleth there was a timer ticking down on my freedom. I’d known all along that when I left this school I’d likely replace one prison with another. I’d allowed my feelings for them to take over my practical side, and I’d indulged in dreams of what the future might be. I’d even told Trey I might become a scientist like Deborah.

  It was just that – a dream. A career, a family, a life – that wasn’t in my future.

  But it could be in theirs.

  In that moment, I made a pact with myself. I wouldn’t reveal the deal I made with the god. I’d promised myself that I would free the Kings of Miskatonic Prep at whatever cost. That was my pact, my mission – I would give back what was taken. If that meant I had to hang with the god for the rest of existence, then so be it.

  “You were crying,” Trey said. “And mumbling these strangling sounds. They weren’t words, just random guttural noises. It was horrible. What happened?”

  “I spoke to the god,” I said, sitting up. Quinn’s grip tightened. I placed my hand over his, noticing that I didn’t tremble. I wasn’t afraid. I knew what I had to do. “It’s okay. He’s actually kind of a cool dude. He’s going to help us.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The god could give me everything I wanted.

  The students… free. Check.

  The Eldritch Club stripped of its power. Check.

  The god no longer a threat to humanity. Check, check, and motherfucking check.

  Provided I found a way to reverse what Ms. West had done. Provided I stayed with him and became part of him. All I had to do was dive into that dark hole in the ground and allow the god to catch me.

  It wasn’t even a question. Of course I would do it. For Trey and Quinn and Ayaz to have their chance to grow up. For Greg and Andre to go to college and change the world. Even for Courtney Haynes to get her modeling deal.

  As I lay in Trey’s arms, knowing that sleep wouldn’t claim me, I thought about what that meant. What would happen to me in the darkness?

  Would I become a soul-eater, just like him?

  I’d never see Trey or Quinn or Ayaz again.

  But I had to do it.

  There was no other way.

  The god was right – he and I were two peas in a pod. I too bore the weight of innocent souls. When compared to my sins, the Kings of Miskatonic were downright angels. I didn’t deserve to share the future with them.

  I tried to put it out of my mind. I needed all my focus to enact our plan. The date of the school production loomed, and it was the perfect time to test our plan. If it worked the way I hoped, it might induce the other students to help us.

  Or make them all hate me. But what else was new?

  It would help if we knew something from the samples we gave to Deborah. As soon as the guys left for class the next morning, I whipped out my phone and texted her. “Any update on lab results?”

  I only had to wait a few moments for a reply. “Gail sent them to me late last night. Both your blood and Trey’s blood are completely normal. No bloodborne diseases. No cellular death.”

  “That tells us nothing!” Frustration licked along my spine. My fingers mashed the keys so hard I ended up with a string of gibberish and had to rewrite.

  A long message came back. “It tells us that there’s nothing physical that defines Trey as dead – that is something. It tells us there’s nothing physiological that explains why he won’t age or why his wounds heal so quickly. It gives us hope, Hazel. I’m waiting on some more results and for your DNA test, but that shouldn’t be long. How are you? Have you read Rebecca’s book?”

  “Parts of it. Want to know something crazy? I tried a spell and it worked. I drew a sigil on the wall and it allowed me to speak to the god through my dreams.”

  “That’s not crazy at all,” Deborah wrote back. “Be careful. I will text you if I have any news.”

  “Ditto. Hug the dogs for me.” I paused, then added, “And for Trey.”

  That done, I cracked open Rebecca’s book and continued my studies, half-waiting for Ms. West to break down the door and drag me away. But she never came. Loretta never told and the god never revealed my return.

  My life followed the same pattern for the rest of the week. I read Rebecca’s book. Deborah and I texted back and forth – I told her everything the god showed me, and she sent me a video of Leopold with his head stuck in a kibble container that Trey watched on repeat for a whole hour. She also asked me for the names of my immediate family members. Apparently, she believed I might’ve had some magical lineage. I gave her my mother’s name – Laura Waite – but I couldn’t tell her anything else. Mum never spoke about her family, and if she knew who my father was, she’d never told me.

  Quinn and Andre would return to the room with more supplies for our plan. We stayed up late fashioning all the props we needed until Trey returned from late-night rehearsals. He might have been disowned, but he still carried the Bloomberg name and was expected to dance like a trained monkey for his father’s amusement.

  “It says here that your friend Helen would cut pictures of the deceased from photographs and glue them onto dolls or old bits of cloth,” Quinn read from the library book on Helen Duncan’s faked ectoplasm.

  I pointed to the stack of magazines he’d stolen from Courtney’s locker, for which he still had the combination. “That’s why we’ve got these.”

  “But they’re all celebrities. It won’t work as well as if it were actual faces.”

  “Agreed, b
ut I don’t see how we’re going to get all actual faces. I’ve got a couple of pictures I took from the noticeboards for the main event,” I pushed Courtney’s photograph across the floor. “But I think everyone will get suspicious if they all go missing. You’ve got the projection – that should be enough.”

  “We could use the photocopies we have from the student files,” Trey piped up. “They’re not students, but people would recognize them.”

  I tapped my chin, remembering the day I discovered Parris’ skin book under the sink in Ayaz’s dorm. As the leaders of the student chapter of the Eldritch Club, the Kings had been given copies of the files of all the scholarship students – photographs of each of us with intimate details of our lives to make their torment more personal. Those photographs would still be there, and all the Miskatonic students would recognize those faces.

  “That’s perfect.” I leaned forward, my mind spinning as I thought about everything else that was in that book. “And speaking of Parris, while Ayaz was translating the book, he would tell me about some of the spells and rituals, just in case we could connect them with something in the other books that might help. He had lists of pages that might potentially help us recover your souls.”

  “Do you remember any of them?” Quinn asked.

  I shook my head. “Memorizing spells didn’t seem relevant, and besides, all this magic stuff is gobbledegook to me. But Ayaz translated the instructions.”

  “So all we have to do is ask our old buddy the betrayer if he’d mind spilling the beans on how we can fuck over our parents, who he is probably helping?” Quinn twirled a strand of blond hair around his fingers. “Great plan, Hazy.”

  “We don’t have to tell him,” I shot back. “Ayaz kept all his notes and translations hidden inside Parris’ skin book, and you’d better believe it’ll be more useful to us than it is to Ayaz right now. I know we can’t take photographs of the pages – they just come out blank. So all we have to do is sneak into his room and steal it.” I stood up, but Quinn grabbed my arm.

  “That’s not going to be as easy as you think. Ayaz is in Trey’s room now. Vincent gave it to him.”

  My heart sank. Whereas Ayaz’s old room was down a corridor without too many other students, Trey’s old room was on the top floor of the dormitories. We’d have to walk through practically the entire dorm to get there… without being seen by a single student. “We don’t even know if the book is still there,” Trey added. “He could have given it to Ms. West, or back to my father.”

  My hands balled into fists. I’m doing this for them. They don’t have to fight this so much. If they knew what I agreed to—

  “We have to try,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Trey and Quinn exchanged a look that said there was no use arguing with me. Which was true. I was doing this, with or without them.

  “I’m always down for a suicide mission,” Quinn grinned. “When do you want to pull this ridiculous stunt?”

  I turned to Trey. “Next play rehearsal is tomorrow night?” He nodded. “Good. Make sure Ayaz doesn’t leave early. Do whatever you can to keep him there as long as possible without it looking fake. Quinn and I will sneak up to his room and find the book.”

  Trey shook his head. “That’s a terrible idea. Students are going to be back and forth at that time of night. If anyone sees you upstairs, they’ll march you straight to Ms. West, and we’ll lose you again.”

  I glowered at him. “I’m going. Help or don’t help, I don’t care.”

  “She’s not kidding, mate.” Quinn grinned at Trey. “Hey, if you don’t help, that means it’s my job to distract Ayaz. Do you think if I put MC Hammer’s ‘can’t touch this’ on repeat during his monologue, that would do the trick?”

  Trey sighed. “Fine. I’ll help. Only because Quinn will turn this into a disaster. But I want it on record that I’m not happy about it.”

  “Right. Because you’re usually Mr. Chuckles.” Quinn punched him in the arm. Trey grabbed him around the neck and pretended to do some kind of wrestling move that looked vaguely homoerotic. The boys fell onto the bed laughing. The sound was like an arrow through my heart.

  I’d fallen for the Kings of Miskatonic Prep. Totally and utterly. I needed Trey’s possessive protection, Quinn’s boisterous enthusiasm. And Ayaz… my whole being ached for him to be mine again.

  In order to save them, I had to leave them forever.

  It was tough waiting a whole night and day before we could sneak into Ayaz’s room. I hated standing still when I knew there was something nearby that could help us. I paced the room, tapping my pen against the desk and bouncing my foot on the edge of the bed while I waited for Quinn and Trey to return from their classes. Above my head, the rats mirrored my jitters.

  Finally, the clock ticked over to 4PM and Quinn dashed back into the room, shrugging off his satchel and running his hands through his rumpled surfer hair. Andre followed soon after. He dropped a key in my hand along with one of his handwritten notes. It read, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  I hope so too, Andre.

  Trey went straight to rehearsal after class. The production was now in dress rehearsals, which meant Ayaz would be occupied until at least 10PM. Theoretically, the dormitory was supposed to be lights out by nine, and teachers would occasionally come through the dormitories in some half-hearted attempt to enforce the rules, but few students obeyed. This was a problem for us because if I was seen in the halls, the whole plan would be ruined.

  Which was why Trey had pilfered a couple of black robes from the drama department costume room. Mine had a stiff Dracula collar sewn in, but after ripping that out and adding a hood torn from one of Greg’s old hoodies, it looked identical to the robes the teachers wore. If anyone saw us in the hall, they’d hopefully scamper before stopping to look too closely at our faces.

  Quinn went up the stairs first, then called down to me. “It’s clear.” I threw the robe over my shoulder, tugging the hood low so it covered as much of my face as possible, and flew up the stairs after him.

  Quinn and I dashed down the hall, past the dorms to the grand staircase that led to the top story, where the richest students had their private suites. As we passed the dorms, I flicked my gaze to the noticeboards hanging outside the students’ doors, where they’d pinned the pictures and notes that offered clues to their past lives, their lives when they thought they had families and futures.

  We ascended the staircase. I was just about to step out into the hallway when the sound of a door opening and voices talking reached my ears. Quinn shoved me against the wall, his chest pressed against mine, our hearts pounding together as we strained to listen.

  A door slammed. The voices disappeared. Quinn grabbed my hand and yanked me down the hall.

  Trey’s suite was the grandest of them all, located right at the end of the hall to take full advantages of the high stained glass windows on both sides. I slid Sadie’s skeleton key into the lock and turned. It clicked easily. I shoved the door open and Quinn and I stumbled inside, pushing the door closed behind us.

  Quinn fumbled for the light, but I flicked it off again. “If Ayaz steps out the stage door, he could notice the light on. We don’t want to give away that someone’s in here,” I said, feeling my way along the wall until I reached the bathroom door. Ayaz used to hide the book in his bathroom cabinet. He said when the cleaners wiped down the bathrooms they never looked in the cabinets. I tugged open all the drawers in Trey’s bathroom, trying to ignore Ayaz’s distinctive scent rising off every surface.

  The book wasn’t there.

  “Shit,” I breathed.

  “What?”

  “It’s not here.”

  “Don’t panic, Hazy. It’s got to be around here somewhere. He wouldn’t let that book fall into anyone else’s hands.” Quinn opened a kitchen cupboard and squinted inside. “Not in here, although I see Ayaz has been cooking. There’s a container of lokma. Have you had his lokma? They’re like tiny Turkish doughnuts excep
t they’re chewy and amazing and coated in sugar syrup, which trust me is delectable when poured on naked flesh and then licked off. We should try that sometime. I bet Ayaz won’t notice if a few tiny pieces go missing…”

  “Put those back.” I scrambled across the room, trying to ignore the way Quinn’s suggestive tone made the fire inside me leap and dance. I tore the room apart – hunting behind the furniture, pulling up the beanbags and peering behind the curtains. Quinn moved to the kitchen and riffled through the drawers, one hand stuffing sticky lokma balls into his mouth.

  “You can tell Ayaz has moved in,” he wrinkled his nose between bites. “This whole place reeks of weird spices.”

  I thought it smelled amazing. “At least Ayaz can cook, so he’s not as completely useless as you are. Shut up and keep looking. And don’t get your sticky fingers over everything. We’ve got to get out of here quick—” Something scratched at the ceiling. I looked up but realized it was the rats circling above my head. Scritch-scritch. Scritch-scritch.

  Interesting. They’re not usually up here.

  Except for that time they were.

  It had been the night I learned about the god’s existence. I’d fallen asleep in Trey’s bed. Quinn came in and we started talking and I’d been so afraid, so unsure, and before I knew it we were kissing away our pain and his fingers brushed my nipple and I wanted him for the first time – wanted his body and his heart. But then the rats scritched in the walls and I’d snapped out of it.

  Almost like they were trying to protect me from the Kings.

  “They’re going mad.” Quinn stopped searching. He frowned at the ceiling.

  “They always do this,” I said, but it wasn’t true. Not here. I remembered last semester I’d heard a few rats in the upper levels of the school a couple of times as well. Even in Trey’s room, it had just been the scritch of a couple of rodents. This was hundreds of tiny feet and claws circling, scratching, and scrambling over each other as they completed their frantic circular dance right above my head.