Chosen for Song, Volume 1

by Delia Stewart

  Grace shook her head. "I don't understand what is happening. Dora shows up at school, then at Celata. And suddenly Alex is slipping away?"

  "Dora told me she would take everything I have," I said. "Clearly she meant Alex. And I think she knew about the prophesy."

  Ann's eyes widened, but she shook her head. "There's not a student at Celata that doesn't know about that prophesy," she said. "It's supernatural 101."

  I frowned, chewing popcorn and wishing my mind could make sense of everything happening. Grace and I had already told everyone about Dora's file, about the word. Anguine. And while we had lots of theories, we couldn't arrive at anything Dora could actually want that made sense.

  "Maybe she's just another kid with powers who freaked out her family and got tossed out," Vance said. "Maybe she's not evil, just bitter."

  "And the thing with Alex?" I asked.

  Vance dropped his eyes to the table. "Coincidence? I mean, maybe our bond wasn't strong enough. The bond grows over time. Alex and I have only been together a couple years."

  I doubted Vance believed that first part. He and Alex were supposed to be together. If I could feel it, it must mean the bond was strong.

  "Should we be getting ready?" Ann asked, looking up at the clock in the kitchen. "We have to go at five."

  "It's three-thirty," Colton said. "How long is it going to take you to put on a dress?"

  "About an hour and a half," Ann told him, and with that, she stood and headed for my bedroom. Grace and I followed, leaving the boys to get dressed in the living room, which they clearly had no intention of doing just yet. I heard the television switch on as my door shut.

  Chapter Six

  At my school in Los Angeles, dances were held in our high school gym. Not that I ever went to one. But the formal and prom mystique was everywhere, and whether you went or not, you were likely to know about many of the details of what went on at these extravagant affairs. But those parties had nothing on the exclusive Manhattan private high school I went to now. Tate's homecoming dance was held in a ballroom at the Plaza Hotel on 59th Street, just outside Central Park.

  Vance and Colton hired a horse and carriage to meet us on Central Park west, and the five of us paraded through the park after saying goodbye to my parents, who insisted on taking multiple photos of me with each of my dates and with my girlfriends. I didn't really talk to anyone from my old life anymore--being the girl who communicates with the dead has a way of driving a wedge between friends--but if I did, they would not have believed any of this.

  I hardly believed it.

  I sat in a horse-drawn carriage, a handsome boy on either side of me, on my way to a dance with my friends.

  My life might be suddenly pretty complicated with prophesies and ghosts, and too much other weirdness to name, but I was still a girl going to a high school dance like a princess. I wasn't above enjoying it.

  Vance kept my hand protectively in his as we were driven to the dance, and Colton's warm palm rested on my low back. Between the two of them, there was a serene happiness zinging around in me, something comforting and exciting at once. I wasn't going to try to define it, not tonight. I was just going to enjoy myself.

  "Can I help you down?" Colton asked once we'd pulled into the circular drive in front of the Plaza.

  "Thanks," I gave him my hand, and with Vance on the other side of me, I stepped down. The boys helped Grace and Ann descend too, and we all went into the hotel together, following the signs and the dressed up teens into the ballroom in the back, up a small flight of stairs.

  The room was magnificent, with dim chandeliers sparkling overhead, the dance floor lit with multi-colored strobes, a DJ booth off to one side and the entire room festooned with ribbons, balloons and sparkling glitter. It was incredible.

  "Wow," Grace breathed at my side. I glanced down at her, trying not to wonder about the illusion she might be holding in place right at this very moment.

  "Hey, we're over here," Vance said, motioning us to a big round table set for dinner. The dance wasn't just a dance--it was a formal dinner. I suspected tickets had been pricey, but neither of the boys had mentioned the cost to me at all. We settled in, greeting our table-mates with smiles--upperclassmen I'd seen at school but had never met formally.

  I swiveled my head around the room as Colton went to get drinks from the bar, where people were buying glasses of soda and mocktails with fun names and fancy garnishes. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, but I didn't really have to look to see Dora and Alex. If I relaxed and let myself breathe, I could feel them. Alex's dark slow energy pulsed from one side of me, while another more frenetic buzz came from the same corner of the room. I narrowed my eyes and gazed in that direction, and sure enough Alex and Dora sat, heads close, with Helen and Carmela and two boys I'd seen at school but definitely didn't know.

  The waves of Alex's energy that I could detect felt different than they had before. Instead of an edge of vibrant excitement, they were dull, steady. I felt myself frown just before Colton slid back into his chair at my side and followed my eyes to see what Vance and I were looking at.

  "He looks ecstatic," Colton said, turning back to face the table.

  Vance sighed, taking his drink from Colton. "He never looks happy anymore." I knew Vance worried that his influence on Alex was fading. I wondered if that meant Alex would be back out mugging tourists soon. Or if with Dora's strange influence, perhaps it would mean something much worse.

  The evening progressed, dinner was served and the senior homecoming committee named their court, a collection of popular students who took the stage and donned crowns before smiling out at the crowd. Freshmen were never on the court, but when Vance's name was called, I was surprised. Clearly, so was Vance, whose eyebrows shot up as he heard his name.

  "Seriously?" He laughed.

  "Are we going to have to call you 'your highness' now?" Colton asked, rising to clap his friend on the back.

  Vance reached down a hand and pulled me to my feet as the crowd around us clapped and cheered, waiting for him to head up to accept his crown. Before he turned to make his way toward the front of the room, he pulled me close as everyone around us looked on.

  The noise of the cheering crowd dulled as Vance put his arms around me, and when his eyes met mine, the noise faded altogether. And when Vance leaned his head down and pressed his soft lips to mine, we might as well have been on a different planet from the hooting and raucous crowd of kids around us. I closed my eyes and let the firm press of his lips, the gentle sweep of his tongue and the grip of his big hand on the back of my neck replace the fear and worry I'd been feeling about everything. Warmth and happiness flowed through me, and when Vance released me with a smile, I sank back down into my chair feeling like nothing could be wrong in the world.

  Until I caught Alex's dark gaze watching me and reality snapped back into focus.

  He'd chosen Dora. Why did he look so angry now?

  Vance took the stage and accepted his crown, and once the dancing started in earnest and the plates were cleared, our small group clustered together at one side of the dance floor.

  Ann and Grace were in the throng of kids on the floor, but Colton, his hand wrapped around mine, shook his head. "Dancing isn't really my thing," he said.

  It wasn't my thing either, so I really didn't mind standing by and watching, and when Ann and Grace came our way and grabbed my arm, announcing, "bathroom break," I followed them out of the ballroom.

  We were just finishing up at the counter, touching up lipstick and hair, when Dora emerged from one of the stalls and slithered over to stand next to me.

  "You look nice," she said, in a voice that told me she didn't mean it at all. "What happened to the peach gown though? It was so precious."

  I didn't answer her, just gave her a grin in the mirror and then went back to fixing the complicated updo Grace had done for me earlier. I couldn't help glancing at Dora now and then in the mirror as she lingered next to
me, adjusting her straps, touching up her own makeup. And as she lifted an arm to smooth her hair, I noticed the dual marks inside her wrist, almost like a bite wound. I just got a glance before she brought her arm back down and looked over at me. I busied myself in my bag, hoping she hadn't caught me staring.

  A moment later, she left the bathroom, and I shared what I'd seen with the girls.

  "Like Director Stone was talking about? Like bite marks?" Ann asked.

  "I barely got a glimpse," I said. "Maybe?"

  "Let's see if we can get a better look," Grace suggested, and we left the bathroom quickly to follow Dora.

  She was still outside, disappearing around a corner that definitely didn't lead back to the ballroom. I exchanged a look with Ann and Grace, and then we set out to follow.

  Dora wasn't going back to the dance, evidently. She took the hallway to a door at the end that was clearly marked "Staff Only." We waited a few seconds after she'd disappeared inside, and then followed her. The door opened to reveal a set of stairs, and though we couldn't see or hear Dora, I could feel her frenetic energy moving away from us. Moving down. I pointed to the descending stairs, and we followed as quietly as we could in our heels and rustling gowns.

  There were a surprising number of levels below the lobby where the ballroom had been hosting our dance. We edged down stairway after stairway until we were following Dora down another set of passageways deep below the hotel. These were dimly lit with flickering overhead lights in a strip centered in the hallway's ceiling, and the corridor was more like a tunnel--concrete and cold.

  Once, Dora stopped, standing in the middle of the passageway and looking behind her. We ducked through an open doorway into a dark room, and I wished fervently we'd had time to grab Colton, who might've been able to hide us with his powers, though I doubted they would work on Dora. If she knew we were behind her, she didn't seem to care, and she turned and continued on her path through the network of tunnels until she came to the end. Though the hallway had a series of doors on each side, storage rooms, I thought, the long passage concluded in a concrete wall, killing my theory that maybe every building in New York was connected underground by this strange network of tunnels.

  Dora stood in front of the blank wall at the end of the tunnel, the three of us just around the corner, and we crouched low so she might not see our watchful eyes if she were to glance behind her. She stared at the blank wall for a long silent moment, and then she raised her hand to it and pressed her palm to the surface. After a moment, dust began to sift down from the wall, the falling bits of concrete making a light sound in the quiet stillness of the tunnel. Soon, the outline of a door was revealed, and Dora pushed it inward, stepping through the doorway just before it shut again.

  We waited a long moment before advancing down the tunnel to where the doorway still stood, and when we reached it, Grace laid a hand on it as we'd seen Dora do.

  But nothing happened.

  "Another storage room?" Ann asked, her voice making it clear she didn't believe for a second this was part of the hotel.

  I put my own hand to the door but quickly pulled it back. An energy so cold and unsettling had sparked at my hand as I'd laid it against the cool surface, it felt almost as if I'd been shocked.

  "Not a storage room," I whispered, shaking my hand and trying to rid myself of the unsettling horror that had filled me when I'd touched that door. "Something bad. Something ... " I shook my head. "I don't know."

  "Let's go get Vance and Colton," Grace suggested.

  We agreed, and soon we were retracing our steps, winding back up the hidden stairway and emerging back into the opulence of the hotel lobby.

  The boys listened as we described where we had been, and they followed us eagerly from the ballroom. We did our best to lead them back the way Dora had led us, but the passageways were long and they all looked the same. Eventually we arrived at that blank wall, only to question whether we were in the right place after all. There was no doorway.

  "But it was here," I said, squatting down to run my fingers through a small silty pile of concrete dust that had gathered when the cracks had appeared in the wall, revealing the door for Dora. "I know it was."

  Colton pressed his hand to the wall, a look of concentration on his face. "Nothing is obscured here," he said, shaking his head after a few minutes. "Nothing I can find, anyway."

  We stood there, a strange little group of overdressed teenagers in a hotel basement, and we wondered what to do next, when the sound of footsteps echoed down the hallway from behind us. We were about to be discovered.

  "In here." Vance pushed open one of the storage room doorways and we all slid inside, pulling the door closed quietly. Outside, we could hear the footsteps draw closer, passing us in a determined stride and then stopping. A second later, they drew near to the door, and the door was pushed open, spilling the hallway's dim light over us where we were huddled in the room's vacant interior.

  "What are you doing down here?" Alex asked us, looming in the doorway.

  Vance stepped forward, pushing his body close to Alex's, clearly moving into his space. "Maybe a better question: What are you doing down here?"

  Alex frowned, his dark eyes on those of his magnetic half, some war waging itself across his face as he struggled with whatever was happening to him, whatever Dora was doing.

  I moved out of the room, coming to stand next to Alex, wishing I could rewind and go back to the days we'd first met, when he'd smiled easily at me and slid my bag from my shoulder each day to carry it on his own as he walked me to school.

  "Alex," I said, my voice coming out a whisper, full of all the longing I felt for what had been so easy not long ago. "What's going on?"

  His gaze moved to mine, and a rush of darkness washed through me as he looked into my eyes, causing me too shiver. "All of you need to leave," he said. "Now."

  I shook my head and reached for his hand. "Come with us."

  Alex stepped away, pulling his hand from my grasp and backing toward the invisible door at the end of the tunnel. "Get out of here. Now!" He shouted at us as the wall behind him began to tremble and shake, concrete dust sifting down from it again.

  I exchanged a look with Ann and Grace. We understood that the door was reappearing. What we didn't know was what might lay behind it, what might happen if we were here when it opened again.

  "Go!" Alex roared. His fists were balled at his sides and his eyes were fiery as he shouted at us.

  Vance took my hand, and pulled me in the other direction, his eyes full of sadness as he turned away from the boy who had once been like a brother to him. "Let's go."

  The tunnel began to rumble, a low sound like something big was moving just beyond it, and with my friends at my sides and Vance's hand pulling me forward, I ran. We left Alex standing there in the rumbling tunnel in front of a door that shouldn't be there.

  And I knew that whatever else might be happening in the tunnel, in the city or in the country, we were on the brink of losing Alex for good.

  Interlude

  In the darkened chamber at the culmination of multiple winding tunnels beneath the city of Manhattan, the thick coils of the beast slid against one another, glittering in the scant flickers from torches on the wall.

  The robed man watched as the snake crushed the offering in the wrapped lengths of its powerful body.

  When the screams had abated, their piercing echoes fading into the steady silence of that deep-below room that human culture had forgotten, the robed man spoke.

  "She has done well so far."

  Another voice reverberated from the cold dripping stone walls, filtered through the air, echoed inside the minds of anyone near enough to hear. "The time drawsssss near."

  The beast lowered its head, opening the wide slavering jaws to snatch the lifeless body from where it lay within the coils, puncture wounds still bleeding. And the robed man turned away as the beast consumed its meal, his own fangs dripping with venom as he left the central chamber to te
nd to the growing army waiting throughout the tunnels he tended beneath the most populous city in America.

  Mean girls suck. Mean girls with dark powers they use on the people you love suck most of all.

  And I've had enough. Dora's going down. Or more accurately, I guess I'm going down. Because Dora's involved in whatever evil is lurking beneath the city streets -- and it might be linked to the escalating disappearances happening all around us.

  But the fight ahead of me is bigger than me and a bully. It's about more than getting my boyfriend back or proving to my father that I'm right.

  This fight is about strength of character versus centuries-old evil, about testing yourself even when you know you're probably going to fail, and about standing up for what's right even in the face of certain death.

  And it's also about finally handling the girl who stole my Homecoming date. Because that really chapped my hide.

  Chosen for Song, Volume 2 is the next episode in the serialized reverse-harem paranormal story, Chosen Academy, featuring magic, demons, mythology and plenty of swoon-worthy heroes! Get it now!

  Don’t miss other Delia Stewart news. Subscribe to her newsletter here!