B00AO57VOY EBOK Read online

  He wasn’t off the hook, either. Kim had gotten costumes for him, too. For Hippie Day there was a white shirt with billowy sleeves, a fringed leather vest, and a peace sign necklace with the same tacky glasses she had brought for me.

  “I used to have one just like this,” Nathan said, fingering the fringe on the vest with a smile.

  For the Roaring 20s she had gotten him a full gangster ensemble with a black and white pinstriped suit with a long jacket, black shirt, white tie and fedora hat.

  “Ah, now that was a great decade until the Depression ruined it,” Nathan said, his eyes lighting up.

  She had also stolen some of his clothes for Duct Tape Day and decorated them with silver and camouflage duct tape.

  “Okay, that’s interesting. Fashion really is going downhill,” Nathan quipped, his lips turning up at the corners in a sarcastic smile.

  When she brought out his costume for Mythical Creature Day, though, I started laughing again and couldn’t stop.

  “How nice,” Nathan said, scowling, as she brought out a complete Count Dracula costume and laid it out for him.

  Seriously, I mean this thing had it all. Burgundy vest, billowy white shirt with lots of lace and antique silver buttons. And, of course, the red velvet-lined cape. It even had a little chain and button closure with little bats on either end. Just the mental image of him in that getup had me laughing so hard I was crying.

  “I assume you own a pair of tight black slacks and black boots,” Kim said, laughing just as hard as I was, tossing him a pair of white gloves and a medallion on a red velvet ribbon.

  “So cliché,” Nathan grumbled, glaring at the costume and sending me and Kim both into new spasms of laughter.

  Giving his costume another disgusted look, he came over and threw himself gracefully onto the bed next to me and pulled me close. I snuggled against his chest and he leaned down to drop a quick kiss on my lips before whispering in my ear, “I’m sorry. Forgive me?”

  “Don’t I always?” I whispered back, breathing in the scent of his skin. “I kind of like you, cave boy. Just let me get rid of the costume lady and I’ll show you just how much.”

  “That sounds promising,” he chuckled, holding me closer.

  “You have no idea.” I grinned, winking.

  For just a little while, I pretended we weren’t in mortal danger. I pretended Kim and I weren’t witches and Nathan wasn’t a vampire. For that little breath of time, we were just normal teenagers hanging out and doing normal things.

  And then Grams ruined it.

  “Ember, I’m going to Amelia’s to get some of the things we need for the ritual,” she said, sticking her head in the door and giving us an indulgent smile. A smile I couldn’t return as reality crashed back in on me. “I won’t be long. Stay with Nate and Kim until I get back.”

  “Yeah, like I was going somewhere,” I grumbled, avoiding Kim’s penetrating gaze.

  I really didn’t want to get into the drama of my past lives and what we had discovered right then. Kim had fallen asleep before the shit had really hit the fan and Blake had taken her home without telling her the good news about us not being able to kill Bastian, saying he was going to leave that delightful little chore to me.

  “Of course you weren’t,” Grams said, sounding kind of sad. “Nate, behave yourself.”

  “Yes, your majesty,” he muttered, arching an eyebrow at her tone.

  “Never mind,” she said, sighing. “Kimberly, watch Nate. You have my permission to smack him if he gets out of line.”

  Kim nodded but didn’t say anything. She was too busy trying to figure out what was going on simply by staring at me. We were completely silent, the good mood of the room gone, until we heard the door close behind Grams and then Kim leapt into action.

  “Out, Nate,” she ordered. “Ember needs to try on these costumes, and I think she and I have a few things to talk about.”

  Nathan glanced down at me to see if that’s what I wanted and I rolled my eyes and nodded. I was going to have to tell her what was going on eventually, seeing as she was going to play a major part. Maybe it was better if I told her sooner rather than later. I could really use her help considering I didn’t have the first clue what I was doing.

  The second Nathan closed the door behind him, Kim tossed me my hippie costume and commanded me to start talking. As I tried on and modeled the costumes for her, I told her everything Nathan had told me about my past lives and then everything I had learned about Bastian’s line of possessed assassins. By the time I was getting into my fairy costume, I had reached the end of my story and all that was left was to tell her the plan Grams and Tyler had come up with to get rid of the demon and get my life back. I put it off as long as I could, but I knew Kim wouldn’t just let me leave it at that.

  “So, what are we going to do, Em?” she asked, coming to lace up the hot pink ribbons on my corset. “I know you well enough to know you vetoed killing our Jack just to get rid of this creeper, so what’s the plan?”

  I made sure my hair covered the mark on my neck. We hadn’t gotten around to discussing it yet, and, since I knew I was about to royally piss her off, I didn’t really think right then was the time.

  “We’re going to trap him in some kind of demonic net and then turn his possession victims loose on him,” I said, slowly, choosing my words carefully.

  “Who’s we?” she demanded, pulling the ribbons a little too tight in her irritation and nearly cutting me in half.

  “Huh?” I asked, hedging.

  “Who’s going to do the ritual?”

  “Oh, we all are,” I said, glad she had picked that question. “It has to be done by a full coven of witches with at least one witch present to represent each of the five elements. So, you, Blake, me, Grams, and Tyler.”

  “And who is going to trap him?”

  Damn. I had been hoping she would forget that part.

  “Um…me, actually,” I told her, already cringing in anticipation of her reaction.

  She had been in the process of attaching my ridiculous blinking wings and instead hit me over the head with them—repeatedly.

  “Are you out of your damned mind?” she shrieked.

  “Hear! Hear!” Nathan called from down the hall, and I could have cheerfully strangled him to death. He was supposed to be my boyfriend. Didn’t that entitle me to a little loyalty?

  “It’s the only way!” I cried, running from my crazed best friend who proceeded to chase me with my stupid wings in one hand and my even stupider wand in the other. “Tyler said it has to be me. I’m the one he wants.”

  Kim stopped in her tracks and then threw back her head and screamed in frustration. That done, she closed her eyes and took several deep breaths through her nose. That was about the point when I noticed the soft blue-white glow she was putting off.

  Oh, hell, I thought with a sigh of resignation. Here we go.

  “You are not going to do this alone,” she said, softly, looking at me finally. When I opened my mouth to protest, she gave me such a dark look that the words died in my throat. “In fact, you no longer get to do anything alone. You will be lucky if you are allowed to pee unsupervised from here on out. There will be someone with you at all times. If I’m not there, Nate will be. If neither of us is available—which, by the way, is unlikely, seeing as I plan to glue Nate permanently to your ass after this—Blake or Tyler will take over. Is that understood?”

  Grounded by my best friend…how messed up can you get? I really hoped she didn’t think I was going to take that lying down. If she did, she didn’t know me as well as I thought she did.

  Giving her my most threatening glare, I propped my hands on my hips and drew myself up to my full height—an unimpressive display, but still—and raised my chin up at least three notches. It was a pose she knew well. It was my ‘I’m fixing to be a bitch’ look. Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything else.

  And then I tossed my hair back over my shoulder and all hell broke loose—pre
tty much literally.

  I knew the second she saw my mark and braced myself for the explosion I could see was coming. Her eyes widened and her face paled visibly even as that blue-white glow got even stronger and sparks of it began to flicker from her fingertips.

  “Nathan Ashley, get your bloodsucking ass in here!” she roared at the top of her lungs, and I winced at the fury I heard behind the words.

  “No! Don’t!” I screamed, trying to warn him, but it was already too late.

  Just as the door opened and Nathan’s head appeared Kim opened fire. If he hadn’t had vampire reflexes, he probably would have had a crater in the middle of his perfect forehead.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” He demanded in a roar of his own, confused and angry. The smell of singed hair filled the room as he spoke. Guess Kim hadn’t missed after all. “What did I do?”

  “What did you do?” Kim screamed. “What did you do, Nathan? You snacked on my best friend, you fucking moron!”

  She lobbed another blast at him and I reacted on instinct. Stepping between them, I held my hands out like a demented traffic cop and envisioned a protective field around both me and Nathan. It formed in front of me just in time for Kim’s last blast to ricochet off and slam through the window instead of Nathan’s head.

  “That’s enough!” I couldn’t believe the imperious voice that came out of my mouth was mine. If anything, it sounded more like Grams than me. “I mean it, Kim. Stop it right now!”

  For a second, I thought she was going to attack again anyway. Instead, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and headed for the door. She glared at Nathan on her way out and he returned it with a narrow-eyed look of his own as he reached up to feel his scorched hair.

  I was just thinking that she was giving up way too easy when she suddenly stopped in her tracks. She turned back around to give Nathan such a dangerous look that I almost felt the need to shield him again. When she spoke her voice was so soft and deadly that even Nathan tensed in reaction to it.

  “Since Ember loves you, I’m not going to kill you right now,” she said, her eyes as cold as ice. “But listen and listen well, you bloodsucking prick. If I get even the slightest inkling that you’re using that little love bite of yours to control her, there won’t be a power on earth that can save you from me. You get me?”

  He gave her a terse nod in answer and she turned that icy stare in my direction. For a long moment she just stared at me. I felt a little ache in my heart when I realized she was looking at me like I was someone she didn’t know.

  “You should have told me, Em,” she said softly, some of the ice in her gaze melting beneath on onslaught of hurt and anger. “What happened to you? You never used to hide things from me.” She paused to give Nathan another scathing glare and then turned hurt eyes back to me again. “Then, I guess you have someone else to share your secrets with now, don’t you?”

  “Kim! It’s not—”

  Before I could explain myself, though, she was gone, leaving the memory of the hurt in her eyes and the ache in my heart to keep me company.

  Ever notice how when you want something to last forever time has a way of going into warp speed, but when you’re dreading something every second seems to take an eternity? That was what the week leading up to the Black and White Ball was like for me. Each second seemed to pass like a movie permanently stuck in slow motion.

  Kim refused my calls and ignored my text messages for two solid days. Hell, she wouldn’t even answer the door when I finally got Nathan—who was far from Kim’s biggest fan after she scorched his oh-so-perfect head—to drive me to her house. If it hadn’t been for her mom, Mrs. Val, I never would have gotten through the door. The second it opened, though, I went flying up to Kim’s room and slammed through the door with the force of a tornado.

  “Take the door off why don’t you?” Kim muttered, barely glancing up from the fashion magazine she was flipping through.

  “Is your phone broken?” I snapped back, propping my hands on my hips and giving her a dark look. “I’m assuming it is since I’ve been texting you non-stop with no response since you stormed off like a jealous girlfriend because I didn’t tell you all my deep, dark secrets.”

  Flipping her magazine closed, she gave me her full attention. And, suddenly, I wished that she hadn’t. The look she gave me was so full of anger and disgust that I actually recoiled back from it.

  “That is not a deep, dark secret, Ember Leigh,” she said coldly, gesturing to my neck and the mark hidden beneath my scarf. “That is sick and twisted and you’re lucky I didn’t kill him for it! Are you really going to stand there and defend that to me? You? Really?”

  I opened my mouth to do just that and immediately snapped it shut again. No, I couldn’t defend Nathan for marking me. The other versions of me might have been pathetic enough to want him to rule them that way, but I wasn’t. I was strong all on my own. And that was why she was pissed…because she knew that better than anyone.

  “I love him, Kim,” I said softly, my eyes burning with tears I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to shed. “Do I agree with what he did? You know I don’t. But I forgive him. I need you to trust me, just this once, and do the same thing.”

  Crystalline tears dewed up on her lashes before I even finished speaking. Tossing her magazine to the floor, she patted the bed next to her and I ran over and jumped up beside her. Before I was even settled, she had me in a bone-breaking hug.

  “Just this once, Em,” she whispered, sniffling against my shoulder. “I’ll forgive him just this once. But if he ever does anything like this again—”

  “He won’t,” I interrupted, not really wanting to think about the body parts Nathan would lose if he pissed her off again. “He won’t hurt me, Kim. Warped as he is, he loves me.”

  “He’d better,” she muttered. “I wasn’t kidding, Em. If I think he’s using that mark to control you, I’ll fry his ass without thinking twice.”

  I shivered and hugged her tighter. Because I knew she would do exactly what she said.

  If I’d thought my weekend was bad, though, it was nothing compared to the level of suck Monday morning reached when we walked into Oakhurst Academy and were met by a silent, leering Bastian, who was surrounded by Jack’s adoring fans—most of whom looked a little green.

  And who could blame them, given that he looked like something that had just crawled out of a bad Sci-Fi movie.

  The arm Kim had hit with her power blast was black and withered-looking. He definitely wouldn’t be catching any footballs in the future with that arm. One side of his neck looked like someone had taken a chunk out of it. The wound left behind was one of the nastiest things I have ever seen. The right side of his face still looked red and swollen and most of the sores the salt had caused still hadn’t healed. The part that wasn’t covered in scabs looked kind of like ground hamburger meat and…

  “Is he missing an ear?” Kim whispered as my stomach started rolling.

  “Yeah, I think he is,” I said, flicking a glance at Nathan who looked ready to attack right then and there. Given that I had been there for the removal of said ear, I didn’t have to look to check. “The question is, what the hell is he doing here? Didn’t Adam say they were looking for him to question his scary ass about the murders?”

  “He walked into the Sheriff’s department like that last night,” Blake grumbled. “He really played it up, too. Clothes all ripped up and covered in blood, bruises everywhere. Missing body parts. He told Sheriff Martin that he’d been locked in a cell somewhere being tortured. Adam said it was some of the best acting he’d ever seen. This creep put on a real show, complete with a lot of tears and shaking and crap. I mean, look at him. Can you really blame the Donut for buying that story?”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” I demanded, giving him a scathing look.

  “I did,” he said, shooting Nathan a confused look. “I talked to Nate about midnight. He said you were already asleep.”

  “I was going to te
ll you,” Nathan said quickly when I turned to yell at him for withholding information—again.

  “Then why didn’t you?” I snapped.

  “Because you slept all the way here. Remember?”

  I glared at him, but I couldn’t argue with that. I hadn’t been getting a lot of sleep lately, and I had fallen asleep in the car on the way to school. Still, it’s not like he couldn’t have told me before that, or when we pulled into the parking lot, or…

  “Would knowing have really made seeing him standing there any easier, baby?” Nathan asked, cupping my face in his hands. “He’s here. Let’s just deal with it, okay?”

  As if he had heard us, Bastian turned in our direction. My muscles tensed in anticipation of an attack when his scabbed lips turned up in a macabre kind of smile. I have to be honest, if I looked like that I would definitely be looking for a little payback. I didn’t particularly enjoy the idea of waiting for him to make a move. The way I saw it, it was better to get it over with than wait and have to spend the rest of the week looking over my shoulder.

  I took a step forward, almost daring him to take a shot with most of the student body to witness it, but Kim and Nathan each grabbed a handful of my fringed jacket and yanked me back and behind them. Though I knew they were only trying to protect me, it irritated me to no end.

  “Am I supposed to walk around for the rest of the week like a damned celebrity with a couple of bodyguards?” I demanded, pushing my way between them and giving them a dark look.

  “Ember,” Nathan growled.

  “Nathan,” I growled right back, sick to death of the whole damsel in distress role. “I told you I wasn’t hiding. That includes hiding behind the two of you. Now, can we please go to class? That is what we come to school for, after all.”

  Without waiting for a reply, I turned on my heel and stomped to my locker. Blake fell into step beside me and I resigned myself to being shadowed for the rest of the day. I didn’t even have it left in me to laugh at how ridiculous he looked. He had on a psychedelic-patterned polyester pantsuit, and his dark hair was covered with a ridiculous afro wig. He’d even gone all out and added fake sideburns and a stupid looking mustache. Finishing off his hilarious ensemble was a pair of dark, Elvis-style shades.