The Coveted (The Unearthly #2)

  “Yeah, I’m all for it,” I said, “but maybe we can do this some other time?” When you’re clothed.

  His lips pulled down at the corners. Like Andre, he wasn’t used to getting rejected. “If that’s what you want.”

  “It is.” All I wanted was a little nap. Just an itty bitty one. Was that too much to ask for?

  “Fine.” He walked over to my window and opened it. Outside, a group of girls clustered in front of the building, chatting about the upcoming Witches Festival, a party hosted by—surprise, surprise—the school’s witches.

  Caleb whistled and they glanced up.

  Oh. No.

  “Hey ladies, can you toss me my clothing?”

  A couple of them giggled, and I heard at least one heartbeat stutter. Did everybody but me have a crush on this guy?

  I spent the next few minutes watching the girls try to throw Caleb’s clothes up to him—try being the key word here.

  “Why don’t I just push you out the window?” I said, eyeing Caleb’s exposed back. “Then you can just turn into a bird and fly your way out of my room.”

  He swiveled to face me. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea.”

  Caleb stretched his arms over his head. The skin rippled and shrank. Feathers sprouted along his skin, until his arms became wings, and his face acquired a beak.

  An eagle stood on top of my towel. It cocked its head at me and screeched.

  “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve heard come out of your mouth all day,” I joked.

  Caleb ruffled his feathers, just to let me know I wasn’t that funny, and then hobbled over to the windowsill. Letting loose another shriek, he dived off. I closed my window behind him, muffling the girls’ surprised screams as he swooped over them and collected his clothes in his talons.

  I stretched and yawned. Just another normal day at Peel Academy.

  Behind me I heard Caleb’s squawk and the tap of a beak on glass. I guess he thought he was coming back in. Ha, sucker.

  I took my shoes off and slid under my topmost sheet, the woolen blanket I’d snatched from Andre.

  Andre. My heart did something funny in my chest. I’d placed my phone on my nightstand next to my bed, and now I stared at it. It had been almost two months since that fateful night at Bishopcourt, and I hadn’t seen or heard from him since.

  I should get over it and call him.

  This was no longer just about me; there was a dead girl involved. But then a creeping thought snuck up on me. Did he think I did it? It had to have crossed his mind. And if it had, then why hadn’t he contacted me?

  I swallowed my unease. We couldn’t go on like this forever—I was going to have to call him.

  Eventually.

  ***

  The next evening I worked on my enchanted engineering homework when Oliver and Leanne came into our room.

  “A little birdie told me you had a naked man in your room yesterday,” Oliver opened. “And I do mean birdie literally.”

  Leanne ignored him. “Whatever plans you had for this evening, drop them,” Leanne said, “and come with us.”

  I twirled the pen in my hand. “Where are you guys going?”

  Leanne smiled. “A séance.”

  ***

  The séance was being held in one of the main library’s back rooms. As Oliver, Leanne, and I passed the rows of cloth-bound, gold-leafed books, I saw Lydia Thyme, Peel’s head librarian. Our eyes met and she winked at me. I smiled and nodded back.

  Not so long ago she’d helped me when I desperately needed it. I wasn’t sure which side of good and evil she fell on, but I also wasn’t sure I had the luxury of defining my world by such absolutes any longer.

  At the back of the library there was a series of doors, one which was propped open. The three of us slipped inside.

  A group of students already sat in seats placed along the edges of the room. Leanne, Oliver, and I grabbed three of the remaining seats and waited for tonight’s activities to begin.

  I leaned into Leanne. “Remind me again what a séance is?” I asked, studying the round table in the middle of the room. Resting at its center was a crystal ball.

  “A séance is a gathering of individuals who attempt to communicate with the dead.”

  That’s what I thought. I was just wondering why this was a good idea. There were plenty of people I knew who were dead, and only a couple I’d be okay communicating with. With the exception of my parents, I seriously hoped none of my deceased acquaintances showed up.

  “Séances are strongest when done close to Samhain,” Leanne continued, “hence tonight’s event.”

  I eyed the ground. Under the table someone had drawn a large pentagram within a circle. Five unlit candles rested at each point of the star. Considering my last foray with candles and old buildings didn’t go so well, I desperately hoped these would remain unlit.

  A few minutes later, after more students trickled in, Madame Woods entered the room, her velvet dress trailing behind her.

  “Welcome, welcome,” she said, steepling her hands together and bowing to us.

  She straightened up. “I am Madame Woods, and my work is in the field of mediumship. Tonight I will be conducting a séance, a communion with the dead. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my procedures, I will first step into the protective circle I’ve created and light each of these five candles.”

  Well, there goes my earlier hope.

  “That,” she continued, “will activate the circle. Then I’ll seat myself in front of my crystal ball and hypnotize myself. Once under hypnosis, those spirits that want to be heard will communicate with me, and I will pass along their messages.”

  With that, she stepped inside the chalk circle and began to light each of the five candles.

  When the fifth and last candle was lit, Leanne inhaled sharply.

  “What is it?” I whispered to her.

  “I can see the contours of the protective circle—it’s actually a sphere,” she said, her eyes never straying from the middle of the room. “The top half of it is visible; the bottom half must be underground.”

  I followed her gaze, but I couldn’t see anything. The air was still as invisible as ever.

  I shivered. There was something in the room that I couldn’t see. The thought made me feel vulnerable. I wondered what other unseen things lurked just beyond my five senses and whether they could peer at me.

  Madame Woods sat down in her chair. Rather than waving her hands around the crystal ball—which, I’ll be honest, I was kind of hoping for—she folded her hands in front of her and stared into it.

  For a long time nothing happened. Just as students were beginning to get restless, she spoke. “Does anyone have a deceased relative whose first name starts with a ‘J’?”

  When no one answered, she continued. “This is a female presence, and she’s telling me she was young when she died. I’m seeing water—either she drowned or . . . something to do with water.”

  An audience member cleared her throat. “I think that may be my younger sister, Jacqueline. She drowned in a lake on our property when she was ten.”

  Something about this moment, this confession, made me profoundly uncomfortable. I shouldn’t know about this stranger’s painful past, and I sure as hell didn’t want to share my own.

  Madame Woods focused on the girl who spoke. “Your sister wants me to tell you that she knows you carry around a picture of you two in your wallet. And on bad days you sometimes pull it out.” At this the audience member began to cry.

  “She wants me to tell you that she loves you very much and to not worry about her.”

  The tearful girl smiled. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Madame Woods nodded and turned her attention back to the crystal ball. This t
ime, we all waited patiently for her.

  “An older woman is coming through. Her name begins with an ‘A,’ and it’s an unusual first name. Adele? Arianna?”

  Leanne made a noise in the back of her throat. “Adelaide?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Madame Woods said empathically.

  “That’s my grandmother.”

  I looked at Leanne sharply. My impression had always been that her grandmother was still alive. After all, her grandmother was the one who had tipped Leanne off about the persecution tunnel in the basement of the women’s dormitory.

  “Oh, I like her,” Madame Woods said. “She has a mischievous personality.”

  I watched the smile spread across Leanne’s face. “She does.”

  “She’s been gone for awhile now, right?” Madame Woods said.

  Leanne nodded. “She died when I was eight.”

  At this, I felt my eyes widen.

  “Hmm,” Madame Woods said. “She’s making it sound as though you two still chat often.”

  The skin at the corners of Leanne’s eyes crinkled. “We do. I dream about her often.”

  “She wants me to tell you that she enjoys those conversations immensely.”

  The medium’s face darkened. “She also wants you to know that things are changing. You need to trust your abilities now more than ever. Because you can see what others can’t, you are more vulnerable to attack. Protect yourself.”

  Leanne sucked in her cheeks. “Okay.”

  Once more Madame Woods focused on the crystal ball in front of her. I studied the way her unblinking eyes watched the ball. Slowly her lids began to droop. Then they slid shut and her body went slack.

  Somewhere in the room a clock ticked rhythmically. Students glanced at each other, no one sure what to make of the medium’s limp body.

  The candles in the room flickered, and Madame Woods gasped to life.

  Only, Madame Woods was no longer Madame Woods.

  “Where is she?” The voice was unnaturally deep and gravelly. Unfocused eyes searched the room. The students shifted. A couple whimpered. Around the room I saw wide eyes.

  “Where is the devil’s consort? I smell her.” The eyes roved around the room. Until they locked with my own.

  “You.” The beast controlling Madame Woods strode towards me.

  What had the thing called me? The devil’s consort? Ew. I mean seriously—ewww.

  The chalk line was only two feet in front of me, and that white line was all that separated the medium from me. Right about now I was having trouble believing an invisible wall separated us. But I sure hoped one was.

  “He’s watching you now, just as he always has.”

  I stilled. It seemed that even my heart slowed. Whatever lingered behind those eyes was ugly and twisted. And it knew about the man in the suit.

  Chapter 3

  Harrison Moore didn’t much like the outdoors, yet his job always seemed to bring him back out here.

  He picked his way through the graveyard. The graves here were so old that the names and years had mostly worn away. They leaned towards and away from each other like drunken revelers partying the afterlife away. At least that was how Harrison liked to think of death—as a party that got better the longer you were gone.

  For all his knowledge of the dead, he still had no idea what truly lay beyond.

  Behind him he could hear his gravedigger shoveling dirt into the hole. Only moments before, that grave’s occupant had whispered to Harrison secrets he’d taken to the grave. Secrets that would earn Harrison his next paycheck.

  Once the ceremony was complete and the soul had once again been released from the body, Harrison’s job was over. And tomorrow, other than the dark brown stain where the goat’s blood had spilled, there’d be no signs that anything supernatural had occurred here.

  He hated his job.

  As he considered alternative careers—perhaps a job that didn’t require supernatural powers—the leaves around the graves rustled.

  They crackled as Harrison stepped over them. It had been a long time since any graveyard spooked him. The dead were not so scary. The living were the ones you had to watch out for.

  Out of his peripherals, the shadows cast by the headstones moved. Harrison’s head snapped to the movement, but when he focused on the grave, it stood motionless, its shadow firmly in place.

  That’s what you get for working in cemeteries, he thought to himself.

  In front of him two trees loomed, arching over the entrance to the cemetery.

  To his side, Harrison heard leaves stir again, even though the air was still. The hairs along his arm rose.

  It might’ve been a long time since a graveyard had spooked him, but this cemetery on this evening had managed to set his nerves on edge.

  He picked up his pace. Behind him he heard a chuckle. He never had time to run. Someone rammed into his back, sending him sprawling to the ground. The bag he carried spilled open next to him. Some vials rolled out.

  He flipped over. And he only had a moment to scream before the thing descended on him.

  ***

  Leanne paced our room. “What was Madame Woods—or that thing that possessed her—talking about?” she asked.

  Oliver lay back on my bed, eating chocolates and reading a Cosmo magazine. “Really chickadee?” he said, not bothering to tear his gaze away from the “Six Sensual Tricks Sure To Make Him Stay.” “It seemed pretty obvious to me. Even the devil has the hots for Gabrielle,” he said, popping a chocolate into his mouth.

  “Ugh, Oliver,” I said, “don’t put it like that.”

  He raised his eyebrows and laid the magazine on his stomach. “Then how should I put it? That the devil and his little cloven hooves want to—”

  I put a hand up. “Please don’t finish that sentence. And Leanne, I can answer your question.”

  I’d meant to tell my friends about the man in the suit, but the moment just never seemed right. Now, however, they deserved to know that I came with a little extra baggage—okay, a lot of extra baggage.

  I looked from Oliver to Leanne and took a deep breath. “Remember how people had tried to kill me at the beginning of the school year?”

  Leanne nodded and Oliver popped another chocolate into his mouth.

  “Well, one of those people who stalked me was someone I call the man in the suit. He’s haunted me all my life. And the day Bishopcourt—Andre’s mansion—burned, I found out that he may be the devil.” Except it wasn’t maybe. He was the devil. I just wasn’t comfortable with that piece of information.

  Leanne’s brows furrowed. “What does he want?”

  I gave her a sad smile. “Me.”

  ***

  I lay in my bed in the middle of the forest. The white gown I wore looked like snow against my skin. I stared at the night sky above me. Stars shone between the treetops. A chilly wind blew through the forest and someone rubbed my arms.

  That was when I realized I wasn’t alone in my bed.

  “Do you want this?” the stranger whispered in my ear. “You can have it all.”

  I turned my head to see him. The pale moonlight cast his face in blue hues. His face was perfect—strong jaw, full lips, thick lashes that fringed bedroom eyes. At the moment, I did want it all. Oh yes please I did.

  But what about Andre? Something about this situation felt wrong.

  “No . . . I can’t.” I pushed against the man. His hands moved to my upper arms, and he held me in place.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Get off of me!” I struggled against him.

  His nails dug into my arms and I woke up gasping for air. Just a dream.

  Only, the man was still on top of me.

  I let out a bloodcurdling scream.
br />   On the other side of the room Leanne woke up gasping. “Gabrielle, are you okay?”

  “Get the fuck off of me!” I yelled at the man.

  I figured that would answer Leanne’s question.

  Lucky for me, my strength gave me an edge. I catapulted him off me, and I heard him grunt as he hit the floor.

  The light in our room clicked on and a naked man scrambled up.

  Ew, ew, ew! A naked man had been in my bed! At the moment, I didn’t really care that he was a perfect specimen of the male species; I was about ready to toss him out my window.

  “What the . . . ?” Leanne’s voice trailed off as the man clambered to his feet. He didn’t even bother covering himself up. “What’s a naked man doing in your bed? I thought we had a code for these kinds of things Gabrielle. Not cool.”

  “What?” I squeaked. “I didn’t bring him in! He just made himself comfortable.”

  The man looked back and forth between the two of us. And then his form blurred until he vanished completely.

  What. The hell.

  ***

  “Goddess above,” Leanne said, “what was that?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea,” I said, still creeped out that he’d been in my bed. I glanced at my upper arms. Half moon divots were still impressed into my skin from the man’s fingernails.

  “How the hell did he disappear?” Leanne asked.

  I rubbed my face with a hand. “I have absolutely no idea.” And I had no idea how to prevent something like that from happening again in the future.

  “So you really didn’t invite him in?”

  I gave her a look. “Did you really have to ask?”

  “Well, he was pretty easy on the eyes . . .”