A Dance With Darkness

  I thought of Bastian and prayed he would never get his hands on the grimoire or Nathaniel’s copy. He had Belial’s dagger and I feared the dark purpose he had in store for it, which was likely related to what he’d intended to use the power of the grimoire for, an ingredient to a spell he needed that was contained within those ancient pages. Inevitably, dark days were coming.

  I stopped singing as a warm, familiar power came rolling across the ground and combing through the grass. I looked up to see Nathaniel emerge from the Grim and land beside my little cabin on the hill, his wings shimmering copper in the sunlight. He waved and I waved back before hugging Will tight to me.

  “Look, sweetheart,” I said to him softly, and pointed toward the house. “Look who has returned.”

  William twisted in my arms and peered up the hill. His green eyes brightened and he smiled toothily. “Nathaniel!”

  He wrestled away from me and bounded toward Nathaniel, who stooped to his knees to embrace my child. I watched them together, listened to their voices as the wind carried toward me their exchange of tales of adventure and mysterious guardians in faraway lands, and I bit my lip, falling into thought. Perhaps the future wasn’t so grim after all and our stories were just beginning.

  Read on for what becomes of these characters in Angelfire,

  the first book in Courtney Allison Moulton’s gripping trilogy.

  1

  I STARED OUT THE CLASSROOM WINDOW AND longed for freedom, wanting to be anywhere in the world other than gaping up at my economics teacher like the rest of my classmates. The last time I had listened to him, Mr. Meyer had been lecturing about fiscal policy, and that was when he’d lost me. My eyes rolled over to my best friend, Kate Green, who was doodling intricate flowers all over her notes and looked like she was thoroughly entertaining herself. Meanwhile, I was reduced to staring at the wiry, gray chest hair puffing out at the collar of Mr. Meyer’s polo shirt like overgrown steel wool and wondering whether he’d ever considered waxing.

  Finally, after another tedious twenty minutes, the bell rang at two thirty and I leaped to my feet, instantly energized. Kate stuffed her papers into her notebook and followed me up the aisle between the desks. The other seniors and a handful of juniors all filed out swiftly, as if they’d only been given a five-second window to escape or they would never get out alive.

  “Miss Monroe?” Mr. Meyer called after me just before I left the room.

  I turned to Kate. “Your locker in five?”

  She nodded and left the room with the rest of the students until I was left alone with our teacher. Mr. Meyer smiled from behind his thick eyeglasses and beckoned me over to his desk.

  I took a deep breath, having a pretty good idea of what this discussion might be about. “Yes, sir?”

  His smile was warm and friendly, his coarse, gray beard wrinkling around his thin lips. He pushed his glasses back up his nose. “So last week’s quiz didn’t go very well, did it?”

  I braced myself. “No, sir.”

  He tilted his head up at me. “Last year in my civics class you were doing very well, but the last few months of class, your grades began to slip. Since school began this year, they’re worsening. I want to see you succeed, Ellie.”

  “I know, Mr. Meyer,” I said. Excuses ran through my head. In truth, I was distracted. Distracted by college applications. Distracted by my parents’ constant fighting. Distracted by the nightmares I experienced every single night. Of course, I wasn’t going to talk to my economics teacher about my issues. They weren’t any of his business. So I gave him a vague response in return. “I’m sorry. I’ve been distracted. There’s a lot that’s happened in the last year.”

  He leaned forward, digging his elbows into the cluttered desk. “I understand the senioritis thing. College, friends, Homecoming, boys … There are countless things grabbing your attention from every angle. You’ve got to stay focused on what’s really important.”

  “I know,” I said glumly. “Thank you.”

  “And I don’t mean just schoolwork,” he continued. “Life is going to test you in ways it never has before. Don’t let your future change the good person you are or make you forget who you are. You’re a nice girl, Ellie. I’ve enjoyed having you in my classes.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Meyer,” I said with an honest smile.

  He sat back in his chair. “This class isn’t so hard. I know if you just apply yourself a little more, you’ll get through it. My class is nothing compared to what’s out there in the real world. I know you can do this.”

  I nodded, assuming he saved this speech for everyone who got a D on a twenty-question quiz, but he spoke with such sincerity that I wanted to fall for it. “Thanks for believing in me.”

  “I don’t say this to everyone whose grades start to fall,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I mean it. I believe in you. Just don’t forget to believe in yourself, okay?”

  I smiled wider. “Thanks. See you tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be here,” he said, rising weakly to his feet. “Your birthday is coming up, right?”

  I gave him a puzzled look. “Yeah, how’d you know? Do you want me to bring cupcakes to pass around or something?”

  He laughed. “No, no. Unless you really want to, I mean, be my guest. But, happy birthday, Miss Monroe.”

  “Thanks, sir.” I smiled and gave him a polite wave before turning away. As I left the classroom, I couldn’t help thinking that speech was a little heavy for an economics teacher about to retire to Arizona.

  I found Kate by her locker. She frowned at me as I walked up to her.

  “What did Meyer want?”

  I shrugged. “He wants me to apply myself more.”

  She smiled. “Well, I think you’re perfect.”

  “Thanks,” I said, laughing. “Are you coming straight over to study for Thursday’s math test?”

  She shook her head and pulled her blond hair over one shoulder as she dug her backpack out of her locker. “I’m going tanning first,” she said.

  “Why? It’s September and you still look like you hang out at the beach all day.” I bumped her shoulder with mine and grinned. Her skin was a glorious golden tone, but I still teased her that she’d end up looking like the other orange Barbie dolls at school if she kept going.

  “I’m determined not to get pasty this winter like you always do.” Kate was very pretty, and even when she scowled she looked glamorous. She was also almost a head taller than me, but that wasn’t a huge feat. I was a couple of inches shorter than most of the girls my age.

  “I’m not pasty.” I glanced down at my arm sneakily so she wouldn’t notice. I wasn’t that pasty.

  “This dazzling skin isn’t easy to achieve, you know.” She stroked her collarbone for effect and laughed.

  I stuck my tongue out at her before we moved on to my own locker. I dumped my bio book inside and stuffed my lit materials into my bag to take home. My paper on Hamlet was due the next week, so I needed to get started on it. A thud against the locker next to mine made me look up.

  Landon Brooks leaned his shoulder against the locker and ran a hand through his professionally highlighted caramel-colored hair. He was one of those guys who thought surfer hair was the only way to go, even here in Michigan, where there is nowhere to surf. In fact, that was how most of the soccer team felt. Landon was my school’s star forward, so of course whatever he thought was awesome everyone else agreed was awesome too. “So what’s up with this party Saturday? Is it still happening?”

  My seventeenth birthday was on Thursday, the twenty-second, and I planned to have a party Saturday night. For some reason, the entire school had picked up on it and the general consensus was that it was going to rock. I wasn’t wildly popular or known for amazing parties, but usually any party at my school stirred up a fair amount of buzz. That was what happened in a suburban Detroit high school like Bloomfield Hills, I supposed.

  “Yeah,” I said tiredly. “We just need to keep the number of guests down. My parents
are going to kill me if a hundred people show up.”

  “Too late,” Kate chimed in. “This is the first party of our senior year, so of course everyone is going to be pumped about it. And Homecoming is next weekend, so we need a good party to start the semester off right. The masses are growing restless. It’s not like you’re Leper Girl or anything. People do like you.”

  “And you invited Josie, remember?” Landon nudged.

  Oh, yeah. Josie Newport. Our moms had been close in high school and they still talked sometimes. Josie and I had played together a lot when we were little, but things change. She was very popular at school, but outside our moms’ engagements, we rarely spoke and never hung out together. I had invited her to my party when we ran into each other at the salon a couple of weeks back. I never understood the stereotype that all the popular, gorgeous girls were complete bitches. Josie was a really nice girl. She was perhaps a little clueless, but she’d never be cruel to anyone on purpose. I had to admit, though, she had some friends I couldn’t say the same thing about.

  “And Josie has to take her posse with her everywhere she goes, right?” Kate added. “That includes half the school, Ell.”

  I made yet another face and shut my locker. “I’ll figure it out.” Of course, I wasn’t actually going to do anything. I wasn’t going to walk up to Josie Newport and say, “Oh, by the way, when I invited you, I meant just you and maybe a friend or two. Not everybody and their cross-eyed cousins.”

  “Maybe she thought she was doing you a favor?” Landon offered. “Boost your popularity or something?”

  While that sounded cool, I didn’t suspect that it was probable. Josie wasn’t going to do me any favors. Most likely, if the party sucked, Josie would simply move her entourage elsewhere. They would be like a party within a party. If mine sucked, then Josie would just make a new one. She’d already have enough people to do it.

  “All right, I’m out,” I said, happy to end the conversation and get out of school and go home, even if it was just to study.

  “Okay, I’ll see you in an hour,” Kate said.

  “Adios, ladies,” Landon said, mock saluting us. “Why don’t you study for me, too, so I don’t have to?”

  Kate gave him a sarcastic thumbs-up before turning and making her way to the student parking lot. She’d had her license and her car since she was sixteen, like most of the kids I knew. I had my license too, but not a car yet. Kate’s daddy had bought her a red BMW for her birthday. I found it to be an absolute miracle of God that Kate hadn’t pancaked it yet. She drove like a blind person going into diabetic shock.

  I waved good-bye to Landon, scooped my long, dark red hair out from under my backpack strap, and headed out through the school’s front doors to meet my mom.

  As I crossed the front lawn, I spotted a boy I’d never seen before lounging against a tree. He wore a brown shirt and jeans, and his hair, which waved around his face in the breeze, looked black until the sun caught the walnut shine. He actually looked a little too old to be in high school, maybe twenty or twenty-one years old. As I looked at him, I felt a certain fondness deep in my heart, but I shook the feeling off. I didn’t know who he was. Maybe he had graduated a year or two ago and I’d seen him in the halls at some point? My school was pretty big. There was no way for me to know everyone who went here. I watched him for several more seconds until I noticed that he was watching me back. I blushed fiercely and looked back to the roundabout ahead, where the parents’ cars were idling. It was strange how he was just hanging out there, but I had to assume that he was waiting for a younger sibling.

  My mom’s Mercedes was nearly indistinguishable from every other silver Mercedes lining the roundabout. I peered through windshields until I spotted my mom. She and my dad looked nothing like me. Mom’s hair was more of a light brunette compared to my rich chocolate red. People asked me all the time if I had my hair colored this way, as if it were hot pink or some other unnatural shade. No, my hair just came this way. Also, she didn’t have any freckles. A lot of people think all redheads are completely covered in freckles. Not true. I only have six on the bridge of my nose. You can poke at my face and count them. There are six.

  I climbed in and we exchanged our typical after-school conversation.

  “How was your day, Ellie Bean?” my mom asked, like she did every single time.

  “I didn’t die,” I answered, as usual.

  “Well, that’s good news” was always her reply.

  I looked back out the passenger window to the tree where I’d seen the boy, but he was gone. My eyes scanned the lawn, but I couldn’t see him anywhere.

  “What are you looking at?” Mom asked as we pulled away.

  “Nothing,” I replied distantly.

  My mom shouted an obscenity at the driver in front of her, who was taking too long to turn at the light. Wiping her expression clean of anger the next moment, she smiled at me. “I’m so happy this is the last week I will ever have to pick your butt up from school.”

  “Good for you.”

  Mom was a web designer and worked from home—she had always been able to drive me to and from school, thankfully sparing me from ever having to attend daycare. My dad, on the other hand, was rarely home. He worked in medical research, and there were many nights when I would go to bed without seeing him. Sometimes I wouldn’t see him for a week. Lately, that was a good thing.

  “So you never told me what you want for your birthday,” my mom said.

  “Lambo.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, sure, let’s just sell the house and get you a Lamborghini for your birthday.”

  We finally pulled out of the school’s drive onto the main road and headed home.

  “Really, what do you want? I know we talked about a car, and your dad says yes.”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Don’t make me choose,” my mom warned. “I’ll get you a moped to drive to school on.”

  “I’ll bet.” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know—just get me something cute, safe, and that has an MP3 adapter. I’ll be set for life with that.”

  I woke to music blasting into my left eardrum. I grappled for my cell phone and hit the reject button without opening my eyes. A few seconds later it rang again. I opened a single eye to check the clock. It was a quarter to six in the morning. Uttering a half-mumbled curse, I dragged the phone off my nightstand and looked at the caller ID. It was Kate.

  I rubbed my hand against my forehead, forcing myself out of that groggy post-nightmare haze. In the past few months, I’d been having the strangest dreams that were like period horror films, like the Dracula movie with Gary Oldman. Creepy stuff. They’d kept me from sleeping well for the first few weeks, but I’d started to get used to them, and now they didn’t bother me so much. Up until a month before, I’d woken up screaming every single night.

  Too lazy to press the phone to my ear, I turned it on speaker mode and thunked it back onto my nightstand. “What is your damage? My alarm hasn’t even gone off yet.”

  “Jesus, Ellie, turn on your TV.” Kate’s voice was low and frantic. “It’s Mr. Meyer. Channel four.”

  I reached for my remote, flipped on the television, and went to channel four as instructed. I bolted upright.

  “He’s dead, Ellie,” Kate whispered. “They found him behind that bar, Lane’s.”

  My eyes were glued to the chaos live on-screen.

  “ … the lack of blood at the scene indicates to investigators that Frank Meyer may have been murdered at another location and dumped here behind Lane’s Pub along with the possible murder weapon: a very long hunting knife with a gut hook. The reason for that can only be a matter of speculation at the moment, as authorities have revealed very little about this gruesome discovery. In case you are only just tuning in, this is Debra Michaels reporting from Commerce Township, where the severely mutilated body of one of the community’s most beloved educators, Frank Meyer of West Bloomfield, was found early this morning….” I felt like vomiting. I
saw the location behind the reporter, swarming with police, the fire department, and ambulances. Mr. Meyer? He was one of the nicest teachers I’d ever had. I had seen him less than twenty-four hours before. How could he be dead? He was murdered? And severely mutilated?

  “Do you think school is canceled?” Kate asked.

  I had forgotten she was on the phone. “I’m going to talk to my mom. Meet me here.” I hung up.

  An hour later I was sitting on a stool at the island bar in the kitchen, staring at an untouched plate of pancakes. Mom only ever made pancakes when I was sick or had a horrible day, or when it was a special day like Christmas. I supposed this was one of those days when pancakes were warranted, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a bite. The too-rich smell nauseated me.

  Mom walked up behind me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “You need to eat, honey. Please? Get some food in your stomach and you’ll feel better.”

  “I’ll just puke it all up,” I grumbled dismally.

  “One bite,” she ordered. “Then I won’t feel so bad about having to throw away this uneaten breakfast.”

  I scowled and stabbed begrudgingly at the stack before scooping up a bite with my fork, but it toppled over and plopped into my lap. I groaned and banged my head on the counter.

  Mom frowned. “You have to be smarter than the pancakes, Ellie.”

  I glared up at her. Weren’t teenagers supposed to be the smartasses, and not their parents?

  She ignored my reproachful look and handed me a paper towel to clean up my pajama pants. “Well, I finally was able to reach someone at the school. They’ve been trying to deal with this tragedy all morning, so their lines have been all tied up. I’m sure every single parent in the district has been calling them. Anyway, school is closed today, but I suspect it’ll reopen tomorrow. I know you really liked Mr. Meyer, and the assistant principle let me know that grief counselors are being assigned, so if you need to talk to anyone—”