Blood and Other Matter

by Kaitlin Bevis

  Praise for Kaitlin Bevis...

  “Move over Rick Riordan!”

  —Rita Webb, author of Daughter of the Goddess

  “A fun, imaginative, smart retelling of my favorite myth, fusing modern culture with a rich world of magic.”

  —Molly Ringle, author of Persephone’s Orchard

  Of Blood and Other Matter . . .

  Blood and Other Matter is chilling and compelling—the fastest page turner I’ve read in a long time! From the opening line to the unexpected conclusion, every page kept me guessing. And kept me up at night.”

  —E. J Lawrence, Unbound

  Of Persephone . . .

  “Persephone might just be my new favorite version of Persephone. Haha. It’s fresh, it’s unique, it’s suspenseful, and a lot of unexpected and exciting things happen that will leave you craving the next book.”

  —That Artsy Reader Girl

  “I always find at least one YA book a year that keeps me entranced . . . and this was definitely one of them!”

  —Book Lovin’ Mamas

  Of Aphrodite . . .

  “Aphrodite is such a complex character, and in Kaitlin’s capable hands, I feel like every major character was well developed; the pacing was fast and tight, there were no clichés, and the intricate plot threads kept me turning the pages well into the nights. Well done, well done!”

  —Tonnye Conner, reviewer

  Books by Kaitlin Bevis

  Daughters of Zeus series

  Persephone

  Daughter of Earth and Sky

  The Iron Queen

  Aphrodite

  Love & War

  Venus Rising

  Also by Kaitlin Bevis

  Blood and Other Matter

  Blood and Other Matter

  by

  Kaitlin Bevis

  ImaJinn Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  ImaJinn Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  EbookISBN: 978-1-61194-908-7

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-945-2

  ImaJinn Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2019 by Kaitlin Bevis

  Published in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  ImaJinn Books was founded by Linda Kichline.

  We at ImaJinn Books enjoy hearing from readers. Visit our websites

  ImaJinnBooks.com

  BelleBooks.com

  BellBridgeBooks.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo/Art credits:

  Forest (manipulated) © Mythja | Dreamstime.com

  Girl (manipulated) © Evgeniya Semenova | Dreamstime.com

  Decorative element © Jaguar

  :Lobm:01:

  Dedication

  To the amazing teachers and staff at Hilsman Middle School. I’d write a book about all you do, but no one would believe it wasn’t fiction.

  Prologue

  November, 25th. 1863

  Brooks Tavern, Lawrence County Alabama

  JENNY DIPPED HER fingers in her husband’s still warm blood and carefully traced over the symbol she’d scratched into the forest floor. The moon hung so low and fat in the sky that Jenny scarcely needed the torch she’d stuck in the ground, but the flames did keep the worst of the cold at bay. Her children watched, backs pressed against the road house, as though they wished the walls would swallow them whole.

  “You too,” she chided them. “C’mon.”

  Angeline, the oldest of the children, led the way, but soon all seven moved into the painstakingly maintained clearing, careful not to disturb the drawings. Since eight soldiers had hanged her husband then shot her eldest son, John, there were eight likenesses drawn on the ground.

  Swallowing hard, Angeline dipped her finger in her father’s blood and carefully traced the symbol her mother had scratched into the dirt. One by one, each child followed suit.

  Just as Henry, the youngest, finished tracing his symbol, a red shadow overtook the moon. It was time.

  Jenny chanted an ancient invocation, offering her body as a vessel to the demon, Estrie in exchange for one thing. Vengeance.

  She finished chanting and switched to English for her children’s benefit. “We will not rest until these eight men . . .” She motioned to the crudely drawn sketches of the soldiers. “ . . . are dead. We demand vengeance.”

  Angeline met her mother’s eyes and gave a firm nod. “I promise, Mother.”

  Each child echoed her vow.

  The torch sputtered, then flared in a whoosh of flame so high, it seemed to touch the sky. The flames twisted and writhed, transforming into a shadow that filled the small clearing. Jenny ground her teeth, doing her best not to flinch as the shadow caressed her.

  You shall have your vengeance, Estrie promised. For a price.

  Jenny accepted the bargain then drew in a deep breath. The shadow flew into her open mouth, wriggling down her throat. She didn’t feel the pain of her loss anymore, nor the biting cold of the night. A low burn began in Jenny’s gut as the Estrie took residence then intensified, like the burn of a thousand flames.

  And the fire felt good.

  Chapter 1: Tess

  Thursday, September 8th

  Nowhere Road, Fairdealings, Alabama

  THE LAST DAY OF my life started like any other—late. I woke to a horn honking and groaned, reaching for my phone to check the time.

  “Crap!” Five missed calls and a billion texts from my best friend, Derrick. One minute, I texted, then jumped out of bed, my pulse racing with adrenaline as I grabbed a pair of jeans off the faded shag carpet and shimmied into them. Off went the nightshirt, on went a bra and the first top I could find. A dark red mid-drift tee.

  I eyed my bare stomach in the chunks of mirrored closet doors that hadn’t been worn away into non-reflective grey patches. Not the worst look I’d ever thrown together, but . . . “Yeah, Mrs. Atkins might have something to say about that.”

  Spotting a black tube-top under a pile of clothes, I yanked it free, pulled it over my jeans, and up, up, up until it was tucked just under my bra. “There, stomach covered.” I’d made two illegal articles of clothing dress code acceptable. Nice. Throwing my dark hair into a quick ponytail, I ignored the honking horn in my driveway and brushed my teeth.

  “Double crap!” Out of deodorant. Wrinkling my nose, I dug my fingernail between the blue plastic seams and scraped as much of the greasy, white substance free as I could. Just enough. I made a mental note to pick up more from the health center after school.

  Wait a minute. I frowned, tilting my chin to the side and examining my jawline in the mirror. Redness swelled toward my chin. With a sigh, I pulled open my makeup drawer and reached for my foundation. Empty. Fantastic.

  Derrick laid on his horn. My heart skittered, and I whirled toward my mom’s room, relief almost knocking me over when I saw her door was open and the bed was empty. She wasn’t home yet.

 
; The horn blared again, but this time, it sounded like it was right outside my kitchen door.

  “Coming! Coming!” I called, though there was no way Derrick could hear me. Grabbing my book bag, I slipped on my paint-splattered Keds, ran to the kitchen, and opened the fridge.

  A cold, stale scent filled the air as I stared at the near-empty shelves. “Oh, that’s just fanfrickintastic.” My stomach growled, and another honk of Derrick’s horn had me glancing around in desperation. Mom still hadn’t gone grocery shopping. Frazzled, I grabbed the last two cans of soda and shoved them in my book bag, then yanked open the fridge drawers in search of something, anything more than soy sauce and salad dressing. A few individually wrapped slices of cheese stuck to the bottom of one of the drawers. “That’ll do.” Grabbing the cheese and a half-empty pack of Hawaiian rolls from the counter, I dashed outside to meet Derrick, letting the aluminum screen door slam behind me.

  “What the hell, Tess?” Derrick leaned out his window, his hands thrown up in exasperation.

  “Sorry, sorry!” I slipped into the car, balancing my soda and tearing two Hawaiian rolls out of their package. “My alarm didn’t go off.” More likely, I’d slept through it. “Can I charge this?” I held up my phone.

  Derrick nodded as his car lurched down the gravel driveway. I hurried to shut off the music that had connected from my phone before he could make fun of my playlist, and kept my breakfast in hand, as though I hadn’t taken a much larger gulp of soda than I’d intended.

  Derrick kept his gaze locked to the road as the car shuddered down the street. “Bread and cheese? Great breakfast.”

  Shrugging, I swallowed a sip of my Coke and inspected the Hawaiian roll I’d pulled from the package. Green spots bloomed along the bottom. My stomach turned as I tucked the rolls back into their package and shoved it into my book bag. I could pick the mold off later . . . when Derrick wasn’t watching.

  But Derrick didn’t miss details. Ever. I knew he’d seen the mold, but he didn’t comment. We rode in silence until we reached Main Street, and he turned left instead of right.

  “Der?” I craned my neck as we drifted farther from the school. “Where are we going?”

  Derrick pushed his dark hair out of his eyes. “I’m taking you to breakfast.”

  “I didn’t bring any money,” I objected, thinking again how much I needed to find a job. But without a car to get to work, applying for one was pretty much hopeless. Less than eight hundred people lived within the borders of Fairdealings, Alabama, and almost every one of them had to commute for work. Walking was not a thing here.

  “I’ll buy.” He pulled into the Waffle House parking lot—the only place I’d ever been where you could get hash browns and eggs on top of a burger. Magical stuff.

  My mouth watered thinking about it, but I couldn’t let him pay. “Derrick . . . ”

  “Tess, you know you can’t miss meals.” Derrick shifted the car into park. “Last time you skipped breakfast, you passed out.”

  I fastened my gaze to my shoelaces, unwilling to tell him that last time, I’d missed a whole lot more than breakfast. “I can raid the vending machines. Really, it’s fine.” Last year, I’d figured out a way to trick the vending machines by cutting construction paper to the same size as a dollar bill, crumpling it up, and then getting it a bit wet. Unfortunately, the trick only worked on the oldest machines at our school.

  “You know that’s illegal, right?” Derrick winced as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

  Snickering at his discomfort, I pushed his shoulder. “What are you gonna do, tell your mommy?”

  “About a misdemeanor so petty, the vending machine company will lose money if they press charges?” He unbuckled his seatbelt. “She has bigger fish to fry. But we are late. Again. That’s a detention—”

  “Not a detention,” I gasped in mock horror.

  “—unless we . . . say, check in after a doctor’s appointment?”

  Our school was so stupid sometimes. You seriously got into less trouble for skipping classes completely than walking in the door five minutes late. But stupid school logic didn’t change the fact that I didn’t have enough money for Waffle House, much less a doc in a box. “Still broke.”

  “I said I’d pay.” He flashed me a mischievous grin. “Trust me, what you’re going to do is embarrassing enough to make up for it.”

  After a huge breakfast and a humiliating trip to the nearest Planned Parenthood for a “false alarm,” Derrick and I stood in the office of Willow County High School—home of the Cougars, y’all—looking suitably contrite.

  “Miss D’Ovidio.” Mrs. Atkins’s voice went frigid as she launched into a lecture about my attendance record, which, to be fair, was pretty bad. But the fear of “serious consequences” wasn’t what had me squirming. It was the way she kept looking at me like I was some kind of a slut.

  “And you.” She turned her attention to Derrick, her gaze frosty. “You’re the sheriff’s son!”

  I bristled, waiting for the follow-up comment about how ironic it was the sheriff couldn’t control Derrick since he was such a delinquent. They loved to ignore the fact that he’d pretty much never done anything.

  Derrick just smiled at her. “Pretty sure that note’s supposed to stay confidential, no matter whose kid I am.”

  Mrs. Atkins’s gaze hardened. “Get to class.”

  Derrick held the door open for me. My heart beat in my chest at an uncomfortable speed, and I could feel my face burning. “Next time, you’re going in for VD.”

  “They’ll either think you gave it to me, or you have it, too,” he replied with a self-satisfied smirk.

  Damn it, he was right. Derrick and I were not together, despite what the rumor mill believed. But I wasn’t sure if we could define ourselves as “just friends” anymore, either. Something had shifted in the way Derrick acted around me since our third-musketeer and best friend, Ainsley, died. We leaned on each other in a way we never had before.

  Watching a road crew scrape her brains off the pavement had that effect.

  In our grief, we’d brushed against something beyond friendship. Derrick tried to hide his feelings, but he wasn’t great at subtlety. And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about him in ways that weren’t purely platonic.

  But romance wasn’t a line I could risk crossing. Not with him.

  “Erectile dysfunction then.” Let the rumor mill chew on that.

  “When I’m the one who makes us late, you can make up whatever excuse you want.”

  Like Derrick would ever be late for anything.

  When we reached a branch in the hallway, Derrick’s fingers brushed my wrist. “I’m sorry. I tried to think of something else, really I did.”

  “I know.” I glanced down at the peeling tile floor. “I didn’t like the looks we got. Here or at the clinic.”

  “Ignore ’em.” Easy for him to say. No one thought he was pregnant. “We still on for the eclipse tonight?” Derrick’s obsession of the month was stargazing. He did that. Got hyper-focused on one thing and researched it to death. Tunnel vision didn’t even begin to describe it.

  “Yeah, sure.” I did owe him for breakfast.

  “See you at lunch.” We headed off in opposite directions toward our classes.

  “Glad you could join us, Miss D’Ovidio.” My art teacher, a balding white guy with an inflated sense of self-importance, sneered when I walked in. Why were all the art teachers I’d met such dicks? Was it a “those that can’t do” type of thing?

  I found my seat and opened my sketchpad, looking at him expectantly. When I didn’t sputter or offer excuses, he narrowed his eyes at me and went back to the lecture.

  “Tonight—” He scanned the classroom like a deranged cat tracking dust bunnies. “—you’ll have an opportunity to view the world in a more un
usual light, thanks to the blood moon.” He paused dramatically as though memes announcing the lunar phenomenon hadn’t been floating around cyberspace for over a month. “What do I mean when I say blood moon?”

  Lacey raised her hand. “Well, technically, ‘blood moon’ is another name for the hunter’s moon, the full moon that occurs in November. But that’s next month. Colloquially, it can also be used to identify the moment the moon passes through the earth’s shadow in a lunar eclipse. It appears red because of the way light scatters when passing through our atmosphere.”

  Mr. Gilbert blinked as though he hadn’t been expecting a technical answer, and I struggled to hide a smile. “Yes? Erm, in other words, tonight, during the eclipse, the moon will be red. Which means unusual lighting. Your homework tonight will be to draw—” Lacey raised her hand. “Yes, Lacey?”

  “Sorry, it’s just . . .” She flushed, squirming in her seat. “It um, doesn’t start until eleven, and the moon won’t be completely red until like, midnight? That’s really late to start an assignment on a school night.”

  He gave her a flat look. “Extra credit then. It’s a unique opportunity, and one I think you’d all be wise to take advantage of.”

  Didn’t matter to me. I’d be watching anyway. Grabbing a stick of charcoal, I tuned out Mr. Gilbert and set to work bending lines and shadows to my whim. Losing myself in the picture didn’t take long. As I sketched, the tension of the morning eased away, and my shoulders relaxed. The drawing was stupid, really, just a dying, old tree in my backyard. But something about the way it stood in the middle of my overgrown grass spoke to me. Like it had tried so hard to thrive, to become something beautiful, but instead it twisted and bent under the weight of its failure.

  “Wow, that’s really good,” a smooth, masculine voice murmured.

  Josh Worthington. I let out a long breath and turned, steeling myself for the inevitable follow-up—that’s really good, for trailer trash—or something along that same old tired theme. He hadn’t always been the school douchebag. In fact, once he’d been neck-in-neck with Derrick and Ainsley for the title of best friend, but a lot changed once we all hit middle school.