Possessed: A reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 3)

by Steffanie Holmes

  “Stop thinking for five minutes and just enjoy this,” he whispered roughly in my ear. “I’ve only been dreaming about it every night since second quarter.”

  And maybe I was an idiot because instead of boxing him around the ears and going to inspect the sigil, I sunk deeper into his embrace and breathed deeply of his herbs and heather scent. For just a few minutes.

  But of course, my brain wouldn’t stop. Only now, it had completely forgotten about sigils and Great Old Gods and had turned back into a teenager – a whirling ball of angst and hormones. I’d gone from a virgin to sleeping with two different guys in a matter of weeks. Neither of them was my boyfriend. At least, we’d never had any kind of conversation about commitment. I had this vague sense that I was supposed to feel offended by their treatment, that I should be wallowing in a desperate need to tie one of them down into a relationship. That sleeping with two guys – two best friends – was going to label me a slut, and that I should care about that. But I didn’t.

  Maybe I am my mother’s daughter.

  Or maybe it was just so low down my list of problems I didn’t even care. Both guys were dead. I wasn’t just a slut, I was a zombie slut.

  Zombie slut. I’d have to tell that one to Quinn. He’d love it.

  Quinn. I missed him. Maybe that was a weird thing to think after I’d just slept with Trey, but I was definitely past caring that my thoughts weren’t normal. Quinn was the first of the Kings to ever be nice to me, to give me a glimpse at the real person that hid behind his mask. I missed the way he lightened every situation and had some crazy comeback ready to go. Trey and I were both too serious – our competitive natures meant that we’d always crash against each other. We both wanted to win, to be first, to be the best. Quinn didn’t care about any of that – he just wanted to make people laugh. He made everything fun.

  I hoped he was okay. I hoped whatever they were doing to him at school hadn’t dimmed his light.

  Speaking of light… I twisted my head to look at the sigil. Yup, still glowing with that faint line of flame, the way Rebecca Nurse’s seal had back in the cave when Zehra and I had seen it. Trey hadn’t seen the flame then, either.

  But what did that mean?

  Trey’s fingers traced the line of my jaw. “I thought I lost you.”

  His words dripped with emotion that tightened my chest. I wasn’t ready to face what Trey was trying to tell me. I pulled a Quinn, turning to him with a grin and saying, “Turns out you can’t get rid of Hazel Waite that easily.”

  Trey sat up, his jaw tightening. He wasn’t going to be dissuaded. “Hazel, you have to tell me what happened. Last time I saw you, you swung out my window like a monkey. You were going to see Zehra and tell her about Ms. West’s lab. How did you end up at Dunwich?”

  “What happened was that Ayaz betrayed me.” I told Trey everything that happened, from the cave-in to what went down in Ms. West’s office, how they told me that I was emotionally unstable, that I’d been bullying other students and pretending the three Kings were my boyfriends.

  “They wanted me to believe it. They’ve been planning this for some time. Ever since Quinn and I overheard that conversation between your fathers and Mrs. Haynes and Ms. West, I’ve been having these vivid dreams. I didn’t say anything because I assumed it was just a side effect of the god’s interest in me… but now I think it was part of your father’s plan to deal with me. They wanted me to doubt my sanity, so… achievement unlocked. I thought I was nuts until you turned up in my dream. Thanks for that, by the way. You pray almost as good as you fuck.”

  Trey jabbed me in the breastbone with the tip of his finger. “I think that was all your doing – you and the god have some kind of connection. That’s why you keep seeing all this stuff when you sleep. I just got caught in the middle.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, well, the god likes to mess with my dreams, but I don’t think that makes me special. Greg had nightmares all last quarter after his run-in with your deity.”

  Trey shrugged. “Yet another mystery we can’t solve. Go back to your story. You saw my father at Dunwich?”

  “No. I went to the Grand Hotel in Arkham. He’s staying there. I listened outside while he told the doctor who treated me at Dunwich it was his job to find me. He admitted he masterminded the whole thing.” Trey looked flabbergasted at what I’d done. I leaned back and flashed him a smile, a little bit proud I’d managed to render him speechless. I decided not to tell Trey what I would’ve done if the bellhop hadn’t shown up. “What I can’t figure out is why Ayaz went along with it or how they managed to do this.”

  I rolled back my sleeve to show Trey my wrist, where the tattoo had disappeared.

  My skin tingled where Trey’s fingers grazed it. He turned my wrist over, his beautiful lips twisting into a frown. “Your tattoo is gone.”

  “Yup.”

  “This I don’t understand. How can a tattoo just disappear?”

  “I’ve asked myself the same question every day since. It was on my wrist when I went into the exam room. I remember seeing it when I was throwing stones at Quinn’s window. But when Ayaz grabbed my wrist in Ms. West’s office, it was gone.”

  I thought I was crazy. I touched my fingers to the burn on my wrist, to remind myself that I as much as I wanted to spill my feelings to Trey, the dark secrets I carried needed to stay buried deep. I bit back the words that threatened to leave my lips. You’re the one who brought me back to reality and made me realize that everything had been an illusion. You’re a beautiful, dead boy, and you’re the only thing in my life that feels real.

  Trey bit his lower lip. He peered closer. “This looks as though it’s been lasered off. See, there’s a burn here—”

  His fingers grazed the scar on my wrist. I whipped my hand away. “Not that. That’s old.”

  Trey sighed. “Hazel, I know that scar is old. You touch it every time something happens you don’t want to deal with. I’m talking about the scar next to it. Look for yourself.”

  I held up my wrist to my face, squinting at my skin in the light. There was the scar from the fire, but I couldn’t see…

  No, wait… there it was, just a tiny discoloration at the edge of my scar. It wasn’t there before I’d gone to Dunwich, I was sure of it. I’d stared at this wrist enough times to know.

  “But… isn’t laser painful? How could they have done that to me at school without me noticing?”

  Trey’s eyes darkened as he considered it. “Shit, okay. I might know. At Dunwich, they gave you drugs, right?”

  “Ooooh yeah. All kinds of drugs. Enough to make a Philly dealer weep.”

  “Maybe they knocked you out with drugs when you got there and you were under long enough for them to permanently remove the tattoo? If they had already decided to do that, it would just be a matter of tricking you for a couple of minutes in Ms. West’s office.”

  I frowned. “Correct.”

  “Well, I was backstage at rehearsal getting some touch-ups a week before this shit went down. Ms. West came around, talking to students, seeing how the production was going. I overheard her asking Lauren about the stage makeup. She specifically asked if it was heavy enough to cover dark features like tattoos. Do you think it’s possible someone in that room could have swiped your wrist with makeup without you noticing?”

  I remembered the orderlies lunging at me and my frantic fight to escape. Once Ayaz walked into the room, they could’ve swiped makeup on my wrist or even cut off my whole arm and I wouldn’t even have noticed. “I can’t believe Ayaz would do that to me. He knew it was all lies.”

  “Not Ayaz.” Trey’s jaw set hard. “This is all my father’s doing.”

  But I know your father is evil. Ayaz was supposed to be my… was supposed to care about me. “Why would Ayaz help him?”

  “I don’t know.” A darkness crossed Trey’s eyes. “He won’t talk to me or Quinn. We’re bottom feeders now, stripped of our standing and all our privileges, and he’s top of the school. He’s been trail
ing around after Courtney like her personal lap dog ever since you left. I can’t get close to him without the other monarchs fending me off.”

  “What about Quinn? Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine.” The set of Trey’s jaw told me there was something he wasn’t telling me. My stomach tightened. “He’s been more helpful than normal. He’s holding down the fort at school while I try to find you.”

  “And Greg and Andre? They’re okay, too?”

  Trey nodded, but the storm in his ice-blue eyes bothered me.

  “You’re not telling me everything.” I glared at him. “You can’t do that. This situation is dangerous enough without keeping secrets. It was a secret that led to this whole horrible mess in the first place.”

  “I agree,” Trey shot back, his thumb reaching out to touch the burn on my wrist. “We can’t keep secrets from each other anymore.”

  My blood turned to ice. No.

  You’re not getting that secret out of me. That’s mine to take to the grave. That’s my guilt to bear.

  “Fine.” I drew away. “Don’t tell me. I’m just going to find out anyway when I go back to school.”

  Trey snorted. “Don’t be stupid. You can’t go back there. They’ll just throw you back in Dunwich, or worse. It’s already halfway through the year. Ms. West doesn’t have to wait much longer until your bargain comes due.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? But I’m not just going to run away while all those evil things are still going on, not until I know Greg and Andre are safe and you guys are free.”

  “We’ll never be free,” Trey’s jaw tightened. “You need to let go of the idea of saving us. We’re already dead – and now we’re just frozen in time. We can’t go backward, and there’s no future for me, Hazel. There’s no future for us. You need to get out while you still can.”

  “Nope. Not accepting that.” I swiped my toe through Zehra’s papers on the floor. “Somewhere in here is the answer.”

  Trey shook his head. “I promise we’ll get Greg and Andre out. And then the three of you will get as far away from Derleth Academy as possible. That’s the plan. It’s the only possible plan. Everything else is hopeless.”

  “You have hope, Bloomberg. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. Otherwise…” I held up the empty condom wrapper we tossed on the floor. “This wouldn’t have happened.”

  “It shouldn’t have happened,” Trey growled.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not.”

  My heart pattered. “Because Ayaz and I…”

  Trey’s fingers curled through my short hair. “I don’t care about that.”

  “How do you not care? Isn’t being a King of Miskatonic all about taking what’s yours, coming first, winning at any cost?”

  “It used to be. And then you arrived on campus and shot us all to hell.”

  “Then why are you saying this shouldn’t have happened?”

  “Because I should be stronger than this. Because you’re going to go off and have an amazing life and probably rule the world someday. Because I’ll have to say goodbye to you, and now it’s going to be so much harder.”

  I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and sat up, glaring at him. “If you know me at all, you wouldn’t even say that shit. I’m not leaving you, and I’m not leaving Ms. West to continue to sacrifice scholarship students. End of discussion.”

  An awkward silence descended between us. A hundred things I wanted to say beat against my lips. I bent down and grabbed a handful of Zehra’s papers, shoving them into his arms. “Can you help me make sense of all this?”

  “What is it?”

  “Zehra’s research. Do you remember what she told us in the cave, that she knew someone who might be able to help reverse what happened to you?”

  Trey nodded.

  I held out the Post-it note. “I think this is her – Dr. Deborah Pratt. She was a pathologist who worked with Ms. West at Arkham General. She’s where we need to start. But there’s so much information here, mostly about Rebecca Nurse and her family tree. I don’t know if any of it is important, or…”

  I slumped down on the floor and spread out the papers around me, creating a kind of barrier between me and Trey’s fiery, magnetic presence. Unspoken between us was the fact that Ayaz would be the best person for this job. Ayaz who spoke several dead languages, who had a fascination with the occult and who knew more about the history of witchcraft and Great Old Gods than any of us.

  But if I couldn’t have Ayaz, then Trey was the next best option. He bent over the papers, wearing that same hard, focused expression he had whenever he tackled any activity, whether it was getting a perfect score on an exam or tormenting some scholarship student.

  Unable to tolerate the chaos of the pile, Trey immediately set about organizing. He pulled out the newspaper articles about the fire and set them aside. “We already know everything we need to know about this.”

  Trey’s description of the fire and of digging his way out of his own grave still burned fresh in my mind. The articles couldn’t tell me anything his recollection wouldn’t. Trey made separate piles of the Rebecca Nurse genealogy and the occult stuff. He bit his lower lip as he sifted through the pile, and his shoulders relaxed. He enjoyed putting everything in order.

  As I sorted the papers onto Trey’s neat stacks, I picked up a page I hadn’t noticed before. It contained lines of symbols made of lines and triangles. They looked like the imprints of chicken feet walking across the paper. The symbols formed three columns down the page and were scrawled on both sides of the paper, and several sets were crossed out or circled, or had question-marks or notes in another language (possibly Latin) written next to them. At the top of the page, Zehra had added a Post-it note.

  “Stolen from Ms. W office. ???”

  “Does this mean anything to you?” I handed the paper to Trey. “She must’ve taken it before she left Derleth.”

  Trey took the paper, frowning as he ran his hand down the page, his full lips pursing as he whispered unknown words under his breath. His muscles twitched, nostrils flaring.

  “Trey?”

  He curled his fingers into a fist and slammed it into a cupboard door. Wood splintered, and I ducked, covering my head as cups clattered to the floor around us.

  “Fuck. What did you do that for?”

  Trey shoved the paper in my face. “Do you know what this is?”

  “No. Duh. That’s why I asked you.”

  Trey’s face was white. I’d never seen him look so… out of control, like there was all this rage inside him and it had nowhere to be. “It’s proof of exactly what I suspected. It’s a code commonly used in the Eldritch Club – cuneiform, an ancient Mesopotamian script that’s common among practitioners of magic. We can all read it.”

  “So it’s a spell? Or like, minutes for a club meeting?” I put on a snooty English accent. “‘Jeeves, we’re out of fifty-year-old Scotch.’”

  Trey looked at me like I was insane. “I thought I’d get a break from Quinn, but apparently, he’s rubbed off on you. It’s a list. A list of all the students of Miskatonic Prep.” Trey slammed his fist into another cabinet door. “Fuck.”

  I snatched the paper out of his hands before he could destroy it. “Okay, so it’s like a class roll or something? I’m not sure exactly what that proves—”

  “This is the minutes from an Eldritch Club meeting. It’s dated four years before the fire, the year before my dad enrolled me in Miskatonic Prep.” Trey’s whole body trembled with rage. “Every powerful family in the country has contributed a child to this list.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that the fire wasn’t an accident. They planned exactly when it would be, and exactly which students would be killed that night.” Trey’s eyes blazed. “Our families chose us to be sacrificed.”

  Chapter Ten

  Fuck.

  Well, that’s dark.

  I mean, I wasn’t surprised. I’d believe anything of Vi
ncent and his Eldritch Club cronies. I’d certainly believe it of Ms. West and her Dr. Frankenstein lab.

  Even though Trey had suspected for some time, seeing proof of what his parents, all the parents, had done wiped him out completely. He punched a few more cupboards and then collapsed on the bed, a dishtowel wrapped around his bleeding fist.

  I let him be. That was some heavy shit to deal with, even in the context of the shit that Miskatonic Prep had thrown at us. I finished sorting and reading through all of Zehra’s material, but nothing was as damning as that page of names. My stomach growled, so I pulled some ramen out of the backpack and found two bowls Trey hadn’t broken – a dinner fit for a King.

  After we’d eaten we lay side-by-side on Zehra’s narrow bed – the bed where we’d had frantic, desperate sex only a few hours earlier – and Trey held up the paper and turned it over and over, the tension in his shoulders growing with every rotation.

  Eventually, I snatched it off him. He tried to explain what each symbol meant, how the different chicken’s feet represented sounds and how they could be used to represent modern names – like Quinn, Courtney, Tillie. He pointed to his own name, right at the top of the list, as if his father couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

  My palms itched to melt Vincent Bloomberg’s smug face. I should have incinerated that bastard while I had the chance.

  Trey and I slept cradled in each other’s arms. Well, Trey slept, his body shuddering as he settled into a string of violent nightmares. I held him tight, bracing his body against the onslaught, and stared at the ceiling. The light was still on in the RV, but I couldn’t bear the thought of shifting Trey’s weight to get up and turn it off. Moths battered themselves against the windows, desperate to get inside to worship their faux sun god.

  As soon as the real sun peeked over the horizon, I shook Trey awake. We gathered up Zehra’s research and all the candy bars and condoms we could find into the backpack I’d started yesterday, then stole out of the RV and walked into Arkham. Trey kept a lookout while I hotwired a car and drove us to the state line. We dumped the car, changed our clothes again (stopping at a nondescript thrift store for something to fit Trey), and got on a bus that would take us back across the state in the opposite direction to a small town about forty miles from Arkham, where this Deborah woman lived.