by Stacey Jay
"Hey," Terrence said, eyes narrowing. "You're that chick from the mall, aren't-"
"Nice to see you again too." Monica cut Terrence off with a sigh, putting one hand to his forehead while she fished her cell from the front pocket of her jeans with the other. "Return to your grave and rest in peace."
Terrence was already streaking away as Monica lifted the phone to her ear. "Hey, Sue. I'm here with Megan Berry. She summoned an Unsettled this morning and will need to have the grave sealed so she doesn't have to cut school." She snatched the paper from my hand and repeated the cemetery and plot number to the woman on the phone. "Thanks, Sue. Yeah, I'll definitely tell her."
"Tell me what?" I asked. Monica snapped the phone shut and shot me a look of completely false pity from her bright blue eyes.
With her dark brown, nearly black hair, those eyes always looked out of place to me but in an exotic, gorgeous kind of way. Everything about Monica was perfect and gorgeous, from the shiny straight hair hanging down to her butt to her size-two body. I supposed that was why she was part of the social elite, despite the fact that she was in training to be the devil's handmaiden.
"Sue said you should really go home and stay with your mommy if you can't even remember how to shield."
"I remember how to shield just fine," I snapped, mentally firming up said shields as I spoke. Maybe I hadn't been shielding strongly enough before, but I certainly was now.
"Right, that's why you're summoning pervert zombies." Monica looked me up and down, her upper lip curling with distaste. "But then again, maybe you enjoy dead people seeing you naked. Is that the only way you can get a boy's attention, Meg?"
"Give me a break, Monica," I said, wishing I could say something nastier, but knowing I had to at least fake civility.
Not only was Monica queen bee at CHS and capable of making sure Josh never spoke to me again, she was also cocaptain of the pom squad. Her vote would help determine whether I made the team next week. I couldn't afford to piss her off no matter how much I'd like to tell her to go eat about a pound of dog poo and die.
"Sorry, Megan, no breaks for Settlers who mess up." She flipped her hair over her shoulder. "I'll be telling my SA liaison about the zombie I saw streaking in here this morning and anything else funky you get up to."
"Please, Monica, I swear I-"
"Ethan told me he took it easy on you the other night, but I'm not willing to risk being discovered because you can't handle yourself," she said, picking her monster purse up off the floor.
She'd talked to Ethan? About me? He'd called the Monicster and told her about meeting me in the graveyard? In the old days he'd hated her as much as I had. Well, maybe not quite as much, since she'd never shown him her witchiest side. He was cute and flirtworthy, and she had always been in need of his advice and comfort and… Hmm…
There was something prodding at my memory, something about Ethan and Monica, but… I couldn't place it. I was on the verge of figuring it out when someone called my name from outside the locker room.
"Megan? Are you in here? I-" Jess poked her fuzzy blond head in, smiling at me before she saw Monica and her eyes widened in fear. Poor Jess, she was far too sweet to handle the Monicster. "Um, hi, Monica."
"Hey, Jessica," Monica said, turning a megawatt smile in her direction. "Saw your name on the tryout sheet last Friday. That is so awesome. I caught your solo at recital last year. Totally fresh."
Monica knew Jess's name? Who would have guessed?
"Oh, wow. Thanks, Monica," Jess said, her pale blue eyes lighting up with pleasure even though she shot me a look that clearly communicated she was thinking the same thing I was. "I'm totally psyched for tryouts. Megan and I have been working on-"
"Yeah, that's good," Monica said, her tone cooling a zillion degrees as she turned to shoot me one last look before heading for the door. "Megan's going to need a lot of work if she hopes to be anywhere on par with what we need."
I knew she was talking about more than dance team tryouts, but her words still stung. I'd been dancing since I was three and training for tryouts all summer. I was an excellent dancer and she knew it, but she was obviously going to make it as hard for me to make the team as possible. Great. As if I needed one more thing to worry about right now.
"Wow, she's such a jerk," Jess whispered after Monica disappeared. "Don't listen to her, Megan. You're totally ready for tryouts. She's just… witchy."
"Thanks," I said, unable to keep from smiling. The fact that she was willing to call Monica witchy on my behalf made me feel loads better. "Come on, we'd better go or we won't have time to get to our lockers before first."
"Okay, but… don't you want to change?"
"Already changed. I'm stuck in gym gear for the rest of the day." I filled Jess in on my fall in the mud-though I fudged on the reason I'd been walking around the track. Jess wasn't clued in to the whole Settler business.
We weren't allowed to tell non-Settlers anything about our world, not that it had been an issue-until now, anyway. Jess and I didn't start hanging out all the time until more than a year after the zombie attack, when we both ended up in all the same classes in seventh grade. Since then, we'd been inseparable, our love of dance cementing our friendship into a bond nothing could break, not even Pickle, our joint crush, asking me out instead of her.
"So you've got to tell me, how'd the date with the Delicious Dill go?" Jess asked, as if reading my mind. "I almost died when Clara said you'd called last night, but she didn't give me the phone. She's still holding my cell captive, so I couldn't even try to call you back."
Delicious Dill was our code name for Josh, derived from the Pickle last name. Kind of lame, but we'd thought it up in eighth grade so we couldn't be held responsible. "It didn't go at all. My parents had these old friends over and made me stay at home."
I felt a flash of conscience for telling Jess a lie but pushed it away. No matter how much I hated it, there would now be secrets between us.
Unless, of course, I figured out a way to check out of Settlerhood forever, a possibility that was looking even sweeter after this morning's events. Stay a Settler and deal with weird black-magic vibes, pervy zombies, and wicked coworkers like Monica. Or be a normal sophomore whose dates weren't interrupted by dead people and who wasn't forced to lie to her best friend. Normal won, hands down.
Now I just had to figure out some way to make my dream a reality.
CHAPTER 4
Please, Mom," I begged, fighting the urge to tear my hands away from hers and make a run for my room to retouch my makeup. "Do you not understand he will be here in like fifteen minutes and I haven't even-"
"And you won't be going anywhere until you convince me your shields are strong enough." Mom smiled and gripped my hands even tighter. "I shouldn't be letting you out of the house at all. I'm sure SA wouldn't approve, even if Monica is covering for you until you've practiced grave sealing."
That made me smile. Ha ha, Monica.
Her call to Sue had totally backfired. The Elders were now convinced I couldn't handle any Unsettled by myself without further training, so Monica had to cover for me. Her liaison had given her a power boost that would last at least a few days, meaning any undead in Carol between the ages of thirteen and eighteen that crawled out of its grave was going straight to her house.
Ha ha, hee hee, na na na na na, na na na na-
"So," Mom said, interrupting my admittedly immature mental celebration, "if you want me to call Elder Thomas and ask if it's-
"No, okay, okay," I said, recrossing my legs on the purple yoga mat we were both sitting on and forcing myself to relax. I was not going to miss a second chance at a first date with Josh because I couldn't get my Zen on sufficiently to suit Mom.
Ah… Josh. Sweet, understanding, gorgeous Josh, who-first thing fourth period-had asked me to go with him and some other seniors to the haunted corn maze in Waverly, a tiny country town about ten minutes from Carol. The idea of hanging out with seniors was way scarier than any haunte
d maze, but I was willing to risk it. I had to convince Josh how perfect we were for each other and soon. Homecoming was only ten days, two hours, and a dozen or so minutes away and-
"Megan! I mean it. If you don't focus, I will tell that boy to go home."
"Okay! Sorry."
"Now concentrate. Close your eyes."
I closed them and almost immediately felt a surge of power flow from Mom's fingertips to mine. It was a much larger amount than she'd tried a few minutes before, but I had no trouble deflecting it. I'd been so freaked by my first daytime zombie that I'd been working on my shields all day. There was nothing getting through those suckers.
"Wow. Good job, honey." Mom's voice sounded funny, and when I opened my eyes, the look on her face made my stomach bottom out.
"What's wrong?"
"That was all the power I could muster and… it didn't even faze you." She dropped my hands, wiping her palms on her yoga pants. "I mean, I can't actively Settle anymore, but I should at least be able to break through the shields of a second-stager."
"But you couldn't. Is that bad?"
"No, it's just…" Mom reached out and smoothed a hair behind my ear. "Honey, you always had advanced power for your age when you were younger. But now, I really think you've come into something extraordinary. You're manifesting more than most third-stage Settlers, and you're not even sixteen. That's just-"
"Awful? Horrible?" I asked, standing up and moving into the kitchen to grab a mint. I'd suddenly lost my will to fix my makeup for the fifth time since I'd gotten home from school.
"No," Mom said, ignoring my bad attitude, "but it's probably why you summoned during the day. Your shields weren't up to handling the amount of power you were emitting."
"Great," I muttered. If what Mom said was true, there was no way I'd ever be free again. SA wouldn't let somebody with super-Settler mojo back out of the biz. Heck, they wouldn't let somebody with a tiny spark of power out. There weren't enough of us around to let anyone who was manifesting off the hook.
"It's a gift, one you should be proud of," Mom said, following me into the kitchen to check on whatever weird hippie thing she was cooking in the Crock-Pot. Thankfully, Josh and I were getting burgers on the way. "And one that could pay your way to the college of your choice."
"Bight," I said. But not even the thought of mad cash could lift my spirits.
Earlier in the afternoon-after I'd finally found the address for William the zombie's girlfriend and dropped the note containing his message in the mail-Mom had shown me this secret savings account from before my accident. When I was younger, she hadn't wanted me to think our gift was only about monetary gain, but apparently I'd been getting paid for Settling all those years ago. With interest the money wasn't bad, and now that I was a second-stager, I'd be getting paid even more.
Our organization was one of the oldest in the world and had invested its assets wisely. Apparently, back in the old days, cities used to pay their local SA a tidy sum for keeping the Undead off the streets. They shelled out enough dough that, even now, in times when people had forgotten zombies were real, there was plenty of cash to go around.
Every Settler was paid well for the work they did, from the time they started manifesting as children to the time their ability to summon Unsettled faded when one of their kids took over. Afterward, they still got a stipend for using their remaining power to train their offspring, as Mom had trained me.
So the job was not totally without perks, even though Mom said SA didn't let kids touch their money until they graduated to third-stage Settling. Of course.
But still… I wasn't convinced the ups outweighed the downs.
Take Monica, for instance. She'd had to find another Settler to cover for her every time the pom squad was scheduled to dance at a night game. That couldn't have been easy. There were only so many Settlers our age in the surrounding areas. Which meant I was probably screwed as far as getting anyone to cover me during games-even if I wasn't blacklisted from the team because I had negatively impacted Monica's evil existence.
Argh! Why did life have to get so annoyingly complicated all of a sudden?
"Now, let's do a quick pop quiz," Mom said, reminding me that things could always get worse. "I give you a situation; you tell me what you would do."
"Mom, please. We studied all day yesterday. Can't we just-"
"And we'll study all night tonight and you won't go on your date unless-"
"Fine! Pop quiz me."
"Okay." She smiled and snagged a few pretzels from the bucket on the counter, obviously thrilled to be playing teacher again. Poor Mom, she had to get a life other than training me and counting seeds or whatever the hell she did for a living. "You've gotten all the information from your Unsettled. Now what do you do?"
"Mark the forehead to summon a halo, send it back to rest in peace, then head over to the graveyard to seal the grave with the standard ritual." Which, thankfully, Mom had agreed I could wait to learn until tomorrow night so my social life wouldn't be totally ruined.
"All right, suppose you wait too long and it starts to go Rogue."
"Do my best to lay hands on the Unsettled and send it back to its grave. If it doesn't respond, try to contain the Rogue and call SA. Not that I'll have to worry about that since I am such a responsible and dedicated Settler, of course."
"Of course." Mom sighed and crunched a pretzel, revealing that my good-little-Settler act wasn't fooling her for a second. She knew I was less than thrilled about my powers returning. "Describe the third type of out-of-grave phenomenon and tell me how they come to be."
"Talking with your mouth full is gross, Mom. Why don't we-"
"If you don't know, then you don't go," she said, still talking with her mouth full and even opening her mouth really wide so I could see all the gross smooshed pretzel inside. Very mature. And this was the woman I was supposed to respect as the Yoda to my Skywalker. She was way more Wookie.
"Reanimated Corpses. They're raised by black magic. The witch-"
"Not all witches practice black magic. The proper term is black-magic practitioner."
"Okay, the black-magic practitioner uses a totem-like a piece of clothing or a picture or a doll that represents the person they want the zombie to munch on-to focus their energy."
"Does the Reanimated Corpse need to see the totem?"
"No." I rolled my eyes, making it clear I was not a total idiot. "Zombies can't think. The totem is for the wi-black-magic practitioner. They need it for the spell and have to leave it on the grave after the corpse has risen."
"So how do they reanimate the corpse?"
"They spill blood on the grave and the totem and chant the summoning spell-"
"Which is?"
"Which is something I don't need to have memorized because I am never going to raise a corpse," I said, glancing at the clock on the stove. Jeez, Josh would be late this time, when I was dying for him to hurry up and get here and spare me any more quizzage.
"Fair enough," she said, crunching on another pretzel. "Though you'll have to have it memorized for the third-stage test in a few years."
"Okay, fine, but that's in a few years. So are we done?"
"Not yet. So why do Reanimated Corpses end up killing people other than the person they've been raised to kill?"
"They are drawn to blood," I said, my mouth going dry. "Any blood, so if they sense an open wound"-like the ones I'd had after I fell down the hill that night at the graveyard-"they… um…"
"They'll be deterred from their course and could potentially go into a feeding frenzy," she said, her voice gentle. I'd told her the memory of the attack had come back in all its grotesque scariness. Maybe now she'd feel sorry for me and give me a break with the quizzing.
"Now, let's say you encounter a Reanimated Corpse. What should you do?"
Or maybe not.
"Run like hell?" I asked, trying to ignore the way my stomach was turning inside out just thinking about running into one of the undead.
<
br /> "Megan, I know this is hard, but-"
"I can freeze it with one of the freezing spells to buy some time, then work the spell to send it back to the one who raised it. Once it gets a taste of the same blood that summoned it from the ground in the first place, it will go snuggle back in its grave and chill for all eternity."
"Good. So the freezing spells. What are they and why-" Thankfully, the doorbell rang just then, sparing me further torture and lifting my sagging spirits. After all, how could I stay in the depths of despair when the hottest guy in the entire school was waiting on my doorstep?
"I can go now and we'll finish this later?" I asked, giving Mom the puppy dog eyes.
"Fine. But home by ten, it's a school night," Mom called after me as I dashed to the door, apparently deciding to be cool and not force me to introduce her to Josh before we left. Thank God for small favors-it seemed like those were the only ones He was handing out lately.
***
"You ready?" Josh asked, tightening his grip on my hand as we headed to the second entrance to the maze. We were supposed to be getting ready to race Josh's friend Andy and his date, but all I could think about was that Josh was holding my hand.
Holding. My. Hand. Ohmygod, I could hardly control my psychotic pleasure.
Josh was looking hotter than ever in a pair of dark-washed jeans and a vintage ringer T-shirt that made his arms look even more muscled. He had a little gel in his shaggy, nearly black hair and it looked like the brows above his ice blue eyes had just been plucked, so it was obvious he'd put in the effort to get studly for me. He'd told me he let his big sister pluck his eyebrows for special occasions.
Yes, he did! He bared that horribly intimate detail'. He's totally into you and is going to ask you to homecoming tonight!
It was so nice when my inner voice got on a positive tangent for a change. "I'm ready. We're going to kick some maze ass," I said, with my best flirty smile.
"Hell, yeah, we are." He leaned down, giving me a sloppy kiss on the cheek. His breath was decidedly beerish and the dampness of the kiss not quite sexy, but who cared? He'd kissed me! Really kissed me! And Andy's girlfriend, London, was driving, so who cared if he'd had a few beers?
