Ghosts and Hunter Boys (Misfit Academy Book 2)

by A. Vers

  He turned away. “I’m sorry for that. More than I can ever say. I’m sorry for hiding. For omitting the things you desperately should have been told. There are no excuses. No good reasons. None, but the very real fear that I still feel. The fear that if you learned the truth, you would turn from me as I turned from my parents. And you did.”

  “If you had been honest,” I began, “maybe I would not have.”

  “Can you say that with certainty?”

  “Well,” I said. “No. Maybe not.”

  “You need to know, too, Giroux was picked up by the human police the night you ran,” he told me.

  “He was?”

  Ames nodded. “I have not heard anything else about him. I assume he is still in custody.”

  A small weight fell from my shoulders.

  With Giroux in prison, I had only to avoid my parents and Ryder’s hunter family.

  It was not much of a silver lining, but it was ample.

  “The police figured out he was draining the humans to bring back your nanny. It was more than a ritual, he was feeding her dead body the blood.” I shuddered and my own disgust was mirrored on his face. “Professor Tremaine said it was some sort of death magick. An old rite. One that I am rather curious about now.”

  I looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you think it is odd that Ryder believed his mother was dead? And yet, here we are. Trying to save a woman who admitted to you that she is his mother?”

  I shifted. “I don’t understand it either, but somehow she is alive.”

  “That’s the point,” Ames told me. “How is she alive?”

  My eyes met his. “Ames, I—”

  A flash of white billowed out from the roof and swooped straight toward us.

  Ames leapt to his feet in a blur, hands grasping to haul me with him. I swatted at him as the spirit hovered a few feet away.

  “What the hell is that?” Ames demanded.

  “A ghost,” I said as it swayed gently before us.

  It darted back toward the house, then stopped and glowed brighter, like a beacon. Beckoning me.

  I took a step.

  Ames grabbed my arm, halting my forward momentum. I peered up at him.

  “You can’t just follow it, Mor.”

  I shrugged from his grasp. “I can, and I will.”

  “It’s a ghost for crying out loud.”

  But the last time it appeared, it led Ryder and I into the attic. If we had stayed there, stayed inside, would Airgid or the Horn have ever known we were inside?

  And now, here it was again. It had not just appeared, but come down from the roof. From the attic.

  My eyes locked on the dark expanse.

  Ryder was up there. I didn’t know how I knew. But I did.

  I looked at Ames. “I think Ryder is stuck in the attic.”

  He frowned. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “I just do,” I snapped. “Now are you going to help me or not?”

  “I go wherever you go.” It was more than a declaration, it was the truth. I could hear it, feel it in the air.

  Ames, no matter how far I went, would just always follow.

  I didn’t know what to do about that, but I couldn’t worry about it now.

  My hand slid down his arm and I wound our fingers together. His heart thumped in my ears, but I ignored it as I hauled him with me toward the barn. “Okay,” I told him. “Let’s make some noise.”

  Chapter 29

  Ryder

  Airgid looked back toward the doorway, and his brows narrowed.

  “What?” Beth asked.

  “I thought I just heard a car door,” he said. My heart pummeled my ribs. He peered at her and frowned. “Don’t try anything, Beth. I’ll be right back.”

  She railed against her bonds. “I’m tied to the bed, Chris. Where can I go?”

  He started for the door and I waited until the quiet squeak of the stairs reached my ears before I rose to my feet. Beth sat up and started working on untying the knots around her ankles.

  “I know you heard all of that,” she said. “And I know you have questions.”

  “Understatement,” I said.

  She swung her legs off the bed and stood. “I will answer as many as I can, but we need to go.”

  “Did the Read’s really kill you?”

  Her eyes met mine. “Ryder, we need to go.”

  I wanted to scream at her to answer me, but I couldn’t. She was right. We needed to leave.

  We made our way through the room and to the stairwell. I started down first, fingers tight around the knife still in my grasp. Beth’s hand was solid on my shoulder, her breathing soft. I wanted to tell her to move back, but something was uncoiling inside me at the same time my adrenaline was speeding up.

  We broke through the doorway and I scanned behind the door before we advanced along the wall, back the way I came. I didn’t bother heading down the hall. It was too far. I turned us to the front door instead.

  My fingers gripped the dead bolt latch and I turned it as Beth watched our backs. It clicked softly in the dimness and my ears strained for any return of sound. Of approaching footsteps. None sounded.

  Easing the old door open, we slipped out into the dark of the front porch and made our way to the bushes that obscured the eastern side of the house. Once inside their leafy cover, I could breathe easier.

  I led Beth back to the trio of evergreens where I had left Morgan and Ames, but the space was empty.

  A distant shout of anger ripped from out of the house.

  Shit.

  “He knows I left,” Beth told me.

  I started jogging through the undergrowth and she stayed tight on my heels. “Morgan?” I hissed. “Ames?”

  A dark blur zoomed into our path, drawing Beth and I up short.

  Ames gave me a brief nod. “Morgan is waiting.”

  We ran after him as he hightailed it through the trees around the rear of the barn. Morgan stood beside the open doors of Airgid’s SUV, her lilac eyes bright.

  I slowed to a stop and almost wanted to turn back around.

  Could her parents really be the reason Beth—

  I shut the train of thought down quickly. “Get in,” I told them, moving to the driver’s side door. They clamored inside and the doors slammed. Along with the back door of the house.

  Airgid hit the gravel and his blue eyes were almost insanely bright in the dark. My fingers hovered over the keys in the ignition. “Don’t do it, boy,” he called. “I can give you answers. Answers Beth would rather you never hear.”

  Beth remained silent in the passenger seat, her hand on the dash. “We need to go, Ryder. He will have already called the others. There are cells all over Salem.”

  I didn’t look at her.

  Airgid took another step, his hands raised in placation. “I know what’s going on in your head, son. But with the three of us together, we can be a family. A real family of hunters. Not a bunch of crackpots like your dad and Josephine. I can show you how to really hunt. How to survive.”

  “By killing Morgan,” I called out the window.

  He stiffened and Ames let out a low growl in the backseat. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Beth shrink back, too.

  “Ryder—”

  “Shut up, Ames,” I snapped, but kept my attention on the hunter visible out the front glass. “I heard it all, Airgid. And I have all the answers I need.”

  His lips tightened and he started toward us. “You have half of the story, boy. A piece. You can’t see the bigger picture. Now, listen—” A white cloud materialized in front of him.

  The spirit.

  He stopped walking and swatted frantically as it dove for his head.

  Unwilling to give up an opportunity to escape, I cranked the SUV, put it into drive, and sped past him. “Listen to that,” I snarled as he faded in the rearview.

  Beth watched me from the passenger seat. “Ryder—”

  “Don’t,” I snapp
ed. “I meant what I said. I have all the answers I need.”

  Her sigh was soft. “No. You don’t.” She glanced out the window. “Take this next left.”

  My hands tightened over the steering wheel.

  “Left, Ryder.”

  I stayed straight.

  “I am trying to help you,” she said, reaching like she planned on moving the wheel herself.

  I jerked the wheel left and we fishtailed as we bumped off the pavement onto an older gravel road.

  The vampires in the backseat were silent.

  Beth glowered. “I get that you’re pissed—”

  I slammed on the brakes and we stopped in the middle of the road. She had to catch herself on the dash and Ames growled again from the backseat. But I could only glare back at the woman beside me as I put the car into park.

  “Fine. You want to talk,” I said. “Let’s talk. The four of us.” I gestured to the backseat. “Morgan Read, I would like you to meet my dead but not dead mother, Annabeth Hanlon.”

  Beth closed her eyes and sagged into her seat. “Read.” The one word was barely audible. “Damn.”

  “It’s nice to meet—”

  I held my hand up, silencing Morgan. “How are you alive?” I asked Beth.

  She opened her eyes and met mine levelly. “Do you really want to do this with her in the car?”

  “How?” I ground out.

  “Your uncle.”

  My world teetered a little more. “What?”

  “Your uncle is a powerful druid.” The quiet in the backseat grew profound. “He worked for the Horn for years. Was inducted into the fold when he married my half-sister, and your aunt, Nancy.”

  Morgan gasped. “Nancy?”

  I spared a glance back at her and her porcelain skin was snow white.

  “Yes,” Beth said. “Christopher and Maggie Airgid adopted me and my sister, Josephine, when I was three and she was six. They were the only family we knew. The only ones we had.”

  “I grew up as a hunter,” she continued. “It was the family business.”

  “Some business,” Ames said coldly.

  She flushed a bit. “It was what we knew,” she told him. “Chris was part of the Horn, even then. When I met Ryder’s father, I told him I wanted out. That I wanted to start a family and raise my children normally. They would go to school. And I would take them to sports games and do all the things a normal family is supposed to do.”

  Her head turned and she glanced at Morgan. “And for years, we were happy. Then I got a call from Chris. He was investigating a colony of vampires that he suspected of draining the blood from local runaways. The homeless. People that society wouldn’t miss.”

  Morgan blinked. “My … colony?”

  Beth nodded, but the motion was grim. “Ryder was seven at the time, and I begged Chris to leave it to the locals. To contact the government. But he couldn’t. He sent Nancy in undercover. And for a long time, it looked like we had the wrong colony. Then they slipped.”

  Morgan’s breathing quickened, and Ames raised his hands, as though to hold her. But he stopped.

  “The first victim was a young male from the streets. They drained him and hid the body. By the time Nancy got wind of it, it was too late to get the proof we needed for a sanctioned extermination. And so it continued.”

  She scrubbed her face. “Even when the Reads should have been lethargic from the draining, from over ingesting the blood, the bodies just kept disappearing. And without a body to substantiate our claims. We couldn’t move. Couldn’t take them out.”

  Morgan looked at Ames and he winced.

  “My family worked for the Reads,” he said into the quiet. “For years, my father exchanged colony titles and power for helping to hide those bodies.”

  Morgan’s arms wound around her waist. She huddled into the door, and I stared between them as his words sunk in.

  No wonder she had been so pissed. He helped hide what her parents were doing. Helped hide their crimes. Even from her.

  Beth stared. “Would you testify to that?”

  Ames shifted. “It would mean prison. For myself. For my family.”

  “Maybe. But they will not stop unless someone stops them,” Beth said. “And with your testimony, they would be more lenient on your sentence. Maybe even agree to a plea deal.”

  He glanced sidelong at Morgan. “I …”

  “Look, I’m all for stopping some bad vamps,” I muttered. “But I don’t understand how you’re alive.”

  “When the Reads found out we were looking into them, they came for me. They couldn’t reach Chris because of the Horn, and Josephine already had her own band of hunters. I was the only one left unprotected.” She sighed. “They attacked at night when your father was at work. I tried to fend them off. To keep them from you.” Her eyes found mine. “But there were too many.”

  “Rex had known for a while that I was in their sights. Back then, he was still practicing on the grayer side of things. And we set up some fail safes. Magick ones.” She pressed down her sleeve and a band of black ink marred her wrist. But it was faded, like a scar. “If I was close to death, the magick would awaken and keep me alive, in a kind of stasis until they could figure something else out. But to everyone on the outside, I would appear dead. It would get the Reads away, and it also alerted Chris that I was injured.”

  “He came the day after the attack and demanded my body from your father. Said I deserved a hunter’s burial.” She snorted. “Paul always hated that I left the life. It was one of the reasons he fell in love with me. So when Chris asked to give me a proper send off, I think Paul believed it was right.”

  “But you weren’t dead?” I asked.

  “No. I was hovering between the two,” she admitted. “I couldn’t feel anything. But I could sense some of what was going on around me. I don’t remember much from then, but I remembered you. Your father. It helped to keep me tethered while Rex and Chris worked with one of the Horn’s surgeons. They fixed most of the damage and I survived. But by then, the world—you and your dad, the Reads … Everyone believed I was dead. And I couldn’t come back to you because I would be risking your life every day I was around.”

  “But shouldn’t that have been our choice to make? As a family?” I demanded.

  Her eyes glistened. “I knew what your answer would be. What Paul’s would be. And I chose not to risk either of you.”

  “You left us. And Dad went nuts. He hooked up with Josephine right after that and we started hunting. Did you know that part?”

  “Yes.” Her admission was a pained whisper. “I kept tabs on you both as much as I dared. And I knew that with Josephine’s group, you two would be okay.”

  I sat back.

  There were no words. There was nothing but the anger brimming inside me.

  She left us. She even admitted to it.

  A small part of me got her logic, but life had been hell for twelve years. Every day I missed her. Grieved for her.

  And now … She was in front of me, but I couldn’t reconcile the hunter with the mother I had known.

  “I know you’re angry,” she said. “And I understand why. But the biggest issue now is Chris. He will keep coming for me. And for you and Morgan.”

  “Me?” Morgan exclaimed.

  “You are the Read heiress. Your family killed Nancy, and they almost killed me.”

  “But I never hurt any of you.” Her head whipped back and forth between us. “I would never— No. I could not.”

  Beth exhaled. “And though I believe you, Chris and the others won’t. Our only hope lies in putting the Reads in a supernatural lockup. By bringing justice to the colony house the legal way.” She turned to Ames. “I have a friend in the capital. He works on a lot of supernatural cases. Would you at least be willing to speak to him?”

  Ames stared at her, then glanced at Morgan’s pained expression. At my angry façade. He swallowed. “I will speak to them.”

  She smiled softly. “I know it’s a l
ot to ask of anyone. But the Reads have taken a lot of lives, and this is the only way to stop more bloodshed once and for all.”

  Chapter 30

  Morgan

  I raised my eyes and met Ryder’s as Beth’s words fell into the car. “Can I speak to you?”

  He blinked. “Now?”

  “Please?”

  Ryder opened his door. “Ames, keep an ear out for followers,” he said.

  Ames’ expression turned wry as he slouched in his seat. “I would be happy to act like the family golden retriever,” he murmured.

  Ryder and I ignored him as we got out of the car and walked to the edge of the road.

  A large field spanned off to one side, the breeze ruffling the weed stalks. Trees blocked us from the direction we had come in. I hoped it was enough to keep Airgid from finding us.

  Ryder watched me as we stopped, his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know what to say,” he told me.

  “Me either,” I said.

  Of all the things that had happened so far, learning that my parents tried to have him and his mother killed … That they were responsible for more pain that I had thought … For his pain …

  My eyes burned and my throat tightened.

  Sighing, Ryder hauled me to him, fitting me to his broad chest as his heat permeated into the icy core of my being. In the matter of weeks, everything had changed.

  “This is all so fucked up,” he told me. “First Giroux and my dad, and now your parents tried to off my mom. Who, I have not forgiven for running, if you can’t tell.”

  My lips quirked as I held him tighter. “I surmised as much.”

  He leaned back and fixed his gaze on my face. “You okay?”

  “No,” I admitted, ducking my head to hide the burn of tears. “I knew, when Giroux attacked, that my parents were not honest. That they were doing awful things. But their actions caused you pain. And that … I can’t tolerate that.”

  He smoothed his knuckle over my cheek. “I won’t say it didn’t suck,” he told me. “But I met you.” I frowned at him and he chuckled. “Okay, that was pretty cheesy.”

  “Ryder, I’m being serious. My parents have done horrible things to so many people. How can I live with that? How can you stand to be around me?”