Neck-Romancer: A Neck-Romancer Novel
Page 1
Contents
Other books by Elizabeth Dunlap
About the Author
1. Haunted at the store
2. The Incantation Express
3. Uni-mule
4. Back to prep-ville
5. Demonic warning
6. Magicae Equidem
7. Cold steel and smoke
8. Chasing rabbits
9. The Lycan’s mate
10. My throne awaits
11. Crashing the party
12. Read on?
Other books by Elizabeth Dunlap
Born Vampire Series: Ya Edition (Completed)
Knight of the Hunted
Child of the Outcast
War of the Chosen
Bite of the Fallen
Rise of the Monsters
Time of the Ancients
* * *
Born Vampire Series: NSFW Edition (Completed)
Knight of the Hunted
Child of the Outcast
War of the Chosen
Bite of the Fallen
Rise of the Monsters
Time of the Ancients
* * *
Born Vampire Short Stories
Tales of the Favored: Arthur’s Tale
Affairs of the Immortal: The Knight and Arthur Affair
Affairs of the Immortal: The Sinful Affair
Affairs of the Immortal: The Valentine’s Day Affair
* * *
A Grumpy Fairy Tale Series
The Grumpy Fairy
The Dragon Park
* * *
Ecrivain Academy Series
Ecrivain
* * *
Neck-Romancer Series
Neck-Romancer
* * *
Highborn Asylum Series
Freak: A Highborn Asylum Prequel
* * *
Stand-Alones
LAP Dogs
About the Author
Photo by Elizabeth Dunlap
* * *
Elizabeth Dunlap is the author of several fantasy books, including the Born Vampire series. She’s never wanted to be anything else in her life, except maybe a vampire. She lives in Texas with her boyfriend, their daughter, and a very sleepy chihuahua named Deyna.
* * *
You can find her online at
Elizabethdunlap.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
NECK-ROMANCER
Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth Dunlap
* * *
All rights reserved.
Cover Art by Pixie Covers; Edited by Pixie Covers
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.
* * *
First Printing: Oct, 2019
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition: Oct, 2019
Created with Vellum
Dedicated to Adriann
Yeet <3
1
Haunted at the store
Goddess, save me from my miserable existence.
“Morning, Jaz.”
I peeked one eye open from my spot on the wooden living room floor to see Bosley, aka. Dad #2 walking past me in his grey silk dressing gown. Dad #3, Aldrich appeared behind him, followed by my mom, all three in their matching dressing gowns. My mom’s had spells woven into the fabric of hers in silken white thread against the dark blue. Aldrich’s was just a striped brown, simple, like him.
Where’s dad #1, you might ask? He’s six feet under, like my social life.
As a non-member of the only magical school worth its salt, Highborn Academy, no one of a magical standing was interested in being my friend, not even post high school when everyone was supposed to stop caring about that bullshit. That meant I was rolling into my 20’s and still living at my mom’s house with her husbands, while everyone else was studying advanced magic that I would never be privileged enough to learn.
“What are you asking the Goddess for today?” Bosley asked me as he opened a package of bread slices and magically threw several into the toaster.
I shut my eyes again and resumed my meditative pose, ignoring one of my pink tipped curls falling into my face. “Only what I ask her for every day: that your dressing robe will never come undone again while I’m eating.”
“Funny,” Mom snarked back with a semi-smile. “Finish your prayers and come help with breakfast.” She lit a green candle and set it on the kitchen table for prosperity. It was always helpful to inhale prosperity while you’re eating, she often said. I couldn’t say one way or the other if candle fumes really helped me succeed at, oh, nothing, because that’s what I’d done with my life so far.
Goddess, help me stop being such a loser.
Aldrich spoke a few incantations, and I heard the dishes clink around the kitchen. If I opened my eyes, I’d see him waving his hands around to make the stove cook the eggs and sausage, and I’d feel a burning envy so extreme it would make me want to break everything in the house. Instead, I wisely kept my eyes shut and focused on the Goddess.
Goddess… why did you do this to me?
“Jaz, stop giving the Goddess a pity party and set the table.” My annoyed eye popped open again to glare at Mom and see her giving me a look full of ‘I’m about to lose it all over your ass.’
“You promised to stop reading my mind when I was fifteen,” I pointed out as Bosley’s toast popped up out of the toaster. The memory of that year sunk inside my head until that was all I could see. The year that my life took a drastic turn, and I was still spinning five years later.
“Yeah, well, whining tends to come through loud and clear.”
Glaring at her, I got up from the floor and walked over to the counter where Aldrich had gathered all the dishes for me to set on the table. Before I could do so, Bosley produced an empty jar of jam from the fridge with a frown.
“Jaz, hun, can you run to the store and get some grape jam?” he asked me over his shoulder. “I’ll set the table for you.”
I bit into my lower lip and studied the blue china plates in front of me. Blue, the color of calming water. I felt anything but calm at the prospect of going to the store. Mom produced several gold Scales from her purse and handed them to me, sealing my fate in stone. I went to the front door, slid my boots on, and walked outside into the crisp sunshine.
The neighborhood was bustling awake around me, with several of my neighbors mowing their lawns using enchanted lawnmowers, and others plucking letters from their portal mailboxes. I trailed down the sidewalk as a green explosion came from a house down the street, igniting the roof in green fire. Mrs. Brooks was always making weird potions. Her house caught fire several times a week as a result, and the fact that one of my neighbors sent out a fire-killing spell without even batting an eye said how used to it we all were.
At the end of the block sat the ‘Curse N’ Save,’ the magical grocery store shaped like a giant cauldron. No, I wasn’t joking. Several customers walked out to their cars/brooms/mounts holding bundles of ingredients they needed for a spell or whatnot, and one juggled about twenty straw brooms in her thin arms that she continued dropping despite her efforts. I approached her, and she looked up after dropping about half of her bounty onto the parking lot.
“Oh, hey, Jaz. How’s your mom? She still up for Wicked Wednesdays?” Nodding, I prodded
into the witch’s bag and produced a long ribbon she’d gotten for tying around her spell candles. We gathered the brooms, and I tied them together with the ribbon before the witch straightened and appraised me with a pleasant look. “Thank you, love. Would’ve never thought of that! We witches sometimes overlook the simple solutions because they don’t involve a spell. That’s why it’s so good to have people like you around.” She pat my shoulder with a friendly smile, but I was too busy resisting the urge to smack her in the face with the brooms.
People like you. Judgy witch. It’s not like I planned on being a magical loser. How about we rub it in as much as possible?
Somehow, I produced a smile for her and left her in the parking lot, throwing my middle finger over my shoulder when I was sure she couldn’t see me. Inside the store, cheerful music blared through the wall speakers, a song by the witchy popstar, Aurora.
♪♪Baby, cast a spell. I swear I won’t tell.♪♪
I rolled my eyes and walked past several witches wearing tall witch hats that were contemplating whether to use red or pink candles for a particular spell. That envy was back inside me, and I stopped at the herb aisle to look back at them. They were so happy, so enthralled. They didn’t know what it felt like to have your future ripped away like a strip of hair wax.
“Jazzzzz,” a creepy voice blew into my ear.
“Christ,” I swore as I turned to see my creepy ghost guardian standing there like a creep-o. The candle witches peered over at me but I waved to assure them I was fine. I absolutely wasn’t seeing ghosts, because the only people who see ghosts are crazy psychos that belong in a loony bin. “You are not here. You’re not real,” I scolded. The ghost humphed at me. He hardly spoke beyond my name so his silence wasn’t abnormal. It was even a comfort because I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on finding grape jam if he was yakking in my ear.
Squaring my shoulders, I walked around the ghost and down past the books, turned right, down a few more aisles, until I was at the honey and jam section. My nearly incorporeal companion had followed me and he was swinging the empty scabbard at his waist to annoy me. His youthful face suggested he’d died young, and judging by his attire, it had happened several hundred years ago, but it was impossible to know the time frame without asking him, and I definitely was never going to because talking to ghosts was, as I said, crazy.
I grabbed the closest jar of grape, as well as a few other flavors just in case Bosley wanted something different. While neither were my bio-dad, Bosley and Aldrich had been around my entire life, and I liked them enough where I was willing to spend some of my own Scales to make sure they had something sweet on their toast. I turned and the ghost was right in my face, smiling at me with his gaunt, chiseled features, and I squealed just loudly enough where the other customers turned to look at me in annoyance.
“Stop it,” I growled at him as softly as I could, looking around to make sure everyone had gone back to their shopping so they wouldn’t see me talking to thin air. “I will banish you, you’ve been warned!” He rolled his ancient eyes at me and crossed his arms over his ghostly blue tunic. He knew I couldn’t do jack shit. I had no abilities now. That’s what made all of this a million times worse.
I walked down the store aisles in the direction of the magical registers, veering straight to an open one that beeped to life and scanned my body for all the store objects I had on me, just in case I’d decided to shoplift, then it produced a list of my items on a holographic projection and gave my Scale total. I popped the Scales from Mom into the coin slot and dug out a few from my back jean pocket to supplement. The register beeped cheerfully and produced a receipt for me before telling me to have a magical day. As if.
I left with my jars of jam and walked down the parking lot, only to see in the reflection of a passing witch’s sunglasses that the ghost was trailing behind me.
Goddess, what the eff?
I turned and stomped my foot at him. “Why are you here?”
“Jaz Neck? Is that you?”
The sound of the voice made my spine crawl because I knew who was attached to it. Hilary, my ex-best friend was standing in the Curse N’ Save parking lot, wearing her latest magical fashion and looking at me like she was the one seeing a ghost.
“Hey, Hilary,” I addressed, making sure the ghost stayed where I could see him while I approached the witch. Her skirt was changing colors every few seconds like a string of Christmas lights.
“Oh my goddess, how are you? What are you up to these days? Did you get a job with the Ordinaries?” Meaning non-magical humans, ones who’d never had magic and never would, the exact opposite of me. Where was that broom lady? I needed to beat someone to death with one.
“No, Hilary,” I ground out, trying to keep a smile on my face. “I would never get a job with Ordinaries.”
A laugh burst from her lips that she quickly tried to suppress, as if it was ironic I’d say such a thing. “But Jaz, you didn’t specialize when everyone else did. Your childhood spark went out and now you have no magic. Where else are you supposed to go?”
What she wasn’t saying was that she believed as everyone else did that I didn’t belong in the magical world anymore, all because I’d failed to find my magical specialty during magical puberty. It was almost as bad as real puberty, because if you didn’t specialize, you were screwed.
“I could become a circus sideshow and wow the crowd with my card tricks like all the other non-specialized witches who juice themselves with potions just so they have enough magic to pull a card out of nowhere.” I wiggled my fingers at her and made a creepy face. “Pick a card, any card.”
Hilary wasn’t amused. “It’s a shame, really. I was hoping we’d attend Highborn together. But, you know, they don’t accept loser Ordinaries like you.”
My eyes narrowed and I dropped my hands as darkness consumed my entire body. “You’ve got five seconds to walk inside the Curse N’ Save before you feel my wrath, and I don’t need a magic spell to claw your eyes out.” She took off running, leaving me feeling as deflated as a popped balloon. My eyes traveled up to the ghost boy in front of me, and as cold as he was, having him near me was comforting. “I’m not an Ordinary,” I told him weakly.
“I know,” he whispered in a voice that was as broken as I felt.
2
The Incantation Express
I delivered the jam to Bosley, but my appetite was effectively ruined for food and family small talk. Leaving my three parents at the kitchen table, I went upstairs to my sanctum and flopped onto the blue blanket covering my bed. On the vaulted ceiling of my room was the astrological star layout from the night I was born, projected via an enchanted stone that Bosley gave me on my fifth birthday.
The one small comfort of being inside my house was the wards Mom maintained around the perimeter. It kept the annoying ghost out, but oddly, I was wishing for his company, even if it meant I was insane. Company was hard to come by now that I was a social pariah.
“You’re not a social pariah,” Mom’s muffled voice said from outside my bedroom door.
I rolled my eyes and dove head first into my pillows as she walked into my room. “I miss my mind wards. You were ridiculously less invasive with them up, and you could’ve easily pushed through them if you wanted to.”
“Mind reading is part of my specialty, Jaz, need I remind you. Not doing it would be like not using my eyes, or not touching things.” I answered with a long drawn-out groan that she interrupted with a slap on my butt. “You can’t keep moping in your room, Jaz. I know what happened wasn’t the ideal outcome, but we can still help you make a life no matter where you choose to live it.”
That popped my head up from the pillows and I studied her carefully. “You want… you want me to live with the Ordinaries?”
“Of course not. You’re not an Ordinary, you never will be. I’m just saying if you chose that route that I would support you.”
“No way in hell.”
She nodded and her large, golden ho
op earrings swished around her auburn hair. “Understood. But if you’re going to stay here, then you have to find something to do. There’s non-magical work, you just have to look for it. In the meantime, my mother wants you to come visit, and I’ve accepted on your behalf.”
“Are you huffing cauldron fumes, mom? I’d rather kiss an Ordinary than hang out with her.”
My comments were met with a heated glare that could ignite wet kindling. “You’re going, end of story. Pack a bag, you have a train ticket waiting on the kitchen table.”
“Noooooo,” I groaned loudly. “I don’t want to ride the Incantation Express. They enchant all the sweets to taste like ass.”
The glare deepened, making the room rise in temperature until I was sweating under my clothes. “End. Of. STORY.”
“Alright, god. Don’t set the house on fire. Effing elemental bullshit.”
The heat left like a sudden cold snap as Mom got up with a smile. “Good. Pack up and get going.”
Echoing her glare, I watched her leave and flipped her off for good measure. Stupid Mom making me go see my stupid grandma. Her specialization was Divination, meaning she was a psycho who was always saying weird, cryptic shit about my future. Bet you didn’t see my social ruin coming, otherwise you could’ve warned me first!
I stuffed some clothes and a few other things into my enchanted coffin backpack and took the stairs two at a time until I was down in the kitchen, swiping my train ticket off the table, and out the back door before anyone could stop me. As soon as I hit the border of our yard, my haunting partner was back, following behind me like a grey kite.