“Skylar?”
I found who was speaking. Logan had perched himself like a gothic pigeon at the edge of the teacher’s desk slash converted altar. His spiked hair glistened with gel. His red eyes stared unnervingly into me as he dug into a bag of pork rinds. “You came. I knew you’d be a good fit with us.”
“What were you doing in the dark?” I asked stupidly, suddenly aware I was very much the only person here who’d been alive in probably the last century. The wraith girl tittered. “We’re undead, silly. We can see in the dark.”
“But having the candles helps us…what were we doing?” the Vamp boy said.
“Aligning our chakras,” the ghoul rasped.
“I thought we were communing with the ghost of Atilla the Hun.”
“That’s not until the next blood moon,” Logan said. Crunch went the pork rinds.
A cold wind whispered across the back of my neck. “Is Logan speaking the truth? Have you come to join our dark order?”
I jumped as a necromancer materialized beside me. She was tall and skinny as a light post, with striking features and hair so straight and sheeny it was criminal. Unlike Remi, the necromancer who was in some of my classes and terrified of dead things, this girl seemed to have embraced what she was like a champ. Blood-red lines of paint (I really hoped) were streaked down her face. Her ears were pierced with what looked like small animal bones. She licked her lips as she drew closer to me. “Welcome, seeker of the darkness. I’m Claramane, club president—second year in a row, actually. It would be an honor to have the daughter of the great Aspen Rivest join.”
I ignored her comment about my mom as I took a small step back. “That’s, uh, great. Really great. I’m here because you told me—well, actually Logan told me—that I had…something inside me. A darkness inside me. I wanted to know what you—he—was talking about.”
“I told you that?” Logan said. He rocked back and forth on his heels. “Oh, yeah. I guess I said that. At the Smoking Lamp, right? Sorry, I haven’t slept much since then.”
“You never sleep,” the ghoul said.
Logan merely crunched on another handful of pork rinds.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Claramane said in a dreamy voice. “A traveler from the world of the light come to seek answers from the dark. Tell me, Skylar Rivest, will you join our cause if I give you answers?”
“Uh, your cause?”
Claramane swept her hand out dramatically. “We are outsiders amongst outsiders, those undead and practitioners of the undead who seek to better their magic arts. We commune with the deceased, summon the unholy, do yoga every other Thursday…”
I was pretty sure they could only do one of those things successfully. “If you help me figure this out, I’ll definitely not not consider joining.”
“Speak then, and we shall listen.”
The other club members scooted closer. Logan slightly turned himself my direction. I felt sudden apprehension with so many eyes on me, but I cleared my throat and collected my thoughts.
“Oh, uh…okay. So…Logan told me I had some kind of darkness. What did you mean?”
“Just that. I sensed darkness within you.”
“Like, are we talking dark magic or what?”
I waited while Logan thought about that. “More like…a dark life force.”
My spirits sank, even as Claramane clapped her hands excitedly.
“Excellent! We’re very perceptive at sensing life forces.”
“I thought it might have been a curse,” I said slowly. “So you mean a dark life force…like a curse?”
Logan cocked his head. “No, a dark life force that’s not like a curse.”
A cold feeling settled over my skin. “So what is it then? A possession? An evil spirit?”
The room went silent, like I’d said something none of them had wanted to utter aloud. The two on the floor glanced at one another. The ghoul in the corner was staring at me, eyes glittering.
“If you will allow me, I could look for you?” Claramane offered. “I have some minor powers of clairvoyance. I might be able to pick up something.”
I stared at her. Even Hilda the witch hadn’t been able to glean anything from me, and now a newbie wanted to try? This entire thing was starting to feel like a really bad idea.
But I didn’t have much of a choice. Not if I wanted to know what I was dealing with.
I eventually nodded and sat on the edge of the nearest desk. Claramane began to hum off-key. She placed her ice-cold fingers on either side of my skull.
“Watch the nails, please,” I said.
“Hush! I need absolute silence while I connect with the Beyond.”
I thought that was overdoing it just a bit, but a moment later I could feel her magic skimming over me, prodding at my own magic to test it. Hers latched onto mine and wound its way under my skin and into my veins where it settled, prodding at the corners of my insides, not quite intrusive, but just at the edge of being uncomfortable.
“I see darkness…” Claramane said in a dramatic voice. “Deep, black pitch!”
Well, her magic was inside my chest cavity, so yeah. But I’d at least give her points for trying.
“There is much turmoil within you, Skylar Rivest,” Claramane intoned. “Unresolved strife! There is—”
Claramane stiffened. I opened my eyes to find hers staring straight ahead at nothing, the whites slowly filling with black. Logan and the others leaned forward.
“Clara?” the wraith said, her voice tinged with worry. “Are you all right?”
“Angry.” Claramane’s voice was soft. “He’s angry.”
“He?” I said, my voice coming out strained, knowing exactly who she was talking about. “What is he? Who is he?”
“He’s been there a long while.” Claramane began going into convulsions, her entire body shaking. I winced as one of her nails nicked the side of my face. Blood flowed down my cheek.
“He’s so angry!” she screeched. The black had nearly covered her eyes. I tried to pull away, but her nails dug into my skin, holding me in place.
“Clara, stop!” the ghoul yelled. Darkness began consuming the glowing magic on Claramane’s hands just like her eyes, swallowing her light as it oozed up her arms. As it oozed from me.
Logan leapt off the desk and tried to pull Claramane away but still she held tight. The darkness had nearly reached Clara’s neck. It was reaching toward her throat.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Stop it! Whatever you’re doing, stop it!”
It didn’t stop. In desperation, I threw my mind to the dark place inside me, as though I were sticking my head down a bottomless well, and yelled, “Enough!”
Claramane went still.
“No one intrudes in my domain,” the Dark Prince spoke in my head. “No one is allowed but you.”
Claramane’s fingernails finally detached from my face, coming away sticky with my blood. I opened my eyes to find her collapsing backwards, Logan and the other Vamp boy catching her just before she hit the floor.
“Claramane!” I scrambled off the desk to kneel beside her. “I’m so, so sorry, I didn’t know that…that’s never happened—well, of course that’s never happened, but I never thought it would happen. Are you all right?”
The others moved Claramane, weak and slightly stumbling, into the nearest chair. Logan rustled around in the desk and pulled out a soda.
“Sugar always helps.”
And indeed, as Claramane sipped, some color came back into her pale cheeks. Her eyes fluttered open. They locked on me.
“You are cursed,” she whispered.
I forced myself to take a calming breath. “Cursed? I thought you said it wasn’t a curse. Isn’t it a…what if it’s a…?”
“He’s been with you for a long time,” Claramane went on, oblivious to my babbling.
How long was a long time? I’d only noticed the Dark Prince these past few weeks. That couldn’t be that long. Unless she meant even before that. But how…?
“What does he—it—want?” I managed.
Claramane sat up and gently waved the others away. “Thank you, my fellow members. Skylar…”
She clasped my hands and I resisted pulling away from her cold touch, unsure if whatever she’d triggered inside me would start up again. “Know this, sister of darkness, we are all outcasts here. Your secret stays among only us. That is the vow of the Midnight Club.”
“The vow of the Midnight Club,” the others intoned.
“Thanks,” I said, more grateful than I could put into words. “Sorry, but you were saying something about this…him, inside me?”
“He’s powerful, that much I know. He’s using you as a host.”
“But how did he—it—get there?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is he—it—doing?” I couldn’t stop calling the Dark Prince an ‘it’. The more I could see him as something inhuman, as something not part of me, the easier it’d be for me to try to separate myself from him.
Claramane cocked her head. “I don’t know that either. I didn’t exactly get a lot of time before he attacked me.”
I gently pulled my hands away, scrunching them into fists, then splaying my fingers again, trying to ease the tension out of my entire body. “Right. Sorry. I—how does something like this just happen?”
“Maybe it started as a curse. Was it a catalyzed?” the wraith said.
Catalyzed…catalyzed…I’d heard that term before. “Isn’t that a curse I had to accept?” I said.
Claramane nodded. “Some curses can only function to their full potential if the host willingly accepts its power.”
W-what are you doing?
Giving you my power.
Dragon’s spit, I’d asked for it, hadn’t I? Had that been enough to set this whole thing off? The curse might have been there before, but could I have stopped it?
“I don’t remember asking for it,” I lied. “So I should be safe, right?”
“Are any of us truly safe?” Logan said morosely. He’d regained his perch on the edge of the desk. “Death comes to all eventually, even us immortals. It is the sweet release, the great equalizer, the—”
“Stuff it, Poe,” the ghoul growled.
A knot tightened in my gut. I’d confirmed once and for all that this Dark Prince, this thing, really was inside me, but I wasn’t any closer to the why, or how, or what. And I was pretty sure only the Prince had those answers. The only problem was, I wasn’t confident enough to visit him again right now.
“As long as you don’t give in to it, you’ll be as safe as you can be,” Claramane said. “And you can’t give into him. Because, Skylar…”
She placed a hand on either of my shoulders. “I did learn one thing: I learned what he wanted.”
I licked my dry lips. “And what’s that?”
“You. He wants you.”
Chapter Sixteen
I wanted to scream.
“You’re too slow,” Asher said. He did a series of complicated slashes with his sword that my tired brain had trouble following. “You stayed up late, didn’t you? I know it wasn’t studying. Not after that test score in Paranormal Politics. I think the entire class could hear Master Briggs lamenting about it.”
I lunged at him, too tired to come up with a response. I was sluggish, I knew. The week following my little visit to the Midnight Club hadn’t gifted me with much sleep thanks to my constant worry and wandering mind.
But of course Asher didn’t know that.
For him, it was just another week of giving me cool stares and awkwardly alternating in our dorm room’s kitchen, trying our best to avoid one another except when absolutely necessary.
And yet…
I could have been wrong, but it almost seemed like his attitude toward me had started to thaw. Almost like he saw me weak and felt sorry for me.
I hated that even more.
I brought Valkyrie up and tried another eighth sequence set. My grip slipped on the third set and I ended up swinging wildly past him, piercing the air two feet to his right.
“We’re practicing fighting humans, not gargoyles, Rivest!” Coach Newman said. “Try not to pierce the wings!”
“That was pathetic, even for you,” Asher said.
I couldn’t help smiling.
“You think this is funny?” he said, brow furrowing. “You think training for life and death situations is something to laugh at?”
“No. I’m just glad you’re yelling at me.” I drew back my sword and tried to hit him again. “You’ve spoken more to me in the last ten minutes than the last two weeks.”
That threw him off. I used his brief surprise to sweep his legs. He went down hard, and I felt even better.
“You know why we haven’t talked,” he said, wincing a little as he stood.
I backed up, keeping my sword arm loose. The darkness inside nudged at me, begging to help cause more violence. But as I’d been doing, I forced it down.
“Actually, I don’t,” I said. “Since you won’t, you know, talk to me about it.”
Asher swung right as I brought up my arms to block. Our swords clashed, our faces drawing close. “But I get it,” I said. “Cool, confident Asher. Can’t be held back by me. Can’t let anybody know how scared he actually was. That’d ruin your image, wouldn’t it?”
“As opposed to not being scared of anything?” he gritted out.
Oh, he was mad.
Good.
“I was scared,” I said, relieved at being able to say that without the earlier guilt of admitting it.
“You have a funny way of showing it.”
We broke apart, spinning away before colliding once more.
“What happened to us before?” I said. “When we were out there? You and I…we had something going. We were in danger, but we were in danger together, almost like a team. I thought that’s what we were.”
“I thought so too.”
“I told you I didn’t run off!”
“And I told you it’s not just that!”
“You think I left you, is that it? You think I wouldn’t have your back? You know me, Asher! You know I wouldn’t do that.”
Asher tilted his sword so that sparks danced across the floor. “I thought I did,” he said, so soft I thought I’d misheard. For a moment I was struck dumb.
“Then if it’s not just about me running off, what is it?”
But Asher stayed silent.
Another wave of anger, propelled by the darkness, rushed through me, and this time I didn’t stop all of it. I shoved Asher off me so hard he went flying back, colliding with the rack of training weapons. I seethed, breath heaving as I pointed Valkyrie down at his glaring face.
“I don’t need your judgement or your pity.”
Asher smirked. He wiped away blood from the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, you don’t need much of anything, or anyone, do you?”
The darkness hit me again, and I stumbled back, desperately trying to rein in my anger. I saw Asher start to get up, watched his hand hesitantly reaching toward me, before I lurched away, shoving the anger down hard enough to stop it.
Enough. I couldn’t be pushed on both sides like this forever. Any longer and I’d break.
I caught one last look of Asher’s face. There was annoyance there, but a flicker of regret, too. For me? For what had happened?
Before I could think too much about it, I grabbed my backpack and hurried out of combat class. I had another infuriating boy to deal with.
“What is your problem?” I practically yelled as soon as I was alone.
Good thing I was alone, too. Anyone looking far enough up would have only seen a crazy girl yelling at her chest. “Are you trying to make my life as impossible as possible?”
The darkness stirred but didn’t answer. I stepped away from the window I’d climbed through and shimmied farther out onto the Academy’s battlement, being sure to keep my feet as far away from the edge as possible. You could see the magical
additions to the Academy when you were standing on them. I was grateful for that. I’m not scared of heights, but even I’d be a little freaked about sitting on nothingness a hundred feet above the ground.
When I was far enough out, I tossed my backpack down and crouched beside the statue of a sky drake leaning menacingly over the edge.
“Enough of this. You’ve been way too annoying lately.”
I closed my eyes. I was intimately aware of my heart thudding, my pulse racing, my mind scattered in a hundred directions. I reeled it in as much as I could and focused on the task ahead. I’d tried to avoid doing this the entire past week, but I couldn’t anymore.
I concentrated as hard as I could inward, and a moment later slipped under.
“You’re very dramatic, you know that?”
The Dark Prince stood in almost the exact same spot he had before: in front of the fireplace of the weirdly furnished room that was actually…my soul? My heart? My gall bladder? I had no clue.
The Dark Prince pushed himself off the mantel and sauntered toward me, grinning in a way that made my skin tingle. I took a step back, finger up.
“You kiss me again and I’ll kiss you right back. With my fist.”
He smiled wider. “Charming.”
Quick as a flash, he took my hand and brushed his lips over the back of it, returning to the front of the fire before I could react. I vaulted the couch and swung at him, but he dodged away easily as a snake through grass, lips quirked, taunting. I tried a couple more times, but gave up when I saw he was enjoying it. And I hadn’t come here to play tag.
“You’ve been pissing me off lately,” I said through gritted teeth. “I can feel you there almost all the time. I can’t fight without you trying to come out. And I can’t concentrate with you…you…”
Called by Darkness Page 17
