by F. T. Lukens
Raves for
The Broken Moon Series
F.T. Lukens
“FIVE STARS…Ghosts & Ashes continues the adventures of The Star Host, Ren, as he comes to grips with his power and searches for his place in the cosmos. This is a rollicking adventure that blends elements from westerns, sci-fi, YA, and romance into a cohesive page-flipping thrill ride.”
—Foreword Reviews on Ghosts & Ashes
“Fans of queer sci-fi adventure, this is the series for you. Start at The Star Host and plow right on through Ghosts and Ashes in one go. Told in Lukens’ no-nonsense prose, this story will draw you in and not let go.”
—Teen Vogue on Ghosts & Ashes
“Lukens writes a satisfying balance of action and romance in a science fiction setting that will feel familiar to fans of the genre.…Add this title to young adult sci-fi collections, and expect readers to eagerly anticipate the next book in the series.”
—School Library Journal on The Star Host
“I continued my science fiction kick with a YA novel I have been eyeing for quite some time. The Star Host by F.T. Lukens hooked me from the blurb. It still hasn’t let me go, and I finished reading it hours ago. I want more… like right, the heck now. I need more Asher and Ren in my life. You need more Asher and Ren in your lives.”
—Prism Book Alliance on The Star Host
“The short version is that this book is amazing, and I am hard-pressed to be more coherent than ASKLJFDAH and OMGFLAIL.”
—D.E Atwood, author, If We Shadows
Copyright © 2017 F.T. Lukens
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 13: 978-1-945053-24-5 (trade)
ISBN 13: 978-1-945053-38-2 (ebook)
Published by Duet, an imprint of Interlude Press
www.duetbooks.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and places are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Book Design and Cover Illustration by CB Messer
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Ezra, Zelda, and Remy
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
—Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
Bridger gripped the slick metal of the drainpipe and imagined the headline for the following day: Teenager Falls to His Death Attempting to Apply for a Job. It’s shocking, pathetic, and morbid—and plain sad—perfect for the people who still read newspapers.
The obligatory paragraph about his life that accompanied the headline would be laughably short, filled with such exciting details as his three-year stint as a bench warmer for the soccer team and the girl he took to his junior prom throwing up in the front seat of his mom’s car after eating suspect fish tacos from the local diner. Who the hell orders fish tacos from a diner? Better question—who takes their prom date to a diner for dinner? Answer—he’s currently scurrying up a drainpipe for a job.
Yes. Him. Bridger Whitt.
Hold on. Rewind. There is a reasonable explanation for this level of asshattery.
Mere minutes ago, Bridger led a respectable life.
Vomiting date aside, he did have friends, one of whom was a best friend. He had excellent grades and plenty of extracurricular activities. At his worst, he was a little mouthy, but he was seventeen. Sarcasm was to be expected.
Dangerous feats of climbing—not so much.
Bridger’s toes slid off the clamp which secured the pipe to the brick wall of the monstrous house. He gasped. His fingers tightened around the steel, and his heart pounded so hard he heard it in his ears. A few strands of his sandy-blond hair flopped into his eyes and stuck to the fogged lenses of his sunglasses, but he didn’t dare relinquish his hold to push them away, clinging to the pipe with a death grip.
After a quick scramble to secure his footing, he tried to assess when he had veered off the straight and easy path he’d been sprinting down and started to stumble blindly onto a windy and treacherous road complete with potholes and head-on traffic. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment.
Okay, that wasn’t true.
Bridger knew exactly when it happened: the day he received his acceptance letter to college with a tuition statement and realized that, even with loans and scholarships, he couldn’t afford it.
Okay, that wasn’t quite true either.
Maybe it was the summer day when his new neighbors moved in across the street and their son mowed the yard while shirtless. Bridger couldn’t help but stare, peeking through the blinds. No, that probably wasn’t it, either, though that had been a revelation, made embarrassing when Bridger was sure the aforementioned neighbors’ son caught him. It turned utterly mortifying when said son also showed up at school—in many of Bridger’s classes, no less.
Hilariously humiliating.
He could go the cliché route and say that he’d been inevitably headed toward drastic measures to be able to afford college since his dad had packed up and left, only to be heard from on birthdays and every other Christmas. But even his missing dad wouldn’t necessarily have led him to answer a vague Craigslist job ad.
No, he would have to accept that this was temporary insanity brought on because he needed a job and had no marketable skills—unless a potential employer deemed playing video games, knowing how to get out of gym class, having a knack for Jeopardy questions, and making a mean grilled cheese as serviceable skills.
Okay, that was also a lie. Bridger’s grilled cheeses were subpar. They always turned out soggy or burned. Gross. Bridger had problems with happy mediums.
Whatever it was, his carefully laid trajectory, which was supposed to transport him directly and swiftly from Midden, Michigan, bastion of Middle America, to the warm southern coast, had gone wonky.
Gulping, Bridger concentrated on looking up and not down. Down was bad. Down led to headlines in newspapers and the yearbook dedicated to him. A few feet farther and he’d be on the roof. He could do this. Maybe.
Sweat beaded on his forehead and his muscles trembled. Okay, he admitted it. This was not his best idea.
Earlier that morning, with one hand tucked into his jeans pocket and the other clutching a printout of an employment ad, Bridger had eyed the large house. The other buildings—squat and brick and ugly—paled in comparison to the three-story magnificent and weird conglomeration of modern and ancient architecture that towered over the rest of the neighborhood. It didn’t belong on the dirty little street in the middle of the city, but neither did he.
He was supposed to be at school. He was supposed to be bragging to his friends about his acceptance letter to the college of his dreams. He was supposed to be in English class listening to Mrs. Peck drone on about Hamlet. Instead, he’d stood on the sidewalk in a part of town
that wasn’t the safest as his fingertips left sweaty marks on the piece of paper in his hand. He dodged the sharp stares of other individuals circling the property like well-dressed sharks, obviously all there for the job. They wore ties and pantsuits. Bridger used the sleeve of his well-worn flannel shirt to wipe a drop of sweat from his brow.
He had studied obsessively the three lines which stated merely the job title of “Assistant,” the address, the small window of time to show up, and the instruction to enter through the blue door.
On first glance, the house had no blue door.
Bridger had checked the address on the mailbox against the numbers on the fluted columns, which held up an ornate pediment, and compared both with the piece of paper in his hand. They all matched.
Panic fluttered in his middle. He didn’t have time for this. Knowing his luck, this ad was a way for a serial killer to lure unsuspecting victims to their grisly death. Or it was a giant hoax, and someone was laughing their ass off while Bridger went viral.
Fuck. He was so going to get caught skipping class, and it would be all for nothing.
Bridger considered walking away, but he was in for a penny and might as well go for the pound. He stepped onto the overgrown lawn and picked his way down the little broken-stone path toward the front door. While moving through the weeds, he passed another potential employee, a middle-aged man in a nice suit with grass stains, who muttered a few disparaging words about the local job market, pranks, and trick doors.
The house had a wraparound porch, and the steps squeaked. The door was not blue, but rather an off-white color that might be purposeful or just due to dirt. With instructions as explicit as the window of time to show up—between 9:58 and 11:11—Bridger wasn’t about to knock. He’d walked around to the side of the house. The shades were drawn on all the windows, so he couldn’t peek inside and embarrass himself. He made a full loop and didn’t find a blue door.
What a giant waste of time!
He had checked again. There wasn’t a speck of blue in sight. In the backyard, Bridger left the porch and walked to the picket fence that marked the end of the property. He looked up and on the third and last terrace, as part of a tower on the back of the roof, spied a tiny blue door, certainly not big enough for a teenager to squeeze through.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Bridger had said. “No freaking way.”
Bridger had heard of employers using difficult tests to weed out candidates, but this was ridiculous. There was no way he was going to climb the side of the house and try to fit in that door. It was stupid, and no job was worth the risk of injuring himself. He wasn’t going to do it.
He had noted the prospective route: the drainpipe and the back porch lattice covered in dying vines. He flashed on the acceptance letter on his kitchen table. He thought about all the hard work he had put in to earn the grades and the long hours his mother had worked to save the little money they did have.
Oh, who was he kidding? He was totally going to do it and he had better get started since a woman in a short skirt had also noticed the tiny blue door and kicked off her heels.
It was on.
Bridger had jogged to the back porch. His palms already slick with nervous sweat, he wrapped his fingers around the wooden lattice. With a deep breath, he’d shoved his foot in a hole and started his ascent. The lattice was sturdy enough to hold him, but that didn’t stop him from being anxious; his stomach swooped with every step he took. At the top of the lattice was the porch roof, and he climbed onto it and brushed his hands on the back of his jeans before moving to the drainpipe.
Now, he clung precariously to that drainpipe and hoped his strength and resolve held out.
With a final heave and a prayer, Bridger hoisted his long body up and grasped the decorative iron railing that edged the landing of the tower. He flung himself over it and landed on his back on the deck. Huh. His gym teacher was right. He could do a pull-up if he would just exert himself.
The platform was small. With Bridger starfished, his right hand brushed the slats of the railing, and his left skimmed the cracked wood of the blue door. He breathed out a low laugh and rolled to his side to look through the railing. Wow, he was far from the ground! He’d been so focused on going up, he hadn’t given much thought to getting down, and that would suck if this whole blue door thing didn’t pan out.
The door—which up close looked bigger than from the ground—creaked inward. Bridger shot upright, scrambled to his feet, brushed off his clothes, and pushed the flop of his blond hair out of his eyes. He slid his sunglasses to the top of his head and flashed his most charming smile—the one that got him out of trouble more often than not.
Someone peeked around the door—a plump, middle-aged woman with a beehive hairdo and cat's-eye glasses peered down her nose at Bridger—which was quite a feat since Bridger towered over her.
“Finally made it,” she said as she swept her gaze over him. She huffed and swung the door open farther, before she turned on her heel and walked away. “I suppose you should come inside before time runs out and I’ll have to do this again tomorrow.”
Bridger kept his grin firmly locked in place as he followed her inside. He’d just climbed up the side of the house; she could at least have acknowledged his physical prowess… or something. Bridger wasn’t sure. This whole job interview thing was new.
He ducked through the doorway and sneezed. Dust motes swirled and caught the light. As soon as he passed the threshold, the door slammed. The bang made him jump. With the natural light diminished, the room was bathed in an eerie orange glow. Bridger spun on his heel. A lump rose in his throat that may not have been directly related to the dust, but because when he tried the knob, it didn’t move. His grin faded.
“Um… ma’am?”
“Perfectly normal. Keep moving.”
Oh, he was going to die. The headline might not be the one he’d imagined, but there was definitely going to be one.
He shuffled forward, shoulders hunched near his ears. The attic ceiling was slanted; the room itself was bare. She led him through another doorway into a roomier space. Bridger watched the line of the woman’s back as she led him deeper into the house.
She wore a purple suit-dress and sturdy purple heels, which clunked on the wooden floor.
“Ma’am?”
“My name is Mindy,” she said over her shoulder. “For future reference the second and third floors are off-limits. Your duties will be restricted to the first floor and the basement.”
Bridger stumbled. “I got the job?”
She leveled a severe gaze at him. “You made it in.”
“So it was a test!”
She brought him to a staircase. Her purple-frosted lips pursed. She cocked a hand on her hip, and, what with all the purple and the towering blond hair, Bridger had an impression of cotton candy. “Go down two flights and wait for me by the desk. We’ll get your paperwork sorted.”
Bridger took a step toward the stairs, excited yet wary. The butterflies in his stomach didn’t know whether to make him dance or vomit.
“What exactly are my duties going to be? How much am I going to get paid? I’m still in school; are the hours flexible?”
“It’s an assistant position. You’re going to assist.”
“Assist what? What exactly do you do? And what kind of business is this? There wasn’t even a name in the ad.”
A large crash was followed by a yelp. Mindy sighed and rolled her eyes like a put-upon parent—Bridger recognized the expression—and she pointed to the stairs.
“Go. I’ll be down in a minute. Don’t touch anything.”
Bridger’s eyebrows inched into his hairline, but he didn’t argue, especially after another crash and high-pitched chattering.
He took off down the stairs with his hand trailing along the smooth railing and the steps creaking under his feet. He didn’t lo
ok up when he hit the first landing, instead he merely turned and fled to the ground floor.
What had he gotten himself into? That noise—it was a chittering noise like something a small animal would make. Was this a research facility? No, no, the house might be creepy, but it’s not test-animal facility creepy. It was more like Adams-family creepy; there had to be at least one suit of armor in the house. The question was whether the armor would try to kill him. Bridger didn’t want an answer to that question, which was one of the reasons he didn’t lift his gaze from his sneakers thumping down the stairs.
Okay, his imagination was running away from him.
This was a business, albeit one running in a strangely converted house, but, cotton candy aside, Mindy seemed normal. At least that was good.
Bridger jumped down the last few steps and found Mindy’s desk. It was a monstrosity of dark wood and clawed feet and covered in tiny bobbleheaded animals all slightly bobbling. It sat in the middle of a foyer. Orienting himself, Bridger saw what must be the front door. Light filtered through the blinds of the framing windows so the room was brighter than what he’d seen of the rest of the house. Landscape paintings adorned the walls. A long bench, covered in a layer of dust, sat against one wall. Someone had tried to give the room an office feel. It didn’t work with the bobbleheads and the lack of anything distinctly professional.
Bridger perched on the bench, straightened his shirt and ran a hand through his sweaty hair, knocking his sunglasses askew. Then he drummed his fingers against his thigh and slumped, resting his chin on the heel of his hand.
Several other doors led out of the small foyer, but he didn’t dare investigate. Even if nothing weird was going on, he doubted an employer would appreciate snooping.
He pulled out his phone and checked the time. Oh, no. He was going to get busted—no way around it. From Astrid, his best friend, he had a text all in caps and emojis asking him where the hell he was.
He didn’t know how to answer that.
“Who are you?”
