According to the book, third-stagers had a lot more wiggle room when it came to how often they used their power. They could basically “shut off” for days at a time. As long as they spent one to two nights a week at home waiting for Unsettled, their power wouldn’t get out of control. It made me feel way better about staying a Settler to know I’d have more freedom in a few years . . . or as soon as I advanced to the third stage.
Mom and Ethan had both said I was manifesting way more power than the average second-stager. Shouldn’t that mean I could move up sooner? Getting to choose which nights I was “at the office” would really help me make sure I didn’t miss night performances with the pom squad. And if I already knew most of the third-stage stuff before I started pestering Mom to talk to Settlers’ Affairs for me . . .
Well, I didn’t see how they could refuse, which made me even more rabid to get started.
Once we got home, however, I exercised great restraint and resisted whipping out the third-stage book until I’d finished dinner and read my English assignment.
Macbeth
. More like
Macblech
. So far I just wasn’t into Shakespeare, which sort of made me rethink English as one of my possible majors in college.
Then I hopped on the computer to IM the news of
Macbeth
’s snooze factor to Jess, took a super-fast shower, and finally raced into the kitchen to snag a bag of Doritos because all the dancing had made me extremely snacky for junk food and Mom had cooked something gross as usual. So I was just getting around to memorizing the hand motions for the flame command when the phone rang.
I waited for Mom to answer it on the off chance someone was actually calling my house to speak to my parents—which had happened maybe once or twice in the past six months—while I hid the stage-three book under my mattress. Then, in an effort to appear innocent while I waited for Mom to yell for me to pick up, I turned on one of my TiVo’d episodes of
Engaged & Underage
, my favorite guilty pleasure.
It was like watching an angsty hormone-fueled train wreck and firmly cemented my resolve to be at least twenty-five before I considered getting hitched.
“Megan! Phone!”
The phone was already in hand, dearest Mother. “Hello?”
“Megan? Hey, it’s Del.”
“Hey, Del, what’s up?” I asked, trying not to sound surprised. Del and I were friends, but she rarely called. We had more of an IM-EVERY-ONCE-IN-A-WHILE relationship
.
“I was just wondering if you’d mind picking up my homework from the office tomorrow since you live closer than Jess or Claire. My brother was going to do it, but now he’s got mono too.”
“You’ve got mono? That sucks!” And meant she couldn’t be my zombie raiser . . . unless this call was a deliberate attempt to throw me off her trail.
Her trail? What trail? You have no trail. You are the worst Nancy Drew ever.
The inner voice was back on a pessimistic streak. Why was I not surprised?
“I know, and right before homecoming! I’m so bummed.” Del sighed. “But Zeke is the one who gave it to me, so I guess I wouldn’t be going anyway.”
Zeke, Del’s man,
had
been absent all week too, so this was seeming pretty believable. Besides, Del and Zeke spent too much time making out to get around to raising zombies. It was only my paranoia that had made me suspect her. Well, paranoia and Jess’s comments about Del’s weird behavior lately and the odd phone call she’d gotten from Del the other day.
Maybe that was why she was calling me instead of Jess even though Jess lived nearly as close. Maybe she’d already weirded Jess out by being all freaky on the phone. Or maybe she was trying to lure me over to her house so she could tie me up in her basement to make sure I didn’t get to the dance?
I made a mental note to make sure Ethan was with me when I went by Del’s. It was better to be paranoid and safe than trusting and dead.
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll pick it up and bring it by after tryout clinic tomorrow.”
“So how’s that going?”
We talked about clinic and the gorgeous dress Del wasn’t going to be wearing to homecoming for a few minutes; then I signed off with a promise to see her Thursday afternoon. I’d barely had time to get the stage-three book pulled out from under my mattress, however, when the phone rang again.
Hmmm. Caller unknown. How intriguing.
This time I didn’t wait for Mom to answer because it was almost ten and I knew she’d get on me for late phone calls—probably while still
on the phone
with me and whoever had called.
“Hello?”
There was a brief, creepy pause before a scratchy voice came on the line. “I’ve got a present for you, Megan.”
“Who is this?” I vaulted off my bed to pace around the room, for some reason feeling safer on the move.
This was it! This had to be my guy. Or my girl, rather. The person was obviously masking her voice, but it still sounded like a female.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. It’s who
you
are that’s important.” The weirdo laughed then, but the sound was inhuman, like a robot coughing up a hair ball. She was using something high-tech to conceal her voice, which made me even more afraid. A high tech voodoo freak didn’t seem like a good combination. “I know you like to play with dead people, Megan.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, my voice shaking.
I wasn’t going to give her confirmation if she didn’t have it already, but in my heart I knew my cover had been blown. Someone knew I was a Settler. If this person
wasn’t
Monica, that meant my family could be relocated, all of our lives ruined because some twisted freak liked to use Reanimated Corpses as her own personal murder weapons.
“Oh, I think you do. It’s okay, I like to play with them too.” The way she said “play” made my skin crawl. “Experimenting with new things can be such fun, don’t you think?”
“Please, you’re freaking me out. I don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t, but you will,” she snapped, clearly near to losing what little sanity she had left. “I wish it could have been different. It’s been fun playing with you from a distance, but I wanted to look you in the face when you finally died. Too bad it looks like that won’t be happening. Still, at least I know you’ll still be getting what you deserve.”
The sharp click as she hung up the phone made me flinch. My mouth went dry and my lips opened and closed, with no words coming out. Someone wanted me dead. Someone
really
wanted me dead.
I frantically punched star-69 into the phone, but all I got was a recording telling me the number was blocked. Of course. Like a freak who went to the trouble to use voice-disguise technology was going to let a murder plot be foiled by
last call return
.
A murder plot. This wasn’t about homecoming, after all. I felt the Doritos I’d eaten come racing back up my throat and barely made it to the toilet in time.
“Megan! Get to the door! Now!!” My mom’s scream came just as I was flushing. I wiped a trembling hand across my mouth and dashed to the door, fearing the worst, but when I got to the foyer, it looked like Settler business as usual.
Well, not exactly as usual.
Just inside the door stood three zombies—all of them girls. And all of them with the same face and dirty shoulder-length blond hair. Triplets.
My mom stood next to the newspaper she’d laid out by the door, looking as struck by the sadness of this as I felt. Someone out there had lost three kids all at once. I felt so bad for their family. Combined with the terror inspired by the phone call, it was enough to make me tear up.
Mom must have seen how upset I was because she stuck close even after she’d handed me the official record book. Her hand on my shoulder helped me pull it together as I opened the book to the first empty page and clicked my pen. I just had to get through this, put these girls to rest. Then I could tell Mom everything.
I
had
to tell her, even though I hated to let her know our cover could have been compromised. No matter how many times I’d moaned about the lameness of living in Arkansas, I didn’t really want to leave and start all over somewhere else. With a new school, no friends, no best friend, and no Ethan. I really wished Ethan hadn’t disappeared right when I needed a friend—and a bodyguard—in the worst way.
“Hello, my name is Megan,” I said, surprised my voice didn’t sound shakier than it did. “Welcome to your after-death session. Could you please give me your names, last name first.”
“Wellington, Shane,” they all three said at once, creating a creepy kind of stereo effect as the human part of them came online.
“No, I’m Shane!” they said, again at the same time. They turned to look at each other, obviously confused. “Who are you? Stop copying me!”
“Okay, just relax. Let’s try this one at a time.” What was their problem? I’d never heard of an after-death identity crisis, but then, I’d never dealt with triplets before either. I motioned to the girl on the far left. “Let’s start with you.”
“No, we’ll start with me, whatever your name is,” said the one in the center in a snotty voice. I was starting to feel a little less sorry for her. “I’m the real Shane. I don’t know who these other losers are.”
The two girls on either side of her chose that moment to start groaning. Not a typical zombie groan—more like they’d been asked to take out the trash and were expressing their displeasure for the chore. Still, there was something . . .
off
about the whole situation. Especially coming so soon after the phone call.
I struggled to remember the exact words the crazy on the phone had used but kept drawing a blank. All I could hear was her creepy robot voice telling me she wanted to look me in the face while I died.
While I
died
. I couldn’t
die
. My sixteenth birthday was only three weeks away!
“Shut up, freaks.” Shane flipped her grave dirt-covered hair out of her gray eyes and glared first at me, then at my mom. “Would you people mind telling me what’s going on here?”
“Maybe you could tell us why you’ve chosen to emerge from your rest?” Mom seemed fairly calm, so maybe this wasn’t anything weird after all. She must have seen or heard about something like the three Shanes before.
Still, uneasiness niggled at my brain. There had been something about a present. The psycho had said she’d gotten me a present. Judging from the death threat, I could assume it wasn’t going to be a gift I would enjoy, but I didn’t see how this could be related. Shane and her sisters were normal Unsettled, no glowing red eyes or lunging for my throat.
Well, they weren’t
completely
normal since the other two weren’t really very talkative. But Shane certainly had normal Unsettled issues, which she revealed as she began spilling her guts.
“My cousin Melinda stole every last pair of shoes I owned while I was in a coma. She came in and told me about it while I was on life support. She thought I couldn’t hear her, but I could.” She sneered, her contempt for her shoe-stealing cousin clear in every line of her face, which was weird, considering the other two Shanes were looking less and less lifelike every second, their jaws growing slack and their eyes empty. “I want her to know that she can’t have my shoes. I want them to go to like charity or something because there’s no way that thief—will you shut up?”
The other two zombies were groaning again, louder and louder, making every hair on my body stand on end. They sounded like they were getting ready to go Rogue, which shouldn’t be possible since they still hadn’t told me what had made them rise from their grave along with their sister. This was so strange, so unlike anything I’d ever even heard of.
“Okay, so you want your shoes to go to charity. I’ve got it. Now what about the other two of you? Who wants to go first?” But the other two Shanes just moaned again, and their eyes began to glow a faint blue color. Okay, creepy. But at least not red. “Mom, what’s going on? Have you ever seen—”
“No, but I’ve read about something similar,” she said, and this time I could hear the fear in her voice. “Shane, are you sure the shoes are the only reason you came to talk with us tonight?” Mom edged slightly in front of me, as if to put herself in harm’s way rather than her baby chick. “Go get the phone, Megan. I’ll handle—”