The thought made my heart race. Returning Settler powers ruining my first date with Josh was bad enough, but what if some kind of zombie crap was going down at my school? There were only two weeks until homecoming, and the football field was a
highly
necessary part of the festivities.
My mind was suddenly awash with high anxiety. What if I never got to see Josh play his senior homecoming game? What if the homecoming court never got to parade down the freshly mown grass? What if, heaven forbid, they canceled the dance because the football field was all messed up from grass-eating zombies or something and with no game the powers that be figured there shouldn’t be a dance and I would never get to slow dance with Josh wearing my new nearly-too-sexy-for-Mom-to-let-me-buy-it dress?
Gah! One heart shouldn’t have to bear this much stress in one night! “Ethan, wait,” I said, running after him. He didn’t turn back, but he did slow down enough for me to catch up. “What’s going on at the football field? Is it Settler stuff?”
“It’s none-of-your-business stuff,” he said, speeding up a bit. “Nice shirt, by the way. Does your mom know her fourteen-year-old is looking for a sugar daddy?”
“I’m fifteen, nearly sixteen,” I said, refusing to cross my arms. “And it’s a joke, obviously. Like a play on the Sugar Daddy candy so obviously shown below the words?” He laughed, a smug little sound I knew meant I was being laughed
at
, not
with
. “Anyway, that’s not the point. If my powers are returning, then it
is
my business if something’s going on at CHS. It’s my school. I have the right to—”
“The only thing you have the right to do is head home and get to work making up for lost time.” We were at his car by then, and he had the nerve to turn around and pat me on the head before he opened his door. Patting! On the head! Like I was a freaking dog or something.
I guess my opinion of the pat must have shown on my face because the jerk laughed, the smile on his face by far the most gorgeous smile I’d ever seen on anyone. “See you later, Schmeg,” he said before sliding into his car.
“Don’t call me Schmeg!” I yelled after him as he drove away, my heart beating as fast as it had been when I’d arrived at Mount Hope but for reasons much more mystifying than having a dead person’s arm in a garbage bag.
CHAPTER 3
My entire day Sunday was spent cramming on first- and second-stage Settler material and helping Mom glue together the crushed bits and pieces of her Lladró collection. Not only was there no time to sneak away to the football field to investigate, I didn’t even get a chance to call Jess until so late Sunday night that her wicked stepmother wouldn’t let her come to the phone.
Actually, Jess’s step isn’t
that
wicked, but she gets pissy if I call after nine because she’s afraid it might wake up James, Jess’s terror of a three-year-old half brother.
Without the chance to calm my fevered brain with some quality phone time, I had a heck of a time getting to sleep. All night long, my mind raced, struggling to find a way to reverse my newly revamped powers. The only possibility I managed to come up with involved jumping headfirst off the balcony of the school lunchroom and praying for another bout of partial amnesia and power short-circuiting. Since jumping could also result in a broken neck, paralysis, or death—all of which would ruin my chances of going to homecoming with Josh—I didn’t consider it really much of a possibility.
I had nada and was starting to feel my inescapable future pressing in all around me.
The only thing I felt at all in control of was ensuring that I reconnected with Josh and made certain he continued to see me as a homecoming-date-worthy chick. Therefore, I was up at five Monday morning, straightening my hair and applying light makeup and just a hint of brown eyeliner around my dark eyes. I donned the sundress Josh hadn’t seen Saturday night—with the shawl, this time—and was off to school by six forty-five.
By five to seven, I had locked my bike at the racks and was booking it to the football field, determined to find out what Settler weirdness was brewing. I walked the length of the dew-damp grass, explored the area beneath both the visitors’ and home team bleachers, and even went so far as to peek into the boys’ locker room but came up with nothing. Everything seemed business as usual.
“The track!” I whispered aloud, thunking myself on the forehead with my palm.
I hadn’t checked the track that ran around the field, which was completely stupid on my part. Circles hold great power for Settlers. We walk circles around graves to seal them, and several of the most advanced, third-stage magic commands involved tracing interlocking circles in the air while chanting.
A quick glance at my cell revealed I had plenty of time to investigate, so I hurried out of the field house and back into the cool morning air. I was three-fourths of the way around the hard-packed dirt track when I felt the vibrations of some seriously bad mojo rippling up through the earth. The stinging energy crept along the bare skin of my legs like an electric shock, making me yip and jump in the air. Lucky for me, I landed on the side of my sandal and was down on the ground seconds later, coated in thick, black mud.
“Ergh!” Why was I such a freaking klutz? I’d been in ballet practically since birth!
For the second time in three days I was coated in grave dirt or, in this case, grave
mud
—mud that had the distinct feel of black magic lingering in its gloppy depths. It was obvious SA had already been here to clean up most of the mess, but the faint flicker of dark power remaining in the mud was still clear enough for me to read. Apparently my ability to pick up dark vibes had returned along with my Settler mojo.
Whatever was going down, it wasn’t Settler stuff. It was black-arts stuff, the kind of thing that led to nothing but seriously bad news for average humans and Settlers alike. And it was happening right here, inches away from the football field where dozens of innocent teens practiced every day—or mostly innocent teens: I’d heard a few stories about some of Josh’s teammates that were fairly scandalous.
I was going to have to talk to Mom about this and force her to find out the 411. If my friends were in danger, I deserved to know about it, no matter what Ethan or the old Elder farts at SA thought.
But first, I had to get cleaned up. I wasn’t sure if grave dirt smelled as awful to average people as it did to Settlers, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t stand the stink of myself all day. There wasn’t time to go home, so I was going to be forced to wear the gym clothes in my backpack for the entire day.
Not
the best way to remind Josh how hot I was but better than smelling like dead people.
I hurried back to the field house and snuck down the darkened hall leading to the girls’ locker room. It was eerily quiet and strangely cold, considering it was already nearly seventy degrees outside. I felt goose bumps break out all over my bare arms and a sinking feeling in my stomach. Hopefully that wasn’t a sign maintenance had remembered to lock this door.
“Yes!” I sighed with relief as the rusty door swung inward with a little shove. It was dark inside, but enough light filtered through the tiny windows at the top of the concrete wall that I could find my way to the showers. I flipped one on. Score: We had water. I wouldn’t have a towel, but there was still soap, so at least I’d no longer smell of decaying flesh.
I dumped my backpack, whipped off my dress and underwear, and laid them on one of the wooden benches near the shower. Then, after twisting my hair into a knot on my head that I figured would hold long enough for a quick rinse, I stepped into the water.
“Sheeeeeesh!” I sucked in the word on a gasp. Holy crap! The water was cold—penguins-in-Antarctica-during-a-blizzard cold.
My fingers were numb and my goose bumps frozen into goose bump cubes by the time I’d soaped up. As I hurriedly rinsed off, my teeth chattered loudly enough to echo through the deserted room.
I was making so much noise, I barely heard the door opening behind me.
“Gunh?” The groan was barely out of the zombie’s mouth before I was spinning around, screaming bloody murder.
The zombie stared at me while I kept screaming, clenching my arms across my chest as I scrambled across the wet tile toward my clothes. The only thing that kept me from snatching my dirty dress and running naked from the locker room was that the zombie just stood there, rigid and unmoving. Finally, I pulled it together and stood shivering in the buzzing silence, staring at my second zombie in three days.
“Welcome to your after-death session. I’m Megan,” I said, my teeth chattering. “May I have your name, last name first?”
“Franklin, Terrence,” he said, a lecherous look on his face as the human part of him came online.
His teeth were oddly white and clean looking against his dark, earth-covered skin, but he was just an average Unsettled, nothing more. He was a little older looking than William—maybe seventeen or eighteen—but not too old for a second-stager to deal with. And apparently not too old to be intensely interested in seeing me naked. Eww!
As I hurriedly pulled my gym clothes from my backpack and put them on—the fabric sticking to my cold, wet skin—I was inwardly freaking out. Why did the
first
guy to see me in the buff have to be
dead
? It was so unfair and potentially emotionally scarring.
“Dang, girl, no need to cover up so fast,” Terrence said, making me move even faster.
“No need to be a perv,” I snapped back at him, but the dead guy only laughed. What a skeeze. I didn’t feel nearly as bad about this dude being one of the dearly departed.
Once dressed, I fished a notebook and pen from my backpack and tried to keep from trembling as I wrote down his name, address, and cemetery plot and number. But even as my skin warmed up I couldn’t stop shaking. This had
never
happened to me before! Never! Unsettled didn’t come to me during the day.
I’d learned to shield to keep that from happening when I was like six years old. Every Settler knows how to keep zombies away until nightfall, when our powers are strongest and we can’t help emitting the subtle, paranormal signals that tell our deceased clients where to find us. Shielding is the first thing you learn how to do when your power starts to manifest, as simple as learning to sing the ABCs.
“Um, so what don’t you like about your death?” I asked Terrence.
“Not a dang thing,” he said, smiling so wide his teeth took up half of his face.
“Then why are you out of your grave?”
“Danielle and I were finally going to do it, but I died the day before.” He looked sad for a moment, which almost made my heart soften toward the guy until he spoke again. “So I never got to see a chick naked. Pissed me off, man. I knew I should have done it with Ladonna even though Ray said she had some nasty body odor prob—”
“So you crawled out of your grave because you wanted to see a girl naked?” My tone was not pleasant, but I couldn’t help myself. This guy was topping my list of skankiest zombies ever.
“Yeah, baby. And now I have.” He licked his dirt-covered lips in a way that would have been gross even if he were alive. “Now I have.”
“Okay, that is totally freaking gross and—”
“And not something you would have had to deal with if you were shielding properly.” I gasped as I turned toward the door, knowing I should be relieved to see another Settler. But considering it was Monica standing there, in all her cruel and beautiful senior glory, it was hard to summon up the slightest bit of relief, let alone gratitude. “Really, Megan, summoning an Unsettled during the day. That’s like . . . toddler stuff, you know that, right?”
“Listen, Monica, I just—”
“Just came back into your power. Yeah, I heard.” And she was entirely unimpressed, as usual. But when wasn’t Monica totally unimpressed with anyone other than herself? “Have you Marked him yet?”
“Not yet, but I—”
“Seriously, Megan, you really need to get it together.”
“Hey,” Terrence said, eyes narrowing. “You’re that chick from the mall, aren’t—”
“Nice to see you again too.” Monica cut Terrence off with a sigh, putting one hand to his forehead while she fished her cell from the front pocket of her jeans with the other. “Return to your grave and rest in peace.”
Terrence was already streaking away as Monica lifted the phone to her ear. “Hey, Sue. I’m here with Megan Berry. She summoned an Unsettled this morning and will need to have the grave sealed so she doesn’t have to cut school.” She snatched the paper from my hand and repeated the cemetery and plot number to the woman on the phone. “Thanks, Sue. Yeah, I’ll definitely tell her.”