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“I know it’s you,” he hissed, spittle hitting my face and making my stomach turn. I cringed away, trying to push off his rough hands and failing. “I know you summoned Nightmare. Summon her back, you psycho bitch, and get her to undo whatever the fuck she did to me.”
Shock made me hesitate a moment too long and he wrenched me forward, slamming me back into the stone so forcefully that I cried out. My eyes burned with tears.
“I’m cursed too,” I snapped, breathless, terrified. We were alone in the graveyard. There was no one else around, the campus deadly quiet. I suddenly felt so stupid for running alone, for lingering so long exploring the mausoleums. “She cursed all of us. I didn’t summon her. I swear.”
Alastor laughed, his handsome face hideous with anger. “You’re lying. I know it was you, I can feel the evil in you.”
I flinched, a lump pressing against my throat. “I didn’t summon her. I didn’t ask for this.”
But Alastor could feel the wrongness in me. Could he sense that she’d ripped me apart and put me back together wrong? That what happened at the party had changed me in ways I hadn’t even begun to understand yet.
His nostrils flared, fingers pressing bruises into my shoulders. “I know you did it. I know what you are.”
“I don’t even know what I am,” I cried, my hands shaking fiercely where I pushed against him, straining so hard that my hoodie slapped my thigh, heavier than it should have been. My knife! “I didn’t summon her, and I didn’t ask for this, I swear to you. I want to undo this curse. I didn’t call her here. I swear it. Get off me.”
Alastor’s laugh made me cold all over. “You’re a good liar, but you are a liar.”
His hands tightened until I cried out. I fumbled at my hoodie pocket, a raspy sob escaping when my fingers closed around the cool wooden handle. I whipped it out and pointed it at Alastor’s throat.
“Back off. That psychopath killed four people; why would I bring her here? And why would I be cursed too, if I was one of her followers?”
Peel the skin from his bones, make him scream, make him afraid the way you’re afraid. Teach him that no one will ever make you run, make you cry, make you beg. Not ever again.
The voice slid through my mind, seductive and compelling.
My breath quickened.
Alastor smirked and released me, but there was cruelty in that smile, and a mean glint in his eye that made my stomach knot. He didn’t back up, only released me. I was still trapped between him and the mausoleum. I was going to throw up.
Both our heads snapped up when voices neared, along with footsteps pounding the path. Alastor took several quick steps back and smiled, his whole face transforming. He was a monster. With the easy way he flipped from threatening to friendly, he could be called nothing else.
“Darya!” I cried, spotting the friend Honey and I made at the costume shop. I shoved my knife back in my pocket, careful not to stab myself, and ran towards her. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. How are you doing?”
She brightened at the sight of me. “I’ve been better, but I’ve been worse. You’re another early morning jogger, I see. Meet the crew, Phyllis and Wilfrith—” She gestured to the tall, athletic brunette girl on her left, her clothes bright Barbie pink to match the ring pierced through her eyebrow, and the rugged blonde guy currently frowning at me behind aviator sunglasses, the only one not in athletic gear. Instead he wore a navy blue Ford hoodie thrown over sweatpants and a shirt that said I DON’T THINK YOU’RE READY FOR THIS JELLY, BABY with a cartoon of a Jelly Baby on it. I smiled at it even as he frowned at me.
“Oh!” he said suddenly. “We met at the party. I remember your…”
“Costume,” I supplied hopefully.
“Heaving bosom,” he finished with a wicked smirk that made me like him more than I had at the party. I thought he was a leering fuckboy then, but there was more humour to him now, and besides, that was a great T-shirt.
“It was heaving,” I admitted, “despite my best attempts. Mind if I join you guys?” The back of my neck burned; Alastor was watching us, probably with his Golden Boy smile still in place.
“Sure,” the brunette said easily, giving me a genuine smile as we all set off jogging again, Wilfrith with a husky groan of complaint. “And I’m Phil, by the way. Please do not, under pain of death, call me Phyllis.”
I gave her a dry look, wrapping myself in humour to ward off the chill of Alastor’s ambush. “You think that’s bad? Try being called Cactus.”
All three winced.
“Yeah,” I agreed, forcing a laugh.
Wilfrith slung an arm over my shoulder, and I wondered if he was using me to hold himself upright—he wasn’t, shall we say, a natural runner. “Welcome to the secret gang of awful names.”
“Hey,” Darya protested.
“Your middle name is Eunice, honey,” Wilfrith quipped.
He gave me a kind smile. “You’re gonna fit right in with us.”
