Page 26 of Shadebound (Dark Fantasy #1)

B eing dead was far more monotonous than people ever imagined.

The living seemed to think it was all candle-whispering, sudden chills down the spine, and mysterious noises at midnight.

Those things were possible, but they cost energy, and energy was something a ghost learned to spend carefully.

Most of my existence was like pressing my hands against glass from the wrong side — seeing the world, hearing it, wanting to reach through, and knowing no one would feel my touch.

When I drifted into the carriage with Jinx and Draven the day before, I didn’t know what Mors Academy would look like.

I had been bracing for the gothic blend of crumbling stone and dark glamour.

What I hadn’t expected was the jolt in the air when we crossed the gates.

It was subtle at first — a distortion, like heat shimmer — and then it sank into me.

My form felt thinner, stretched, and beneath it all was a recognition I couldn’t mistake.

The killer.

My killer.

Their presence hummed in the air. The certainty made me cold in a way the dead weren’t supposed to feel.

I didn’t understand how I knew, only that I had carried this knowledge since the night I died.

The moment my body had fallen still, something had been planted in me — a warning, a tether — and it tightened now.

I would be able to feel their presence lingering in the air for the rest of my ghostly life.

When Hightower herded Jinx and Draven into the arena for the rest of their introduction, I let my awareness drift outward.

Mors was a labyrinth of stone and iron, halls crawling with magic that prickled against me as I floated through them.

I didn’t need to find a door or an open arch — walls meant nothing.

I passed through them, weightless, until the air grew damp and the scent of churned earth reached me.

That was where I saw him.

He was slumped in the long grass, head twisted too far, throat cut clean through. The wound was fresh, the blood still soaking the soil beneath him. For a moment, he was only a body. Then the air above his chest rippled, as if heat were rising from him, and something began to peel itself away.

First came his outline, faint and trembling, then his features took shape. His neon blue eyes darted around, unmoored, until they landed on me.

“I know you,” he said, voice thin with disbelief as I tried not to feel anything at the sight of a siren near me. “From the news.”

There was a catch in the way he said it, like he was trying to fit me into a memory that hurt.

“Not my best headline,” I replied, my voice steady out of habit. “What with it being about my graphic murder.”

“Oh,” he breathed, and the sound trembled like the mist curling low over the graveyard.

His gaze flicked from the trees, to the rocks, to the damp grass, to the broken body lying in it.

As if searching for something that could make this scene mean anything other than what it was.

When his eyes met mine again, there was no escaping it.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“Yes. You are.” I kept my voice steady, anchoring it in the space between us. “Welcome to the club.”

He looked back at his body. The skin was already leeching to a pale grey, lips slack, the wound at his throat dark and wet against the white of his collar. A bead of blood had slipped into the hollow at his collarbone and dried there, black in the moonlight.

His voice snagged as he spoke. “Why am I—” His hands came up, staring at the faint silver edging his fingertips. “Why am I glowing?”

It started at his chest, a pulse of light so soft it might have been imagined, then spread outward in threads until it caught on every edge of him.

“That’s good news,” I said. Trying not to be disappointed that yet another ghost I’d met was not going to be a ghost for long.

His head turned sharply toward me, neon eyes flaring. “Good news? How the hell—how could this be good news?”

“It means you’re passing on,” I told him. “No getting stuck in between, no haunting the same corridors for the rest of time. You’ll leave this place. Whatever’s waiting for you, you’ll get there.”

He shifted his weight, though his feet no longer pressed the grass. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

“Most people aren’t.” I’d seen the fear often enough to know it didn’t matter how ready you thought you were. The leaving happened regardless.

He studied me then, his gaze dragging over my bubblegum hair, my tanned face, as if something in me didn’t quite match his memory. “I like the change of hair.”

My brow furrowed. “Change?”

“The black,” he said. “I remember the killer had a picture of you in a locket. You had black hair then. I don’t know why I remember that, but... but it feels important.”

For a moment, I thought I’d misheard him. Then the image landed in my own head — a hand covered in my blood. Laughing as they yanked something from around my neck. Their cursed fingertips opening a small silver clasp, and inside...

“That’s not possible,” I said, the words sharper than I meant. “That was my locket. The bastard took my locket.”

He blinked. “Yours?”

I felt the memory slide into place whether I wanted it to or not.

The day I bought it, leaning against the counter in a little shop in town, flipping the clasp open and shut because I liked the weight of it in my palm.

I’d told Jinx I was going to put a picture of myself inside, because why waste space on anyone else?

She’d looked at me with that flat, unimpressed expression only she could manage and said, “Lockets are meant to be for people you love.”

So I’d grinned, gone home, and printed a picture of her instead — her hair a little straighter than mine, her eyeliner sharper.

I’d slid it into place and held it up. Told her it was like a selfie, but if I’d turned goth.

We’d laughed until my sides hurt. Or at least, I’d laughed, and she’d twisted her mouth up at the corners a bit.

Now that stupid joke had found its way into the hands of the person who had killed me.

“They had it?” My voice came out quieter than I expected.

The guy nodded. “I thought it was strange, but I was... occupied.” His gaze flicked again to his own body, lying broken in the grass. “Being murdered takes up most of your attention.”

The glow around him deepened, pulling upward in slow ribbons that unravelled from his shape. His edges blurred, pieces lifting away as if they were too light to stay. But he shook his head, not looking at himself as he stared at me.

“I think... I think they want you.” He said slowly. “Not you, now but... but you with black hair. That’s what they said. What my brain seems to remember.”

Before I could comprehend that shit show of a comment, he kept talking.

“I feel weird.” He mused. “Like I’m light enough to float.” He looked at me. “I’m Connor, by the way. And I know I probably ought to be freaking out, but I can’t seem to.”

“I’m Jezebel.” I replied. “And it’s normal. Your mind won’t process the bad things. You’re only allowed positive from now on. I don’t know why. I presume it’s something magical I’m not dead enough to understand.”

He cocked his head as the glowing got worse. “Do you feel bad things?”

“Every single minute I’m awake.” I forced a grin. “Good luck,” I told him. “See you in paradise if I ever get there.”

His eyes didn’t leave mine until the light took the last of him, and the place where he’d been was only mist and night air.

I stayed there for a long moment, not because I was sad. Or interested in exploring. But because I felt different.

It was one thing to know the killer was here. It was another to know they had been carrying something of mine all this time.

And that they were after my sister.

By the time morning came, I was hours deep into my plan to warn my sister and attempt to avenge myself.

The cafeteria was already buzzing when I drifted in, voices rising and falling under the constant scrape of spoons on metal bowls.

The smell of porridge clung to the air. Maya sat at the back, her braids neat and tight.

I knew she’d hate waking up like that, the hair ties digging into her scalp, so I’d undo them tonight as I always did when I was alive.

It took time and care — ghost fingers pinching until the elastic loosened, unravelling the plaits one twist at a time.

But it was the closest I would come to touching someone with kindness these days.

The closest I could get to her without hurting my feelings too much.

But not every act I performed was kind or emotionally ruining.

Across the room, I spotted the seer I’d scoured Mors student records for threading her way between tables with her tray. She was careful with her steps, inky eyes flicking down to avoid spills, but that wouldn’t save her from me.

I waited for the perfect opportunity.

Tyler the dragon oaf lumbered toward her with his head turned to laugh at someone across the room. Without a sound, I slipped behind him and used every bit of ghostly power I could muster, and shoved.

He lurched forward, colliding with the girl just as I hooked my energy under the tray and gave it a hard upward flick.

The motion tugged something out of me — a stretch that left my edges thin — but the payoff was worth it.

Metal clattered against stone, porridge splattering in pale clumps across the floor.

And Jinx saw it.

She had just left the food queue, her own tray balanced carefully in her hands.

She slowed, shifting her grip before stepping toward them.

Her head dipped in that way she had when she was deciding if someone was worth her time, but her feet still carried her closer.

She still predictably bent to help the seer gather herself, and the two of them ended up at the same table. Heads bent, talking.

Perfect .

Barely any time later Eris was doing what I’d wanted her to do.

I heard her mention the serial killer.

My killer.

A slow grin curved my mouth. Stage one complete. My plan to push her and Jinx into each other’s orbit had worked like a charm.

And then, as if the universe wanted to reward me for my efforts, I spotted Tyler across the room again.

Perfect timing for the rest of my revenge plan; starting with the dragons who’d watched my sister get harassed.

He was exactly where I wanted him. The loud-mouthed fool was sitting beside the panther I’d heard be called Saphira, his fork stabbing lazily into his bowl.

My eyes rolled as he told her something with the smug confidence of someone who thought the sound of his own voice was a gift to the world.

She laughed a fraction too loudly, and I caught my sister’s name curl off his tongue, dragged through whatever ugly remark he thought was clever.

That was all I needed.

Sliding beneath the bench, I took my time.

My hands weren’t made for tying knots anymore, but if I concentrated, I could make the laces weave over and under with neat precision.

I looped them twice for good measure, pulling them tight until they were one unbroken snarl of fabric.

The kind that wouldn’t give way without a fight.

Once done, I drifted back, settling above the doorway so I could enjoy the view when the time came.

And boy, did it come. Even if it was twenty-eight minutes of boredom later.

He stood, or tried to. The moment was a masterpiece in miniature — the flicker of confusion that crossed his face when his knees wouldn’t straighten, the half-second of dawning horror, the jerky lurch forward as the bench screeched against the floor.

His legs tangled like marionette strings pulled by a drunk puppeteer, and the bowl in his hands surrendered to gravity in glorious slow motion.

I followed it with greedy eyes as it sailed up, rotated twice in midair, and then found its target — the nape of an unsuspecting student two tables over.

The bowl struck with a wet smack, slop cascading down the poor kid’s back in steaming rivulets of leftover sludge.

The student’s yelp cut through the cafeteria din, followed a heartbeat later by the hollow thump of Tyler’s knees smacking against stone.

I lost it. My laughter ripped free, bright and unrepentant, shaking me until my form blurred at the edges.

The petty satisfaction sang through me, lighting up the dim corners that had been cold too long.

This was my craft — my art form — and the fact that Tyler had earned it extra hard with his smug little comments about Jinx only made it sweeter.

When the laughter ebbed, the echo of it left something softer, lonelier in its wake.

I missed this — not just the mischief itself, but the way it used to be shared.

Jinx would have looked at me, eyebrows arched in a silent dare to ask her to escalate things.

Draven would have tried to hide the corner of his mouth pulling upward, failing every single time.

Now, I could see them both — breathing, laughing, living — in the same room as me, but they might as well have been on the other side of an unbreakable pane of glass. Every attempt to touch, to make them feel I was there, slid off the barrier between life and death for over a year.

But with no choice but to watch and exist on my own, I turned my gaze outward again, over the crowd. To the shadowed corners of the room and the halls beyond.

Somewhere within these same walls, the killer moved. Watching. Waiting.

Not just for anyone.

For my sister.

I was sure of it. Deep in the floating parts of my body, where my bones used to be.

A heat that wasn’t quite anger but wasn’t far from it unfurled in my chest. They could circle all they wanted. They could plot and stalk and sharpen whatever blades they liked.

I would not let them touch her.

My sister’s happiness was the only thing tethering me to this half-existence, and I would ensure she got it. even if... well, it wasn’t like I could die twice.