Page 19 of Wicked Bonds (Serpentine Academy #1)

Seventeen

Drake

I don’t go to her room right away.

I stand at the far end of the hallway, and I make up a hundred good reasons not to go. It’s late, and she’s probably asleep. She doesn’t want me there. She made that abundantly clear last time, when she used her newfound powers to blast me halfway to hell.

But that’s not what stops me. What stops me is the need to apologize, which feels almost as distant a memory as having a physical body.

No one sees me. No one ever does unless I want them to, usually.

The witches and werewolves pass by me, unaware how close they get.

Occasionally one of the more sensitive among them will shiver, or their eyes will narrow as they sense something.

They don’t know what, but they still feel it. Feel the wrongness of me being there.

When the hallway goes quiet, I slip through the door.

The room is unlit, shades drawn, air filled with the smell of her skin.

One of the most surprising things about being dead was realizing that I still retained some of my senses.

My sense of smell, for one. Being able to feel emotions was another.

That was disappointing, as they were something I felt far too much, in my living life.

My mother called me sensitive. My father called me a weak.

My atoms adjust to the space. There are advantages to being incorporeal. No longer being crushed by the human condition is one of them. Not having to feel embarrassed should be another, but here I am, standing over the bed of a girl who made it clear she’d like nothing less than my presence.

She isn’t asleep. She’s not even in bed. She’s sitting on the floor, back against the side of the bed, legs crossed, reading a book. She doesn’t look up.

“Let me guess,” she says, “you’re here to deliver another cautionary tale about how I’m doomed.”

“I’m here to apologize.”

She ignores me, turning the page so roughly that it tears a little.

“You were right to be upset. I shouldn’t have been here.”

She doesn’t say anything.

I push on. “I crossed a line. I am… still adjusting to the concept of boundaries.” The words are awkward in my mouth. I haven’t had to say them in a very long time. “I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t lift her head. “Did you watch the whole thing?”

“If you mean the part where Soren made you, uh, you know, no.” I realize I’m lying and try again. “Actually, yes. I should have left sooner. I didn’t mean to?—”

She finally looks up. “You didn’t mean to what?”

“I didn’t mean to see you like that. It wasn’t my place.”

She sets the book down on the floor. Her fingers drum on her knee. “I don’t buy it.”

“Buy what?”

“No offense, but you don’t strike me as the type to get embarrassed over a little peeping. This is a dorm full of young, nubile witches. If I were a ghost I’d be perving too.”

I ignore her word choice, but I mean, she’s not wrong. “Under normal circumstances, you’d be right.” I drift closer. “But you aren’t like the others.”

“Sure” she mutters.

“I mean it.”

“You know, I don’t really care anymore. Honestly, after the last week, that’s pretty low on the list of things that have gone wrong for me.”

She keeps surprising me with her ability to absorb blows and keep upright. Resilient is an understatement for this one. “Really?”

“Whatever. At least you’re not Soren.” A pause. “Actually, no. You should be more like Soren. He doesn’t care if people hate him. You seem like you need me to forgive you.”

I fold myself onto the end of the bed. “Maybe I just don’t want to be the villain in your story.”

She leans back and lets her head thump against the mattress.

Her neck looks impossibly delicate. “Look, I get it. You’re dead.

You’ve got limited entertainment options.

If you want to stick around, fine. But if you ever watch me get off again, I will find a way to exorcise your ass so hard you’ll land in the next universe. ”

“Understood.”

We sit in silence for a while, the only sound the rain on the window and the muffled shouts from some idiots down the hall. I wonder if she’s going to make me leave, or if I should take the initiative and fade out, but then she surprises me.

“Hey, Drake?”

“Yes?”

“What’s it like?” Her voice is quiet. “To be dead.”

I blink, because it’s not the question I expected. “At first it was confusing,” I say, after a minute. “You don’t know what you are. You just know what you aren’t anymore.”

She thumbs the edges of her book. “Was it fast?”

“The part where your body gives out, that’s quick. The part where you realize you’re never going to touch anyone again, that’s the part that drags.”

“Sounds lonely.”

“It is.”

“Is that why you keep hanging around me? Because I can see you? And touch you?”

I nod. “You’re the first one in a long time.”

“Just keep your ectoplasm to yourself, alright?”

“No promises,” I say, and she actually laughs.

The tension feels lighter, and I realize my apology has been accepted. She stands, brushes off her hands, and crawls onto the mattress. She doesn’t look at me as she pulls the blanket up, but she leaves a corner turned back, and that’s invitation enough.

I sit on the bed until she’s asleep. I don’t try and touch her again, though I want to more than anything. I just exist, quiet and invisible, for as long as she’ll let me.

When I finally rise to leave, I pause by the door. I consider saying something, but decide against it. Instead, I brush a hand through the air above her head, not quite touching, but close enough to remember what it felt like when I could.

I turn to go, then stop. “Rose,” I say, and even though she’s asleep, I think she hears me.

“Don’t ever do that again,” I say, remembering the way her magic lashed out at me. “I mean it. Don’t use that on me. I didn’t like it.”

She doesn’t answer, but she shifts in her sleep, hand curling around the mark on her arm.

I slip out as quietly as I arrived.

The next night, I return. I don’t have a reason. Or rather, my reason is that I spent all day haunting the places where Rose isn’t, and I don’t like how that feels. The world is cold and empty and worse, boring, unless I am in proximity to her.

Tonight, she sits on the windowsill, eyes on the night sky.

I do what any self-respecting wraith would do. I materialize directly inside, in the space between bed and window, and watch for her reaction. She doesn’t even flinch. She just scoots over to make room for me on the sill. For a moment, I almost feel like a regular person.

“Couldn’t stay away, huh?”

I lean beside her, and I wonder if we are friends. I haven’t had a friend in an achingly long time. But you don’t feel for your friends the things I’m starting to feel for Rose.

“My mom lied to me,” she says, unprompted. The words spill out in a way that says she’s been holding them in with a lot of effort. “She told me I didn’t have any magic, that whatever she had skipped a generation.” A humorless laugh. “She went to a lot of effort to keep me from finding out.”

I tilt my head. “Parents are experts in creative omission.”

“She didn’t just omit. She bound it. Did you know that’s even a thing?”

“Yes.”

“When I realized, I was so pissed. All those years thinking I was just a burnout, a disappointment. And the whole time, she was hiding it from me, to hide me from this.” She gestures at the room, the school, the entire ridiculous situation.

“She was trying to protect you,” I say.

“I know she was,” Rose says. “That’s the worst part. She did it to keep me from being found. Then she died. And I still can’t decide if I’m grateful, or mad, or—” She bites the word off. “Never mind.”

I watch her face. She’s angry, but really she’s sad.

“You ever wish you could go back?” she asks. “Do something different, maybe try and change things, before everything fell apart?”

“Every second,” I say.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “Me too.”

We lapse into silence again. She tucks her chin into her knee.

I study the way her hand wraps around her shin, her fingers are long and her nails are short, bitten down. I want to reach out, to feel touch again, but after I crossed her boundaries, I don’t dare.

“You miss it?” she says. “Being alive?”

“Yes.” What I don’t say is that when I miss it the most is when I’m around her.

“Tell me more about how you ended up like this.”

“The official version is that I killed myself,” I say. “Jumped. But the truth is, the Crescent Moon Coven helped me along.”

She looks at me, eyes wide. “They murdered you?”

“I got too close to the truth, and they couldn’t risk the secret getting out.” It’s all fuzzy but remember enough.

“What truth?”

I hesitate. I haven’t spoken these words out loud to another soul since the day before my death.

And look how that turned out. But what’s the worst that can happen, when the worst has already happened?

It’s not like I can be killed twice. I decide to tell her.

I don’t want her to end up like me, even if it would mean we could be together.

What I love most about Rose is how alive she is.

I would never be the one to take that away from her. She deserves to know the truth.

“You know I was like you? Marked. Bound to the Coven by a blood contract.” She nods. “Well, it’s not just the magic they want to keep to themselves. It’s the life, too.”

She frowns. “Explain.”

“The reason the Coven is so powerful is because they siphon life from the students they bind, not just magic. The bloodmark doesn’t just link you to the Accord.

It feeds them. Every contract extends their years, keeps them young.

The witches in charge should be dust by now, but they’re not. They’re feeding off us.”

She digests this, her eyes wide. “That’s fucked up.”

“That’s the Crescent Moon Coven.”

“You’re telling me they kill the bloodmarked?”

“More like they drain them, but yes.” I hate the fear I see in her eyes now.

“How long?” She stands up and starts pacing.

“What?”

“How long do they keep us alive?” She stops and turns to face me. “Months? Years? Decades?”

“It depends on how much they need. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less.”

Rose tilts her head to look up at the ceiling, staring at nothing. “They said I’d be bound to service for two years.” She takes a shuddering breath. “Then I’ll be freed from service.”

I don’t say anything.

“What they really meant is that I’ll be dead. Right?”

“Yes.” Lying won’t help her now. So I don’t lie. “They will siphon your power for two years, then once they have everything they want they will drain your life force to keep themselves alive.”

She lowers her gaze and stares at me. “So what happens if I break the contract?”

“You don’t,” I say. “Not unless you want to end up like me.”

She goes still.

Finally, she says, “Did you ever try?”

“Someone I trusted betrayed me to the Coven before I had a chance to try. I didn’t know until it was too late. Before I figured it out, I was already in the ground.” I don’t like to think about that too much.

She crosses the room and sits on the bed, motioning for me to join her. I do, this time close enough to feel where our forms almost touched.

She studies me, head cocked. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you deserve to know,” I say. “And because I don’t want you to end up like me.”

“A ghost?”

“If they drain your life force, you just cease to be. You don’t end up trapped here. That only happens if you die an untimely death, before they use you up.”

Her lips press together. “I keep thinking if I just tough it out, if I survive long enough, maybe I can get out. There’s got to be a way.”

“You can’t,” I say. “There isn’t.”

But there is, isn’t there? There’s one way. The way I told someone about so long ago. I never got a chance to find out if it would really work. I don’t tell her that. “Well, there wasn’t for me. You’re powerful though, Rose. If anyone could get out, you could. You could have a chance.”

She grins. After everything I’ve revealed to her, this girl actually smiles. “I like the way you think, ghost boy.”

I don’t have a pulse, but if I did, it would be racing.

She lies back, arms behind her head. I stretch out beside her, our bodies parallel, not quite touching.

“Promise me something,” she says.

“What?”

“Don’t leave me alone.”

I don’t respond. I’m in no position to make promises. I’m not sure if she takes my silence as agreement, but she doesn’t push it.

We lay there for a long time. She drifts off, hair fanned over the pillow. I stay watching the way her chest rises and falls as she breathes. As she lives.

I don’t want to see her life force drained. Not Rose. I’ve never met anyone more alive than her.

Before I fade out for the night, I lean close and whisper into her hair, “I won’t let it happen to you.”

It surprises me how much I mean it.