Page 7 of Wicked Bonds (Serpentine Academy #1)

Six

Drake

I’m restless tonight, haunting the empty halls like a cliche poltergeist. I try not to linger in the West Wing, too many memories. I prefer the dormitories. The girls there tend toward insomnia, and they’re more interesting to watch since they’re awake.

But tonight, I’m drawn to the new arrival’s room.

She’s awake, no surprise there. The ritual mark will do that, it will burn her skin from the inside, etch the blood pact into her nerve endings, remind her every waking moment that she belongs to someone else.

To them. The mark is a kind of branding, but more elegant than that.

I run my own finger along the invisible scar that would be on my arm, if I still had an arm to feel. The old familiar ache is there.

She’s trying to cool the mark under the tap running cold water, like it’s a bad sunburn and not witchcraft. She’s huddled over the basin, shivering, lips pressed together in a thin line. Her hair’s unbound this time, falling around her face and over her shoulders. The effect is distracting.

She senses me before she sees me.

That’s new.

She stiffens, but she keeps the arm with the mark under the running water.

“Don’t you people ask to be invited in?” she says, but she doesn’t look up.

“We generally don’t consider ourselves ‘people,’” I reply. “And you’re not supposed to be able to see me at all, unless I want you to.”

She glances up, unimpressed, then fixes her stare back on the angry crescent embedded in her skin. It’s still wet, but the surrounding skin has started to blister in a way that makes my old death wound itch sympathetically.

“I’m full of surprises,” she mutters.

I don’t disagree. This girl barely blinks at finding a ghost in her bathroom. Most students scream, or run, or at minimum have the decency to look terrified. She just keeps her arm under the water like I’m an annoying roommate who forgot to knock.

I’ve haunted these halls for decades. I’ve watched countless witches arrive, all wide-eyed and scared when they catch their first glimpse of me. They clutch their protection charms, mutter banishing spells, sometimes even throw salt, which does absolutely nothing.

But the new girl? She’s annoyed. Like I’ve interrupted her evening skincare routine.

I watch her for a moment, feeling the urge to pace, but I’ve learned that humans interpret spectral restlessness as a threat. “You won’t be able to cool it off. The burn isn’t physical.”

I drift closer, but stop before her bed. “You should let it air out. The ritual wants you to see it. To acknowledge what you are now.”

She gives me a look. “What am I?”

I weigh my answer. “You’re property,” I say, and watch her face. “But not in a way you think. The Accord is complicated. Your bloodline bound itself to the Coven, centuries ago. This is just a payment.”

She looks at me then. “You said I’d die here. Last night. Is that what happened to you?”

I almost smile. “Did they warn you about talking to the dead?”

“Nobody warned me about shit,” she says, and now I do smile. I like a little defiance in a doomed soul.

“I was like you once. A student. Not as clever, but just as angry. I trusted the wrong person.”

She looks at the mark on her arm. “How did you die?”

It’s a rude question, but I’ve asked it myself more times than I can count.

Of all the memories I can’t forget, that’s the one I can barely recall.

But I remember enough. “Badly. Messy. With a lot of regret. They said I killed myself, but I know that’s not true.

” I wouldn’t have done that. Not when I was so close to finding out the truth.

Not when all I was living for was revenge.

“So you’re stuck here, haunting the academy?”

“I prefer to think of myself as a cautionary tale.”

She shrugs, then shudders at the pain in her arm. “I can handle myself.”

The mark is strawberry red, fresh and angry. She turns her whole body to face me, crossing her legs on the mattress. “So, what do you do all night, besides spy on girls in their dorms while they sleep?”

So nonchalant, like she speaks to ghost boys every day. Wherever did they find this one?

I sit on the desk, legs through the wood, and fold my hands in my lap. “I watch. I remember. Occasionally, I try to convince someone to do something extremely stupid, so they’ll join me on this side of the veil.”

“How’s that evil plan working out?”

“Not as well as you’d think. The living are surprisingly attached to their misery.” I blink slowly, smiling.

She’s silent for a moment, then asks, “What was your name?”

“Drake.”

“Drake,” she repeats. “So what’s the point? You stick around forever, popping up for jump scares?”

I look at the mark on her arm, the angry red slivered moon. “Every few years, one like you arrives. Every few years, someone thinks they can break the cycle. They haven’t yet.”

She shakes her head, but she’s thinking. “Why are you telling me this? Why should I trust you?”

Because I want to, I almost say. Because I want you to be different. Because the only thing worse than death is an eternity stuck here alone.

But I don’t say any of that. “Because you’re going to need help, eventually. And the ones who survive longest are the ones who listen.”

She studies me, but I know she won’t ask for help, not tonight. Maybe not ever. But the thought is planted, and that’s enough.

She pokes at the mark. “Does it ever stop hurting?” she asks.

I shake my head. “You just get used to it.”

She sighs. “Great.”

I could stay, linger here with her, but her eyelids are drooping. I stand, and she raises an eyebrow, not sure if she’s supposed to say goodnight to a ghost. I fade into the wall, and for the first time in years, I feel a little less dead.

Outside her room, the lights flicker as I pass by. I look down at my translucent hands, and try to remember what it was like to touch someone.

I think about Rose, and for one dangerous, impossible moment, I want to try again.

Maybe this time, it will be different.

It’s hours before I return.

By then, the hallways have gone fully silent: not even the scuttle of mice or the yowls and prowls of the familiars. Only the dead are left to pace the floor. I drift, weightless and jealous.

I tell myself I am only checking on her. That if she’s sleeping, I’ll leave. But even ghosts lie to themselves.

She’s asleep. She’s sprawled half-off her bed, curled around the arm with the mark, and a damp towel is bunched beneath her cheek.

I step into the room and the temperature drops, but I don’t think that she notices. I could watch her for hours. There’s something about the living at rest that is hypnotic, with their defenses down, their faces open and unguarded, their bodies a mess of inconvenient desires.

I drift closer, standing over her. I want to reach out, to brush the hair from her face, to do something gentle and forget for a minute what I am. The rules I keep are simple; there’s only one, really. Do not remind yourself of what it meant to be real.

But then she moves. The pain in her arm must be waking her, and she sits up, wincing. Our eyes lock.

“You again.” She glances at the wound, then at me. “Is there anything you can do? Like… ghost magic?”

I smile. “No. But I can keep you company.”

She nods, and I sit beside her on the bed.

We sit in silence, her breathing growing steadier, my own sense of longing metastasizing into something painful and impossible.

Without thinking, I reach for her hand. I expect the usual, my fingers pass through, a shock of cold, nothing else. But this time, my hand lands on hers as both of us gasp.

For one heartbeat, for the first time in more than a century, I am touching someone. No, that’s not right.

Someone is touching me.

She freezes, staring at where our hands connect, then at my face. Her eyes are wide.

It’s not normal. It’s not possible. This isn’t supposed to happen.

I flex my hand, testing the reality of it. The sensation is so intense I almost pull it back. Her skin is hot, feverish, alive, and I feel a current that has no business existing between a dead man and a living girl.

She should pull away. She doesn’t.

This isn’t normal. She isn’t normal.

Her mouth opens, maybe to ask why I look so goddamn scared, she says nothing.

For a long minute we just sit there, linked by this impossible point of contact. Then I do what I have wanted to do since the moment I saw her. I close my hand around hers and anchor myself to the world.

She closes her eyes, just for a second, and I can tell she’s remembering something she lost. Maybe the touch of another. Maybe nothing at all.

I have to leave before I lose what little self-control I have. Before I try for more. I stand, abrupt, and the connection breaks with a snap that leaves my whole body hollow. I flee, because that’s what I do, and this time I barely notice the way the world warps and bends around me as I go.

I drift back to my old corner of the attic, the one place the witches never go. There’s a little window that faces east, toward the river, and sometimes I like to watch the sun try and fail to reach inside. I sit in the darkness and flex my hand, over and over, hoping the sensation will linger.

It doesn’t.

Instead, I get memories.

A party after a ritual much like the one in the Great Hall tonight. There was music, and wine, and a girl with eyes like emeralds. Her name was Isabel, and she was the only person in this place who ever made me feel less alone.

We danced in the rain. We stole kisses in the library. We made plans to run away together, to break free, to live. I remember the taste of her lips, and the way her hand tightened on mine as they dragged us apart.

She betrayed me, of course. They always do. That’s the lesson of the Crescent Moon Coven witches. It doesn’t matter if you love them, if you bleed for them, if you die for them. The contract will always come first.

I don’t want to think of that anymore, so I think of Rose.

Of the way her hand felt in mine. Of the way she didn’t jerk away, even when she should have.

I want to warn her. I want to protect her. I want to tear down every wall in this place just to see her free.

But I am a ghost, and the only thing ghosts can do is watch.

The sun begins its slow climb, and the attic gets incrementally brighter. I close my eyes and pretend that I am not alone.

Maybe this time, it will be different.

Maybe this time, I won’t let go.