Which puts all my senses on red alert. “Not like human-sacrifice robes, right?”

Macy narrows her eyes at me. “No one’s going to sacrifice you, Grace.”

Easy for her to say. I tamp down the little spurt of annoyance and lead with humor instead. “Says the spider to the fly…”

Macy laughs, just as I intended her to. Which eggs me on. “I’m just saying, no one gets to criticize me for being skittish until they’ve had to fight off a homicidal bitch with talons through their arms, a dislocated shoulder, a concussion, and gaping wounds on their wrists and ankles from clawing their way out of shackles. On an altar. Surrounded by blood. In the dark. While drugged.”

Macy looks at me, completely deadpan, and says, “Well, who hasn’t? I mean, really.”

I burst out laughing, like full-on belly laughter, because the delivery was just too perfect. “Is that your way of telling me I’m being too much of a drama queen about the whole near-death-experience thing?”

“Are you kidding me? It’s my way of telling you that I would like nothing more than a chance to dropkick that bitch straight to hell a second time.” She crosses to her closet and pulls out two dark-purple robes. One she tosses on her bed and one she hands to me.

“It’s purple,” I tell her.

“Yeah,” she says.

“The robe is purple.”

She nods. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“I’m going to look like Barney if I put that on.”

She grins. “Welcome to Katmere Academy.” And then, while I’m still eyeing the giant purple monstrosity that is supposed to be my ceremonial robe, she steals the freaking bathroom right out from under me.

70

When the Devil

Comes Up

to Denali

I’ve been in auditoriums before. I mean, I am an American high school student. But nothing could prepare me for what the Katmere Academy auditorium looks like.

Huge, with ceilings that are probably close to thirty or forty feet high and creepy-looking carved spires everywhere, it looks more like a Gothic church than it does a meeting room for students.

Stained-glass windows depicting various paranormal scenes, check.

Carved black lancet arches hovering over every walkway, double check.

Elaborate and semi-creepy engravings on pretty much every available surface, triple check.

Seriously, I’m pretty sure the only thing missing is an altar.

In its place is a round stage in the center of the room, surrounded by hundreds of chairs in the same deep purple as our robes. So as the students filter in and find their seats, the whole front of the room looks like an eggplant exploded—or, more accurately, about a thousand eggplants.

The House of Usher has nothing on this place. Edgar Allan Poe, eat your heart out.

I turn to my left to share the joke with Hudson but realize he didn’t walk in with me.

Uncle Finn is on the stage already, but nobody else is, despite there being eight intricately carved (big surprise) chairs set up in a row directly behind the microphone and sound system that my uncle is currently messing with.

I have to laugh as I watch him, because here in the middle of this auditorium that looks like a horror story waiting to happen, my uncle is doing the same thing that every high school principal or vice principal in the history of high schools does before a schoolwide assembly. The abject normalcy of the whole thing amuses me, but it also makes me just a little homesick.

Not necessarily for the life I used to have but for the girl I used to be. Normal. Human. Average.

I mean, in my head I’m the same old boring Grace I’ve always been, but at Katmere Academy, I’m abnormal. An anomaly. Someone to be stared at and whispered about. Most of the time, I ignore it—I mean, I’m the girl mated to Jaxon Vega while Hudson Vega lives in her head. And, oh yeah, I have a pesky habit of turning to stone whenever I want.

Honestly, who wouldn’t stare?

“Let’s sit over there,” Macy says, pointing to a couple of empty seats near the very front. “I want a good view of this mess.”

I’m not normally a very front-of-the-room kind of girl, but of the things I feel like I might have to argue about today, where I sit doesn’t even blip on the radar. Besides, at least this way I’ll get a good look at Jaxon and Hudson’s parents.

“No!” Hudson’s shout reverberates in my head, so loud and vehement that it actually brings me to a stop, eyes wide, as I look around, wondering what kind of attack I should brace for.

But everything looks normal—or as normal as it gets at Katmere Academy, considering a group of witches is bouncing a ball all around the auditorium using nothing but a few flicks of their fingers.

What’s wrong? I demand, my heart beating out of control.

“Don’t sit up front. Don’t get anywhere near them.”

Near whom? I ask, again looking around for a threat I have yet to recognize.

“My parents. They would love for you to sit that close so they can get a good look at you.”

I feel like that’s normal, under the circumstances, I tell him with a shrug. And I want a good look at them, too.

Macy’s gotten a little bit ahead of me, since Hudson’s shout stopped me in my tracks, and I weave around a couple of groups of students in an effort to catch up to her.

“Damn it, Grace! I said no!”

Excuse me? I ask, shocked and more than a little annoyed. Did you just order me not to do something?

“You can’t trust them,” he tells me. “You can’t just put yourself up there in front of the king and queen and think nothing’s going to happen.”

We’re in the middle of a crowded assembly! I shake my head in amazement. What are they going to do to me?

I wave to Gwen, who is sidling up to Macy, already sitting in the front row. I’m still seven or eight rows back, so I skirt around a few students in an effort to weave my way to them.

“Anything they want! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. My father is the head of the Circle because he has killed, literally, everyone who might possibly be any kind of threat to him. And he has done that continuously for two thousand years. Do you think for one second that he’s going to hesitate to kill you, too?”

In the middle of a school function? Sure, he’s going to try to kill me with my uncle, all the Katmere Academy teachers, and the entire student body looking on. Not likely. So will you please chill out and let me take an effing seat?

I move down a couple more stairs and then freeze, not because I want to but because my feet won’t move. At all.

I start to panic, wondering what on earth can be wrong, but then it hits me. Don’t you dare! Hudson! Let me go right now!

“Grace, stop for a second!” Hudson’s voice is deliberately soothing, which only makes me that much angrier. “Just listen to me.”

No! No, no, no! I’m not going to listen to you when you are controlling my body. What the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you?

“I just need you to think for a minute.”

And I just need you to let me go. If you don’t release me right this second, I swear to God, Hudson, when I finally get you out of my head, I will murder you. I will literally make you human and then stab you through your fucking black heart until you die right in front of me! And then I’ll stab you some more.

Hudson walks “us” off to the side, weaving around students rushing to grab their own seats, then eventually slips us between two panels into a hidden alcove. And I’m not going to lie, having someone else take control of your body, with you stuck in the passenger seat, might be one of the worst experiences of my life. The violation, the fear, the anger swirling inside me right now are all building into a storm of epic proportions.

Once we’re hidden, I can feel him struggling to give up control of my mind. It’s like trying to walk through wet mud, but eventually the resistance gives way with a little pop, and I’m free. I feel myself rush in to fill the emptiness, and I can’t fight the shiver of panic that overtakes my body.

When he moves around to face me, panic gives way to white-hot anger. He holds his hands up. “All right, all right. I’m sorry.”

I take a deep breath, fight for calm. And then say screw it, latching on to the part of me that I’ve pushed down for so long. “Fuck. You.”

“Feel better?” Hudson asks. “Now, can you just listen for a moment?”

Is he for real? I am beyond mad, well into a full-blown rage. “I am never listening to you again. Never!”

My heart is racing like I’ve run down twenty flights of stairs, double-time, my head whirling at the knowledge that Hudson must already have punched through the wall the Bloodletter helped me build. How is it possible for him to be that strong? How can he be knocking it down when it’s been less than a week?

Am I really that weak? Or is he just that strong?

He’s standing there perfectly still, his face pleading as he tries to get me to listen to him. “I’m only trying to help you, Grace. I only want—”

“Help me?” I hurl at him like a berserker, my rage so overwhelming that it’s all I can do not to claw his goddamn smug face off. Only the knowledge that he isn’t actually standing in front of me keeps me from punching him right now.

“By violating my trust and taking my free will? How can you possibly think that’s helping me?”

“It isn’t like that—”

“Well, that’s what it feels like!” I’m furious, absolutely furious, and I know it shows because Hudson’s eyes are wide with what looks like actual despair. I almost feel bad. Almost. But since Hudson has made it very obvious that not only will he not respect the sanctity of my right to do what I please with my body, he won’t even respect my right not to have five minutes without him yammering in my head.

So instead of heading to where Macy is waiting for me, I grab my phone and text her that I’ll be right back. Then I put my hands on my hips, so I can have this out with Hudson once and for all.