Undeadly. Michele Vail
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The day I turned 16, my boyfriend-to-be died. I brought him back to life. Then things got a little weird...
Molly Bartolucci wants to blend in, date hottie Rick and keep her zombie-raising abilities on the down-low. Then the god Anubis chooses her to become a reaper—and she accidentally undoes the work of another reaper, Rath. Within days, she’s shipped off to the Nekyia Academy, an elite boarding school that trains the best necromancers in the world. And her personal reaping tutor? Rath.
Life at Nekyia has its pluses. Molly has her own personal ghoul, for one. Rick follows her there out of the blue, for another...except, there’s something a little off about him. When students at the academy start to die and Rath disappears, Molly starts to wonder if anything is as it seems. Only one thing is certain—Molly’s got an undeadly knack for finding trouble....
He drew me into his arms, right there in front of everyone, and leaned down.
“Happy birthday, Molly.”
Rick’s lips ghosted across mine. He angled his mouth against mine and I opened for him. My eyes fluttered closed. Tentative, I met his kiss and felt electrified. I clung to him, completely unsure about what I was doing.
He drew away, just a little, took a shuddering breath and returned. I was pressed so close to him that I could feel how his heartbeat matched the ferocity of mine. I felt awkward and amazed and—
We broke apart, grinning at each other.
“Open my gift, Mol.” He turned toward the fireplace.
I don’t know why he lost his footing.
Rick’s eyes went wide as he twisted, falling, his head bouncing off the corner of the stone fireplace.
I screamed.
With Curt’s help, I rolled him onto his back. His blue eyes were open wide and unseeing. I pressed a shaking hand against his chest.
“Too late, dude,” someone said. “He’s dead.”
All the colors around me bled away until everything was gray and covered in shadows. Above the dark, dead figure of Rick a ball of white light pulsed. It glittered, like starlight, and emanated comforting warmth.
Rick’s soul.
I knew that I had to capture the light before it took the journey into the afterlife. Rick needed it to live. All I could think about, focus on, was catching it and sticking it back in.
I had no tools, no magic spells, no perfect way to fix what death had broken. All the same, while Curt pounded on his friend’s chest, I stepped around him, knelt at Rick’s side and grabbed his soul.
Undeadly
Michele Vail
To Natashya Wilson and Adam Wilson, who are made of awesome (and patience and enthusiasm and did I mention awesome?)
To all the wonderful peeps at TNT Dental (BTW, Jon Lemons really is a zombie…at least he is when he turns his T-shirt inside out. Really.)
Contents
“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
~J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
MOLLY’S REAPER DIARY
Holy Crap, What Happened to My Life?
So, my...um, friend gave me a diary for my sixteenth birthday because, apparently, it’s a necromancer tradition. I guess he did some internet research and found an archaic reference, which is kinda cool. It’s nice that he wanted to give me something meaningful, even if it was a book with a bunch of blank pages in it.
Anyway.
I’m glad he gave it to me. Because I want my life to mean something, and it’s so weird now! The night I turned sixteen, everything changed. Big-time. And you know what? If this kind of crap happens to anyone else (and it will) then I figured they