Bone Cold: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 2) Read online

  Bone Cold

  Copyright © 2015 Cady Vance

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electrical or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval without permission in writing from the author.

  Cover design by Paramita Bhattacharjee

  Interior design and layout by Cady Vance

  Dedication

  To Shana, for believing in Holly’s story from the very beginning.

  Click here to join Cady’s mailing list and be the first to hear about new releases.

  CHAPTER 1

  When someone gets on my bad side, my face has a tendency of betraying my thoughts. In the past few months, my lips had formed a permanent scowl, and I swore I’d grown some forehead wrinkles to match the new bulldog look I wore. It just never failed. Every time my mind wandered to Anthony Lombardi’s victorious smile, I got the overwhelming urge to throttle something. Unfortunately, my mind went there a lot.

  “You’re thinking about Anthony Lombardi again.” Laura shoved a red cup into my hands, the bitter scent of beer swirling through the salty ocean air. “Stop with the madness.”

  “Someone needs to kick his ass.” Frowning, I watched the flickering blaze of the beach bonfire that lit up the night sky. The flames were hot enough to keep me warm in the mid-December chill but only just.

  “That someone doesn’t have to be you.” She tapped my cup with her black-painted fingernail. “Chill out and have fun for a night. Seriously, Holls. It won’t kill you.”

  I held onto my scowl but took a timid sip of my drink. I knew Laura was right. After everything that had happened in the past year, I owed it to myself to relax, at least now that life had finally gone back to normal. No more spirits were attacking residents of Seaport, no more dangerous shamans were skulking around, and my mom was free from her Lower World prison.

  That last bit was the most important improvement of them all. But I couldn’t shake the chilling look in Anthony Lombardi’s eyes from the night he’d attacked us in our own home, despite the powerful protection spells I’d cast. And the fact he’d gotten away.

  Not to mention the bastion of spirits I’d unknowingly released on the world by breaking his binding spell.

  My skin prickled. “I just have a bad feeling it’s not over.” The Intuition from my shaman magic always kicked in when I thought of the multitude of spirits out in the world. Even though I didn’t agree with Anthony’s creepy-ass plan to keep them tethered to his existence, at least there’d been a point to the madness. It had kept all those Lower World beings from attacking humans anytime they got a thirst for souls.

  “Yeah, probably not,” Laura said, frank as always. “But tonight, it’s you and me and this wicked bonfire, and we’re going to forget all about the shaman world until sunrise.”

  “You know what? You’re right.” My scowl melted into a genuine smile. “What would I do without you?”

  She looped her hand through my arm and clunked her cup against mine. Beer sloshed onto my hands, sticky and warm and normal. “You’d probably be conjoined to Nathan’s hip, which would just be lame and vomit-worthy.”

  Speaking of Nathan…my smile faltered as my gaze drifted from the flames and toward the half-dozen cars crammed into the tiny parking lot at the edge of the beach. “Have you seen him?”

  Laura’s eyebrows squished together. “Don’t you know if he’s coming?”

  “He said he wasn’t sure if he could make it tonight.” I took another sip of my drink, and a warmth began to spread through my stomach, biting off the bitter chill that hung around our beach party like an unwanted stray. “He’s been really busy with his web comic lately.”

  “Well, that just means we can have a girls’ night.” Laura grinned, and I met her smile with one of my own. We’d been having a lot of girls’ nights lately. With Nathan’s impending table display at the Boston Comic Expo, he’d been spending the majority of his nights burrowed in his drawings rather than wrapped in my arms.

  We turned back to the bonfire, scanning the small crowd that had collected on the shore for the first Seaport High winter beach party. It was a strange mixture of popular crowd and random non-cliquers. Laura’s old crush, quarterback Brent Ackers, stood with several other members of the football team. Just behind him, Jason Harris hunched over the keg, pumping frothy beer into his red cup and eyeing up the pretty cheerleader beside him.

  Jason was one of my oldest friends. Back in the day, we used to hang out daily, when bicycle rides and collecting seashells were the cool things to do rather than downing bitter booze. He didn’t really fit into a certain group, not even with me and Laura anymore, despite his popularity with the girls. He floated through school and through life, using his winning smile and random jokes to put the whole world at ease. It worked for him somehow.

  Jason turned his gaze to someone I’d never seen before. She stood alone by the bonfire, tossing beach twigs into the flickering flames. Her short-cropped hair, eyebrow piercing, and skull tattoo made her stand out from the otherwise preppy crowd. Jason zeroed in, sliding up to her. The girl shot him a wry smile and said something that caused Jason to bark out a laugh. His hand fluttered over his heart, and I couldn’t help but smirk. She’d totally just turned him down.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Laura, pointing to the stranger.

  Laura shifted her eyes to follow my gaze. “That must be the new girl, George. Brent was telling me about her earlier. She’s in his Chemistry class.”

  “Brent, eh?” I nudged my shoulder into hers. “I didn’t know you guys were talking again.”

  Laura rolled her eyes. “That ship has sailed, sunk, and started sprouting algae.”

  “He’s still weirded out about the whole shaman insanity?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Laura twirled her nose ring and frowned. “Anyone who would run off that easily isn’t the right person for me.”

  “Damn straight.” I tapped my cup against hers and took a deep gulp. I’d never really gotten the whole Laura crushing on Brent thing anyway. He was the football quarterback and the full embodiment of everything that came along with that. Popular, preppy, and pretty. And while he focused his efforts on following the crowd, Laura marched to the beat of her own drum.

  “Hey.”

  The new girl wandered over to where we were standing on the outskirts of the party. She smiled to reveal two rows of straight white teeth, eyes crinkling to emphasize her eyebrow jewelry—two crossed skull-bones. A frigid breeze ruffled the jagged ends of her hair, but she didn’t seem the slightest bit cold even though she sported a flimsy tank top.

  “Hey. You’re the new girl, right?” I asked. “I’m Holly, and this is Laura.”

  “Yeah.” Her shoulders relaxed, though I wouldn’t have thought they were tense before. “I’m George. I just moved here last week.”

  “Welcome to the wonderfully dull town of Seaport,” I said, though I wasn’t sure how accurate that was after everything that had happened in the past year. Spirits attacking rich kids, crazy shamans kidnappers showing up out of nowhere. I shook my head to get rid of my dark thoughts. I was never going to get over the past if I let my mind keep wandering back there.

  “Dull, eh?” George’s lips split into a grin. “I could use some of that. Just moved here from Salem, and…I’ll just say that place has turned into a shitstorm. I’m glad I escaped when I did. Dull Seaport seems so much better already. Especially when there’s hot girls like that around.” She nodded at Megan Joseph, who was sashaying toward Brent in a pair of the skinniest jeans I’d ever seen.

  I cocked my head, curious to know h
ow life in Salem had morphed into a shitstorm, but Laura elbowed me in the side. I clamped my mouth shut. I’m not a fan of nosy people myself, and if I pried into her past, I’d be just like all the other townies who liked to needle me about my fugitive dad two seconds after saying hello.

  “Well, trust me, this place rarely sees much excitement. This party is about as crazy as things get around here. Unless…” Laura’s wicked grin made an appearance as she turned to face me. “Dare you to go into the ocean.”

  I laughed. “You’re a lunatic. The Atlantic feels like Antarctica this time of year.”

  “Exactly.” Laura rammed her fists into her armpits and flapped her elbows as if they were wings. Chicken, her twinkling eyes said. My mouth formed a mock scowl as George laughed and mimicked Laura’s antics, but my irritation was all for show. Even though she’d only just met us, she was already game for our special brand of crazy. This new girl could grow on me fast.

  “You scared?” Laura knew she had me with those two words, flapping her ‘wings’ one last time.

  I took a massive gulp of my beer, swiped the froth from my lips, and dropped the cup to the sand. “Mom would kill me if she knew I was going to do this.”

  “Lucky for you she’s too busy training to know what we’re up to tonight.”

  Yeah, lucky for me. I frowned. Mom had dove headfirst into an intensive physical and magical training regimen as soon as her strength had returned and our money issues had disappeared. I was pretty sure Laura’s dad had something to do with our miraculous financial recovery, but my mom would never admit it if that were true.

  “No more conning people,” she’d said as she shoved the last bill into the shredder. “We don’t need it, Holly. Go to school, make some good grades, hang out with your friends. And don’t worry about me.”

  But it was hard not to worry, knowing who she was training to take down. Even though he’d disappeared with a bloody hole in his chest, Anthony Lombardi was a seriously resourceful and manipulative shaman. He’d find a way to bounce back, especially now that he had a rune book of powerful spells to help him do so.

  “Last one in the water has to ask Wanda for a tarot card reading! “Laura yelled as she wriggled out of her black skinny jeans. “George, that means you, too.”

  With a grunt, I pulled my Wolverine hoodie over my head and tossed it onto the sand. Underneath, my dark blue bikini top popped against my pale skin. If there’s one thing you learn when living in Seaport, it’s never go to a beach party without a swimsuit. If you do, you’ll end up in the sea buck naked. It never fails.

  Jason Harris materialized before us with his eyebrows shooting up to the sky. “Going for a dunk already? It’s not even midnight yet. Could it be that Holly Bennett is finally in the party mood again?”

  My cheeks flushed under his gaze as I kicked off my Chucks. “Laura doesn’t like to play nice.”

  “Where’s the boyfriend?”

  “Not here.” I unbuckled my jeans and pushed the denim down to my toes as I saw George chucking her tank top into the wind as if it were a frisbee. “Where’s your latest conquest?”

  “Not here.” He watched as Laura began her launch toward the dark waves, her bare feet kicking up sand. “Think you’ve lost this one. Save yourself from the icy insanity and chat with me instead? I haven’t seen you around much since…”

  Since I’d saved him from a violent spirit attack on his home three months ago. We’d passed each other in the hallways at school like usual, nodding as we each shuffled to our next class, but his pinched smile gave me the feeling he was no longer sure how to talk to me. When humans realize there’s more to the world than meets the eye, it can be a massive shock. And I was the unfortunate person who’d introduced him to that.

  “You should know by now that I never give up without a fight,” I said.

  Whirling toward the ocean, I threw my feet forward and raced past my classmates who were clustered around the bonfire, leaving George in a cloud of sand. Laura was already to the shoreline. She splashed into the ocean, her shriek echoing off the rocky cliffs that rose high into the night sky. The lapping water reached out for my feet like frozen fingers. Gritting my teeth, I threw myself into the waves.

  A chill swept over my entire body, and my voice merged with Laura’s as we yelled in both pain and delight. George jumped in after us, tipped back her head, and let out a thunderous roar. Shivering, I pushed further into the ocean until the churning water splashed against my shoulders. Laura met my gaze, the distant bonfire flickering in her dark irises.

  “One,” we said together. “Two…”

  “Three!” We both dove under the water. My breath whooshed out of my lungs, surrounding my face with a legion of bubbles. The ocean engulfed me. It stung my skin and turned my bones to ice. The only thing I could feel was the cold. Every inch of my body was frozen in place, an ice sculpture in the sea.

  My toes pressed against the slick bottom, and I pushed up. When my head crested the water, I gulped in a breath of air and screamed again, though this time it came out as a shrieking laugh.

  “Holy shit, that’s cold!” Laura shook as a wave splashed against us.

  “This may be the dumbest thing we’ve ever done.” My teeth chattered hard.

  “You guys are seriously insane.” George shuddered and slicked back her wet hair. With a grin, I gave her a high-five for joining in the insanity.

  “Definitely not the dumbest thing we’ve done,” Laura said with a pointed look. Even though she didn’t elaborate, I knew what she meant, and a different kind of chill swept through me at the memory of September.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “Then it may be the most normal thing we’ve done in the past few months.”

  Before my mom’s mind had gotten stuck halfway between Lower World and the real world, Laura and I had done stuff like this all the time. Beach parties, bicycle races, midnight trips to the abandoned red barn near the harbor. But after Mom got sick, I stopped doing all of that. And now, even with her health back to normal, I still spent one hundred percent of my time at home, at school, and at Nathan’s house when he wasn’t buried under a mountain of work.

  It was high time for my life to return to normal, even though I didn’t feel normal, and the tickling sensation in my forehead had kept me from letting go. Maybe all I’d needed this whole time was a dunk in the frigid ocean to wake me up to the reality of life. I was regular old Holly Bennett again. Not a shaman. Not a breadwinner. Not a con artist. Just a girl.

  The problem was, I didn't know if that made me happy or sad.

  A scream ripped through the air, and I twisted to face the shore, expecting to see another lunatic jumping into the waves to join our nighttime swim. Instead, my eyes found a shaking body curled up on the ground, her hands flailing as if to swat at a swarm of invisible bees.

  “Holly!” Jason’s deep voice bellowed from the shore, his dark form silhouetted by the bonfire. “Get here quick! I think it’s a ghost!”

  The world blurred before me, the figures on the beach lurching toward the quavering form in exaggerated slow motion. Salt stung my eyes as I blinked at the chaos, my heart squeezing inside my chest. This couldn’t be happening. Not again.

  Jason had to be wrong. Spirits don’t attack out in the open. It was impossible.

  My head swivelled toward Laura. She jammed a shaking hand into the wet hair plastered to her forehead, and her mouth opened into a wide O. George looked back and forth between us, eyebrows crinkled in confusion, mouth hung open in surprise. The laughter was gone from her eyes, just as I knew it was gone from mine.

  “Not again,” Laura whispered, and the world blurred back into motion.

  “There has to be some other explanation,” I said.

  With a deep breath, I splashed back to the shore. My body seized from the sudden chill as I exited the water, but I forced myself to focus on the task at hand. I ran to Jason’s side, sand clinging to my wet feet and icy droplets dripping down my skin. A crowd bloc
ked my view of Megan, but her high-pitched wails gave me enough of a mental image to know she was in serious pain. The kind of pain a spirit brings.

  “What the hell is going on?” I swiped the wet hair out of my eyes.

  “I don’t know.” Jason held out my hoodie, and I yanked it over my head, grateful for some protection against the ocean wind. “It’s Megan. She was fine one minute and then the next…We’ve called an ambulance, but this seems more up your alley than theirs.”

  “Megan Joseph?” I asked, almost stopping in my tracks. Megan had been one of the rich kids targeted by the shamans who had wreaked havoc on our town a few months ago. Even though she’d been attacked, she’d ended up fine once Laura and I had banished the offending spirit from her house. What were the odds she’d be attacked again now? And outside?

  When I reached the group huddling and whispering and murmuring quiet sobs, they parted to make way for me to reach the body on the ground. It was Megan Joseph all right, with her blond bob and curvy frame, presented before me in a ghastly display. She twitched in the sand, skin a stark white and breath shaking in her chest as if a cancer had taken hold of her lungs.

  Dropping to my knees, I swiped the hair out of her eyes and pressed my fingers against her clammy forehead. Her skin was the temperature of the sea. She peered up at me, pupils dilated and eyes gray.

  “Megan?” My voice boomed in contrast to the silence around us. The only other sounds were the gentle lapping of the waves against the shore and Megan’s wheezing breath. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Her eyelids fluttered shut. “It felt the same as that time that spirit thing came after me.”

  Her voice was so weak, I could barely make out the words. Frowning, I glanced around me for some kind of explanation. There was no way a spirit could have done this. They can’t just attack a human out in the open on a beach.

  “Did anyone see anything?” I asked, scanning the crowd for someone I could trust. Someone who had been there before, someone who had seen what spirits could do. Kylie Wilkinson would know better than anyone what a spirit attack looked and felt like, but her familiar pixie face was nowhere to be found amongst the fearful expressions.