The Unquiet Dead A Novel Novels & Stories

"You and Elroy were never friends. You've been rivals forever. Watching him fall apart—it made you happy, didn't it?" He dropped the act. Smirked. "Yeah. It did. Oh—and he's dead. Thought you should know. You're sharp, Celine. I wish you happiness." My pen hovered. Ink bled into the page. I tore it up, tossed it out. "Happiness isn't for me." I'd had it once. Look where that got me. He gave a soft laugh. "Goodbye. I hope you find freedom." This time, I nodded. Freedom—that, I could want.

While clinging to the last bit of my strength, I stood up, grabbed the divorce agreement from my handbag, and threw it at Jake’s face. “I’m divorcing you, Jake!” Then, right before Jake’s disbelieving gaze, I stumbled toward the door, but soon after I started walking, my vision turned black entirely, and I fell forward again. Right before I lost consciousness, I heard shouting. “Mrs. Green is bleeding!” “Call the ambulance!” “Luna!”

I blended into the shadows of the alley behind Jules n’ blues as Quinn Parker and Fiona Declan took a seat at a table in the bar. The blond-haired beauty eyed the redhead with a certain wariness in her expression. I tapped the right side of my head, tuning into their conversation. It didn't matter that they were far away. A mere human couldn’t eavesdrop from a distance such as this, but for we supernaturals? Easy peasy. “What was that about?” Quinn started without preamble, ignoring the giant glass of lemonade before her. “It sounded urgent.” Fiona leaned into her, her eyes wide and shimmering. “We uncovered the trails of the money. Turns out they were buried under numerous paper companies!”

"The Vance family built a world where every breath was an advance on a debt you couldn't see. But out here, the air doesn't keep a tally." I looked down at my hands. The stain from the printer's ink was fading, turning into a faint, gray shadow along the creases of my palms. The phantom in the silk suit, the Faceless Author, the iron pens—they were all sinking into the deep, dark reservoir of the unwritten past. We had torn the book in half, and in doing so, we had finally broken the sequence. The Geography of the Unwritten

“You think this is funny?” He shrugged, still wearing a smile. I looked around again, trying to process the chaos happening below. The room was massive. Hundreds of bunks lined up in perfect military order, stacked three or four high. People in the same yellow uniforms milled around — some talking in groups, others sitting quietly, a few even laughing like they weren’t trapped in a death game. The lighting was bright enough to make everything feel sterile, artificial. The air smelled faintly metallic, mixed with the scent of cooked food somewhere far off.

When I placed first on an exam, I posted, "I got locked in the dark room again, but I never cheated. I was in first place. Why does Mom believe everything Juniper says and never listens to me?" When Mom celebrated Juniper's birthday, I wrote, "It's cake. I haven't had a birthday cake in so long. I want to celebrate my birthday too, but Mom said I don't deserve it, since I killed Dad and Juniper's parents…" On the day I died, I wrote what I felt when I was locked in the dark storage room. "I'm so tired that I don't think I can hold on anymore. Will Mom finally be happy if I'm dead?"

She glanced back down at the leather-bound book resting on the floorboards beside her. The empty pages seemed to stare up at her, daring her to turn them. With a trembling hand, she picked it up again, the leather warm against her palm. She knew she should get up, should finish unpacking, should do something practical, anything to distract herself from the throbbing between her legs. But she couldn't. She was hooked. The anonymous writer had become a guide, a seductress whispering secrets into her ear, and Pinky was a willing student, desperate to learn every lesson.

Valencia rolled her eyes at the thought and did her best to not look at Calhoun. After the food was served, they began eating quietly and after a few minutes of silence where the only thing audible was the soft clanks of spoons against china, Dominic asked, “So, did you hear any news from your side?” Calhoun knew he was asking about the death of the Ancient One and if it had been discovered. The mage only shook his head and answered, “None, yet. I guess, the mages are all under hibernation or deep meditation themselves.”

Once it told her where she could find the rest of her daughter. “In gullets,” it had said. “Building the bones of strong animals. Feeding the universe. Decaying with the leaves.” “That’s lovely,” she had told the voice in her dream, and then it wrapped around her neck like a lover’s hands and tried to strangle her. “I’m back,” she answered him now. “You ran off so quickly before that I wasn’t sure I would see you again.” Casual. Nonchalant. Simply a murderer unknowingly talking to his victim’s mother, after all. A warm sunny day in the poor district of the city.

I heard the clicking of camera shutters, but no one called the ambulance. My blood drained dry. My body became cold. Finally, Yvette Skye was no more. I died all alone at the corner of the street. No one cared. My corpse was not a pretty sight. My eyes were wide, unseeing, and there was a large hole in my stomach. My legs were twisted together. One of my arms was flung by the side of the road. My legs were useless now. I was ugly. No wonder the little girl cried. Floating in the air, I stared at my mutilated corpse.