Undeadly

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

www.miraink.co.uk

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

Epigraph

Diary Entry 1

Ghost Gin

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Diary Entry 2

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Diary Entry 3

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Diary Entry 4

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Diary Entry 5

Epilogue

“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 might need a real guidebook...it’s sorta like Reaping for Dummies.

Yeah. Reaping.

We’ll get to that. But first, you gotta understand how everything started.

Here’s a little history...

* * *

It is said that Anubis fought a great earth-shattering battle with his uncle Set, the God of Chaos. Anubis’s legacy was to rule the Underworld and Set was all, “Nuh-huh. I want to rule the Underworld.”

So they had this huge freaking war. Set stole some of the reapers that Anubis was the boss of—and wow, did that piss him off!—so then, the reapers were fighting each other and the humans were all, “What is this crap? Reapers suck!” And there were plagues and famine and people dying for no reason, and the reapers were too busy blasting each other to do their jobs.

It was a mondo ick mess.

Finally, Anubis went deep into the Underworld and got some bad-ass magic. We’re talking magic so ancient and powerful, it wasn’t supposed to leave the world of the gods, like, ever.

But he got it anyway and used it to capture Set. He imprisoned the god in the bowels (Seriously? Ew!) of the Underworld, and then he banished all the disloyal reapers into this place that was like limbo, I guess, only way, way worse. And no one but Anubis could get there. Or something like that.