Three Trials (The Dark Side Book 2)(37)

Yet, the pain is still unbearable. It’s as though I’m still burning alive from the inside, and it’s weakening my ability to turn ghost girl.

With all the concentration I can muster, I focus really hard on going phantom, but I can barely sense them when I feel myself fighting to stay in intangible form. It feels like I’m being pulled in four different directions at once.

I zap myself seven feet into the air—calculating an extra foot for human error in depth since I can’t see—and fall the extra two feet back to the ground, landing in a crumple as a real girl who can feel that shit.

They buried me a foot short. Dicks.

I can’t even go phantom again when I try.

Oh damn. If I can’t go phantom and zap myself all the way back to them, then how the hell am I going to find them? It’s not as though they’ve ever walked home.

Looking around, I note that it is a very familiar cemetery.

Then, of course, my eyes dart to the headstone to see how they’ve endeared their fearless, selfless, wonderful, doting guardian, though they never helped determine her virginal status.

No name.

The stone simply reads, “Comoara Tr?d?toare.”

There’s also a bed of quickly wilting roses I’m sitting in. I don’t feel a single thorn.

It reminds of the roses they showered onto those women as a gift to bring them into the folds. They always took care to remove the thorns. I found it so thoughtful. It was one of those things that just reeled me in that much more.

Now that I’ve apparently died—again—one of those assholes finally got me my damn roses. Whichever one it was, they’re my new favorite. I don’t even care if it’s Jude; this one is a win.

“Lovely,” I say to myself, grinning at the heaps of roses surrounding me, even though the ones under me smell like they’re burning.

Lush, luxurious, red…and faded red/pink. And dried and dead beneath.

For an entire moment, I’m distracted from my pain as I bask in my roses, then bewildered by their varying degrees of decay.

Just how long have I been dead?

It surely took a while to get such an ornate gravestone, though they certainly could have put a little more thought into the inscription I was supposed to be left with for all time.

Where are my awesome quotes? Not even any dates to show my very short time as this version of me. Just that damn treacherous treasure crap that is certainly not a sweet term of endearment.

I’ll get mad at them later.

The pain will be distracted no longer.

Staggering to my feet, I look around, confused. How do I find my way home in this mess?

I manage to walk, despite the pain, focusing on the guys, thinking of everything about them. It seems to lessen the pain.

Two people stumble over themselves, gaping at me like they’ve been traumatized.

“It’s just a naked body,” I tell them with a bitter smile as I flip them off and keep hobbling along.

Dying apparently makes me very cranky. Especially when I come back whole and struggle to cling the form I once despised.

I tell ya, there’s just no way to make me happy right now.

I can’t even conjure some clothes for myself. And somehow I’m still dirty even though I did go phantom.

“Sheesh, someone get me a cheese plate to go with my whine.”

Yeah, my recycled-yet-slightly-altered bad pun doesn’t even cheer me up.

The back alley I turn down doesn’t look promising. The guys are in a much nicer area.

The three guys who swing their gazes up in shock and very alarming delight has me looking over my shoulder as I pass them.

They’re definitely about to piss me off.

Predictably, they cut off my exit and surround me, all of them leering.

“What do we have here?” Mr. Cliché asks from behind me.

“You have a very naked girl who just dug out of her grave—figuratively speaking on the digging portion. If I’m a zombie, you idiots will be the first I infect,” I tell them flatly. My gaze deliberately dips to one’s crotch. “And depending on your intent, the bite wound could be vicious.”

The one in front of me looks hesitant now, as though he’s not sure if he wants to do terrible things to a girl who might just be crazy enough to bite away his manhood.

I’ll do far worse, but they’re human and don’t know that. Yet.

“I’m in a lot of pain, and I’m a little lost right now. I’m almost suspicious it’s because I’ve been away from my four very ungrateful boyfriends for too long. Care to hurry up and exercise your free will so I can decide if I’m going to kill you or not?” I ask with an impatient smile.

The one in front of me turns and runs when I smirk at him. When I flick my gaze to the right, the guy there sees something in my eyes I’m apparently missing.

Or maybe it’s the fact the concrete under my feet seems to be sizzling and burning away without fire the longer I stand here. That’s rather curious.

It makes me look back on everything that’s been going on since I woke and consider all the burning smells.

He runs as well, while the one behind me jerks me back by my hair and calls them a string of very emasculating names.

My lips tense when the fella jerks me back harder, trying to force me to the ground. But he cries out in pain before I even do anything to him.