Undead Girl Gang(79)

Binx prances out of the neighbors’ shrubs and rubs himself against my ankles, his tail swishing through the air. I scoop him up, rubbing my thumb behind his ear until he purrs. “You think the Greenways are going to remember to feed you now? Mrs. Greenway wouldn’t even let you live indoors.”

“So witches really do talk to cats? Does he talk back?”

Aniyah Dorsey is walking down the driveway toward me. Her silver frames have been switched out for sunglasses. She’s wearing all black, down to her lipstick. It makes her teeth look especially white when she flashes me a smile. I resent how cool she looks. She doesn’t look like she just went to a funeral; she looks like she just buried someone.

“I didn’t see you in there,” I say, gesturing toward the house with Binx, who makes his grumpy mooing sound.

“I snuck out the side door during the slideshow when Chloe Wellington started scream-crying,” she says. Her tongue wedges under her upper lip. “I didn’t want to see him again anyway.”

I understand the feeling. It’s hard to see his face and not see a monster. I guess people have been trying to warn us forever that the boogeyman would be just some guy. Man is in his title, after all.

I know that I couldn’t have saved him, even if I’d wanted to.

Maybe one day the guilt will be easier to bear.

“You doing okay?” I ask Aniyah.

“Since running for my life out of a burning house with a group of zombies from a mushroom demon that I can never tell anyone about? Yeah. I only wake up screaming sometimes. Otherwise, I’m hella chill.” Her lips purse, and she tips her head up toward the sun, her hair swishing around her back. “It’s getting easier, but only because it’s starting to feel fake.”

I nod. “Nightmares have a way of doing that.”

“And we’re the only ones who even know that it was real.”

“Us and Caleb Treadwell.”

“Oh shit.” She hops with excitement, then has to right her sunglasses. “Did you hear he had to pull his Rausch Scholarship application because he plagiarized the essay?”

“I’m out of the loop at Fairmont right now. Rumors don’t really make it to you when you don’t have any friends,” I say.

“Uh, I’m telling you the rumor right now. Consider yourself in the loop.”

Dr. Miller has been harping on me for not giving people a chance. By people, she mostly means Caleb, who has invited me to join the honor society despite my mediocre grades. I think he pities me because I’m partially responsible for Xander dying. Dr. Miller thinks that he just misses our dead mutual friends and is trying to be nice.

If I spend the rest of my life avoiding people who could die on me, I’ll be alone for a long time. And what are the chances that I’ll immediately befriend another murderer?

You know what? I really don’t want to know the statistics on that.

“You don’t have an older brother, do you?” I ask Aniyah abruptly.

“Nope. One younger sister. She’s thirteen, so she’s kind of an asshole.”

“Tell me about it. Mine are eleven and fourteen. They’re the worst.” I hoist Binx closer to my chest, holding on to him like a surly security blanket. “So you . . . what? Wanna start the fat brown girl clique?”

She cocks her head at me. “Doesn’t that sound dope as hell?”

Honestly? It really does.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS



This book has been my most collaborative effort to date. Allow me to thank all my witches. (No, I will not ever get tired of witch puns. Hex-cuse me.)

Las Chicas Malas Brujas:

Anna-Marie McLemore, Tehlor Kay Mejia, and Candice Montgomery, who beta read and listened to me whine and never once told me to shut up. I love you all so much. Someday, we’ll get those four houses next door to each other. Tamales and ponies and wine for everyone!

The Badass Lady Authors Coven:

Cori McCarthy, Amy Rose Capetta, and Jenn Bennett, who are less a coven and more a list of very nice mentor authors who all take my panicked DMs when I don’t know what books are anymore.

The Red Sofa Coven, My Minnesota Witches:

Thank you, of course, to Laura Zats, my most incredible agent who also might be my guardian angel. Also to Erik Hane for putting up with Laura and me listing terrible titles in our group thread. And Dawn Frederick for leading the way in all things bookish.

The Razorbill Coven:

Thank you to Ben Schrank and Tiff Liao for believing in me and giving me the chance to write the fat Latina Wiccan story I’ve spent my entire life researching. Marissa Grossman and Alex Sanchez for always being a phone call away to help me iron out plot ideas—from red herrings to mushroom monologues. Corina Lupp, who designed this book, inside and out, and Michael Frost, who photographed that bitchin’ jacket. My awesome marketing team, especially Casey McIntyre.

The Wordsmith Coven:

Kate Frentzel, my copyeditor, and my proofreaders Krista Ahlberg and Vivian Kirklin, who saved all my readers from my sloppy idioms and repeated misspellings. Thank you the most.

The Harbor Family:

Forever and always. You may not be witches, but you are magic.