The Stalking Dead (Gang of Ghouls, #1)

by Eva Chase

Minnow. The nickname sank into my brain with a spike of adrenaline. I stared at him. My voice came out in a whisper. “What did you just call me?” Mr. Grimes—or the man who wasn’t really Mr. Grimes anymore—grinned. “Minnow. Like old times, when you were a little thing splashing around in the marsh like you were going to learn to breathe water. Are you going to complain about that now? I guess I can come up with a more fitting one since you’re not so little anymore.” No. It couldn’t be. I gaped at him. He… He knew. In therapy, I’d talked a little about the imaginary friends who’d occupied so much of my free time, but I’d never gotten into that much detail. I’d never told anyone—and it’d always been him talking to me when he called me that name, not the other way around, so no one could have overheard—no one could have known about that… Except the guy who’d coined the nickname in the first place. Swallowing hard, I studied every plane of his face, every angle of his body, as if I’d be able to recognize the hazy impressions of those ephemeral presences in this new manifestation. “It’s… How did you know that?” He squeezed my shoulder. “How could I forget? Technically we rose from the dead last week with Kai’s little trick, but really you brought us back to life ages before that. If it wasn’t for you, we’d have faded away into that numb nothingness. Fuck that.”