More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
One of my fellow patients in the psychiatric ward had insisted that everyone she met had an animal of some kind riding around on their heads.
It was hard to get very worked up about the opinions of a guy who didn’t even know he had a crocodile camped out on his cranium.
And visualized the parakeet making explosive diarrhea all down the back of Mr. Grimes’s head.
My grandfather had always named his cars, but he’d given them women’s names, with a gag-worthy comment about women’s duty to carry the load. I’d vowed to always name mine as men, because if I was going to ride anything, it’d be a dude.
I’d say I shouted Lily’s name until my throat was hoarse, but I didn’t really have a throat. Or a neck or a mouth, come to think of it. Just one of the many ways that being dead was deeply fucked up.
I’d stopped going to classes partway through eleventh grade, and I’d turned out just fine. Okay, I’d turned out dead, but that’d been almost ten years later, and getting gunned down hadn’t had anything to do with my lack of algebra skills.
Lily shone like a star, and everyone else in this podunk town was sewage.
“No problem. I’m looking forward to it. Just to be clear, we can’t create forms out of nothing or grow flesh back on our old bones. For the final plan, we’re going to need to commit a few murders so we have bodies to take over.” A grin stretched across the face I no longer had, and a dark laugh spilled out of me. “Perfect. I know at least a couple of people who’ll totally deserve it.”
Oh, what a tough guy, Zach—hurling projectiles at unarmed women, my inner voice said. Tom Brady would be so proud of you.
For a second—just a second—I wished I really was a murderous psychopath who wouldn’t hesitate to carve them up. We’d see how long they kept laughing then.
I loosened the nuts, unable to stop myself from thinking about a whole lot of other kinds of nuts I wouldn’t have minded detaching from the slimeballs around this school.
Oh, there’d be something in him, all right. Unfortunately for him, there’d be something coming out too—specifically his soul.
Back in the janitor’s room, Ruin was jittering behind the bleach bottle like a kitten that’d bit a live wire.
Ruin bounded right at me, throwing his almost-as-brawny arms around me. Right. I’d forgotten that when he had arms, he was a hugger.
My first instinct was to turn tail and run like a rabbit in the sights of a fox. My dignity went halfsies with my sense of self-preservation, and I hurried away at a brisk walk.
Had Ansel taken a hard blow to the head? Or been snorting something he really shouldn’t have?
“I think it’s kind of cozy,” Ansel declared in his new role as The Most Optimistic Guy Alive.
“Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you’re ghosts. Someone killed you, and then you haunted me for most of my childhood. And now you’ve decided to take over new bodies so you can… hang out with me again?”
“Tell me you didn’t just try to justify attempted murder on the basis that you needed a good workout.”
“Anyone else have a problem with me teaching this class however the hell I want to teach it? Speak up, and I’ll demonstrate some juvenile delinquency on your asses right now.”
Does your mother know you’re offering up human sacrifices? my inner voice snarked,
They were worried about me going on some kind of manic rampage while they were already in the middle of one. The hypocrisy was intense around here.
Her smell permeated the whole space, lightly sweet with an aquatic tang, like wildflowers that’d been drifting down a river. I wanted to roll around in it and slather it all over me like a cologne.
I wanted her to feel how much I adored her, but only if she was enjoying the demonstration.
“You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Lily?” he murmured, every word like a flame. “No one’s treating you fucking right. But I’ve got you. I’m going to make you sing again.”
But Lily’s smile made me want to paint every surface in the world just for her.
The bartender rolled his eyes, and I contemplated removing them from his head.
“I’m going to rebuild the Skullbreakers and remake our name—but I came back for you. I already had one life that was all about me. In this one, you come first.”
“Good girl. So fucking wet for me. Do you have any idea how hard I am for you? You make me want to explode. But I’m going to look after you first.”
I gave her pussy one last lingering kiss and loomed up over her, fumbling in my pocket for the condom I’d thankfully had the foresight to carry. I had no idea if possessed swimmers swam well, but after all the weirdness of our ghostly union with these bodies, I didn’t think knocking our woman up with ghostly jizz was a smart idea.
