The Book of Lost Souls (7 page)

Ivy glanced between him and the books. She didn’t believe him. “Then what kind of demon are you? Seems you happen to be wherever things go wrong.”

“Y
ou
made Tara trip,” Shayde said, grinning. “Way to go, Nick!”

Nick feigned an expression of hurt and surprise, but the dark glitter in his eyes didn’t fool Ivy. “Moi?”
 

Shayde leaned closer to Raven and whispered in her ear. Raven laughed softly, and the girls hurried from the room, dragging an unsuspecting Gareth with them. “Hey!” he protested to no avail. Their laughter faded, and Ivy heard the click of a door closing.

“What kind of demon am I?” Nick drew his eyes away from the stack of books to meet Ivy’s stare. “I’m the kind of demon who is going to help you get rid of your scaly reputation. You keep turning me down. Come on, Ivy. How about going for some pizza at Saludo’s? What do you say? Think you’re up to a real date?”

“What do you know about the books?” Ivy asked.

Nick picked them both up, studied them briefly and set them back down. “I don’t know a thing about the gardening book. But
this
one.” He tapped
The Rise of the Dark Curse.
“I know more than you, lizard lover. If you can handle it, maybe I’ll tell you.”
 

Nick’s playful expression changed to something more serious. “Now about that pizza. After a hard day working in the cemetery, a girl’s gotta eat. We’ll talk about your favorite subject. Books.”

Ivy sighed. Maybe Nick could prove helpful yet. “Fine. Pizza’s good. And yeah, I can
more
than handle it.”

Nick grinned. “I bet you can. I’ll pick you up at six.” He gave Ivy a half-smile and motioned to the books. “You didn’t by chance find another book, did you?”

Oh, yeah. He knew all right.

“No, it seems to be missing. What do you know about it?”

Nick shook his head and sighed as though this bit of information wasn’t what he’d hoped to hear. “Leave the gardening book at home. Bring the other one. And whatever you do, tell the rest of the group to keep quiet. Tell
no one
else.”
 

Ivy nodded. How much did Nick know? Did any of it have to do with her father? Her dad and Mr. Marcelli knew each other very well. They had been friends, actually. She hated that Nick was so hard to read. She hated all the mystery and rumors surrounding him. It was nearly impossible to know where she stood with people like that. People like her dad.

Asking her to bring the book on a date seemed like an odd request. Had she been wrong in her belief it had been discarded? Maybe Nick had gone to take the books himself and startled someone else. If Nick had any part in the missing book, then she needed to stay clear of him. If he knew how to use any of the spells in
The Rise of the Dark Curse
he was probably the most dangerous person she knew. But, despite her mistrust of him, she didn’t really want to believe Nick would be part of something so dark. Maybe this was another case of wrong place, wrong time. Sure, maybe he startled the person in the cemetery. Or, maybe he knew about all this some other way. Just what was his part in all this? She supposed she could wait to hear what Nick had to say before turning the books over to her mother.
 

She watched Nick as he drove away in his black Mustang GT.
 

“So,” Shayde said, entering the parlor. “You finally listened to me. You’ve got a date with Nick.”

“Eavesdropping again, Shayde?” Ivy asked without turning around. Nick made a left onto the main road. The Mustang’s tires chirped against the asphalt and within a few seconds, he was gone.

Shayde tried her best to appear innocent. “I
vy
, I was with Raven and Gareth. We went into the other viewing room. You can’t hear anything from there.”

“Right,” Ivy said. “I know you.”
 

“Okay, I might have overheard
some
things,” Shayde said. “Nick could help undo the damage you caused to your reputation by dating Spike. He likes you, Ivy. You’d have to be blind not to notice.”

“Uh, huh. Well, he knows about the books. You did hear that part, right?”
 

Shayde frowned. “Yeah, I heard. But seriously, how much could he really know? That happened a long time ago. He was just as young as the rest of us. And, honestly, I couldn’t hear
everything.
Gareth kept asking too many questions about the Moray thing.”

Ivy shook her head. “It was the way he looked at the books. Other than a witch or wizard studying black magic, who else would know about
The Rise of the Dark Curse
besides a demon?”

“Think he’ll say anything about you having them?”

“That’s what I intend to find out,” Ivy said.
 

CHAPTER 8

Before they’d taken a single step into Saludo’s, Ivy knew it was a bad idea. Saludo’s was the local pizza hangout between Maple Avenue and Hill Street and like every Saturday night, it was pretty busy. After last night’s fiasco, the place was crammed with students sharing their version of what had happened.
 

Saludo’s decor hadn’t strayed much from the forty-year-old photos that hung in black frames on the walls: brown brick front, vinyl flooring, paneled walls, Formica tables with plastic checkered tablecloths, and large picture windows across the front and side facing the corner sidewalk.
 

Four tables opened at once and were promptly cleared, so the wait didn’t turn out to be as nearly as long as she thought. Ivy heard the occasional whispering and laughing as their waitress seated them at a booth near the front window. A few students nudged their friends. Nick hadn’t been kidding about everyone knowing she’d turned Gareth’s pet lizard into a date for the Halloween party. If they only knew that she was carrying one of Skinner’s books, they’d all look at her differently. She’d taken care to put the mismatched dust jacket back on it and had carefully ticked it into her book bag. Ivy shifted the book bag to her other hand, carrying it low, and hopefully not in the line of everyone’s sight.
 

Just act casual
.

Ivy pulled her book bag up against her and tried not to pay attention to the sixty or so sets of eyes staring at her.
 

“Don’t worry about it,” Nick said, plucking a couple of laminated menus from between the napkin holder and glass shakers of seasoning and parmesan cheese. “I’ve got a plan.”

Nick gave her his most wicked smile. Ivy thought she’d had enough of schemes and excitement over the past twenty-four hours, but the constant stares and giggles were enough to make her game to at least hearing Nick out.

“First, what do you want on your pizza?” Nick asked.

Ivy shrugged. “Pepperoni’s good.”
 

“Perfect.” Nick ordered a medium pepperoni pizza with extra cheese and two drinks. The waitress finished scribbling down their order and hurried off, promising to come right back with their sodas.

“Is it in there?” Nick asked, nodding toward the book bag at her side.
 

“I brought both books, yeah.”

“I’m only interested in the one.
The Rise of the Dark Curse
. I have no idea why the other one was with it. It means nothing.” Nick studied her with those dark, mysterious eyes of his.

Ivy forced herself to stop fidgeting. Other than Nick, no one here knew she had the book. What if he stood up and said something right here, right now? “Since you know so much, then what’s the deal with the
The Rise of the Dark Curse
?”

Nick gave her a long, curious look. “You don’t know, do you? You mean to tell me you never knew about the books? Your dad never told you why he and my father wanted them? What they did and all?”

Ivy said nothing. Her father had left without a goodbye, much less an explanation. She only knew that Helen Skinner, a half-witch, half-demon, was undeniably the darkest Kindred ever to set foot in Northwick. She knew Skinner had written a few books containing black magic. After the fire and her dad’s disappearance, the Council had questioned both her and her mother extensively. But no one ever told her anything. Not what the books were called and not what they did. Until now, she’d been just fine with that.

“You really don’t know. Interesting.” Nick surveyed her a second longer, then sighed. “Okay, well, it’s like you suspected. The books are pure black magic. No surprise there. If you haven’t already looked, it’s supposedly filled with a lot of really nasty spells and curses. Anything from causing various forms of insanity to flesh rot. There’s a chapter on turning people into major-league plague-carriers, a curse that puts someone in a near death state, and I think there’s another one that makes the victim have an insatiable craving for toxic substances. You know, like antifreeze and triple A batteries. Mmm. Tasty.”

Ivy
had
paged through the book. She hadn’t gone through the whole thing, because the book freaked her out and she kept dropping it every time one of those tendrils of smoke drifted out. She didn’t know anything about curses containing flesh rot, although she had seen the one with the rats and another that Nick hadn’t mentioned—a curse designed to make the intended victim pull out their teeth and fingernails. After reading that one, she’d set the book aside and took a shower to scrub her skin from the cold, tingling sensation it’d left on her. She had vowed to never open that horrible book again. Not that she didn’t want to. She did. It had been hard not to go through it again before tucking into the book bag. It had been as though the book had called to her. Beckoned her. Had it called to her father, too?

Ivy suppressed the urge to shudder. “So how do
you
know about this book? Why was it in the cemetery?”
 

The waitress brought them their drinks and Nick unwrapped his straw. “The book was small press. Maybe less than four hundred in print. The missing book, Skinner’s second work of dark art and considered the most dangerous of all is
The Book of Lost Souls
. There’s only one.”

Nick paused and rubbed his chin. “As for who wants it, well, there are certain witch and demon families. My Dad, for one. Others might want it for how much they could sell it for. To some, it’d be a collector’s item. But, I’d bet that every dark spell caster in existence would probably kill to get their hands on it.”

Spell casters were those capable of, well, casting spells. Witches, demons, wizards, fairies. That meant half the Kindred in Northwick could use the book if they got hold of it. And then, there were the Regulars who’d want to hide them the best they could.

“My dad tried to swindle Skinner out of it about eleven or twelve years ago. But, he wasn’t the only one.” Nick’s eyes locked on to hers as he paused, waiting for her reaction.

Ivy blinked. She remembered her parents arguing over something to do with Skinner and some books, but it had meant nothing to her then. Except that her parents were fighting and they
never
fought.

She leaned forward. So, he did know about her dad. His father clearly told him more about the books than her own father told her. Ivy was shaking inside, both scared and angry. Scared that Nick knew so much. Angry that Mr. Marcelli and Nick had known what her dad had been up to while she and her mother didn’t matter enough for her dad to explain a single thing.
 

“What do you want, Nick?”
 

The corner of Nick’s mouth eased into a grin that made Ivy’s insides somersault unexpectedly. “You,” he said without breaking eye contact.
 

Ivy’s heart raced, then tumbled somewhere into her midsection, leaving any response she’d been planning frozen in place.
 

The waitress returned with their pizza and two plates. “Get anything else for you two?” she asked.

Ivy shook her head, still unable to speak or look at Nick directly. His gaze was far too intense and flirtatious for comfort.

“No, thanks, Angie,” Nick said with a casual and charming smile, and Angie tucked her pad and pen into her apron and left to attend another table.
 

“Well, and I also want the books, of course,” Nick added. “Want to know what
The Book of Lost Souls
does?”
 

She did.

“It’s a list of some of history’s most notorious dead and damned: Jack the Ripper, Lizzy Borden, Al Capone, just to name a few. The book details how to resurrect their souls from Hell,” Nick said, offering her a plate with a slice of hot, gooey pizza.
 

 
“Thanks,” Ivy said, taking the plate. The pizza smelled good, and she hadn’t eaten any lunch. She chose to ignore Nick’s first answer. “So, this book you want raises the dead?”
 

Nick shook parmesan cheese on his slice of pizza. “It’s not what you think, Ivy. There are three kinds of Kindred that want it. Anyone who practices black magic wants it. Then, there are the collectors who want it because it’s one of a kind. It represents power.”

“And the third?” Ivy took a bite of pizza. There couldn’t be any such spell. Once you were dead, you were dead. Well, unless you were a zombie or a vampire.
 

“The third believe the books shouldn’t fall into the hands of either. Those books need to be put away. Someplace safe and out of reach.”

She swallowed. “And which type do you fit into?”
 

As if she didn’t know.
 

Nick raised an eyebrow. “The third type.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“What have you got against me, Ivy? You seem to think I’m this terrible person because I’ve had a few scrapes. I’ve made some poor choices. I’ve had some bad timing. Guilt by association, too. In your situation, you should understand. If the word gets out about the books, about how you found them, everyone will think your father gave them to you. Especially after last night. I know that’s not the case. I trust
you
.”

True. They’d all imagine the worst, which was exactly what scared her the most. It’s why she wasn’t sure she could tell her mother about the books. Her mother would think that going straight to the Council would clear her daughter’s name. But, Ivy didn’t believe that for a second.