Commencement: Hellsbane

By Paige Cuccaro

Commencement by Paige Cuccaro

Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn for frat guys… Emma Jane Hellsbane knows something evil is worming its way through her college campus—she can feel it. Literally. Her freakish ability to feel other people's emotions as though they were her own has always been monumentally awkward, and it's easier for her to just pretend it doesn't exist. But this time her paranormal ability just might help her save lives. Emma Jane's fairly certain that whatever the hateful, egomaniacal, Godlike thing is, it's set up shop inside her boyfriend, the frat boy/soccer star Justin. And if she doesn't figure a way to get it out of him soon, Justin's soul will be the appetizer to the main course—the whole student body. Problem is, the big baddy is granting sinister wishes, and with each one the risks grow higher and the phrase Be careful what you wish for becomes a real-life dire warning. Of course for Emma, what feels like it could be the end is in fact just the beginning…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Sep 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781622669929

Book preview

Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Preview of Hellsbane

About the Author

Discover more romance from Entangled…

Ancient Desire

Hunter’s Hope

Insurrection

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Paige Cuccaro. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Preview of Hellsbane © 2012 by Paige Cuccaro

Entangled Publishing, LLC

644 Shrewsbury Commons Ave

STE 181

Shrewsbury, PA 17361

[e-mail]

Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Edited by Stacy Abrams

Cover design by LJ Anderson

ISBN 978-1-62266-992-9

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition September 2012

To my family and friends who have believed in me from the beginning.

Chapter One

There’s something wrong with Justin.

He’s possessed, Mihir said.

I’m serious. Worry had my heart racing fast and my tolerance for smartass remarks dangerously low.

Mihir sighed and swiveled his desk chair to face me. Okay, then he’s just a jackass. It’s either one or the other.

The kid kinda had a crush on me. So he kinda hated Justin, my boyfriend. I mean, it was sweet. Mihir was a great guy…but at fifteen, he was just a kid. We were friends—that’s all. It seriously wasn’t gonna happen. So we sort of silently agreed not to talk about it. It worked for us.

"Knock it off. I need someone to talk to about this, okay? I got a really weird feeling when I was with him last night. You know what I mean? Like I literally got a weird feeling."

I knew he understood. Mihir knew all about my weirdness of being able to feel other people’s emotions like they’re my own. It can be kind of awkward—not just knowing people’s most intimate, private emotions, but feeling them. Growing up with this kind of freaky gift wasn’t easy, especially on Friday nights—Mom and Dad’s date night.

The word ewww comes to mind.

Thank God that by nineteen, I’d learned to control it…well, mostly. It ain’t easy keeping your mental guard up twenty-four-seven. Slips happen, and then I learn way more than I ever wanted to know about the people around me.

Mihir was the only person I’d ever told about my ability. He’d been raised to believe in all kinds of woo-woo stuff, so I was just another kind of woo-woo to add to his list. It was nice having someone I could be myself with. But still, I just wanted to be normal, so most of the time I’d keep my mouth shut when I accidently felt someone’s shame or embarrassment, acting just as clueless to their private suffering as everyone else. The closest I’d ever felt to normal was watching Lieutenant Troi on Next Generation—only what I experience has always been way more intense.

Mihir sat straighter. "Oh. You mean Justin felt really weird, and you picked up on it?"

Mihir had the brain of a rocket scientist and the background of a gypsy fortune-teller. Well, not gypsy exactly—Indian. Mihir’s family was from India and his grandmother was some kind of spiritual medicine lady or something. She believed in all kinds of weird stuff like spirits, demons, and magic. She’d taught Mihir all she knew.

Personally, I didn’t know what I believed. I mean, with a creepy ability like mine, it’s hard to say none of the other crazy stuff exists. I’d never seen any hard evidence, not that I wanted to. Personally, if the disembodied voice in Amityville Horror told me to get out, I’d go.

But Mihir believed all of it. He’d accepted me right off the bat, and even enjoyed the idea of my special brand of weirdness. The only downside was, like most teenage boys, he thought about sex every three or four minutes, and he knew I knew when he did. So now and then when I’d catch him staring at me, he’d turn beet red and everything he was thinking and feeling would be right there on his face—plain to see. He’d cover quickly though, hiding his embarrassment with a goofy grin and bobbing his brows like a horny little idiot. Thank goodness I’d learned to block him most of the time, like clenching a fist in my mind, squeezing off the flow of emotions.

How do guys function with that kind of stuff going through their heads twenty-four-seven?

Anyway, during his few minutes of free thought, Mihir was actually pretty cool. He was the one person in the world I could talk to about whatever might be going on with Justin, and be honest about how I knew. I couldn’t have asked for a better confidante, though for Mihir I figured being friends with me must be like waking up in a cold sweat after dreaming you’d gone to school naked. Except he wasn’t dreaming and he couldn’t do anything to cover his exposed emotions. I did what I could, laughing with him, pretending it was no big deal, but it always made me a little queasy.

I’d give anything not to know exactly how he felt about me. Not just for myself, but for him. It seriously sucked sometimes.

He leaned forward, bracing his bony teenage elbows on his lap. What’d you feel?

"I was cold all

Reviews for Commencement

[avoraciousreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5*Book source ~ Many thanks to Entangled Publishing for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.Emma Jane Hellsbane is different than her fellow college students. Not only can she sense other people’s emotions, but she experiences them, too. She’s had to work to keep feelings not her own at bay, but sometimes they overwhelm her. When her boyfriend Justin suddenly doesn’t feel right to her, she seeks help from the one person who she can talk to and not expect him to call her a freak. Mihir is a fifteen-year-old genius, a Junior in college and his family believes in all things mystical. So, even though he hates Emma’s boyfriend because he’s lusting after Emma himself, he’s there to help her figure out what is wrong with Justin. What’s wrong with Justin is way creepy and dangerous. It’s up to a skeptical Emma to save the day.A good start to a new series this short introduces us to Emma and her freaky ability to sense and feel the emotions of others. Even though she has been able to do this since she could remember, she has a hard time believing Mihir when he starts tossing out ideas as to what is wrong with Justin. I was irritated with her at this point. She’s living with some weird ability and yet she completely doesn’t believe anything else weird is out there? Give me a break. I’d be more apt to believe all kinds of stuff rather than bury my head in the sand and pretend the boogeyman isn’t out there. Other than that though I enjoyed the introduction to the Hellsbane series. Oh, and Justin? He’s an idiot that got what he wished for even if it wasn’t quite how he wanted it.