Majesty

By Jay E. Tria

What would you do if the ghost of someone you love appeared in front of you?

Majesty is a beautiful ghost, with her hair of fire and eyes gray like smoke. That is Andy Fey's first thought when the ghost of her best friend Majesty Hall appeared in her bedroom, only two months since her death. Majesty doesn't know why she's there, why only Andy can see her.

Andy isn't sure if she should tell Gale, that boy who claims that he and Majesty were in love. Funny, sarcastic, and a self-proclaimed serial heartbreaker, Gale is proving to be a good friend in grief, though his trail of broken hearts could soon include hers.

As Andy and Gale wade through their sorrow, Andy wonders if Majesty is here to help ease her into this new, complicated friendship, or if she has a mission all her own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay E. Tria
• Release date: May 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393087731

Book preview

Majesty

Jay E. Tria

Copyright

Majesty

Jay E. Tria

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

Copyright © 2015 by Jay E. Tria.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contact the author: www.jayetria.com, [e-mail]

Cover art by Raine Sarmiento, www.rainesarmiento.com

Books by Jay

Playlist Series: Songs of Our Breakup | Songs to Get Over You | Songs to Make You Stay | That Thing Called Closure

Young Adult/Manga novel: Blossom Among Flowers

Young Adult/Urban Fantasy: Majesty

To Marcelle.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Author’s Note

About the Author

Chapter 1

Majesty was a beautiful ghost.

I don’t even know why I was surprised. She was already a goddess when she was alive. A mass of fiery hair, thick tendrils that spilled down her small shoulders. High, rounded cheeks, balanced by a delicate chin. Cherry lips, full as pillows, and a small, straight nose. But it was her eyes, luminous pools of gray, hazy as smoke, which drowned anyone who dared look into them too closely.

As a ghost she was not whole, not flesh and bone, but effervescent, as if a slight gust of wind would make her vanish. But even in this state her beauty did not fade, but swelled, shimmering in its otherworldly glow.

I was sleeping on my desk, slumped over a textbook, when her presence first woke me. The sun was bright through my open window, too angry for a Connecticut winter sun. Its rays battled with the dark curtains to get inside my tiny dormitory room. I had woken because I felt a cold rush, a tingle down my spine, heavy pinpricks making the hairs on my arms stand to attention.

Is the heater broken? was my first groggy thought. I lifted my head, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and there was Majesty’s ghost, standing in front of the window.

She looked surprised, as if she too didn’t know what she was doing in my room. Then she turned to me. Her light gray eyes, turned into transparent pools by the mystery of death, grew wide at the sight of my face.

I look terrible. I remembered I had fallen asleep in the clothes I had gone to class in—a bad habit I’ve adopted in the past two months. When she was alive, Majesty didn’t like it when I wasn’t presentable.

The glass orbs of her eyes warmed, and I thought she must have recognized me.

Good morning, hon, she said in her strong, singsong voice.

She spoke as if she had just barged into my room like she used to do, giving me a wake-up call that I didn’t ask for. Her voice echoed in my ears, like a sound coming through a veil that I couldn’t see. But it was loud, and clear, and the song filled my head, and I knew it was really Majesty.

She had spoken in that voice that belonged only to her, as if I had not seen her coffin touch the ground only two months ago.

I MET MAJESTY ON A Wednesday, the first Wednesday of September last year.

It was at Statistics class during the fall term. Students at Rosehorn University were required to take any two courses in Quantitative Reasoning, regardless of their majors. I chose one of mine to be Statistics because it fit the empty morning slot in my Monday-Wednesday schedule. Not because I showed genius-level proficiency for it in high school, and not because I thought it was compatible with my Management major. I tried to not worry too much about details like that. Trying to keep my scholarship was pressure enough.

That was probably Majesty’s reason too. Convenience, that is. For one, Statistics had no value added to her Communications major. She was there only because it was mandatory. She despised Math, truly detested the sight of numbers and summation signs. I think I knew that the first time I saw her.

I was sitting in my usual spot in any classroom. Not quite at the farthest corner, because you don’t hear the professor from the back, and I liked to learn. Not quite at the front either, because I don’t want my face to be the first the professor sees, his first option if he needed to call on somebody to answer his questions. I sat instead at a spot in the middle row, slightly to the right, near enough to the door. It was a good spot to scan my classmates and sort them into boxes inside my head.

Hunched guy in black with stringy hair and a lip ring. Could be a geek in hiding. In he goes into the Yay Box.

Plump girl with glasses and a polka dot sweater. Definitely the Yay Box.

Loud, obnoxious boy standing with one high-top sneakered foot on his chair, regaling a small circle of students with a story of a vampire, a werewolf, and a BSDM enthusiast walking into a bar. Nay Box, for sure.

Classmates in the Yay Box were people who I wouldn’t mind talking to in class. I’d even say a silent prayer to have them as groupmates should the need arise. Maybe we would greet each other in the halls once class was over. I was cool with that.

Classmates in the Nay Box, on the other hand, were people who I don’t think I could ever get along with, not in the short few months in a term, not even if I cared enough to try.

I’ve done this exercise many times before—at nineteen years old and too many years in school, I’ve had lots of profiling practice—and the system was virtually foolproof. If you’re an introvert like me, you’d want to conserve your socializing reserves on people you could actually like, and avoid the loud, energy-suckers.

Obviously, I wasn’t a fan of people.

Majesty was sitting in the front row, in the very middle seat, right in front of the professor’s table. That was clue enough. Then there was her hair, strands of gold woven in the mass of red, bright as sunrise, tamed to perfection. She turned to greet someone she knew. She’s gorgeous, I thought, the vision of her alarming me.

Hi, Majesty! Nadia called out from across the room. I remembered Nadia. She lived on the same dormitory floor as me, I think.

Hello Nadiaaaaaaaaa! flaming-hair girl cried out, her voice a loud bell, ringing clear throughout the waves of noise in the room.

My frown deepened. And Majesty goes into the Nay Box.

Okay everyone, settle down. A sturdy tree of a man entered the room, burdened by a pile of books and a moth-eaten coat to match his old trousers. He sported graying blond hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Standard Rosehorn professor ensemble. I’m Professor Grayson. Welcome to the class most likely to be flunked by sophomores.

He was answered by collective groaning. I perked up in my seat, thinking, challenge accepted. I did fairly well in Math all my academic life, if I say so myself.

I stole a look at my aggrieved classmates, my gaze landing on the red-headed girl. It wasn’t my fault really. Everything she did and everything she was screamed for attention. Her rouge-painted lips were pursed in deep concentration, as if the professor told her she couldn’t have something she wanted, and that wasn’t sitting well with her.

Professor Grayson went on to discuss the syllabus, the details of each quiz and