Ashes to Ashes: The Ghost Ring Chronicles, #2

By Sierra Storm

Her secret could mean life or death—but for whom?

Spring semester for Bunny Rainville means new classes, old threats, and one very handsome new stand partner in orchestra. With the help of her ghost friends, she finally finds herself climbing the social ladder, but her talent has a grisly downside as well. Visible targets are much easier to hit.

As the mysteries of life and death unravel around her, Bunny quickly realizes that everything is not as it seems. Old and new friends alike come with secrets, and if she can't identify who's on her side in time, Twin Oaks College could become an epicenter of chaos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen And Glory Press LLC
• Release date: Aug 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223067696

Book preview

Ashes to Ashes

The Ghost Ring Book 2

Sierra Storm

Copyright © 2023 by Sierra Storm

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

1.One

2.Two

3.Three

4.Four

5.Five

6.Six

7.Seven

8.Eight

9.Nine

10.Ten

11.Eleven

12.Twelve

13.Thirteen

14.Fourteen

15.Fifteen

16.Sixteen

17.Seventeen

18.Eighteen

19.Nineteen

20.Twenty

21.Twenty-One

22.Twenty-Two

23.Twenty-Three

24.Twenty-Four

25.Twenty-Five

26.Twenty-Six

27.Twenty-Seven

The Ghost Ring: Book 3: Moonlight And Malice

Dead But Not Forgotten

About The Author

One

January

Twenty-four hours from now, I would be back on the cursed campus of Twin Oaks College in Maine. I would have taken my first round of classes and met my new roommate and come face to face with the repercussions of what I had done in December. Tomorrow night I would keep my inevitable torments to myself as I watched reality disintegrate from me on all sides.

As for tonight, I sat in a self-imposed dramatic funk in the passenger seat of my mom’s Corvette as we curved around the winding New England roads under a cloudy dark sky. It was snowing tonight.

We had to wait in line to enter the parking lot. Apparently I wasn’t the only one checking in the night before. I’d told my mom I wanted to return to campus as late as possible, but it felt like cheating death in the end. And I knew a thing or two about cheating death.

I’d said as little as possible on our trip out here from our home in Minnesota. It was a long drive, three days of atrophy in the passenger’s seat, with only brief stops in restaurants and motels along the way. My mom had alternated between static-driven country radio stations while we had driven, asked about my future schedule, asked about orchestra, and I had given the briefest responses possible.

All my friends were dead people. I’d brought a man back from the grave when I meant to kill his ghosts. I was like the opposite of the Grim Reaper, and the guy I dated throughout the season was one of my sworn enemies.

Could it get any more screwed up than that?

When my mom hounded me with questions, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I was traumatized or in shock or horrified at the next turn my ethereal role could take. Marco was alive again. Marco, the one behind the human sacrifices. And I had brought him back.

I didn’t want to learn what I would do next. I had hoped that going home for a few weeks would allow the chaos to settle in my mind, but it didn’t. The chaos grew worse. I couldn’t talk with my ghostly consorts when I was at home. Neither did I find the one ghost I’d hoped would appear: my dad.

I hadn’t had a truly happy Christmas since my dad died when I was twelve. Things had improved and adopted a comforting stability in the years since. I was better at distracting myself now, at telling myself that at least I had other things to be thankful for, but it wasn’t the same. Waking up on Christmas morning to find my mom eating a pathetic breakfast of strawberry yogurt alone in her widowhood made me want to kill somebody.

My mom parked the car outside Avian Hall and leaned back, examining me to see if I would break. Despite the wrinkles hardening on her forehead, she remained energetic and somehow more optimistic than I was. The flurries had begun to build into a more honest snowfall. You want me to help you carry everything in?

Yeah. Thanks.

I didn’t want paranormal drama to come between me and her. I loved my mom. She was my favorite person in the world—well, favorite living person, at least. But even thinking of that made my mouth run dry again and all the old fatigue return.

I followed behind my mom as she opened the trunk and carried my new therapy lamp and backpack, and then I looped my cello case around one shoulder, took my duffel out and slammed the trunk shut. Despite the cello, I traveled lighter than most of my friends here. As far as I knew, I was the only Midwesterner here on this Maine campus, and more weight made for harder travels.

We stopped by the student hall, and I pulled my ID out of my wallet and flashed it into the card reader before it allowed us in.

Is there anything more we can do before I disappear into the night? asked my mom.

I cocked my head back for a second. If I faint at the sight of my new roommate, you can catch me before I hit the ground. Let’s see how bad the damage is first.

My old roommate, Paige Aldrin, had moved out in December right before break. Ever since I started having open and regular contact with the ghosts on campus, she’d grown increasingly paranoid by being so near me and had decided to transfer at the end of the semester. I assumed Twin Oaks would pair me with someone else this spring, and I wasn’t looking forward to a new face.

Despite my habitual efforts in making a good first impression, most people didn’t like me when they first met me. This trend started in high school, when an exaggerated news bulletin went viral and introduced me to strangers across the nation as both insane and a library arsonist. By the time I got to college, my reputation was too bold for me to tear down—not that last fall’s exploits did a thing to prove my sanity. Whenever I thought of the cold glances I’d get when classes resumed tomorrow morning, my stomach churned like it wanted to blend a smoothie.

I stuck my room key into the lock on my door and jiggled it until the handle turned. Then I peeked inside. There was no sign of a new roommate, and everything that I had left behind for my break was untouched.

It looks like you’re alone for now, said my mom. That’s good. You’ll have time to settle in.

She set my backpack and the mood therapy light down on what used to be Paige’s desk, and then waited with a hand on her hip while I dropped the duffel at my feet and unstrapped the cello.

Hey, she said as the silence stretched to an uncomfortable length. You’ve done well. Dad would be proud of you.

I almost started bawling then and there. This wasn’t about Dad.

But it was.

It really was.

Ever since I found a magic ring last fall, I’d had the power to talk to the dead, to see ghosts and interact with them as if they were still alive. But it wasn’t until I had left that I realized that my ability didn’t reach everyone. As soon as I got home for the break, I hunted every shadow of our house for a sign of my dad.

He was gone. Still gone, always gone.

I didn’t know if he was standing nearby watching me like a guardian angel or if he had moved on to—to heaven, most likely. If there was a heaven.

Either way, I didn’t see him when I wore my magic ring back home, and not finding him made me feel alone all over again, as if I were twelve again, as if I had just gotten the news that he wasn’t coming back.

But I forced myself to smile. Yeah. Thanks, Mom. I know I’ve been out of it lately. College is just… really exhausting, you know. But it was good to go home for a few weeks.

You’re welcome back anytime. She smiled, and it was a full smile that reached her eyes.

I smiled back as well as I could, and then she leaned forward and pulled me in for a kiss. I warmed at her touch. I needed more human contact than I ever got. Sometimes I struggled to tell if I was alive or dead, but the fact that my toes were sore in my tan leather boots, almost frozen from the cold outside, reassured me of the former. All right. If we drag this out any longer, it’s going to get awkward, I said.

You’re so right. She pulled back and smiled. You keep in touch this semester. I don’t want to miss anything of what’s going on at Twin Oaks. I need some more gossip in my life.

Yep.

And one more thing. I know you don’t like going to events and surrounding yourself with crowds, but I want you to get out there a little more and make some friends. It’s how you survive in college. Open up and put yourself out there, okay?

I nodded.

Of course, my mom knew nothing about it. I’d whitewashed my conversations with her about last semester. She didn’t know about my landing the magic ring that gave me the power to speak to the dead. She didn’t know about the Honor Society and their sinister history and purpose—how I kept their magic ring on my finger and how they would stop at nothing to get it back. And she certainly didn’t know how the semester had ended for me, with one ghost—the sinister Marco Domino—bringing himself back to life. Or rather, tricking me into bringing him back to life.

It turned out that the magic ring was only one part in a set of two items, the other being a small dagger. If I used the dagger to stab a ghost I could see while wearing the ring, that ghost would come back to life. It would be great… if it worked on good guys. But unfortunately, Marco was as messed up as they came.

I had seen nothing in the school quarterly about the resurrection. I hadn’t seen anything either in the local newspapers or in the Twin Oaks Facebook group. If people knew about Marco, they had kept the secret about his coming back from the dead. Hopefully, that was a good sign, but something told me that the silence came from a sinister source. People must have known about Marco. The Honor Society must have known. Right now he could be aligned with anyone, teacher or student. He could be here on this campus. Since Marco knew where I lived, I wasn’t safe in my own dorm room anymore. He knew what I had and what I could do, and now that he had physical form, he could come after me to force what he wanted out of me. I couldn’t get away with pretending not to see him anymore.

My mom turned and left the room, closing the door behind her, and for a few seconds I stared at the door as my isolation sank in.

I was glad I didn’t have a new roommate yet. I was glad I didn’t have to go through the stress of meeting someone new again and hoping that it wouldn’t turn out as badly as I feared. No, this was easier. I knelt by my duffel and slowly removed my pajamas, slipping them under my pillow on the top bunk and making a note to myself to relocate to the bottom bunk when I had a chance. I didn’t care tonight. My second magical artifact fell out from a pocket. I didn’t like to think of the dagger and what it could do. The ring gave me the ability to see ghosts. The dagger likewise was supposed to allow someone—a different someone—to stab hostile ghosts and kill them beyond the grave. One person was not supposed to have both. Having both gave someone authority over life and death.

I took the dagger, wincing, as I did so, and slid it onto my desk under my mechanical keyboard.

Then I pulled out my shirts and started toward the dresser.

Bunny?

The voice sent shivers down my back when I heard it. Roman Asher. Roman had died shortly after we had met back in September. I liked Roman when he was alive, but we didn’t cross paths often. Since his death, we’d become fast friends. Roman was the first ghost I’d seen after I found the magic ring in my mailbox one day. He walked me through the beginning of my world being turned upside down and helped me understand the depth and the limits of my arcane ability. But Roman didn’t come alone. He was not the first student to mysteriously die on campus, and shortly after our macabre reunion, he introduced me to the others who had been lurking around, some for decades.

The others, who joined him now, included energetic Ben, withdrawn Davey, and intuitive but stuttering Jason. I couldn’t hide my relief at seeing them. Their faces had grown dull in my memory during my time away, and I wondered if ghost faces were harder to remember than the faces of living people. Everything I had experienced with them as well had faded in the snowy concrete and cornfields of Minnesota. But now they were here, as real as ever, and they were as glad to see me as I was to see them.

Roman, I said. Ben. Jason. Davey. I’ve missed you.

Ben cocked his head to the side as he looked around the room. No roommate this semester?

Not yet, I said.

Shoot. I was hoping for another good round with Paige.

How has everything been since I left? I asked. Is Marco still around? What happened to him?

Yeah, Marco is still here, said Roman. He crossed his arms uncomfortably. As far as we know, he’s staying with Professor Lightfoot. We need to watch our step.

I’m… so sorry about what I did back there, I said.

The fact that I brought Marco back to life was a sore spot between me and the ghosts. To be fair, the resurrection was an accident. I hadn’t known that I held the keys to life or death. I still didn’t know what to do about it. I had meant to kill him, not bring him back.

But there was more to it than that. If I could bring Marco back, I could bring the others back as well. But none of them wanted that to happen. None of them, not even Ben, who usually obsessed over the idea of coming back to life. There was something unnatural about my abilities, and we all knew it. Besides that, we still didn’t know the end game. Maybe Marco really was alive again, but only with a debilitating illness. Maybe he’d be judged in the long run, and cheating death like this would only hit him harder in the end.

Either way, things weren’t the same between me and the ghosts since. The innocence had fled our relationship, and when I saw them now, my heart twinged as I thought that I could have them here in flesh and blood.

Don’t sweat it, said Roman. We’re just glad you’re back. I’m glad you had a break from all the craziness around here.

I stepped forward and almost threw my arms around him, but then I stopped when I remembered that my arms would cut straight through him and only aggravate our separation. Yeah. You too. I stopped speaking and counted the heads in the room, now noticing for the first time that one of them was absent. Where’s Lew? I asked.

The ghosts exchanged glances.

Oh, he h-hasn’t been hanging around with us l-lately, said Jason with his familiar stammer.

He hasn’t been hanging out with you? Why is that? I asked.

Jason shook his head and declined any further comment.

He had a hard time with Marco coming back to life, said Davey. We tried to reason with him, but right now he thinks it’s best if he keeps his distance. I don’t think it’s anything personal.

Lew’s giving the stink eye to anybody who isn’t him, said Ben, rolling his eyes.

I tried not to look disappointed, but I was upset that Lew wasn’t around. He was exactly the one I needed to talk to. Lew was the oldest of the ghosts, with the most seniority. He had a better idea of what was happening here than anyone else, and without him, our efforts would dwindle to an extended guessing game.

Roman reached forward and lifted his hand, pretending to put it on my shoulder. The movement was so genuine that I could almost feel it. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure that now you’re back on campus, he’ll be around anytime. How about you settle in? Do you have an early class tomorrow?

Ancient history, I said, not ready to think about classes starting so soon.

With Lightfoot?

You guessed it. Professor Lightfoot was my adviser, also one of the faculty members in charge of the charge of the Honor Society on campus, and he had it out for me. I didn’t know the full extent of