Fated Souls (Boxed Set Bundle)

Chapter 1

Adri just wants to make it through the next two years of high school so she can graduate and go out on her own, but she's in for a big surprise. Adri is about to develop a unique power that will thrust her into a shadowy world filled by preternatural creatures who want to use her for her own ends or barring that, kill her to keep her out of someone else's hands.

At home, at school, even in her own dreams—nobody is who and what they say they are, and her time is running out. The only thing she knows for sure is that if she doesn't trust anyone, then she's as good as dead.

I

had a headache again, but that was pretty much the case all of the time. I was almost used to my brain trying to work its way out through my ears, so that couldn't have been the reason I opened my stupid mouth.

I'd hated Janessa for a long time and managed to keep my mouth shut, so I was pretty sure that wasn't the reason either. Maybe it wasn't either reason, maybe it was both of them together combined with a couple of other things that were so small that I didn't even realize they were bothering me, but I wanted to get up from my table and go tear Janessa's hair out by the roots.

Normally I'm not even the slightest bit violent. Unlike my sister, Cindi, I've pretty much made it through school by keeping my head down and ignoring other people as much as possible. You'd think in a school with a student body approaching five thousand that it would be easy to get lost in the crowd, but I'd had to actively work at staying anonymous. It was almost like there were so many kids attending our school that anybody could find a clique without even having to try.

Janessa and her friends talked crap about pretty much everyone in the school most days, but today it was getting to me like it never had before. Maybe it was the way that she was leading a smear campaign against Jackson, one of the new guys who had just moved into school. It wasn't that she didn't like him, she was doing it to make sure that none of the other girls would date him.

Once she finished sucking her current boyfriend dry then she'd be able to move in and redeem Jackson's social image by dating him. It was beyond shallow, but she'd invented a kind of social cold storage for future boyfriends. Given how oblivious I was to most things in school, if I knew about it then everyone else in the school did too.

Janessa was bad, but the people who let her get away with it were nearly as terrible, and the whole thing was making my headache even worse than normal.

"...and I was like seriously? Not only can I do a better back handspring than you, I'm going to ace our history test, at which point you're going to turn over your spot on the homecoming committee to me."

Janessa's voice was like an icepick shoved into my brain. It didn't seem to matter what I did or how I sat, I could still hear her as well as if she were sitting right next to me instead of at the next table over.

"...I know, right? She's still complaining that I had to have cheated somehow. She totally can't deal with the fact that not only am I hotter and more z than her, I'm also smarter."

I couldn't help the snort of disbelief that made its way out of me. Maybe if I'd kept my head safely buried in my book I would have been able to pretend like it hadn't been in response to Janessa, but I looked up at the same time and she locked gazes with me.

"Did I say something funny, chubs?"

My fists clenched tight at the despised nickname, but I didn't actually want to get into a yelling match with her so I dropped my eyes back down to my book and hoped that she'd just let it go.