Free You Are So Undead to Me by Stacey Jay

kidnapping me and probably making sure Josh would never ask me to homecoming.
     
    Furious! I should have been furious . . . but for some reason, I wasn’t. Some sick little part of me was very happy to be bouncing along on Ethan’s shoulder, headed wherever he decided to take me. My inner feminist tried to put the smackdown on that sick little part, but soon she too was distracted by the lusciousness of Ethan. Weakness, thy name is Megan’s hormones.
     
    I was so deep in tingle Happyville, I didn’t even notice the chick leaning on London’s car until we were nearly to Ethan’s Mini Cooper. And even then, it took me a few seconds to recognize the identity of the scrawny size-two wench who should not have been anywhere near here.
     
    Monica. Not only was she not home on zombie duty, she was out getting ready to crash my date with my Josh. I would have screamed for Ethan to stop long enough for me to ask her what the hell she was doing if I’d thought he would listen. Or if a part of me weren’t a little freaked out to see her standing there, looking so strangely satisfied with herself.
     
    Someone had to have raised those corpses, and a Settler would know how to get the job done. Could Monica? . . .
     
    Nah. Not even her horridness was that horrid, and she certainly didn’t look like she’d just been bitten by two RCs. A little pale and out of breath and shivering in her oversize sweater, sure, but . . . hmmm . . .
     
    No. I wasn’t going to go there. Yet.
     
    She was a bitch, not a witch or a black-magic practitioner or whatever. But I decided right then it might be smart to keep an eye on the Monicster. You know what they say—keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.
     

     
    An hour later, I’d decided I would be grateful for a lot less closeness with a certain ex-friend. Ethan had firmly vanquished every last shred of happy within me with the most boring lecture in the world on the various Unsettled commands and an in-depth briefing on grave sealing. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but Ethan insisted on delivering his “lesson” in some nasty-smelling graveyard near a paper plant where he had sent one of his Unsettled earlier in the evening.
     
    “Now, you ready? You’re going to seal the grave.”
     
    “Me?” I asked, shuffling away.
     
    “Yes, you.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me back.
     
    “But I—ow!” I jumped as Ethan jabbed me with the needle. It was a tiny little needle, the kind diabetics used to check their blood sugar, but I’ve never been a fan of getting stuck with sharp things. This was apparently part of the grave-sealing process, however, so I guessed I had to get used to the idea of stabbing myself on a regular basis.
     
    The Settler gig just kept getting better and better.
     
    “If you’d had one of these on you earlier, you wouldn’t have had to scratch your arm to get those RCs’ attention,” Ethan said, though he didn’t sound annoyed. I could tell he thought I was pretty brave for luring the Reanimated Corpses back to me instead of letting them find their target. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sufficiently impressed to give me the rest of the night off Settler duty. Even when I’d sworn I’d known all four second-stage commands before I was scared half to death.
     
    He’d been appointed my tutor by the powers that be and was taking the job very seriously. I figured Mom would be pissed to find out SA thought she wasn’t suitable mentor material anymore, but when I’d talked to her on Ethan’s cell, she’d sounded positively thrilled. She said she just wanted to keep being my mother and it was probably better for me to learn second-stage Settling from someone who had more recent experience and blah, blah, blah, . . .
     
    So, no help was coming from that corner. Hell, she’d even extended my curfew by an hour.
     
    “Now, walk the perimeter of the grave, holding that hand over the center.” Ethan steered me to the edge of the grave with