Wake Unto Me Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  CHAPTER One

  CHAPTER Two

  CHAPTER Three

  CHAPTER Four

  CHAPTER Five

  CHAPTER Six

  CHAPTER Seven

  CHAPTER Eight

  CHAPTER Nine

  CHAPTER Ten

  CHAPTER Eleven

  CHAPTER Twelve

  CHAPTER Thirteen

  CHAPTER Fourteen

  CHAPTER Fifteen

  CHAPTER Sixteen

  CHAPTER Seventeen

  CHAPTER Eighteen

  CHAPTER Nineteen

  CHAPTER Twenty

  CHAPTER Twenty-one

  CHAPTER Twenty-two

  CHAPTER Twenty-three

  CHAPTER Twenty-four

  CHAPTER Twenty-five

  CHAPTER Twenty-six

  CHAPTER Twenty-seven

  CHAPTER Twenty-eight

  CHAPTER Twenty-nine

  CHAPTER Thirty

  CHAPTER Thirty-one

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  This must be real… .

  He leaned forward, his gaze intent upon hers, his hand on the arm of her chair as if confining her to its bounds. She could feel the warmth of his closeness and smell the hint of a spicy scent on his skin. His knee bumped hers, and she felt an awareness of his presence tingle over her body. She lost herself in the deep hazel of his eyes, where the flame of the candle flickered.

  As if moved by a force beyond herself, Caitlyn lifted her hand and reached toward his face. A spark of surprise touched his eyes, but he didn’t move away as she lightly touched his cheek.

  His skin was soft as velvet. Her lips parted on a breath, and she stroked his cheek, feeling the sharp prickle of whiskers roughening his jaw. The sensation on her fingertips was sharp and real, and it stirred awake a sleeping part of her mind.

  I’m dreaming. She blinked in surprise, her hand freezing in place. He’s not real. This isn’t real.

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  Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011

  Copyright © Lisa Cach, 2011

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Cach, Lisa.

  Wake unto me / by Lisa Cach.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When fifteen-year-old Oregonian Caitlyn Monahan earns a scholarship to an exclusive French boarding school, she hopes to escape the terrifying dreams that haunt her, but instead she encounters centuries-old mysteries at the Chateau de la Fortune, where she has a princess for a roommate and she falls in love with a seductive ghost that visits her at night.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-51353-8

  [1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Nightmares—Fiction. 3. Boarding schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. France—Fiction.] I. Title.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  To my niece, Elizabeth

  Between two worlds life hovers like a star,

  ’Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.

  How little do we know that which we are!

  How less what we may be!

  — Byron, Don Juan

  Prologue

  CHTEAU DE LA FORTUNE, FRANCE

  “Is she the one?”

  Eugenia Snowe felt an unsettling mix of distaste and compassion as she picked up the photo that she and the other women of the Sisterhood had been staring at. In it, Caitlyn Monahan, a fifteen-year-old American girl with long black hair and a pale face, held a notebook to her chest, her shoulders hunched, her hair half concealing her features.

  “Maybe,” Eugenia replied. Caitlyn wore her insecurity like a coat, on the outside for all to see. Eugenia loathed weakness in women.

  On the other hand, this girl had likely grown up suffering severe feelings of alienation from the mundane people around her, so it was little wonder that she should be a miserable creature. According to what the private investigator had uncovered, Caitlyn had no one in her life who could possibly understand what she truly was.

  What she might be, Eugenia corrected herself. They didn’t know yet if Caitlyn was one of them.

  “We can’t be certain that Caitlyn is one of our lost sisters,” Eugenia said aloud. “Genealogy can take us only so far. Her family tree on her mother’s side is spotted with uncertainties; we have had to make calculated guesses about her heritage, based on what records we can find. She may be nothing more than an average teenage girl.”

  “But your great-grandmother’s prophecy of the Dark One,” Greta Klenk said, her plump, kindly face filled with anxious hope, “it seems to fit her.” She recited the verse they all knew by heart:“From the New World’s western shore

  Comes a Dark One, young and poor,

  Black of hair and pale of face,

  Without bidding she will chase

  The source of Sisters’ power real

  In the heart of Fortune’s wheel.

  Only when this Dark One’s found

  Can our powers be unbound.

  “It speaks of someone with dark hair, from the western shores of the New World, just like this Caitlyn Monahan,” Greta said.

  “Yes, but that is no guarantee that Caitlyn is the Dark One, or even that Caitlyn is one of us. We cannot make her the girl of the prophecy simply by wishing it,” Eugenia said. She tightened her jaw, tamping down her impatience. She had spent her whole life trying to decode her English great-grandmother’s short, prophetic verse, and to find the heart of Fortune’s wheel herself, and with it the original source of the Sisterhood’s psychic powers.

  She hadn’t found it; she hadn’t even figured out exactly what Fortune’s wheel was supposed to be, other than a figurative idea about the goddess Fortuna, or possibly a reference to the legend of a Templar treasure buried beneath the castle. Her failure to solve the puzzle had forced her to practice both humility and patience, neither of which suited her temperament. She had, at last, turned her efforts to finding the Dark One. Caitlyn was her best hope of being that long-sought girl.

  “She looks like nothing,” Marguerite Pelletier sneered, her hands on her slender, hard hips. The riding instructor had a sharp-featured face and black slashes of eyebrows that scowled her disapproval. “She does not look like anything special. I don’t think she’s the Dark One, nor do I think we should take a chance on her. This is our first time trying to bring a lost sister to the Fortune School, and she seems a very bad bet. We should only bring girls who have culture and sophistication, who will fi
t in well with the regular, ‘ordinary’ paying students.”

  “But the prophecy says she’ll be poor,” Greta said. “Caitlyn is poor.”

  The group of eight women looked to Eugenia for guidance. At thirty-five years old she was the youngest of them, but she was also the strongest. She was their leader.

  A DNA test could tell the Sisterhood for certain whether Caitlyn was related to them, but it would not answer the most crucial questions: Had Caitlyn inherited any psychic gifts? If so, were they of a strength worth developing? And most important of all, was Caitlyn the Dark One of the prophecy?

  There was no way to know, at least not yet. They had to bring Caitlyn to Château de la Fortune and let the girl prove her worth. If Caitlyn was the Dark One, she would lead them to the heart of Fortune’s wheel.

  “I have goals for the Sisterhood that will never be met by playing it safe,” Eugenia said at last. “We will bring Caitlyn here, to Château de la Fortune, where we can discover firsthand whether or not she is the one we seek.”

  “And if Caitlyn is not the Dark One?” Marguerite demanded. “Or if she is not a true member of the Sisterhood? What do we do with her then?”

  Eugenia shrugged one elegant shoulder, dismissing the issue and the girl. “We get rid of her. If she’s not the Dark One, she doesn’t matter, does she?”

  Marguerite grunted her approval.

  Eugenia’s lips twitched in amusement. Marguerite: so quick to anger, and yet so easily manipulated. Eugenia hadn’t even had to reach into Marguerite’s mind to make her behave. It had only taken words.

  Too bad. She enjoyed practicing her gift for mind control and welcomed every chance to hone her skills. She couldn’t yet achieve total control over another person, unfortunately. But she could nudge, and implant an impulse. Coupling this with old-fashioned verbal persuasion and Eugenia’s extensive training in psychology, there were few who could resist bending to her will.

  When Eugenia at last found the heart of Fortune’s wheel and the Sisterhood’s source of power was unbound, though, she was certain that her powers would be doubled. Trebled, even. With greater power, no one would even think to obstruct her, and she could begin in earnest her work to bring the Sisterhood to eminence. The Sisterhood would become a force to be reckoned with. There were no limits to what they might achieve, or to the influence they might wield. With Eugenia as its leader, the Sisterhood could alter the course of the world itself.

  “No one matters,” Eugenia said again, her voice as cold as steel. “No one, except the Dark One.”

  CHAPTER One

  OCTOBER 15, OREGON

  Caitlyn’s pencil moved over the paper in harsh, rapid dashes. A picture began to emerge: flames, smoke. A face in agony. A stake of wood.

  Caitlyn’s breath came in short gasps as her pencil brought the image from last night’s eerie dream to life. She felt the heat of the flames against her own skin, the smoke choking her, her lungs searing as she gasped in great gulps of burning air. Panic flooded her body as she fought against the ropes that bound her to the stake. She was desperate for escape, desperate for someone in the jeering crowd beyond the flames to scream out against the wrong that was being done to her.

  “Hey,” a panting male voice said, the sound impinging on the edges of Caitlyn’s awareness. She ignored it and kept drawing.

  Caitlyn could feel the thoughts of the woman being burned at the stake. It was no use. She was not one of them. Always an outsider, she had suffered their fear and their hatred for her her whole life. And now they had finally found a way to be rid of her forever: Witch, they called her.

  “Whatcha drawing?” the same male voice asked.

  With that one word, they were free to destroy her. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live…

  “Yo!” A large pale hand appeared between her face and her art journal, waving back and forth. “You in there?”

  The crackling flames of the medieval pyre faded into the squeaking of tennis shoes on the gym floor. Annoyed, Caitlyn Monahan looked up from the journal in her lap, blinking herself back to present reality. Pete Fipps, strands of his dark hair plastered to his temples with sweat, was breathing at her. What did he want? Probably to make fun of her, as usual.

  “You really like to draw, huh?”

  “Yes.” Caitlyn slipped her bookmark—a tarot card of the Wheel of Fortune—into the journal, closed the cover, and pulled it up against her chest. Without her noticing, practice had started for the boys’ varsity basketball team. Caitlyn’s perch at the end of the fifth row of the bleachers was no longer a quiet, private place to wait for her friends Sarah and Jacqui.

  “What were you drawing?”

  She felt the intrusion of his gaze and was vaguely threatened by his looming closeness. She wished he’d go away. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing, huh?”

  Caitlyn remained silent, entranced by a big zit on the side of his neck, the red spot brilliant against his pale skin.

  “You must have been drawing something.”

  Caitlyn held the journal more tightly to her chest, her shoulders hunching. “Just… someone I saw in a dream last night.” What gave Pete the right to torment her? Since the start of school a month ago, he’d been sniggering with his friends whenever she walked by. She’d dealt with the jokes for years and didn’t understand why it was suddenly getting worse. Did entering tenth grade automatically up the jerk factor in people?

  “Were you drawing a guy?” Pete asked, voice leering.

  “No, not a guy!” she said, a little loudly. Why was he still talking to her? Some of his friends had stopped tossing balls around and were standing, watching them with grins on their faces, as if waiting for the payoff to a joke. “I was drawing a wise woman, if you have to know.”

  “That like a wise guy?” Pete put on a bad New Jersey accent. “You lookin’ at me? You lookin’ at me?”

  Caitlyn rolled her eyes. “A wise woman was a healer, or midwife. But some people thought they were witches.”

  “They burn ’em?”

  For a moment, Caitlyn felt herself thrown back into the dream. Ignorance, all around her, destroying that which it could not understand. She felt the searing smoke in her throat, squeezing off her air. “Yes,” she coughed.

  He snorted. “Guess they should have rethought their choice of careers. Witches! You gotta know the fire’s coming for you, one way or another.”

  Anger and loathing welled up inside her, hatred burning in her soul. It had been faces like Pete’s that had laughed from beyond the circle of flames; ignorant minds like his that had destroyed her.

  Caitlyn blinked and shook off the thoughts. Where had that come from?

  “Fipps!” Doug Hansen called from midcourt.

  Pete turned just in time to catch a basketball thrown at his head.

  “Leave Moan-n-Groan alone and get your butt back on the court!” Doug shouted, making his friends laugh.

  Caitlyn winced at the nickname, a play on her last name, Monahan, the taunt a familiar stab to her heart. It’d begun in seventh grade, when she’d started wearing black goth-inspired clothes and had shown her misery on her face. She’d gotten better at hiding her feelings in the three years since then, and had moved on to more colorful vintage clothing from the thrift store, but the nickname had stuck. Only now, boys said it with a raunchy, knowing lilt to their voices.

  She looked toward the girls’ locker room door, willing Sarah and Jacqui to appear and rescue her.

  Pete gave his friend the finger.

  Caitlyn slid the journal into her backpack and started to get up.

  Pete grabbed her arm. “Wait!”

  She jerked free. “Why?” she asked, cautious.

  “I’m having a party tomorrow night; my parents are going out of town. My brother is getting a keg. Wanna come?”

  She stared at him, too stunned to think. He was inviting her to a party? That’s why he’d been talking to her?

  Pete’s face colored under her surprised ga
ze, and his hands flew in wild gestures as if to avert a misunderstanding. “With Sarah and Jacqui, I mean! If you guys want to. I’m inviting half the school. I wasn’t inviting you in particular.”

  The fragile butterfly of flattery that had begun to flutter in her chest was smashed beneath the rubber soles of his shoes. “Of course you didn’t mean me,” she said flatly, embarrassed to have misunderstood. She knew better than to let down her guard with guys like Pete; she knew better! All they ever wanted was to make fun of her. “Why would you invite Moan-n-Groan anywhere? You wouldn’t be caught dead with me.”

  Pete’s pink cheeks turned scarlet, the red seeping up his forehead. “Caitlyn, I—”

  “Gotta go,” Caitlyn said, grabbing her backpack and heading to the end of the bleacher row. “I wouldn’t want to hang around and let people get the wrong impression!” She jumped off the end of the bleachers just as Sarah and Jacqui came out of the locker room, and jogged over to meet them. Caitlyn looped her arm in Sarah’s and dragged her out of the gym, Jacqui trotting to keep up. Wolf whistles and laughter followed them.

  “What was that all about?” Sarah asked as they came out into the autumn sunlight and the gym doors clunked shut behind them. Her brown hair fell in thick layers to her shoulders, as glossy and effortlessly stylish as if she’d just stepped out of a shampoo commercial. Her dark brown eyes were wide with questions.

  Caitlyn rolled her own pale, sea-green eyes and told them what had happened.

  When she finished, Jacqui grabbed her arm, squeezing a little too hard. Her round, freckled face was mottled with excitement. “Pete totally likes you!”

  Embarrassed, Caitlyn shook her head. “He doesn’t. He made that clear.”

  “Oh my gosh, of course he does!” Sarah said, and shook her head. “You are so dense.”