You Are So Undead to Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

zombie—”
     
    “Unsettled, have some respect,” he said, obviously even angrier. “And you have gone back to normal. Being a Settler is normal for you.”
     
    “How would you know?” If he wanted to escalate this little confrontation, that was fine with me. “Who are you, anyway?”
     
    “Ethan.” He gave me a hard look, as if his name should mean something to me, then continued with a sigh. “I’m with Settlers’ Affairs, Protocol Division, the people SA calls when screwups need an attitude adjustment.”
     
    I stared into his undeniably gorgeous green eyes, mind racing as I tried to remember where I might have met him before. The name did niggle something in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t concentrate on the niggle when the rest of my brain was thinking about the whole “Protocol” revelation. This guy was the equivalent of a Settler cop, and I was truly in deep trouble if he’d been called in. Some backpedaling was clearly in order.
     
    “Okay, I’m sorry. My attitude is ready to be adjusted, I swear.”
     
    He just stared at me for several seconds.
     
    “I’m Megan Berry,” I said finally, when the tense silence had lasted too long. I might as well introduce myself properly, even though this dude obviously already knew who I was.
     
    I held out my hand and he took it after a moment. A tiny buzz of Settler power jumped between us as his much larger hand engulfed mine, along with a zing of something much more human.
     
    Wow, this guy had some intense personal energy. If I weren’t totally into Josh and this guy weren’t a Settler cop, I had a feeling I would be able to get a pretty intense crush going on Ethan in a very short time.
     
    “Yeah, I know, but I was hoping you’d let me call you Schmeg.”
     
    “Schme—” The nickname made the niggle in my mind turn into a tidal wave that broke through some wall deep inside my head. I was suddenly overwhelmed with memories—Ethan and me playing in my backyard, eating tofu bake over at his house, watching scary movies in his rec room, me sneaking along to the graveyard the night of his second-stage ceremony because I didn’t want to be left behind. He was three and a half years older and getting ready to—
     
    “Seal your first grave,” I mumbled, my lips numb. Ohmygod, that was why I’d been out alone on the night of my attack. And Ethan was the boy at the graveyard, the one who’d saved my life. I remembered his face now, the way he’d looked when he was thirteen.
     
    Other details spilled into my brain, filling in an abundance of the holes in my personal history and Settler education. Now I knew why I was in trouble with Protocol. I was supposed to have marked William before I let him go. I should have touched his forehead, which would cause that halo thing and let any fellow Settlers who saw him know someone was following him back to his grave. Then I was supposed to go to his resting place and seal his grave after he returned to it, to make certain no one could resurrect him through black magic.
     
    To make sure no one could turn him into a Reanimated Corpse, like the ones that had attacked me five years ago.
     
    “You remember,” Ethan said softly, and I could tell he was talking about so much more than me recalling what my new duties should have been.
     
    “I’m sorry, Ethan.” Oh God, this was really Ethan. My Ethan. Well, not my Ethan now, but back then . . . well, not even really back then, but . . . wow, this was so weird. “I mean, I . . . You know, after that night . . .” I sucked in a frustrated breath.
     
    I was so confused, shaken by how much of my old life I had locked away in my head. How could I have forgotten him? Especially considering that my memories of Monica had come back within a few months? I mean, true, he went to a private Catholic school in Little Rock, where his dad taught, so it wasn’t like I saw him every day or anything, but I should have remembered him eventually. What kind of