HellCast

Seventeen-year-old Lyla Keigston has been treated like a burden in her own home since her father died. So when a mysterious invitation arrives for a fully funded residential academy hidden in the mountains, she doesn't hesitate. Free tuition. Free meals. A room of her own. She packs before she finishes reading. What she walks into is not a school. HellCastle is the operational front of The Spirited — an ancient secret society of vampires fighting the extinction of their bloodline. The students they recruit aren't gifted. They're selected. Prepared for a ritual that only the strongest will survive. Lyla was never a random choice. The Spirited has been watching her bloodline for generations. The women in her family carry a rare power — they feed on grief and can return the dead to the living for one day. Each failed attempt at the ritual has compressed that power further, passing it down stronger each time. Lyla is the accumulation of all of it. She is the most valuable candidate The Spirited has ever found. She just doesn't know it yet. At HellCastle she finds enemies who are testing her, allies who are using her, and scratch marks behind the dresser in her room left by the girl who slept there before her and didn't make it out. As the nightmares intensify and the letters from a dead girl reveal the truth piece by piece, Lyla realizes she is already trapped. Then there is Corin Bellwether. Cold, unapproachable, the last of a pureblood vampire line. He knew who she was before she arrived. He was supposed to stay detached. And Anton Grey, warm and steady and the closest thing she has to a friend — is hiding why he came here. What he needs from her. What he's willing to do to get it.