Damien Stark walked into my tent with his girlfriend, and all hell broke loose.
I was only pretending to be a psychic for the school carnival, but there was nothing fake about my premonition of danger and doom. Now his girlfriend is dead, and Damien is acting very strange. They were attacked by a wolf, and he's starting to seem just as feral and untamed.
The things I'm thinking are impossible, but another full moon is coming soon.
Damien Stark walked into my tent with his girlfriend, and all hell broke loose.
I was only pretending to be a psychic for the school carnival, but there was nothing fake about my premonition of danger and doom. Now his girlfriend is dead, and Damien is acting very strange. They were attacked by a wolf, and he's starting to seem just as feral and untamed.
The things I'm thinking are impossible, but another full moon is coming soon.
When I left my house to go the school carnival, I was myself—Clarissa Harris, a normal member of the high school senior class. Sure, I was dressed like a Hollywood version of a fortune teller in a gypsy blouse and peasant skirt, with big hoop earrings hanging from my ears. I already had the long dark hair and deep brown eyes, framed by mascara-enhanced lashes.
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My costume was part of my one-time only performance as Madame Aurora. I was going to help raise money for the PTA by telling my customers what they wanted to hear. The giggling girls that entered my tent gave me my cues. Their questions told me the answers they were looking for, mostly love with a handsome man. It was just for fun and entertainment, but I played it up with mysterious pauses as I stared into my cheap crystal ball like I could really see the future.
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I was one of the few attractions afforded any privacy, and the tent muffled some of the noise being made by the excited teenagers playing carnival games outside. This added to the mystique of my act and helped attract customers, because the girls liked to ask their hopeful questions away from the judgmental eyes of their peers. They knew it was all pretend, but they still waited expectantly for me to tell them their thrilling futures. The downside was that I missed out on all the fun that was happening at the other booths.
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The only guys I saw were dragged into my tent by their girlfriends. Such was the case with Damien Stark, who entered with a bored expression following his much more animated girlfriend, Blair Hadley.
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“Come in,” I intoned in a ridiculously hammy impersonation of a psychic. “You wish to know your future. Madame Aurora sees all.”
What more could this bitch want, I wondered. She already had popularity and better than average looks, and her boyfriend was the most gorgeous guy at school—possibly on the planet according to some of his female classmates. Maybe she was worried about what would happen after her high school glory years came to an end.
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“They got a real gypsy,” she exclaimed in delight. “Ooh, this will be fun!”
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“It’s Clarissa Harris,” Damien said after a brief, dismissive glance at me.
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“Who?” Blair asked.
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I’m in your English class bitch, I felt like telling her.
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“She’s in my Trigonometry class,” Damien informed her.
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Blair grimaced. “I hate math.”
“Sit.” I gestured toward the chairs, eager to get this over with and be free of Blair’s annoying presence.
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“I want to know if I’ll make the squad in college,” she said. “I’m cheer captain here.”
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“Quiet please,” I shushed her. “Madame Aurora must concentrate.”
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I made a show of staring into the crystal ball as I debated whether to tell her that she wouldn’t make the squad, and that she would end up getting fat. Then I worried that the airhead would take it seriously and develop an eating disorder. “Yes,” I began dramatically. “I see you cheering. I see…”
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The sense of foreboding came out of nowhere. It was so strong that I couldn’t even speak at first. My eyes lifted in horror to Blair’s smiling face. “Death stalks you tonight,” I warned. “Stay inside your house. Don’t go out for anything.”
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“What?” Blair squeaked.
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“The killing moon is a harbinger,” I continued ominously.
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“What is this shit?” Damien demanded.
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“You,” I hissed, completing my transformation into a lunatic. “Stay away from me. I don’t want you.”
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He glowered at me. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
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Blair now looked suspicious rather than frightened. “Why is she saying that? Do you have something going with her? No wonder you knew her name!”
“No,” he insisted. “I’ve never even talked to her before. She’s fucking crazy.”
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She immediately accepted his explanation and turned her distrust on me. “Are you after my boyfriend? Is that why you’re trying to scare me?”
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I was still in the grip of my inexplicable fear. “Go home,” I pleaded with desperate intensity. “Don’t let it get you.”
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For a moment, she seemed to be swayed by my urgent plea. Then her expression hardened. “I’m not falling for your stupid tricks. You know that Cory’s Halloween party is tonight. Now let me tell you something about your future. Stay away from my boyfriend or you’ll be sorry.”
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Damien, too, glared at me. His stunning green eyes were made even more striking by the dark rings around his irises. This rare feature was called a limbal ring. I had looked it up after becoming fascinated with him in ninth grade. Having long since gotten over my unrequited crush  on him, I didn’t know what had brought on my sudden attitude toward him. I was still irrationally wary of him.
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“Take her home right now,” I said. “Before it’s too late.”
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“Let’s get out of here,” he told Blair as he stood up. “Your fortune teller act sucks,” he remarked to me before they left the tent.
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I sat there trying to think of what I should do. The horrible feeling of doom wouldn’t go away, but I had nothing specific to go on. A couple of giggling girls entered the tent and were quickly disappointed by my announcement that I was closed.
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“But it’s still early,” one of them protested.
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“I’m sick,” I stated, not really lying. My stomach was roiling with worry.
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Finally, I decided that I had just freaked myself out with my own imagination. Having acted in plays before, I knew how easy it was to get caught up in the character you were playing. I’d somehow taken my over-the-top performance of Madame Aurora even further by coming up with exaggerated predictions of doom and gloom. I took the money I had made and gave it to the person in charge of the carnival. She believed my story of suddenly taking ill and sent me home to rest and recuperate.
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Instead of stopping at the game booth where my best friend was working, I texted her. Taylor would see right through my story, and I didn’t want to get into the details tonight. I wanted to go home and escape the weirdness, but I thought about it most of the night. Sleep was as elusive as my formerly untroubled disposition. I got up several times to stare pensively out the window at the full moon and went uneasily back to bed.
I must have finally drifted off shortly before dawn. My cell phone woke me at noon.
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“Did you hear?” Taylor asked. “Oh my God! I can’t believe it.”
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I instantly came all the way awake as I registered the seriousness of her tone.
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 “Hear what?” “Blair Hadley was killed last night.”
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My world turned upside down, and it wouldn’t right itself no matter how much I tried to go back to normal.
If you're looking for your next supernatural YA (and perhaps werewolf) read, my goodness, you should absolutely read Suzana Thompson's Midnight Moon.
I readily compare Suzana Thompson's Midnight Moon to L.J. Smith's Vampire Diaries because of its writing style, universe, solid dialogue and characters, and unique rendition of supernatural figures - and if you've read even just the first of the Vampire Diaries book, you know that carnivals and Halloween parties are absolutely a place for disaster. In Midnight Moon's disaster, this is no exception.
Helping to raise money for the PTA, Clarissa Harris was dressed in fortune teller costume and waiting in a mystical-looking tent. Everyone was enjoying Clarissa's performance until popular girl Blair Hadley and impossibly-gorgeous boyfriend Damien Stark entered the tent. Clarissa wanted to give her classmates an easy fortune that would usher them back out of the tent quickly, but then she spouted a fortune of death and harbinger of evil against her will. She wanted to think it was nothing, but later that night, when Blair was killed by a wolf she and Damien encountered, and Damien began to act strangely, Clarissa became suspicious of what was going on - and with another full moon coming soon, she knew she needed to find out the truth sooner rather than later.
Thompson's supernatural read is impressively-well paced and written, and it was the first book in a long time that I've wanted to read in one sitting. Like the opening scene of the book in the fortune-telling tent, Thompson uniquely ushers the reader through a world she has built that is spell-bindingly supernatural and violent, and which offers a refreshingly honest depiction of the teen years (though, please note that the book also includes some mild explicit content, sometimes in dialogue and sometimes in internal thoughts).
If you've been looking for a unique take on YA supernatural fiction and the werewolf genre, this is absolutely a book for you. It's truly the best in the genre that I've read for a while, it was a quick and fun read, and I felt like I had to read this one in one sitting - which, with three kiddos, is definitely saying something.