UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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Chapter
Twenty-Five

For a moment I thought something inside the graveyard—possibly a tree—had caught fire, but then I realized that the sounds accompanying the light weren’t fiery hisses. They were human murmurs.

Chants.

The fires glowed brightly and the sun had nearly set, so I had to squint just to make out the dim figures of the chanters standing just inside of the iron cemetery fence. At first, the scene made no sense. But when I looked up at the night sky, to the waning crescent moon that hung there, the pieces began to fit together until—

“Joshua, the exorcism!” I gasped. “It’s supposed to be tonight.”

In my rush to deal with Eli, I’d completely forgotten about the exorcism. But Ruth and the other Seers obviously hadn’t. They probably followed Joshua here tonight, knowing he’d lead them right to me.

Now the ache at my temples pulsed in time to their voices; it must have started when they began to chant, before we noticed them.

Joshua groaned and grabbed my hand to drag me through the cemetery, to the small hill near its gates. There, about ten people had gathered. Except for Ruth, each held a lit torch and had taken his or her place in a ring around what looked like a circle of gray powder—identical to the kind now bordering the Mayhew house—sprinkled onto the grass. Through the ring of people, I could just make out a small, square object lying on the grass. Ruth’s herb-wreathed Bible, probably.

All of the Seers but Ruth stared intently into their makeshift circle. Ruth, however, stood off to one side and looked at Joshua and me.

Joshua gave his grandmother a curt nod. “Torches, Ruth? Wouldn’t flashlights have been a bit less heavy-handed?”

The corner of Ruth’s mouth twitched in irritation. “The torches add a touch of ceremony, Joshua.”

At the sound of voices, the other Seers finally glanced in our direction. I was surprised by their faces: mostly elderly but a few young ones, not much older than Joshua and me. But only a few of them—mainly the older ones—stared directly at me. As Jillian had done outside the school and then in the Mayhews’ kitchen, the younger Seers seemed to peer with difficulty at the space in which I stood.

“Why isn’t everyone looking at me?” I managed to whisper, although everything on my body, including my vocal chords, felt paralyzed.

“Not all of them have had a triggering event,” Ruth explained, turning her sharp eyes on me. “Some of them can’t see you . . . yet.”

“Then don’t let them,” Joshua pleaded.

Thank God he did, because I didn’t think I had the strength to choke out another sentence. I didn’t know whether this group of Seers had enough power to cast me into oblivion, but I knew this headache (not yet debilitating, but getting there) wasn’t a sign of good things to come. Whatever the Seers intended to do to me, I certainly didn’t want to go through it.

Nor did I want tonight to be my last in the living world. My last night with Joshua.

Ruth, however, shook her head at Joshua’s request. “That’s not possible. If she’s wandering among us, unclaimed by one afterlife or another, then she’s evil. And we can’t take the risk of letting her join the other spirit in hurting more people on that bridge.”

Joshua lurched forward, inadvertently yanking me with him. “You have the wrong ghost, I swear.” Ruth shook her head again; but Joshua continued, cutting her off. “No, listen to me, Ruth. Amelia has nothing to do with all the deaths on High Bridge. In fact, she was a victim of the guy you’ve been hunting—Eli. I know. I’ve seen him myself, and he’s seriously creepy.”

Ruth took a hesitant step away from her grandson as if his words confused her. Joshua took advantage and moved forward, fumbling with his free hand for something in his pocket. He produced his cell phone, flipped it open, and shoved it in front of Ruth.

At first she avoided looking, but soon her eyes were drawn to the phone’s glowing screen. She frowned, still staring at the device.

“What does this mean, Joshua?” she asked.

“It’s a text from Jillian,” he said, pushing the phone closer toward Ruth. “She and our friends are at some party on High Bridge, and we’re pretty sure Eli’s lured them there.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” he nearly shouted, his patience running thin. Each second of delay might cost his sister, and Joshua knew it.

Ruth still looked skeptical, with her mouth twisted with disbelief. Her eyes, however . . . in her eyes I could see doubt. I could see it each time her gaze flickered over to me.

“Ruth,” I said quietly, stepping forward with Joshua’s hand still clasped in mine. The pain at my temples grew in intensity the nearer I got to her, but I kept moving. “Ruth, I know you don’t trust me; and all things considered, I don’t blame you. But you’re right about one thing: Eli Rowland is bad news. He controls that river, and I’m almost certain he’s behind this party tonight, after what he showed me about my death today.”

I could still see uncertainty in Ruth’s eyes, so I leaned closer. “Please,” I murmured. “Just hold off on this exorcism for now. At least long enough for me to do something about Eli, and to make sure Jillian is safe.”

Ruth looked back at her group of Seers, each of them watching us intently, and then she turned back to us.

“Please,” I repeated.

Slowly, so slowly I wasn’t sure she even moved, Ruth nodded at me.

“I can hold them off for a while,” she whispered. “I’m not promising any length of time—a day, two weeks, who knows—but you have to make sure my granddaughter is safe. If she isn’t . . .”

Ruth trailed off, but I didn’t need her to finish the thought. If I didn’t save Jillian, nothing could save me. I bit my lip, nodding as well.

I turned to Joshua, who still looked pale, afraid. “Joshua?”

Finally, he stirred, moving his eyes from his grandmother to me. Once I had his full attention, I gripped his hand hard, sending fire racing up and down our arms.

“Joshua, you’ve got to go,” I commanded him. “Now!”

Those words were all the motivation Joshua needed. He dropped my hand and began to dash to his car, jingling his keys out of his pocket. He had made it almost to the door before he noticed I wasn’t behind him. Only then did he spin back around to me.

“Amelia?”

“Go on without me. I can get there a lot sooner if I materialize.”

“Great idea.” Joshua nodded. “Do whatever you can. I’ll drive fast.”

His expression told me that he was too distraught to question what exactly I could do once I beat him to the river. Within seconds he had ducked into the car and started the engine.

As he skidded off across the gravel, I turned back to Ruth.

She stood motionless, still watching me. Her eyes flickered briefly to her Seers, all waiting expectantly—almost angrily, it seemed—for her to take some kind of action. When Ruth’s eyes flickered back to me, I could see the emotions warring in them: worry for Jillian; frustration about the position in which she’d just been put; and, of course, unadulterated hatred.

Of me.

Her blatant hatred angered me, especially since the headache still throbbed along my temples and threatened to break into that awful, incapacitating montage of images. I was about to risk myself, my own afterlife, just to save her granddaughter; a little gratitude, or at least a little less intentional infliction of pain, couldn’t have hurt.

Despite my irritation, however, I didn’t feel intense enough emotions yet. I would need to get much more agitated before I tried to materialize.

So, instead of Ruth, I thought about Serena Taylor and Doug Davidson. My best friends in life. The two people, outside of my family, about whom I cared most in the world. I pictured their crazed, possessed faces on the night I died: horrible distortions of the good people they truly were. Pawns, played with indiscriminate cruelty by Eli in his little game to procure souls. None of them—not Eli, nor his dark masters—had ever considered that our own volition should have something to do with our futures.

Hence my current lack of a future.

Immediately, I became angry. Violently so. The emotion began to simmer somewhere in my stomach. It threatened to bubble up into my throat and break out in a growl. The force of it made me dizzy. I reached out but found nothing except empty air to steady myself.

While I grasped, I felt an unexpected sensation brush along the skin of my palm: air—as cool as if it had come blowing in off water—shifting with the movements of my arm.

I opened my eyes and stared down at my hand. It still flailed, clenching nothing but darkness and hovering several feet above asphalt. Out of my hand’s reach, the asphalt ended in grass. Not the grass outside the cemetery, however, but a thicker, coarser grass that sloped steeply down into rushing water. Into a river.

High Bridge Road—I was now standing on it.

I could have spent some time congratulating myself on this second materialization, and marveling at the fact that my headache had suddenly vanished, had my attention not been drawn elsewhere by a chorus of voices. My head jerked toward them.

A huge crowd of young people—Wilburton High students, by the looks of their purple shirts and hoodies—clogged the road across High Bridge. Someone had parked a car in the middle of the bridge, and loud music blasted out from its open doors. Just next to the car I glimpsed the shining metal rim of a beer keg.

A normal enough scene. Just a high school party on a Friday night, one full of people having a great time. And one held directly over the mouth of what I no longer doubted was some cold, pitiless outpost of hell.

I wove my way through the mass of bodies, searching the faces of the students but not finding anything unusual. Aside from the effects of the beer, everyone looked relatively normal: no blurry, possessed eyes, no maniacal laughter. Maybe I’d overacted? Maybe there was no danger here, except for a few possible hangovers?

Ahead, a few yards between me and the bridge’s newly repaired guardrail, were some familiar faces. O’Reilly stood closest to the keg, with one arm around Kaylen, sloshing beer from his cup as he gestured to Scott and Jillian. Although Kaylen looked mildly bored, Scott kept sneaking glances at Jillian, who blushed each time his eyes met hers.

I sighed in quasi relief, mostly because none of them looked crazed. Maybe I had overacted.

“All’s quiet on the western front,” I muttered, shaking my head at my own foolish paranoia.

A familiar whisper, so close to my ear that it felt like a cold caress, made me shriek.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say all’s quiet, Amelia.”