“Until now,” I pointed out.

Ruth blinked, obviously surprised. She recovered fast, though, and shook her head. “Joshua hasn’t made his choice yet. He wouldn’t have, without consulting me first.”

“Don’t be so sure,” I answered, speaking softly but with a certainty even Ruth couldn’t doubt. However angry Joshua had been (and might still be) with me, I believed him when he promised he wouldn’t use his gift against me. Ruth looked as if she believed it too, now.

She stared at a point past me, not really looking at anything in particular. Thinking. Then, more to herself than to me, she began to murmur.

“I was biding my time with Joshua. Waiting for the right moment to tell him about his heritage. But maybe that was a mistake. . . .”

She trailed off, and I took advantage of her distraction to push the issue further.

“If Joshua made a choice you didn’t think he could make, then doesn’t it make sense that I could do the same thing? That I could choose not to be evil?”

Pursing her lips into a thin, prideful line, Ruth drew herself up to her full height. “Joshua can deny his nature all he wants, but eventually he’ll come back to it. He has to.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Are you saying neither of us has free will?”

Ruth narrowed her eyes; and, for all their beauty, they suddenly appeared predatory.

“Joshua is free to make his mistakes,” she said, “for now. But I wouldn’t want you to think, for even a second, that we’re going to give you the same opportunity of choice.”

I felt an ominous little shiver crawl up my spine. “What exactly are you saying?” I whispered.

“I’m saying you’d better get moving to one place or another, because your days in the living world are numbered. We have plans for you, and they don’t involve dating my grandson.”

The ominous shiver broke free of my spine and turned into an allover tremble, one that threatened to make my teeth clack together. I fought to wear a cold, calm expression and to keep my arms at my sides instead of wrapped protectively around me. Before I could show Ruth how much she terrified me, I had to get out of here.

“Well, thanks for the heads-up,” I mumbled, practically leaping down the last few steps.

I moved away from Ruth as quickly as I could, seeking out the shortest path through the church parking lot to the woods surrounding it. I hadn’t made it more than a few feet toward the trees when Ruth called out after me.

“We’re coming for you in two days, when the moon is waning and our banishing spells are their strongest. So be ready.”

Without warning, a stabbing sensation shot through my head. Involuntarily, I hunched my shoulders and bent my neck against the pain. I whipped my head from side to side, uselessly trying to shake off the pain.

Then, like some awful companion to the ache at my temples, a blur of images filled my mind. The images moved at such a dizzying speed across my vision, I couldn’t make out their details. They flashed, relentless and brutal in my head, until I felt an actual wave of nausea rise up within me.

The force of the sensation was so disorienting that I stumbled, tripping over my own feet and falling to my hands and knees on the ground. My hands slapped hard against the graveled parking lot, and, suddenly, I could feel the sharp bite of the gravel. It cut into the skin of my palms and knees, breaking through my ghostly numbness at the worst possible time.

At that moment the pain dissipated—so quickly that I almost wondered whether I’d experienced it at all. Still bent over, I shook my head in confusion. I barely had time to ask myself what could have caused the pain before I heard a soft, feminine laugh behind me.

At that moment I knew exactly who had hurt me.

Pushing myself up from the gravel I could no longer feel, I didn’t acknowledge Ruth’s earlier warnings, or the cruel headache. At least not outwardly. Instead, I sprinted for the woods, waiting until I crossed into them before I broke into violent shudders of fear.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

Chapter

Seventeen

Long after Ruth disappeared back into the church, I paced among the trees just along the edge of the parking lot. Ruth could probably still see me from a church window if she wanted to, but I wasn’t really thinking rationally enough to care.

In fact, for a while I couldn’t think at all. I could only feel the phantom clench of terror in my stomach, could only hear my wild gulps for breath. Eventually, though, I calmed down enough to try and make my brain function again.

Once freed from blind terror, however, I couldn’t help but imagine all the alternate futures I had in store: exorcism—and obviously, a painful one—at the hands of the ladies of Wilburton Baptist Church; entrapment in the dark netherworld forest, courtesy of a dead guy in skintight pants; or employment as some sort of grim reaper for the dead guy and his evil masters.

And, of course, the worst aspect of each possible future: no Joshua in a single one of them.

“I’m doomed,” I said aloud with a hysterical giggle.

“And why exactly are you doomed?”

At the unexpected voice, I spun around, my hands in defensive claws. A quick scan of black hair and midnight-blue eyes, however, made all my anger, if not my fear, evaporate.

“Joshua, I’m so sorry.” My arms dropped to my sides in defeat. “I thought it would help, but I just ended up making things a million times worse.”

“It’s okay, Amelia. It’s going to be okay.” He kept his voice low, soothing.

“How?” I asked, the hysterical edge creeping back into my voice. “How’s it going to be okay? How do you know I’m not evil and need to be destroyed? I don’t even know, and I’m me!”

“Because I just do, that’s all.”

Joshua stood with one foot on the asphalt of the parking lot, one on the edge of the grass that led into the woods. With his arms crossed casually over his chest, he didn’t look the least bit concerned. When he gave me a reassuring smile, the ache in my chest stirred slightly. But I had to ignore it, for now.

“You have no idea how much that means to me, Joshua, honestly. But even with what we found out about my home and my family, I still know so little about myself—too little to know where I belong or what I deserve.”

“What do mean, ‘deserve’?”

I dropped my head into my hands. “Basically, your grandmother just told me I deserve to go to . . . hell, I guess; and if I didn’t, she and her friends would send me there. In two days.”

“Wait—what?”

I sighed, still not looking up at Joshua. “Ruth and her little coven are going to exorcise me in two days.”

“No, they aren’t,” Joshua growled.

My head shot up from my hands. Before I could ask him how he intended to stop them, Joshua lurched forward and closed the space between us. He leaned over me, locking my gaze with those strange-colored, beautiful eyes of his.

“Come with me,” he murmured. “Now.”

I tried to focus, tried to ignore the intensity of his stare. “Where? Why?”

“To my house. We’re going to try and figure out a few things about you.”

“But Ruth said—”

“Screw what Ruth said,” he interjected. “I live in that house too, and I say you’re always welcome. More than welcome, actually.”

“Oh.”

A number of emotions warred inside me: fear, anger, uncertainty. But now, a jittery kind of happiness warred right beside them. Joshua just had that effect on me.

“So,” he said, holding out his hand. “Want to come home with me?”

I smiled and stretched out my hand to his.