As he spat out the final words, his lips curled into a snarl. He now looked savage, almost feral. But I saw human emotions skirting the edges of his mouth and his eyes. Buried beneath his sneer were desolation and deep, profound loneliness.

Lost in thought, I ran my fingertips in circles on the strange moss beneath me. So many details from Eli’s story were important. So many things cast light upon what I was, and what kind of choices I had.

But another aspect of his story saddened me—the part of it that had absolutely nothing to do with me. Because, however much I might dislike him, I couldn’t ignore an important theme in his narrative: despite Eli’s fervor for this world and its dark imperative, he didn’t want to be alone.

Seeing the misery in his face, I felt another surge of pity for him. I felt the strangest compulsion to help him, to pull him out of his mood, so I asked the only diversionary question I could think of.

“You kind of implied that you moved on after Melissa disappeared for the last time. So, what did you do next?”

His eyes flitted up to mine, and the ghost of his old smirk twitched at the corners of his lips.

“Well, I found myself another pretty assistant.”

“Me, right?”

Eli nodded slowly, still smirking.

“So, what did you do: find me after I died and decide you wanted me to help you?”

“No, Amelia.” His grin widened into something foreign and slightly wild. “I choose you before you died.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

Chapter

Twenty-One

I felt my vision narrow to a black pinpoint and then expand uncomfortably.

“You were there when I died?”

Eli moved suddenly, lurching off the tree branch toward me. His eyes were fierce, once again filled with that fervor. He spoke in a dizzying rush of words.

“I was, Amelia. I was there when you died, but I didn’t wake you up like I did Melissa. I didn’t even take you into the darkness like I do all the other souls. Don’t you see what that means? Don’t you see what I’ve done for you? I let you escape for a while. I allowed you your freedom. And you owe me for it.”

Eli grasped for my hand, but I yanked it out of his reach. I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Yet, somehow, I forced the words from my lips.

“What do you mean, you were ‘there’? How . . . how long were you there?”

“Just like with Melissa, I was there even before you fell,” he said with a tender smile that made me go cold. “I saw you hit the water and go unconscious. I saw your eyes open and saw you struggle against the current. And later I heard your heart stop. After the last beat, though, I left. I couldn’t let you see me. I had to materialize somewhere else so your death would have meaning.”

“Meaning? What meaning?” I stared at him, enthralled and horrified.

“Obviously, something went wrong with Melissa, otherwise I’d still have her. I had to behave differently with you in order to keep you. If I woke you up immediately, like I did with Melissa, then you might miss the significance of my mercy in letting you be my assistant; you’d have remembered your life, maybe even missed it. So you had to experience the fog to truly appreciate when I brought you out of it.”

The image of Joshua’s face flashed into my mind again.

“But you didn’t bring me out of it,” I whispered.

Eli smiled widely, his expression suddenly animated. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t even need to. You did it yourself.”

I shook my head, uncomprehending.

“I was on High Bridge last week, waiting for a new soul to acquire,” Eli explained, “when I saw you in the river beneath me. Just as a car approached, you started to flail, distracting the driver so I could spook him into the water.”

I nearly gagged.

Joshua. Eli was talking about Joshua, and his car accident.

“You . . . you did what?” I finally managed to gasp.

“No, we did something. Together,” Eli said with an excited gleam in his eyes. “Like a team. I mean, we obviously weren’t successful, since I saw the boy make it out of the water. But even so, I watched you follow him, still trying to go in for the kill.”

Eli beamed as if his misinterpretation of my actions actually made him proud of me. “You were a natural, Amelia. A perfect lure.”

My head swam, and I had the strangest suspicion that I might just pass out if I didn’t keep it together.

So . . . what? Eli thought I’d intentionally lured Joshua off High Bridge when I was really just reliving my death in the river? And then, while encouraging Joshua to swim for safety, Eli thought I’d actually been exhibiting some innate signs of evil?

I had to remind myself to focus on the most important detail of this revelation: all along, the real watcher—the real villian—had been Eli himself.

The thought of Eli playing an active role in Joshua’s accident made me reimagine my own death scene, inserting Eli’s figure above the greenish black swells of the river. Eli, watching me choke and struggle, grinning his arrogant grin. Perhaps a crowd of black shapes at the periphery, watching him watch me.

The reimagining made my death seem even more horrible, if that were possible. But really, I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering what he’d just told me about his role in Melissa’s death.

“You said . . . you s-saw my death too,” I stuttered, swallowing back the great wave of rage that threatened to pour out of me. I had to. It was the only way I could learn about my death, from the only person—the only creature—who had witnessed it. “Did I jump, like you did? Or did I fall, like Melissa?”

He raised one pale eyebrow. “You don’t remember?”

I simply shook my head.

Unexpectedly, Eli sat back upon the curve of the tree. The hint of fanaticism left his eyes, and the familiar smirk crawled across his face. Now I could see the expression for what it really was: the look of someone who believes he holds all the cards.

“Maybe I’ll tell you about your death someday,” he said. He leaned forward and traced his narrow fingers across the air above my cheek. “But I want that to remain a mystery for now. So you’ll understand how much you need me.”

I shuddered and then jerked away as if he’d tried to touch me with a branding iron.

“I’ll never ‘need’ you again, Eli,” I growled.

Eli’s smirk vanished. “What do you mean, Amelia? We’ve been called together. We’re fated.”

“We. Are. Not. Fated.” I pronounced each word carefully, individually, so he couldn’t miss my meaning.

“But I . . . I saved you,” he sputtered.

That one word—“saved”—demolished whatever small amount of self-control had been holding back my fury. I flattened my hands against the ground and shoved myself up into a standing position.

“Saved me?” I screamed. “You didn’t save me! You did the exact opposite of saving. I know for a fact that you could have helped me. You could have done something before my heart stopped. But you didn’t. You let me die.”

Eli started to speak, but I went on, furious and loud.

“I don’t care if it was part of your supposed ‘mission.’ Because that’s not all you did to me. Even after your sick part in my death, you didn’t stop there. You’ve been waiting the whole time I wandered lost and scared, ready to pounce on me. All because your masters told you I could be yours?”

“Amelia, I—”

“And I bet you didn’t try to ‘save’ my father, did you?” I cut him off with a growl, my rage growing. “I bet you threw him into this forest with all your other victims.”

Eli had the audacity to look confused. “Your father?”