“Spare me.” I laughed. “You can’t pretend to be innocent any longer. And I couldn’t care less about whatever grand plans you had for our future. Oh, pardon me—my future. Whatever your plans are, they have nothing to do with my future at all.”

“Our future,” he snarled, the tenderness now absent from his voice.

“No. My future.”

It was now Eli’s turn to jump to his feet.

“You’re mine!” he shouted into my face. His hand shook violently as he reached for me, but I took two quick steps backward.

I didn’t even take a last look at him before I spun around on my bare heel and ran into the woods. I had no idea where my feet led me, nor did I care. I only cared that my feet slid across the icy purple moss with a speed they’d never shown before.

Unfortunately, no matter how fast or how far I ran, the sinister landscape around me never seemed to change. I kept passing what looked like the same mangled shrubs, the same glittering trees.

As I ran, I saw other things too: dark shapes in the forest, flitting among the trunks and branches like wild animals following my path. Maybe I was so scared I’d begun to hallucinate, but I could swear the shapes had faces. Human faces, watching me run through the woods but not moving to stop me.

Were these the lost souls, biding their time until Eli gave them the order to attack? Was my father among them, watching me too? Part of me wanted to stop and hunt for him, but another part kept my legs moving, dragging me forward in terror.

Then, at the moment I was about to give in to full panic, the gray began to shimmer and shift. Like some massive drape over a theater set, the dark netherworld floated and fell away until I stood, panting, in the middle of the sun-filled woods of the living world.

Something about a hundred yards ahead caught my eye. I squinted and realized it was the river, glinting orange in what looked to be the late-afternoon sun.

I started running again, moving as though my very existence depended upon my speed. When I crested the hill above the river and stepped onto the asphalt of High Bridge Road, I paused only long enough to say a prayer.

“Please, God,” I begged aloud. “If you like me at all, please, please, show me the way back to the Mayhews’ house. I could really use the help.”

I nodded once for an amen and then tore off again down the road.

My sense of direction would be the death of me. Metaphorically, at least.

By sunset I’d made one too many wrong turns, and my confidence unraveled a little more with each inch the sun dipped below the horizon.

At last, at the end of what felt like the hundredth road, I saw the front porch of an unmistakable house. I raced down its driveway toward the backyard, my feet flying over gravel. But as I left the gravel and crossed onto the grass, I found the Mayhews’ backyard empty and dark. All the lanterns, now unlit, looked gray in the night. No light shined from the back windows of the house, nor did Joshua wait for me on the darkened porch. I slumped against the trunk of a cottonwood, exhausted and defeated.

“Amelia?”

The hushed voice came from somewhere farther back into the yard, away from the porch.

“Joshua?” I whispered. I heard a tiny click, and a small circle of light appeared more than fifty feet behind the house. Within the circle was Joshua, standing in the entrance of the gazebo I’d noticed the first night he’d brought me here.

Without another sound I was running across the back lawn, leaping up the gazebo steps, and throwing myself into his arms, all before Joshua could even move.

After only a second’s hesitation, he pulled me to him, wrapping one hand around the nape of my neck and weaving his fingers through my hair. Just like when we’d kissed, I could feel it all: his arm around my waist, his fingers against my skin.

“Thank God you’re here. It’s late. I was worried . . . ,” he murmured. He lowered his head to my neck and ran his lips across the skin just below my jaw, all but igniting a fire there.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I panted. “It took forever to do what I had to do, and then I couldn’t find your house. I think I walked down about a million wrong driveways.”

Joshua chuckled—a rough, low sound that reverberated off the base of my throat.

“You’re not mad at me for kind of disappearing again, are you?” I asked hesitantly.

Joshua shook his head, the tip of his nose brushing across the soft skin of my neck. “No. God, no. I’m sorry about the other day, I really am. I was so stupid. If I’d just taken the time to think about what you are, and what you have to go through—”

“No!” I cut him off. “Don’t blame yourself! It was my fault, too. I could have—”

Now it was his turn to interrupt me by moving his lips to my ear. “Let’s just agree to make it up to each other, okay?” he whispered.

“I could live with that,” I whispered back.

Joshua’s fingers ran slowly up and down my spine, and I held him more tightly, relishing the tingles that seemed to have found their way over every inch of my skin. The sensation obscured every other thought in my head, made me trail off as I said, “You know, I really have so much to tell you about today. . . .”

“I want to hear it all, I do,” he said fervently, pulling his head back and looking into my eyes.

In this position—one of his hands still woven through my hair and the other wrapped around my waist, both of my arms thrown around his neck and our bodies pressed together—our lips were only inches apart.

We must have noticed this fact at the same moment, because we simultaneously began to tremble. Joshua’s breath sped; and I could actually feel it, warm and soft, on my lips. Our eyes were still locked, and I started to feel a little dizzy.

“I . . . I still want to kiss you,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Me, too.”

“Can I . . . ? Can we . . . ?”

“I think so,” I nodded. “I just really have to concentrate, so I don’t disappear.”

Joshua’s fingers tightened in my hair, and he pulled my face closer to his.

“Concentrate, then,” he murmured, and pressed his lips to mine.

Just as it had before, our kiss threatened to melt every part of my body. Waves of hydrogen-fueled flames unfurled like petals in my brain.

But this time I paid close attention to more than just my passion. When I felt the blackness creep along the edges of my joy and when a tiny place in my core felt as though something were tugging on it with an invisible string, I fought back. I anchored myself to the present, holding on to Joshua and concentrating on the immediate feel of his mouth.

I didn’t disappear. I didn’t sink into the water. Instead, I kissed Joshua back, more ferociously than I could have imagined possible. I parted my lips and moved them against his, breathing him in, almost tasting him.

Eventually, we had to stop so he could breathe. We reluctantly pulled away but stayed pressed against each other.

“That was amazing,” Joshua panted.

Even if I’d wanted to speak loudly, I couldn’t. I could only whisper, “That was—”

“Beautiful,” a voice spat from behind us.

Still wrapped in each other’s arms, Joshua and I whirled around to face the same spot in the black tree line. The speaker remained invisible, hidden by the darkness.

“Who the hell . . . ?” Joshua began, but I already knew the answer.

“Eli,” I said flatly.

“Who’s Eli?” Joshua asked, turning back to me.

“My errand this morning.”

“Oh, I’m an errand, am I?” Eli stepped out of the shadows, his skin oddly bright against the black of the night.

“That’s far more than you deserve,” I said through clenched teeth. “And you know it.”

“I know no such thing,” he hissed.

“How did you follow me without me knowing?”

“I stayed far enough behind you. Then, at the right moment, I materialized.”