“Perfect,” I muttered, wiping at a fat droplet from the corner of my right eye. No matter how furiously I wiped, though, the droplet wouldn’t go away. In irritation, I swung my head violently to the right.

That’s when I saw them. They must have hung at the edge of my peripheral vision, almost but not quite out of sight: black shapes wafting through the crowd, circling around people’s heads. The inky, insubstantial things moved like liquid, undulating and swirling. Yet they looked dense, almost like clouds, or . . .

“Smoke!” I screamed, pressing against a particularly out-of-control boy.

I kept screaming the word and shoving against people, but the crowd responded to my screams with nothing but shrieked laughter and unfocused stares, as if they couldn’t see me, much less the strange shapes moving above their heads.

I started to panic. My adrenaline surged, and I tried to elbow my way through the thick mass of unresponsive bodies.

Suddenly, my arms broke through the crowd. My hands flailed in the air for a moment until they caught something solid: the cold, wet smoothness of metal. I grasped it tightly and used it to pull myself free from the wall of bodies.

I looked down and saw my hands clutched to the edge of the metal guardrail of the road, a flimsy one meant to keep cars from plummeting off the bridge and into the river below.

With the crowd writhing behind me, I hugged the railing as if to escape them. But escape to where, honestly? I spared one glance below me, to the river.

The water rose up to me, swelled by almost three weeks of Oklahoma’s spring storms. I’d never seen the water so high or so churned by the speeding current. The river seemed to foam at the edges, frothing like a rabid dog. The sight of it sent a deep, piercing chill through me.

And yet . . .

What if I just . . . jumped?

I leaned farther over the rail, staring into the water. Sure, I was a few stories up, and the river looked more dangerous than I’d ever seen it. But maybe I could get away from the party if I leaned forward just a little more . . . ?

I gasped and pulled myself back from the guardrail, shaking my head in fear. What on earth had given me that impulse, made me think I could just jump down and swim away? Where had that so obviously lethal idea come from?

At that moment I’d never felt so strong an urge in my life: I wanted to be away from this place. Away from this crowd of strangers and the bizarre smoke hovering—seemingly without source—above them. Away from this river.

I stared back into the crowd, desperate to find someone I knew. Someone who could get me out of here.

At that moment I caught his eye again. Mr. Rock Star. He watched me from behind an array of faces, now wearing an unmistakable smirk. I don’t know how I knew, but instantly, I just did—he could see the fear in my eyes. And he was enjoying it.

Before I could call out to him, to tell him to leave me alone, another face popped in front of his. When Serena gave me a broad grin, I nearly fainted with relief. She brushed aside the partyers until she broke through to stand in front of me.

“Serena, thank God—”

“Amelia!” she interrupted with a happy cry, and then threw her arms around my neck in a fierce hug.

The motion was too forceful, and it nearly rocked me over the railing. I grabbed onto the edge of the curved metal, clawing desperately against its smooth surface.

“Serena, let me up!” I screamed.

Immediately, she dropped her arms, and I was able to plant myself against the railing once more. But instead of checking my safety or even calming me down, Serena turned back to the swaying mass on the bridge.

“Hey, all you people,” she said, slurring each word. I’d never heard her so drunk. “Did you know it’s Amelia’s eighteenth birthday?”

In response, the entire crowd shifted its focus to us. The effect was disturbing, as if hundreds of eyes had simultaneously riveted on me. Now I could just make out Doug’s blue eyes, no more than twenty feet away. Mr. Rock Star’s eyes also reappeared, sparkling coldly, close to Doug’s. Above all of them, the black shapes still floated, slipping over and around each figure.

Suddenly, the partyers all began to speak again, but this time they spoke only one word. The same word, repeated over and over again in a hundred different voices.

My name.

Still staring at them, Serena leaned back against me, and her weight pushed me farther over the rail. My feet actually lifted up off the asphalt and swayed slightly in the air.

The motion should have horrified me. Yet when Serena spun back around to face me, I found myself transfixed by her eyes.

They were unfocused, as anyone’s would be if they were drunk enough. I’d seen her eyes affected by drink before, plenty of times. But whatever clouded Serena’s eyes now, it certainly wasn’t alcohol. Her eyes seemed too wide and vacuous, the pupils so enlarged that only a thin line of blue circled them.

Serena looked possessed.

When she leaned in to me this time, I flinched. But my fear didn’t deter Serena. She closed the space between us, pushing me farther and farther over the bridge until I was parallel with the river. Then Serena grasped my shoulders and, in a raspy whisper, said, “Happy birthday, bestie.”

With a strange, too-wide grin, she let go of my shoulders.

That movement was all it took.

My scarce balance upon the guardrail vanished. I rolled backward and hovered for what seemed like an eternity on the edge of the railing. Then I fell, tipping over the metal. Beneath, I could hear the water, foaming and slavering as the river rushed up to meet me. Just before I hit the water, I could hear a chorus of shouts above me.

At that moment the flash ended.

For a while I’d almost forgotten I was experiencing a flash. But the past blurred and faded, and I was once again back in the river, staring up at the bridge.

A terrible realization dawned on me. I didn’t know how or why, but when this latest flash ended, it didn’t take me back to the present and the relative safety of my graveyard. Instead, the flash left me still flailing in the river, still experiencing what I’d initially thought was just another afterlife nightmare.

So, the flash hadn’t ended. Not really. Because this was the present, in a sense. I was still here, in the river, on the night of my eighteenth birthday. And, suddenly, Doug and Serena were still staring down at me with wild eyes.

“Doug, she sees us!” Serena shrieked. “Amelia sees us!”

Doug didn’t respond to her proclamation, nor did he break eye contact with me. He just grinned like a crazy person and, as Serena had done before the flash, waved at me.

I could still see the shadows, dark and swirling around my friends. I knew what they were now. Those shadows could be nothing other than the trapped souls from the netherworld. Eli’s minions. The mindless orchestrators of this entire evening.

“Doug, Serena, please. I can’t . . .”

My voice came out even fainter than it had before the flash. I could feel myself losing the fight against the current. I was far too weak to swim out of the stormy waters now; I knew it. I would need their help.

Help they didn’t necessarily seem inclined to provide me. Doug and Serena looked like statues, standing stock-still on the bridge.

“Please,” I called out once more, as loudly as I could.

At the sound of my watery voice, Serena turned toward the crowd of partyers behind her. She called out to them, her voice rising to a hysterical octave over their laughter.

“Hey, everyone! Let’s sing ‘Happy Birthday’!”

I shook my head feebly. I wanted to scream out to the crowd, to beg them not to listen to Serena. To tell them they were all being controlled by dark spirits, driven wild and out of their minds. But my voice, like my arms, seemed to be on the brink of failure. Instead, I stared at Serena and pled silently with my eyes.