“Amelia!”

The unexpected shout made me leap into a crouch, clenching the grass and snarling in the direction of the voice. At the thought, the very insinuation, that Eli had reappeared, I went completely feral.

I must have looked completely crazy, too, when Joshua, not Eli, came running up to me. Seeing my wild stance, Joshua skidded to a stop.

“Amelia?” he asked again, more timidly.

I dropped out of the crouch and onto my knees. I felt humiliated, terrified, confused. Joshua’s eyes were also wide with fright.

“Are you really here?” he whispered. “I’m not crazy, right? I’m not, like, imagining you?”

“No,” I said, uncurling and reaching out to him with one arm. “You’re not crazy. I’m as real as a ghost can be.”

Joshua surprised me by diving across the grass, dropping to his knees, and pulling me to him with dizzying speed.

“Oh my God, Amelia,” he murmured in my hair. “Is it possible to be really mad at you and really relieved at the same time?”

“Probably.” I laughed, hugging him close. I pressed my face against his pale blue shirt and sighed. “I’m sorry, Joshua. So sorry. I mean, I’m glad I did it alone, but I’m not glad I did it the way I did.”

“What did you do, exactly?”

“I materialized in the graveyard. I met with Eli, and some stuff happened—bad stuff, including a nightmare—and then I just woke up. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was trying to do. I just didn’t want you to follow me, if it worked, because I didn’t want you to get hurt. But obviously you did follow me, because here you are, and here I am—”

Joshua cut off my babbling with a tense laugh. “Do you know how many graveyards there are in Wilburton? Way too many.”

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” I moaned again.

Joshua grabbed my face with both hands, gently but firmly lifting it until our eyes met. “Amelia, you can’t ever do that again, okay? Not unless you want to kill me, too.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated once more. Then I shook my head. “I just keep having to apologize to you, don’t I?”

“If you promise you’ll at least tell me before you do something like that again, then you don’t have to apologize.”

I held up one hand in a pledge. “I promise. I will always, always tell you before I do something stupid from now on.”

Joshua nodded, looking slightly mollified. “Okay. Now a second promise: you’ll never go see Eli without me.”

“How about if both of us never see him again?”

Joshua blinked. “Well, that would be more than fine with me. But how’s that going to happen?”

“I learned a few things today,” I said. “I have so much to tell you. But first, I think I have some powers too, just like Eli does. I’m not sure which ones yet, but I think if I get worked up enough, I can use them against him.”

Joshua arched one eyebrow. “So, you think he’ll show back up again?”

“Definitely, but who knows when . . .”

I trailed off, frowning and staring down at the grass without really seeing it. As I thought back over my early-morning conversation with Eli, something struck me as odd. For the first time, I processed something Eli had said, just before he’d told me I’d been pushed off High Bridge. Something about having another appointment today.

A song suddenly filtered through my head, tinny and faint.

We’ll meet again. . . .

I felt an eerie tingle race across my skin, and it had nothing to do with Joshua’s touch.

“Joshua, Eli wasn’t at your house today, was he?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Are you sure?”

He laughed. “Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Have you checked on everyone in your family?” I insisted.

Joshua’s laugh faded. “Well, no, but—”

“How long was I gone?” I interrupted.

“You’ve been gone all day. It’s still Friday. But it’s Friday night now.”

“Where’s the rest of your family?”

“Mom and Dad are out for their date-night. And Jillian’s taking advantage by going out, too.”

“Out?”

“Jillian came home from school all excited about this party tonight. She made fun of me for not wanting to go—I didn’t, because I figured I’d be looking for you all night—and then she invited all her stupid friends over to get ready. I guess I should have followed them, but I was worried about you.”

The story bothered me, particularly the part about the party. My head snapped up, and I met Joshua’s eyes again.

“I . . . I think we need to go check on Jillian,” I said. “Sooner would probably be better than later.”

Not yet attuned to my mood, Joshua chuckled. “Jillian wouldn’t appreciate me pulling the big-brother card on her, you know.”

“Still,” I mused, biting my lip and carrying on an internal debate. Finally, I nodded. “Joshua, the night I died, I was at a party on High Bridge for my birthday. The party . . . well, I’m pretty sure the party is the reason I died. And Eli and his minions made it all happen.”

I could practically hear Joshua’s thoughts shift in tone. “What exactly does that mean to us now?” he asked quietly.

“I have no idea. Maybe nothing. But I have a weird feeling about this. What if Eli tried to get to us another way? Like maybe through this party, and what he could do to the people there?”

“Do you really think he’d do that?”

“I don’t know—nothing seems beneath him at this point.”

A sudden, chirping electronic noise interrupted my worrying. Joshua also seemed surprised by the noise, because he jerked upright too quickly and jostled me in his arms.

The noise chirped again, insistent, so he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He flipped open the tiny device and began clicking away at its keys.

“It’s a text from Jillian, inviting me to the party.”

“A text?”

“It’s like an email, but on your phone,” he murmured, clearly not interested in explaining technology to me at this moment. I couldn’t blame him. Nor was I surprised when, after he read the text, his mouth tightened into a grimace and he loosened his hold on me.

“Where’s the party supposed to be?” I asked, shutting my eyes in dread. I felt a strange, sudden ache at my temples as if in response to my fears.

“High Bridge Road.”

Everything screeched to a halt. Nothing had moved, and nothing had changed; but I felt as though I were sitting at ground zero at the exact moment before a nuclear bomb detonates.

“Joshua?” I whispered.

He frowned deeply before looking up at me. I easily read the emotions in his eyes: uncertainty, yes, but also a deep, growing fear.

We continued to stare at each other, both of us momentarily frozen. In mere seconds a barrage of thoughts ran through my mind. How fast could Joshua get to the river? Did Eli have something to do with this? And if he had, what could I do to make him stop?

My head started to throb in earnest now. Only Joshua’s voice broke through its buzzing.

“Want to go to a party, Amelia?” he whispered, panic edging into his voice.

“I think that’s a good plan,” I whispered back. Without another word the two of us were up and sprinting toward the entrance of the graveyard.

“I’ll drive,” Joshua called back to me.

“Then drive as fast as you possibly—”

A burst of fire, bright and less than fifty feet away, ended my sentence and stopped both of us short.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

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—