I opened my eyes and stared down at my hand. It still flailed, clenching nothing but darkness and hovering several feet above asphalt. Out of my hand’s reach, the asphalt ended in grass. Not the grass outside the cemetery, however, but a thicker, coarser grass that sloped steeply down into rushing water. Into a river.

High Bridge Road—I was now standing on it.

I could have spent some time congratulating myself on this second materialization, and marveling at the fact that my headache had suddenly vanished, had my attention not been drawn elsewhere by a chorus of voices. My head jerked toward them.

A huge crowd of young people—Wilburton High students, by the looks of their purple shirts and hoodies—clogged the road across High Bridge. Someone had parked a car in the middle of the bridge, and loud music blasted out from its open doors. Just next to the car I glimpsed the shining metal rim of a beer keg.

A normal enough scene. Just a high school party on a Friday night, one full of people having a great time. And one held directly over the mouth of what I no longer doubted was some cold, pitiless outpost of hell.

I wove my way through the mass of bodies, searching the faces of the students but not finding anything unusual. Aside from the effects of the beer, everyone looked relatively normal: no blurry, possessed eyes, no maniacal laughter. Maybe I’d overacted? Maybe there was no danger here, except for a few possible hangovers?

Ahead, a few yards between me and the bridge’s newly repaired guardrail, were some familiar faces. O’Reilly stood closest to the keg, with one arm around Kaylen, sloshing beer from his cup as he gestured to Scott and Jillian. Although Kaylen looked mildly bored, Scott kept sneaking glances at Jillian, who blushed each time his eyes met hers.

I sighed in quasi relief, mostly because none of them looked crazed. Maybe I had overacted.

“All’s quiet on the western front,” I muttered, shaking my head at my own foolish paranoia.

A familiar whisper, so close to my ear that it felt like a cold caress, made me shriek.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say all’s quiet, Amelia.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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Chapter

Twenty-Six

I should have known, from the first moment I spotted all these people on the bridge. I should have made the connection and trusted my instincts.

Because Eli would never let me go free without a fight. Not after today’s argument in our graveyard. He wanted another confrontation with me and as he had done in the past, he’d used as many pawns as he needed to provoke one.

“Hello, Eli,” I whispered.

Keeping uncomfortably close, Eli circled around me until we stood directly face-to-face. He smiled, obviously pleased with himself.

“Nice party,” I said. “Looks a little familiar though.”

Eli’s grin widened. “Ah. So you remember.”

“Yes. I remember now.”

As I spoke, I took slow, cautious steps toward Jillian and her friends, trying to circle Eli so I placed myself between him and them. With each step, I prayed Eli wouldn’t notice until I was close enough to do . . . who knows what.

Eli kept grinning, still oblivious to my movements. He probably thought I was just trying to avoid him, which, on some level, I was. Then his eyes flickered to my feet. I stopped moving, but too late. Eli caught my movements, and his face darkened.

“Stop,” he commanded.

“Or what?” I asked, trying to sound brave.

Eli gave me another grin. “Or else, obviously.”

The smug glint in his eyes made me want to wipe the grin off his face. I tried to straighten my spine, to ignore the shivers running along it.

“I don’t believe you, Eli.”

“Well, you should, Amelia.” He twitched his head to something behind me. Without letting him out of my sight, I peeked over my shoulder to Jillian and her friends.

I was horrified to find that, in the few seconds I’d been distracted, the entire scene had changed. O’Reilly still had his arm around Kaylen, but the expressions on both of their faces had shifted drastically. Each of them wore an idiotic grin, and each had those unnaturally wide, unfocused eyes. Even Scott’s sweet glances at Jillian had become vaguely maniacal.

Of all the people in the small crowd, only Jillian remained unaffected. She glanced nervously from friend to friend, clearly unnerved by their sudden, hysterical giggles. All around her, the party had grown wilder, more uncontrolled. She sensed it, just as I had on the night of my death.

And there, woven throughout the party, were a few new guests; the inky, shapeless forms had arrived, weaving and oozing between the partygoers like smoke. Each time one of these dark souls brushed past a partyer, the living person would stiffen and then began to laugh louder, more vacantly.

I turned around fully to Eli. Although I already knew the answer, I asked, “Who’s the latest victim?”

“Well, Amelia, it’s none other than Little Sister over there.”

“What makes you think she’s Joshua’s sister?” I asked, disdainful. The bravado in my voice sounded too shaky, however. Unconvincing. Eli smirked in response.

“Because I’ve been stalking Big Brother’s house all afternoon. And wouldn’t you know, I eventually found the perfect candidate to invite to a party. A few whispered suggestions in some teenage ears, a few promises to my masters, and voilà—the party of the year.” Eli gestured grandly to the throng of people around us. “I could have chosen to inspire a suicide like I did with Melissa, or caused a car accident like I did with your lover boy, but—considering my audience—I thought I’d put on a repeat performance instead. The exact same thing I did more than a decade ago when I needed to find a new assistant.”

I wanted to choke, or even scream, upon hearing what Eli had just revealed: that he’d intentionally killed Melissa, that he’d purposefully lured my friends to a party on this bridge so that one of them could die. Or maybe so that I could die? Had he engineered the whole party more than ten years ago just to capture me?

“You should know, Eli,” I said in a still-shaky voice, trying to distract not only Eli but myself, “that Jillian Mayhew is a Seer, like her brother. They’re exorcists by birth, and their family has a long tradition of sending ghosts to hell.”

Eli snorted, undeterred. “Not scary, Amelia, considering the girl obviously can’t see me right now.”

“But she will,” I insisted, “if you keep up with your plan tonight. And her Seer grandma isn’t the forgiving kind, trust me.”

Eli just smiled, totally disinterested in my threats. Disinterested in the Seers who’d been hunting him without success for so long. When his eyes briefly flickered back to the crowd, mine followed. As I saw the increasingly glazed expressions on the partygoers’ faces and listened to their shouts of laughter, I realized how little time I had left. I had to think, think, think of some way to make Eli stop.

“A trade!” I cried out suddenly.

Finally, Eli looked back at me, his grin fading. “A trade, Amelia?”

I took a quick peek at Jillian, only to find her being propped up on the guardrail by O’Reilly, with Kaylen and Scott giggling and bending over to hold her legs. One could have easily interpreted this scene as harmless play among friends.

But I knew better.

O’Reilly had his arms around Jillian, but he seemed to be struggling forward, as if he was making an effort not to prevent Jillian from falling backward, but to keep her from sliding down off the railing, onto the safety of the road. The same went for Kaylen and Scott, who both looked as if they were trying to pin Jillian’s legs to the rail, not keep her steady. As for Jillian, her fingers had clenched into white claws, dug firmly into the skin of O’Reilly’s arms.