“Guys,” she said with a seemingly casual roll of her eyes. “This has been a real riot and all, but it seriously stopped being funny about twenty seconds ago.”

Her friends merely laughed and pressed her more firmly to the guardrail.

I spun back around to Eli.

“Yes, a trade,” I said, now desperate. “Me, for them. My life, for theirs.”

Eli blinked, obviously surprised by my willingness to negotiate.

“And you answer a question for me first,” I added hurriedly.

“Well . . . I might be able to do that,” he sputtered. Then his face grew serious, almost reproachful. “As long as you’ll hold up your end of the bargain, of course.”

“Of course.” I nodded.

“And that entails you, staying with me. Forever.”

“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently, “for however long forever lasts.”

Eli blinked again. Then a wide smile began to spread across his face, one that had only a touch of incredulity to it.

“What’s your question, Amelia?”

I hesitated for a moment, knowing that now wasn’t really the time for this, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Why me?” I asked.

Eli tilted his head to one side, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you kill me? What about me was so . . . special, you just had to have me join you? I mean, other than the fact that you thought I was trying to kill Joshua.”

To my surprise, Eli laughed. “I could just tell we were meant to be together. I knew it from the first moment I saw your green eyes across the bridge at your birthday party. I didn’t even know you were the guest of honor until I started pressing my army to chase you. I only knew your eyes were like hers. Like Melissa’s.”

My mouth dropped open in shock.

My eyes?

My death, my afterlife, my struggles with Ruth and Eli—they had nothing to do with my supposedly evil nature? The whole, tragic thing had started with my eyes?

I shook my head, stunned, trying hard to remember my purpose here. To remember my promise to help Jillian.

“Oh,” I finally managed to say.

“What on earth made you come to this decision anyway?” Eli asked, unaware of how much he’d shaken me. “Not that I’m disappointed.”

I shrugged as nonchalantly as possible under the circumstances and fought to speak again. “Well, if you’d stop behaving like this—if you’d stop trying to hurt the Mayhew family—then I guess I could see you in a better light. Maybe I could learn to feel like we’re meant to be together. After all, you’re dead, I’m dead. It makes a weird kind of sense, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does,” Eli said. “But what about the living boy?”

“What about him?” I tried to feign a smile.

“Well, obviously, if I let this girl go, if I leave her and her brother alone, then you have to give me your word you’ll never see him again. Even in his own hereafter, whenever he becomes like we are now. Can you promise me that, Amelia?”

“I—I promise.”

Not only did I stutter, but my voice cracked at the word “promise.” Without thinking, I winced at the sound. Eli’s eyes automatically narrowed into dark slits. He obviously saw through my ruse, and fury began to brew upon his face. Without another word, Eli flung out his arm toward the group of people clustered around Jillian Mayhew.

Suddenly, their laughter took on an animalistic quality, like the howls of an attack. The black, shapeless souls began to gather around them and writhe frantically. In response, Jillian’s captors began to shake their arms, rocking Jillian back and forth against the railing. Her eyes widened in terror, and her mouth open in a silent scream.

“Let her go!” I shrieked. I launched myself at Eli, grabbed the arm he’d extended, and sank my nails into his dead flesh.

For one silent moment, Eli stared down at his arm and the small half-moons of blood my nails had drawn from it. We both knew he shouldn’t—couldn’t—bleed. And yet, as he’d done to me in the graveyard, I’d hurt him now.

“What the hell?” Eli began when a strange, groaning noise erupted under us. It sounded like metal against metal, protesting as it began to fold.

Eli jerked his arm from my grip, and we both looked in wonder at the road beneath our feet. There, zigzagging through the thick asphalt between us, was a narrow fissure. It ran from one side of the road to the other, as if some impossibly large force had cracked the bridge itself.

“Amelia, what did you just do . . . ?” Eli murmured, but the sound of squealing tires cut him short. All of our heads—Eli’s, Jillian’s, and mine—whirled around to the sound.

At first, all I could see were the negative images of two headlights, flashing black spots against the backs of my eyelids. As I tried to blink them gone, a car door opened, and I heard a wonderfully familiar voice.

“Let them go, Eli, or I swear I’ll kill you a second time.”

“Joshua!” Jillian and I cried simultaneously. I turned to Eli with a triumphant smile.

Eli looked past me to Joshua. “Your knight in shining armor?” he asked me softly, dangerously.

“Yes,” I whispered, suddenly fervent. I grasped his open shirt. “Please, Eli. I love him. I do. And I don’t think you’re evil, either. Just . . . misguided. So prove me right and let Jillian go. Let them all go. Make me care about you, Eli.”

For one unbelievable moment, Eli wavered. I saw the war of thoughts on his face, the battle between his need for power and his desire for something else. . . .

“Amelia,” he whispered, and reached out with one hand to cup my cheek. But the moment before his fingers brushed my skin, I pulled away from him.

Eli grunted, in both anger and—I was sure—hurt. “I can’t stand this anymore,” he muttered to himself.

All at once the partygoers straightened and froze. They stood absolutely still, their wide eyes suddenly immobile, vacant. Then, in unison, they began to twitch and convulse.

Almost at once the wraiths pulled back from the living people as if the force of their involuntarily movements had frightened the spirits. The partygoers trembled so hard they appeared to shimmer, the lines of their bodies wavering like the air above a hot tar road in the summer.

From what I could see, all the living people convulsed, with no exceptions. Which would also mean . . .

My head whipped back to Jillian and her friends just in time to see O’Reilly slump like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Both of his arms went slack at his sides, including the arm that, until now, had been one of the only things holding Jillian upright. When Kaylen’s and Scott’s convulsions caused them both to fall backward, they also lost their tenuous hold on Jillian’s legs.

Everything after that seemed to happen in slow motion.

Jillian’s eyes briefly flickered to her brother, who was still pushing through the twitching crowd, and then flickered back to her friends. Her arms lifted from the railing like a trapeze artist’s as her body shifted farther backward.

She screamed, just once. The noise was muffled and dull in my ears, as was Joshua’s shout behind me. But I heard the next sound clearly, the one that cut Jillian’s scream short.

A sharp crack rang out, followed by a low, vibrating twang as Jillian’s head connected with one of the support beams that extended up from the bridge.

Instantly, her mouth went slack and her eyes rolled back until only their whites showed. Her head slid away from the beam, leaving a dark red smear on the metal. For less than one second, Jillian’s entire body relaxed. She looked peaceful. Lovely. Then, without another noise, she toppled over the railing and into the darkness below.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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