“Don’t you dare address her directly, boy,” Eli snarled. “She’s a servant of this place now, and she is mine.”

And that was all it took.

With that one little word—“mine”—the world exploded all around me.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

Chapter

Twenty-Eight

I thought I’d burned them all, incinerated the living and the dead together in a final, inescapable blast.

From my perspective, the explosion looked like what I pictured when I thought of hell: fire billowing everywhere, obscuring my vision. I couldn’t see anything but bright orange waves, and I had the oddest notion flames poured out of my eyes and fingertips. Instinctively, I clenched my hands and shut my eyes tight.

I stayed like that for a moment, praying, willing that everything would be okay.

With my eyes still closed, I relaxed my hands and slowly stretched my fingers far apart from each other. Then I opened my eyes to stare down at my hand.

I could finally see again, but to my shock, the fire was still there. It glowed upon my skin, just as bright as ever. Yet the explosion hadn’t incinerated anything. Everything looked as it had before: no charred trees, no twisted metal, no embers dancing on the wind.

I was the only thing that looked aflame, just as I had on the riverbank. There hadn’t been any explosion at all, it seemed.

My location was the only thing that had changed since the explosion-that-wasn’t. Instead of standing on the shore beside Joshua and Jillian, I now stood back on the bridge—materialized here, I supposed, by the force of the glow on my skin.

My eyes darted immediately to my right, toward the riverbank below me. To my endless relief, Joshua still crouched in the mud unharmed, and he’d propped Jillian up in his arms. Perhaps he’d positioned her this way so she could more easily cough out the dangerous water in her lungs. Whatever his motives, Joshua had momentarily forgotten his mission. He stared up, wide-eyed and openmouthed, at the bridge. At me.

From my peripheral vision, I could see another wide-eyed and openmouthed observer standing just a few feet from me on the road. Only now that I was certain Joshua and Jillian were safe could I force myself to turn and look fully at Eli Rowland.

His blond hair fluttered from the breeze, and his already pale face had turned a new shade of ashen white. Though he looked awed—stunned, even, by the glow on my skin—he still wore his earlier, smug expression. As if he had absolute confidence that, despite this new ability of mine, he owned me. The sight of his horrible face made me want to snarl, to growl at him like an animal. It took all of my self-control not to do so.

I turned away from him to view the rest of the empty road. In front of me, a pair of fresh tire marks crossed the asphalt. Behind me, the black rubber zagged to one side of Joshua’s car and then streaked off across the dark road.

It appeared that, in the few minutes of chaos I’d witnessed from below the bridge, the owner of the loud car stereo had fled the scene, as had the rest of the students of Wilburton High.

I shook my head at the tire marks. I couldn’t blame any of them for running away, including O’Reilly, Scott, and Kaylen. I didn’t imagine that they would remember anything, or that they would want to, for a long time.

They shouldn’t have had to play any role in this twisted supernatural game. Nor should Jillian, who would likely carry the frightening memory of this night with her always.

Then there was Joshua. The one for whom I feared the most during this ordeal. The last—and, to me, the most important—of the living people who would have suffered horribly, had Eli’s plot ended in a darker way.

So much fear, and so much potential tragedy, all because Eli Rowland wanted me.

Nothing but outright ownership would satisfy Eli. Even now Eli had a glimmer of it in his eyes—not only the need to obey his masters’ orders, but also that mad, unstoppable need to own. To possess.

And because of some passing resemblance to his dead lover, I was the current object of his fixation. I might always be, if I didn’t act now. This knowledge burned within me, much stronger than any fire ever could.

I took one last look at Joshua’s shadowed face. Joshua had once more pressed his cell phone to his ear. He still cradled Jillian in his arms; and, every few seconds, he cast worried glances down at her and then back up at me.

When Joshua’s eyes met mine across this wide distance, my vague plans solidified. I had to stop Eli immediately if I ever hoped to spend this hereafter in peace. I had to make Eli fear me more than he did now. More than he feared anything on this earth. Only then would I stand any chance of existing without his constant, dangerous interference.

Eli only added to my resolve when he finally spoke.

“Whatever this is, Amelia,” he said, gesturing to the glow, “I think it could be very useful to me.”

I turned back to him. Eli didn’t meet my eyes, however, because he was still too busy watching the glow. Studying it intently.

“Oh, you think so, do you?” I asked softly.

“Of course.” Eli nodded, and I could almost see the ideas forming in his head. “You’d be my best servant yet. Just imagine what that light of yours could do—how many new souls it could help me gather; how many people would be drawn to it, like moths to a flame.”

I tilted my head to one side. “And if I don’t want to serve you?”

He started and met my gaze. A slow, incredulous smile spread across his face. “‘Don’t want to?’” he repeated. “Do you still think you have a choice in all this?”

I pressed my lips tight, fighting the surge of fury inside me. Only once I had a better handle on myself did I respond.

“We all have choices, Eli. I don’t care how often I have to say this: I have a choice too. Even if I’m dead.”

Eli shook his head. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along: I chose you. That should be enough.”

I too shook my head. “It’s not enough. Because I don’t choose you.”

He sneered; and as if on cue, the crowd of long, black shapes gathered around him. They seemed to appear out of thin air, swarming into view. They moved restlessly, constantly shifting so that I could hardly recognize their almost human forms, much less their faces.

Eli didn’t look at them, but his grin widened. “You sure you want to put up a fight, Amelia?” he whispered menacingly.

I stifled my gulp and clenched my fists at my sides. “I’m sure.”

Eli nodded again. Not to me, I realized, but to the black wraiths around him. In response the wraiths surged forward, surrounding me with a speed I didn’t know they possessed. They clustered around me, pressing together until they blocked out almost all the light and then began slinking closer.

Now enclosed by their dark forms, I whipped my head first one way and then another, seeking some sort of break in their ranks. Some beam of light in between them. My arms, extended from my sides, whipped around with me. When one of the shadowy souls reached out to grab me, I shrieked.

The soul didn’t trap me, however. At the moment it tried to wrap, snakelike, around my arm, the glow on my skin brightened and intensified. It shined powerfully against the wraith, cutting through the black shadows around it and revealing its almost human form. The wraith yanked back for a moment, shifting angrily among the dark periphery. Then as if to retaliate, the other wraiths moved at once to converge upon me.

Before I could fight back, before I could even scream, the glow flared around me. Instead of its previously warm oranges and yellows, the light shined so white and pure that I had to shield my eyes from it. This light was unlike anything I’d ever seen, more intense and fierce than the glow my skin normally gave off in the dark; this new glow was glorious and terrifying at the same time.