"Uh-huh."

"Nice theory, but it doesn't help you out, right? Point is, you guys fell through by accident, and we need to get you back. Now, since you came through here, this spot must be important. A portal, if you want to get all Trekkie about it."

I looked around.

"Damned ugly place to stick one, isn't it?" she continued. "Which is probably the point. No one comes here sightseeing."

"So, can you break through?"

Eve shot a glare behind me. "Finish that sentence at your peril, Kris." She paused. "That's what I thought." She turned to me. "No can do. Not yet anyway. We need a necromancer."

"Good, I know just where to find one."

"Jaime Vegas?" Eve made a face. "Not my first choice, but I guess any necro will do. Between her and me, we should be able to rip this thing open enough for you to go through."

"Lucas and me."

"Uh, right. Now, I can't say it'll work for sure, because I know there's no way for me to go back permanently. Believe me, I've tried."

Her eyes cut to Kristof and, for a split second I caught a glimpse of something in those eyes that sent a shiver down my spine, and reminded me of who and what Eve was. She locked glares with the air behind me.

I suspected whatever Kristof said, it had something to do with Eve trying to cross back into the world of the living. From the way she said it, I guessed she'd been trying damned hard to return to life and, for a moment, I wondered at that. She seemed happy and comfortable enough. It wasn't like she was in some kind of hell dimension. So why fight to return to life?

Even as the question flitted through my brain, I thought of my own situation. I was here, in the afterlife, and not for one second did I consider staying. Why? Because my life was on that other side, and no matter how pleasant it might be to live in a world free of pain and discomfort, I wanted to finish my "real" life before I embarked on my afterlife. That real life, though, included Lucas. It had to.

"So if you can't get back," I said, "then you think maybe we…?"

"I don't know, but I'm sure as hell gonna try. You're a special case, so there's gotta be a way."

"Okay, so let's do it. You're a ghost, so you contact Jaime-"

"It's not that easy. First, we have to find her."

"Find her? She's in Miami."

"Obstacle number one, though it's not as bad as it seems. Miami exists here, too, only it's not quite… well, it's different. Distance isn't a problem. It's all very… relative."

"Uh-huh."

Eve shook her head. "I can't explain. Even I don't understand it all yet. Obstacle number two, though-" She looked down at Lucas. "We can't carry him."

"I'm not leaving him here."

"Well, then we have a real problem. He'll wake up in a day or two, but by then, the Searchers will have found us, and once they do, you're taking up permanent residence. Now, we can-" She stopped and looked up at Kristof, then nodded. "Kristof is offering to stay here with Lucas."

When I hesitated, she looked back toward Kristof. "You ripped the poor girl's life apart. That doesn't encourage trust, Kris." She looked at me. "It's okay, Paige. If Kristof says he'll watch Lucas, he will. He has nothing to gain if you and Lucas don't make it back to Savannah. He knows now this is what I want, what I wanted from the start, for Savannah to be with you. He won't interfere again."

Eve stood. I squeezed Lucas's hand, took one last look at him, then followed Eve across the rocky plain.

Primeval Swamp

We hiked across the rocky plain for what must have been two hours. One problem with the ghost world? Serious lack of public transportation. Yet, even with all that walking, I didn't suffer so much as sore feet. I suppose that renders motorized vehicles unnecessary. That and the fact that, here, you have all the time in the world to get wherever you're going.

Normally, I guess, travel in the ghost world is like a Sunday stroll, relax and enjoy the scenery. Where we were, though, there was no scenery to enjoy, unless you were a geologist. Rock, rock, and more rock. Not exactly the Elysian fields I'd hoped for. Of course, this was a temporary stay-the more temporary, the better-but I couldn't help being curious, if only to take my mind off the worries that were gnawing through my gut. This was the afterlife, the greatest mystery in the world unfolding before me. Yet my attempts to get more information from Eve were blocked with witticisms and non sequiturs. I can, however, be somewhat persistent, and finally she was forced to address the issue.

"I can't tell you anything, Paige. I know you're curious, but if we're going to get you out of this world, then the less you know-"

"The better," I finished.

"The better for me, too," she said. "I'm already in the Fates' bad books, and once they find out-"

"So the Fates are real?"

"Oh, yeah, only they don't just sit around spinning yarn-" She shot me a mock glare. "Stop that. You're going to trick me into talking, and then they'll find out and I won't just be up to my neck in shit anymore, I'll be drowning in it. Believe me, they will find out-hopefully just not until you're gone."

"How will they find us? Those Searchers you mentioned?"

Eve kept walking.

I continued, "If I need to be on the lookout for these things, then I have to know what to look for."

"No, you don't. If you see them, they've already seen you, and we're both going down. Not a whole lotta laws in this place, but we're breaking most of them."

"What if-"

I stopped and stared. The rocky plains ended less than a dozen yards in front of us. Beyond that was… nothing. They didn't end in a cliff or a wall of darkness or anything so dramatic. They just ended, like hitting the last page in a book. I can't describe it any better than that.

"Well, come on," she said.

I couldn't move. There was something indescribably terrifying about the view in front of me, the yawning nothingness of it.

"Oh, hell," Eve said. "It's just a way station."

She grabbed my elbow and propelled me forward. When we reached the end of the plain, my brain went wild, digging in its mental heels. That response shot down to my legs and they stopped moving. Eve sighed and, without a word, stepped behind me, and pushed.

I'd been tricked. In that last second before Eve shoved me through, I realized the truth. Eve wasn't helping me. She didn't want me going back to Savannah. She hated me, hated what I was doing to her daughter, hated how I was raising her. This was her revenge. She was-

"There," Eve said, stepping beside me. "That's not so bad, is it?"

I looked around. Fog surrounded me, a strange, cold, bluish mist.

I rubbed my upper arms. "So what is this place? A way station between what?"

"Between planes, the nonearthly realms of the ghost world, like where you landed. From here I can transport us to another plane, or to any place on earth. Well, our version of earth."

"But how-"

"Think of it as a cosmic elevator. A modern one, though. No elevator attendant on duty. Can't just walk up and say 'Miami, please.' Don't I wish. No, it's strictly do-it-yourself, and you have to figure out the right incantation to get to each place, like breaking a code. Different place, different code."

"So I assume they don't like ghosts traveling."

Eve shrugged. "They aren't totally against it, but they'd rather you found a place and stuck to it, at least for a while. Frequent commuting is not encouraged. It confuses the older ghosts, seeing new faces popping in and out all the time."

"But you know the codes."

She grinned. "Not as many as I'd like, but I'm racking up far more frequent flier miles than the Fates would like. They've rapped my knuckles a few times. Not about using the codes, because, technically, that's allowed, but they don't always approve of the methods I use to get them."