“By all means,” he called out loudly, “join us.”
Whatever had prevented Ruth and Joshua from entering the bridge earlier must have fallen away, because she now moved decisively across its length, to where the demons and I stood. As she came toward us, I could see something shimmer back into place at the entrance of the bridge, like a transparent mirage.
By then, Joshua had regained his strength and stood. But no matter how much he screamed, I couldn’t actually hear him—I could just see his mouth opening and closing as he shouted soundlessly. No matter how hard he threw himself at the entrance, he couldn’t cross onto the bridge.
If Ruth noticed this new development, she didn’t show it as she stopped several feet away from the demons’ formation. Once he was sure she wouldn’t come any closer, Belial flashed his most congenial smile.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, madam. What can we do for you on this fine evening?”
The other demons snickered at his fake, ingratiating tone. But Ruth kept her face impassive. She tossed back her gleaming white hair and met his gaze squarely.
“You can make a trade with me. For me, actually. I offer myself, so that you will end the war that you’re waging on this girl.”
My mouth dropped open in shock, but the demons seemed vaguely amused by Ruth’s proposal. For the first time since they’d arrived, the female demon stepped out of rank and approached Ruth, smirking.
“What makes you think you’re a sufficient replacement for the girl?”
Ruth returned the smirk and then caught my gaze. I saw something flicker in Ruth’s eyes—apology, I think—before I suddenly couldn’t see anything anymore. A blazing pain tore its way through my head, and I felt my knees buckle. Images blurred through my mind, like a reel of old-fashioned film spinning too fast for me to discern any individual panel. I clutched at my pounding temples and gasped, “Stop. Please!”
And just like that, the images vanished and the pain dissipated.
“A Seer witch,” the female demon whispered, giving Ruth a wary, almost respectful look. The other demons hissed in agreement, clustering closer together in their pack. Obviously, they recognized an act of near exorcism when they saw one.
Ruth didn’t confirm or deny the label. She simply folded her hands in front of her and released an impatient sigh.
“Well?”
Belial studied Ruth harder now, taking in her regal stance, her annoyed frown. “I assume that you’re someone of importance in your coven?” he asked.
She gave him a withering glare. “I’m the leader of two major covens, including the one in New Orleans—the young members of which defeated your kind this winter, I believe.”
I could see Belial bristling, but he didn’t immediately retaliate. Instead, he continued to evaluate Ruth—probably weighing their intended revenge upon me against her worth as a possible addition to his army. If he accepted Ruth’s trade, I didn’t doubt that he would give her a position of some power; a woman with Ruth’s abilities didn’t end up as a mere wraith.
“You do understand,” he said, “that once you join us, you will be unable to work against us; your mind will not be your own.”
Ruth’s answering smile was close-lipped and caustic. “I assumed as much.”
Neither side said anything further until, after some considerable time, Belial nodded decisively. He didn’t consult his fellow demons, which made me wonder whether he had the final say, or they just shared a hive mind. Judging by the similarly determined looks on their faces, I guessed the latter.
“It’s settled then: you die tonight, and the girl goes free.”
Ruth shook her head vehemently. “Not just her. All the people around her, too. Anyone that you might hunt, in order to get to her.”
He considered this additional demand for a moment, and then nodded a second time. “It is agreed upon. The death shall be administered by the wraiths, and then your new form will join us in the netherworld, forever.”
His voice deepened with this pronouncement, booming off the icy girders of the bridge. In response, the temperature seemed to drop, as if the air itself understood that a dark bargain had just been made. The wraiths understood, too: they began to swarm again, writhing and churning about twenty feet above our heads. They were gathering for an attack. A final one.
A shiver crawled its way across my skin, and I turned to Ruth. “You can’t do this,” I pleaded desperately with her. “There’s got to be another way.”
For the first time Ruth offered me a sad, genuine smile. “I don’t think there is.”
She turned slightly and eyed the entrance of the bridge, where Joshua was still clawing at the invisible barrier and screaming his silent screams. When Ruth looked back at me, her eyes shimmered with the only tears I’d ever seen her shed.
“Please,” she begged quietly. “Please watch over them. And when the time is right . . . please leave them and don’t come back.”
“I . . . I’ll try,” I stuttered, unsure of how else to answer her.
Above us, the wraiths began writhing faster and screeching. Any minute now, they would dive. For a wild second, I thought about shielding her with my own body.
But Ruth was no longer looking at me. Staring up at the black swarm, she fumbled frantically with something in her pocket. Finally, as the wraiths began their dive, she yanked her hand out of her pocket. Through the cracks in her bulging fist, I could just make out a few tiny, white discs—pills.
I screamed, “No!” But the shrieking wraiths drowned out the sound of my voice.
It took Ruth several quick swallows, but she’d gulped down all the pills by the time the black mass crashed into her. Just before the wraiths fully engulfed her, she clutched one hand to her chest and fell to her knees with an unexpectedly peaceful smile.
When the wraiths disbanded several minutes later, Ruth lay prone and motionless on the road. Her arms had fallen into a T shape, and her head had lolled to one side so that she faced me. She still wore that enigmatic smile, and her eyes were wide open. But I knew she couldn’t see me. Not anymore.
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I began gasping for air as the demons laughed and cheered. I hardly even noticed when the colors of the netherworld began to seep away, returning the bridge to a plain, ordinary gray.
Before the darkness disappeared entirely, Belial pointed one finger at me.
“The witch died before we could take her soul. Whether or not she intended this outcome, her soul is already gone, and we cannot claim her,” he hissed as he began to fade from sight. “Therefore her bargain is void, and our mandate still stands: give yourself to us, or in one week, another person dies. And this time, we’ll take him.”
Belial’s arm swung toward Joshua, who’d finally pushed through the vanishing barrier and was now running toward me. Then, with a last malevolent smile, the demon vanished too.
Ruth Mayhew was dead. By her own hand, no less.
No one could seem to accept that fact. Not Joshua, even though he’d witnessed the event, nor Jillian, who’d heard about it immediately after. Not Jeremiah and Rebecca, who arrived at the bridge an hour later. And especially not the officers from the Wilburton police department.
As a few of them mentioned just after the ambulance arrived, most of the officers had known Ruth Mayhew their entire lives. They’d eaten her apple cobbler at Easter picnics; they’d tried not to squirm through a church service, lest she catch them from the choir loft and tell their parents; and they’d suffered through the Sunday-school classes that she’d ruled with an iron fist. The Ruth Mayhew they knew was not the type of woman who would take her own life with an overdose of heart medication; the Ruth Mayhew they knew would never have been that careless.
And yet no one really doubted Joshua or Jillian when they told the story of how their grandmother demanded that they go for a late-night hike to the town’s biggest river—a hike that brought on a sudden heart attack, which she was overzealous in fighting. Too many nitrate pills ha
d caused almost every organ in her body to fail all at once.
And that, as they say, was that.
The story was so plausible, so tearfully told, that the police never thought to explore the rest of the riverbank, where they would have found the shuffled footprints of fifty Seers, fleeing the scene less than an hour earlier. Only Scott had remained, constraining Jillian on the part of the road that hadn’t plunged into the netherworld. But once the netherworld vanished—and once we determined that Ruth really was dead—then Scott and I both had to disappear too. After all, the story of Ruth’s death grew less believable the more random teenagers you added to the equation.
So for the last hour, I had watched invisible as Joshua and his family slowly broke into pieces. It was the hardest scene I’d ever witnessed—and I’d just watched two beings die tonight. Almost as bad as watching the Mayhews’ suffering was the fact that I couldn’t do anything for them.
Finally, after all the stories had been told and the reports filled out, the Mayhew family was free to leave. Too tired or disoriented to pretend that he wasn’t looking for me, Joshua began wandering the edges of the bridge, hissing my name. Seeing one of the remaining officers give him a funny look, I stayed invisible but rushed over to Joshua and whispered that I would meet him at his house. His eyes still searched for me in the shadows, but then he nodded bleakly and rejoined his family on their way to their SUV.
Although I desperately wanted to join them as well, I hung back, waiting around the bridge so that I could make sure the police didn’t start expressing suspicions, now that the family had left. To my relief, none of the officers said anything out of the ordinary as they wrapped things up and left too.
After the last cop car pulled away, I shifted back into visibility with a heavy, painful sigh. With one hand, I probed the shoulder that had popped, making sure that it hadn’t dislocated. Then, feeling like I’d just been punched repeatedly, I began to trudge down the road toward the entrance of the bridge. I’d almost reached it when, inexplicably, I stopped, threw my head back, and screamed out the foulest curse word I knew.
I clenched my hands, digging my nails into my palms, and began to scream the word over and over. It echoed back at me from the girders and the tree line. At some point, my screams incensed a nighthawk, who began to shriek with me. Other than those noises, however, nothing else answered me. Nothing called out, from this world or another, to tell me what to do next.
Chapter
EIGHTEEN
By the time I finally returned to the Mayhews’ house, dawn had started to break. Still, I could see a yellow light from the front window—a sure sign that at least some of the Mayhews were awake. Making arrangements, I supposed, or mourning together. So I moved past the house without hesitation. Joshua needed me, but not quite yet; right now he needed his family more.
I was so exhausted that I could hardly muster the energy to soften my steps up into the gazebo. Once inside, I pulled the curtains shut and fumbled my way over to the daybed. Then I collapsed onto its surface, fully clothed and still wearing my muddy boots.
I craved peace so badly, I could almost taste it. Every part of my body ached for some rest from these nightmarish attacks. Still, I thought I knew myself too well to believe a moment’s peace was possible—I thought I would stay awake for hours, crying perhaps, or just turning in restless circles on top of the covers.
But to my surprise, I must have immediately fallen asleep instead. What else could explain why a gorgeous, endless prairie had suddenly replaced the gazebo? I’d also gone from lying on a bed to standing in the grass—a change that, for some reason, didn’t bother me. At that moment, nothing seemed to bother me. For the first time in months, I felt at rest.
A light breeze swept over me, pleasant and warming. It brought with it the aroma of earth, wildflowers, and that strange, indefinable scent that lets you know the day was sunny, even with your eyes closed.
The air smelled like spring. Like new life.
In an unhurried manner, I stretched my arms above my head and sighed contentedly. Maybe it was because of how starkly this place contrasted with the netherworld, or maybe it was just my exhaustion, but the prairie looked more beautiful then than the first time I saw it. And I had seen it before, during my car ride to New Orleans with the Mayhews.
But now, the grass in which I stood seemed taller, reaching well past my knees. All around me bright colors burst through the grass: yellow sweet clover, white larkspur, and purple wild indigo. Flowers my father had taught me to recognize, when they appeared each spring. I reached for a nearby blossom—a round cluster of pale yellow petals that looked like some iridescent bubble floating above the field—when I thought I heard him speak.
“That’s prairie parsley, darlin’,” he whispered, from somewhere behind me. I turned toward the sound of his voice, but the field was just as vacant as before.
“Where are you?” I whispered to the empty breeze.
“He’s not here,” a feminine voice answered.
I turned back around and saw the redheaded girl from my dreams, standing where only prairie grass waved moments before.
“Hello again,” she said, almost apologetically.
“Where are we?” I demanded. “I thought you promised that you’d stop making me hallucinate.”
“It’s not a hallucination. This realm is as real as it was the first time you came here. But since you’re not part of this realm, you’re only allowed to access it in your dreams.”
“You didn’t answer my entire question,” I pointed out.
The girl smiled slightly, and explained. “It’s an entrance of sorts, just like the netherworld. The netherworld leads to the darkest place in existence; this prairie leads to the lightest.”
I glanced around me at the blue sky, the soft sunshine, the lush prairie. The lightest place—heaven—waited, not far from here. I could feel it now, just like I could feel the nearby presence of hell whenever I stood in the netherworld. That explained my tranquility when I’d arrived in this prairie.
“Do you like it here?” the redhead asked quietly. “Would you . . . like to see what lies beyond this prairie?”
I didn’t respond, choosing instead to fold my legs beneath me and sit cross-legged on the grass. The girl mimicked me, tamping down the blades between us with her hands so that we could see each other. Once she’d finished, she stared at me again, obviously waiting for my reply.
But I simply placed my chin on my hands, rested my elbows on my knees, and considered her: auburn curls, bright green eyes, old-fashioned white tunic over bell-bottomed jeans. Finally, after a long silence, I leaned back.
“I think I know who you are.”
She raised her eyebrows but didn’t speak.
“You’re Melissa, Eli’s dead girlfriend. The one who dumped him before he started stalking me.”
She barked out a surprised laugh. “Yeah, I am.”
“I’m guessing you have a new job. One that doesn’t involve helping a demon’s slave.” When I quirked my head to one side, she confirmed my guess.
“I’m a guardian of this world,” she said. “Just like Eli Rowland and Kade LaLaurie were for the netherworld. Ultimately, we’re all competing to claim souls. My side just does it a little differently than theirs. Meaning that the other side . . .”
“Cheats,” I finished, thinking back to what Eli had once said about stealing souls for the darkness.
Melissa nodded. “They pick out some of the living as targets—victims. And when someone dies at the hands of one of the dark guardians, it’s far more likely that the dark will be able to claim that soul first. That’s what we thought had happened to you. We didn’t even realize that Eli hadn’t actually claimed you, until . . .”
When she trailed off, I waited for a beat and then prompted, “Until?”
“Until someone here alerted us to your presence in the living world. Problem is, we don’t interfere with ghosts who still wander, unsettled. Especially ones like
you, who’ve gone unclaimed for so long. There’s a really tacky name my fellow guardians have for your kind—damaged goods.”
By now, my pleasant mood was starting to crumble. I crossed my arms over my chest and scowled at her. “I’m not some forgotten piece of luggage at the airport, Melissa. I’m a person. With a soul.”
“Trust me, I know,” she said hurriedly. “When my friend told me about you, I bent the rules a little and made sure you’d be at the scene of one of Eli’s conquests last fall. So that Eli would have to notice you again.”
I blinked back in surprise. “Wait—what? Are you saying you made me find Joshua on the night of his car accident?”
“I didn’t mean to place you in Joshua’s path, specifically. I just wanted to make sure your nightmare occurred at the right time, in the right place. I thought that would draw Eli’s attention back to you—make him finally do what he was supposed to do after you died.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “You were trying to send me to hell?”
Melissa waved her hands anxiously. “No! No, not . . . technically. I was just trying to get things resolved, as far as your afterlife was concerned. No matter what my friend wanted me to do for you, I couldn’t just bring you to the light immediately. And anyway, you didn’t end up in the darkness, did you?”
“No,” I growled. “And just so you know, Eli hadn’t forgotten about me—he’d been toying with me for over a decade.”
“I know,” she said, shaking her head sadly—for me or Eli, I didn’t know. Then she brightened, suddenly smiling widely. “But instead of Eli winning, the most amazing thing happened. On the night of Joshua’s accident, you did something that none of us anticipated. Something that robbed Eli of two souls.”
I stared at her blankly for a moment. Then realization hit me.