TEN
I didn’t remember when Joshua stopped me, nor did I remember how he convinced me to get back into the truck without being able to touch me. All I knew was that I went from tearing a feverish path through the wilderness near my mother’s home to sitting motionless in the passenger seat of Joshua’s truck as it bounced us down a roughly paved road.
“What . . . what happened?” I asked hoarsely. I had a bad taste in my mouth, and I had a bad feeling about how it got there.
“You were sick,” Joshua replied plainly. He kept his gaze trained firmly on the road, almost as if his life depended on how hard he could concentrate on the task of driving. I’d never seen him so intent on not looking at me.
“Do you hate me now, knowing that I caused someone’s death?”
My question dripped with self-pity, and I hated myself a little for asking it. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t want to know the answer anyway.
For a long time—an eternity, to someone who’s asked that kind of question—Joshua said nothing. When he eventually cleared his throat, I cringed, ready for something awful. Ready for him to tell me, finally, that I’d put him at too great a risk.
“Amelia, I love you.”
He said it so earnestly, so fiercely, that I leaned back in surprise.
“I love you,” he repeated. “And hell itself won’t stop that. Sorry to put it so dramatically but, well, it’s the truth. And I’m terrified because I can’t keep you or me or anyone we know from what’s coming. From what’s already here.”
I nodded bleakly.
“It must have happened right after we left. I don’t know how they convinced her to drive on that road again.” Then I recalled one image from the night of my death: a young girl with crazed, possessed eyes, watching while I drowned in the river below her.
“Actually,” I amended, “I have a pretty good idea how they did it. But I just can’t believe they would choose . . .”
When I trailed off, unable to finish, Joshua spoke one, low word.
“Serena.”
For some reason, I chose that moment to lose it. I dropped my face into my hands and began to sob messily, not bothering to hide my misery from Joshua. I cried like I hadn’t done in months, letting the full force of what I’d seen on my mother’s TV wash over me in a brutal, guilty wave. And as I sobbed, other things started to seep in along with the details of the morning news report.
Memories.
The image of an eight-year-old Serena on the day we met, beautiful and a little wild in her grass-stained soccer uniform. A whiff of the rancid volcano we’d tried to make together for a seventh-grade science credit. The slight chip on her right canine, from a rock-hard jelly bean we found in her mom’s couch that I’d dared her to eat. The heart she’d drawn around Doug Davidson’s name in bright-red ink, right on the front cover of her Government book, our first day of public school.
Our friendship had been the lifelong kind . . . for as long as I’d lived, anyway. Now, neither of us had a “lifelong” existence. Not anymore.
It was the thought of her, lost and alone and probably tormented in the netherworld, that ultimately made me stop crying. I swallowed back the last of my sobs and wiped furiously at my eyes, smearing the tears away haphazardly across my cheeks. As my vision cleared, I could see that Joshua had pulled his truck to the shoulder of the road, and he now waited patiently for me to work through this outburst of misery.
Yet another reason why I loved him; yet another reason why he deserved so much more from me than self-indulgent misery. He deserved my action, as did Serena, and Gaby, and my father, and every other wrongfully imprisoned soul. I wasn’t exactly sure how, but I knew that I wouldn’t go into the darkness without freeing the people I loved from the demons.
And I wouldn’t go without one hell of a fight.
I kept silent until the force of tears and sickness and loss no longer controlled me. Then, when I felt like my body would better obey my mind, I finally turned to Joshua.
“Please take me back to your house.”
Joshua began moving fast, as if he was dealing with an unstable situation—or person.
“That’s a good idea,” he said hurriedly. “We’ll get you back there so you can rest for a while, have some of my dad’s cooking, and then maybe—”
“No.”
My interruption wasn’t cruel, but it didn’t leave any room for argument, either.
“I’m done resting,” I continued, a touch more gently. “I’ve been resting since Christmas—since Gaby—and look what that’s accomplished. First, you and I love each other, more than ever, but our relationship is stalled. It will be, until something about me changes. Then, the demons are obviously a bigger threat than they were the day we met. And now, another one of my friends is dead.”
“None of that is your fault, Amelia—”
“I know,” I interrupted again. “Really, I do. Like you said: I didn’t create hell. I didn’t invite this evil into our lives. But I’m tired of my loved ones hurting because of the darkness. I’m tired of being its victim too. And I’m ready to do something about it. Now.”
Once I’d finished that pronouncement, I leaned back against my seat and did a quick self-assessment. I felt . . . good, actually. Surprisingly good. Galvanized, even.
But Joshua clearly didn’t know how to respond. As he drove, he opened and shut his mouth several times without saying anything. Finally, after taking more than a few miles to collect his thoughts, he nodded.
“Okay, then. What do we do next?”
Joshua’s question sounded just as fierce, just as determined as his earlier declaration of love. Which meant that both came from the same, good place inside of him. The place I loved most.
Despite everything that we’d gone through, despite everything to come, I couldn’t help but give him a wide, bright smile.
“I think it’s time to gather a coven of Seers.”
It was a good plan. Not to mention, it was the only plan I could come up with on short notice. But that didn’t make it any easier to implement. First, sheer numbers were not on our side, as Jillian wasted no time in telling me.
“It’s just math, Amelia,” she mumbled through an enormous bite of cold fried chicken. “One, two, three.”
To illustrate, she used her cleaned drumstick to point at Scott, then Joshua, then herself. She swallowed her huge bite and added, “Three versus—what?—thousands of demons and their ghost slaves? No offense to anyone at this table, but I don’t like our odds.”
I groaned and let my forkful of potato salad clatter to my plate. Math, I laughed to myself. How quickly Jillian forgot that I’d helped Joshua to an A in Calculus last semester, while she almost failed basic algebra.
Aloud, I said, “That’s why we’re going to get a lot more Seers, Jillian. Because the larger our circle, the greater power we have to open the netherworld. And that’s the most important part.”
“Aside from the killings?” she asked drily.
“That’s not going to happen again.”
I answered so sharply that Jillian actually sank back in her chair, temporarily chastened. She should consider herself lucky that I hadn’t followed my first impulse and thrown my fork at her.
For the second time today, the four of us were gathered around the Mayhews’ breakfast table—this time, with a Southern-fried lunch of the weekend’s leftovers. When Joshua and I had arrived back at the house, Rebecca and Jeremiah were already awake; this necessitated a flurry of explanations about why the two couples were together so early in the morning, instead of sleeping safely apart. Jillian and I crafted some impromptu slumber-party lies that, although thin (nail painting! gossip! chocolate!), convinced the older Mayhews to leave us alone with a few plastic containers of leftovers and an entire afternoon to plan our attack.
“Personally, I think we should talk to Ruth’s and my gran’s old Seer group,” Scott offered.
Joshua and I replied simultaneously: “No chance,?
?? on his part, and “That’s a fantastic idea,” on mine.
Joshua turned to me, blinking rapidly. “What? You can’t be serious, Amelia.”
“I’m very serious. We need them. As your little sister so sweetly pointed out, there’s strength in numbers. And in the old coven’s case, experience. Two newbie Seers and one who hasn’t technically been triggered yet aren’t going to keep the netherworld open for very long.”
“Hey,” Scott protested. “I could, like, hold my breath for a really long time, or something. You know: get ‘triggered’ or whatever.”
I smiled at him gently. “Scott, in a weird way, that’s very sweet. But I don’t think an intentionally failed suicide attempt is what we’re really going for.”
When he grinned back at me sheepishly, I noted, “A-plus for enthusiasm, though.”
“I think it’s a mistake,” Joshua insisted, running one nervous hand through his hair and then resting it on his neck. “We can’t forget that the Wilburton coven wanted to exorcize Amelia. Just a few months ago, actually. I’d bet none of them have forgotten that fact.”
To my surprise, Jillian actually took my side and began to argue with her big brother.
“So what?” she challenged him. “I doubt that would matter, if they knew we were all after the same thing. Besides, they’re probably leaderless without Grandma Ruth, anyway. If we ask them really nicely, maybe bring them a few extra cases of Ensure as a peace offering . . .”
Although Jillian kept talking, I stopped listening. Not because she offended me with her disrespect, but because of something she’d just said. Something that gave me an interesting, if dangerous, idea. I turned it over in my mind, treating the idea as carefully as I would a delicate seashell with sharp edges. Razor sharp, if past experience served.
But worth it, I ultimately decided. Maybe even necessary to our mission. I mentally rejoined the conversation as Jillian continued to poke fun at her Seer elders.
“. . . you know, throw in some denture cream. Ask them if we can see pictures of their great-grandchildren—”
She stopped short when she caught my determined stare.
“What?” she demanded. “Why are you looking at me like I’m a crazy person?”
“Actually, I’m looking at you like you’re a brilliant person.”
One corner of Jillian’s upper lip lifted in suspicion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ignoring her hostile sneer, I flashed a knowing little smile. “It means that someone should give your grandma Ruth a call.”
For a moment, no one responded. Then Joshua and Jillian burst into raucous laughter. Joshua actually started to tear up, and Jillian curled sideways across her chair as if all the cackling had given her a cramp. But their laughter died when they noticed that I hadn’t joined in.
“I’m not joking,” I said evenly, once they’d quieted down. “Ruth Mayhew is the most powerful Seer we know. We’d be idiots to try and do this without her.”
Jillian snorted lightly, reached into the pocket of her dress, and flipped out her cell phone. She used it to gesture meaningfully at me.
“Okay, Fearless Leader. Why don’t you call her, then?”
Again, she wore that derisive sneer. But I could tell from the glint in her eyes that she didn’t actually hate the idea; she was just too afraid to make the call herself. So I glanced over at Joshua. He met my gaze squarely, but like his sister, he clearly balked at the thought of making such a call. I understood this fear far better, coming from Joshua.
To put it mildly, Joshua’s relationship with his grandmother had been strained for the past few months. Because of me—but also because he’d chosen a different kind of Seer life. The kind that included coexistence with the dead, something Ruth staunchly opposed. This opposition should have struck her from our list of possible partners. And yet . . .
“I’ll make the call.”
Thankful that I’d practiced dialing a few times on Joshua’s cell, I snatched the phone out of Jillian’s hand and scrolled quickly through her list of contacts. The photo that corresponded with Ruth’s phone number made me shiver a little, but I clicked Dial before I could chicken out—and before anyone around the table could stop me.
Ruth answered on the second ring.
“Jillian, honey? How nice to hear from you.”
Immediately, I could tell that Ruth had recovered from her poisoning last Christmas. Lucky for her and the New Orleans Seer community, Kade LaLaurie’s serpentwood cocktails apparently didn’t have a permanent effect. She sounded so strong, so imperious, that it struck me mute for half a second.
“Jillian? Jillian, dear, I’m awfully busy—”
“It’s not Jillian, actually.”
My voice came out strained and unfamiliar. But Ruth nonetheless recognized it. After a tense pause, she growled, “What do you want?”
“A chance,” I said weakly. Then, in a firmer tone, I repeated, “A chance, Ruth. I need one, your family needs one—the entire town of Wilburton needs one.”
I heard a faint, rhythmic clicking on the other line, as though she was tapping her fingernails against a marble surface. She stayed silent for so long, I thought she might have hung up on me. But finally, she commanded, “Explain yourself.”
I took a deep breath for courage, and then did just that. It took me a while to go through the whole story—I actually started from the beginning, with Eli, and made my way to the present threat. I only left out a few details, mainly steamy ones concerning me and Joshua; in my opinion, those memories belonged solely to us.
I felt a little breathless as I finished. Checking the clock over the Mayhews’ stove, I could see why: I’d talked for almost thirty minutes straight. I took a quick, peripheral peek at my tablemates. Joshua and Jillian looked far more somber than they had earlier, and Scott looked downright queasy. I guess Jillian didn’t give him the entire story, after all.
Ruth’s voice drew my attention back to the phone call, which, up till now, had been more of a monologue than a conversation. As Ruth continued to speak, it seemed that the call would remain a monologue—she talked ceaselessly for another thirty minutes, telling me exactly what she thought about me and my plan. She even told me when the conversation was officially over, hanging up on me without so much as one word of good-bye.
I stared at the phone in my hand long after the call ended, not really noticing when the screen went blank from inactivity. My tablemates stared at me, too, waiting silently for the bad news. While they waited, I played Ruth’s most important words over and over in my mind. Then I shook my head and raised my eyes to Joshua’s.
“She’s in,” I said. “Ruth’s on our side.”
Chapter
ELEVEN
Four tense but uneventful days later, neither Joshua nor I had quite recovered from Ruth’s shocking change of heart. Or change of methods, at least.
On the phone with me, she made it perfectly clear that she still thought I shouldn’t exist in this realm. But as long as I intended to fight the powers of darkness, she’d stand with me. Until High Bridge fell, of course. After that, we would return to our respective sides of the dead/living divide.
For the last few days, Joshua and had I spent every spare minute planning the big picture. Before we knew it, it was already Thursday night—only forty-eight or so hours away from our epic showdown. So we lay on the gazebo’s daybed, avoiding his Physics homework and plotting the smaller details. Unfortunately, most of our plotting involved waiting, since everyone agreed that we should let Ruth convince the Wilburton Seers to join us. God only knew what would happen if four teenagers, one of whom was a Risen ghost, asked them.
Without looking at Joshua, I tugged nervously on my bottom lip with my teeth.
“Ruth said she could get a flight out of New Orleans Friday,” I told him. “And she promised that she’d spend this week working on spells. But since she won’t get here until tomorrow night, we only have one full day to rally the Wilburton coven and prep for
Saturday’s midnight attack, before the demons strike again. Assuming they even keep their word on the one-death-a-week thing.”
Joshua shifted uneasily beside me. “We can’t afford to think like that, Amelia.”
“You’re right,” I said softly. “I’m not sure I can wrap my brain around the idea that someone else might die before then.”
To distract myself from that very real possibility, I reached up and drew invisible patterns in the air with one finger. Joshua watched me for a minute and then reached up as well, to try to clasp my hand. Even though our hands passed through each other midair, it was the thought that counted; with Joshua, it always counted.
I angled my head toward his on our shared pillow. “You know the only thing that makes all this bearable?”
“That you love me?” he guessed.
“Bingo.” I smiled faintly and dropped my hand to trace the outline of his jaw.
“Do you need me to tell you that the feeling is mutual?” he asked. When I shook my head, he beamed at me. Then his smile faded into a grimace.
“Damn,” he murmured, raking his fingers through his messy, post-baseball-practice hair. “I forgot to tell you—I’ve got a game tomorrow night. I won’t be there to help you with my grandma.”
The thought of speaking to Ruth in person, without Joshua as a buffer, made me go cold. Still, I shrugged and gave him a blasé wave. “It’ll be okay—Ruth and I can handle the planning that night by ourselves. And on Saturday . . . well, you’d better not miss Saturday.”
“I wouldn’t, not ever. But you know what’s weird? I’m actually a little sad that you have to miss Friday.”
“Me, too,” I said, and I meant it. I’d attended each of his spring ball games, albeit invisibly: I’d never felt ready to introduce myself to Joshua’s friends. Kind of ironic, considering the fact that just a few days ago, I’d introduced myself to one of them with a literal bang.
“Maybe if I’m not there,” I joked, “you’ll play even better. You know, since my freaked-outedness won’t be subliminally freaking you out.”