She’d offered me a fabric daisy: the very kind of flower she always placed on my grave.
Chapter
FOURTEEN
She knows. I know she knows.”
“Maybe not. Your mother could have meant anything when she handed you that flower. Maybe she really did think it was yours. Like she thought that you dropped it, or something.”
Hearing this highly unlikely explanation, I didn’t say anything. Instead, the corners of my mouth tugged into a tight, disbelieving smile, and I arched one eyebrow at Jillian. Seeing my skeptical eyebrow raise, she shrugged and leaned against one column of her parents’ front porch.
“But . . . probably not.”
“Probably not,” I echoed.
Then I wrapped my cardigan more tightly around me and craned to peer around another porch column. It was already dark outside, but I didn’t need a spotlight to see that the driveway was completely empty. It had been, since Jeremiah and Rebecca left to watch Joshua’s baseball game.
“Where is she?” I asked. “She should have been here hours ago.”
Jillian and I had been waiting far too long for Ruth’s taxi. Her flight should have landed at Wilburton’s tiny municipal airport late that afternoon. But five p.m. had come and gone with no sign of a car—and no contact from Ruth whatsoever.
Again Jillian responded to me with a shrug, but this time she actually looked nervous. Like she knew that each second that ticked by meant another life was put more at risk.
I leaned against the railing of the porch and sighed raggedly. I wanted a lot of things right then, but more than anything, I wanted Joshua.
Part of me hoped that he had a fantastic game—one where he didn’t have to worry about death or demons or his crazy girlfriend who liked to throw hand grenades. Another part of me missed him horribly, especially after I read the note he left for me on the gazebo’s daybed:
I understand. Good luck tonight. I love you.
Such a simple note, and yet every word made me ache inside.
I should’ve told Joshua why I wanted to leave early for the funeral. In fact, I should’ve just said yes when he suggested that he go with me. It didn’t help that almost everyone else in his life—his parents; Scott; his other good friend, David O’Reilly; Kaylen—got to watch him play that night. And I supposed that I wouldn’t even get to tell him about what happened that morning until very late that night—if I ever got the chance.
If we ever get started at all.
Ruth’s conspicuous absence didn’t bode well for us and our little endeavor. The longer Jillian and I waited for her, the more I suspected that either something had gone wrong, or Ruth had lied to me. Taking another long look at the empty driveway, I was about to admit defeat and choose the latter.
But just before I turned away, something at the far end of the drive caught my eye. I squinted at it, and then smiled.
A light flickered through the thick line of trees that bordered the Mayhews’ property. As it moved, the light doubled and grew stronger, until I could see that it came from two car headlights.
Those two headlights weren’t the only ones bouncing down the Mayhews’ driveway. While the car I first noticed drove toward the house, another followed behind it and another behind that one, and so on until the entire driveway had filled. Even then, I could see other headlights moving on the other side of the front tree line, as more cars found parking spots outside the Mayhews’ property.
“Holy Moses,” Jillian whispered, staring with wide eyes at all the people exiting their cars and making their way across her front lawn.
“Holy Seers,” I amended, but I sounded just as awed. An awkward crowd of at least fifty Seers gathered at the base of the porch. But that didn’t make sense: less than twenty had attended my failed exorcism last fall. I couldn’t explain how the Wilburton Seer community had doubled in just a few months. Not until I saw Ruth Mayhew finally exiting the first car.
Once her driver closed the car door behind her, she brushed imperiously past the big group and marched up the porch steps as though she owned them. Then she stopped in front of me abruptly and placed one hand on her hip as if to say, You’re in my way—move.
Standing there, looking so much healthier than the last time I saw her, she resembled a general ready to command her troops. On some level, I was relieved: I needed her angry and authoritative, so that we might actually have a fighting chance against the darkness. But I also bristled under her resentful scowl. After everything that had passed between us, it frustrated me that her hatred hadn’t lessened one bit.
“You’re late,” I said flatly, in lieu of a greeting. The corner of Ruth’s mouth lifted into a half smile, one that I suspected was involuntary since she erased it so quickly.
“As you can see,” she answered, tossing her glossy white hair, “I was just a little busy.”
“Where did all these people come from, Grandma?”
Ruth and I both startled at the question—we hadn’t even noticed Jillian approach us. It seemed as though we’d immediately fallen into our old routine, letting ourselves get wrapped up in mutual dislike. Still, the cold went out of Ruth’s eyes when she looked at her granddaughter.
“They’re from other towns nearby,” she explained. “Some of them are even from other states. I’ve been working all week: reinstating myself with my old coven in Wilburton, recruiting Seers from others.” She cast a rare doubtful peek over her shoulder at the crowd on the lawn. “I honestly thought I’d get more people than this, but . . .”
“But nothing,” I interrupted, unable to hide my admiration. “This is amazing. There are way more Seers here than I expected.”
Again, Ruth looked begrudgingly amused. “Well, thank you for that high praise.”
“Anytime,” I offered, smirking back at her.
We appraised each other for another beat and then, without so much as a signal, we turned simultaneously to face the crowd. From the corner of my eye, I saw her toss an irritated look in my direction. There were too many generals on this porch after all, it seemed. So I swallowed my pride and took one step backward, effectively giving Ruth the floor.
As I’d suspected, Ruth needed no other concession. She threw back her head, folded her hands in front of her, and began to address her audience.
“I won’t waste your time with introductions,” she called out, projecting her voice at a surprising volume for someone her age. “If you’re here, you know who I am. And if you are what you claim to be, then you’ll be able to tell which of these girls up here is my living granddaughter, and which . . . isn’t.”
I heard uneasy murmurs race through the crowd: ghost, ghost ghost. Those whispers crawled over my skin like probing, intrusive fingers. For the first time, it struck me that every person gathered on the lawn was staring up at me with barely concealed hostility. Suddenly, my commanding posture felt a bit foolish: these weren’t the kind of people who took orders from me; these were the kind who would try to blink me out of existence, if they could. I didn’t shrink into myself, but at that moment I certainly wanted to.
“Let’s get right to it, then,” Ruth continued, without sparing me as much as a sideways glance. “You all know why we’re here: to end the threat that has plagued this area for decades. Possibly for centuries. We’ve long known that the evil ones choose rivers as their gateways, and we know that this river is a prime example. So, what do we do about it? When I contacted you this week, some of you suggested that instead of focusing on the river, we take out the earthly tool that the evil ones have been using: the bridge. But as this girl”—here, Ruth gestured to me—“has discovered, ruining the bridge is pointless on several levels. First, the darkness won’t let the bridge be easily destroyed—they have an army of souls protecting it. And second, the destruction of an evil instrument on earth won’t do much to its users in hell.”
At this point, I felt a little frisson of excitement. Ruth had paid attention to me on the phone, and she clearly understood th
e problem: no human effort would take down that bridge, and even if it fell, nothing mattered unless the hell gate itself closed. I leaned forward, listening more closely to Ruth’s plan.
“The real solution,” she said, “is to open their gateway under its earthly façade, and then make it inoperable. Will this close hell itself? No. But it will end their reign here, in this one region; it will force them to hunt elsewhere—it will keep our children, our grandchildren, safe.”
“How?” someone called out from the crowd. “How do we make it inoperable?”
For half a heartbeat, Ruth’s gaze seemed to flit toward me. I thought maybe I’d just imagined it, until she announced the most crucial part of her plan.
“Dust,” she announced proudly. “We’ll salt the very earth of the netherworld with our Seer dust, so that nothing dark can ever tread it again.”
The crowd began to chatter so excitedly, so loudly, that no one could hear me shriek, “No! Absolutely not!”
Almost no one. For a second time, Ruth’s gaze flickered in my direction. I tried to catch her eye—tried to plead wordlessly with her to find some other way to win this battle. But she looked away quickly, turning back to her enormous new coven with a broad grin.
“We will season the waters of their river with our potions,” she proclaimed over the enthusiastic babble, “so that nothing dark will ever flow in our own river again.”
Now the crowd broke into actual cheers. I could only cover my mouth with one hand to hold back a sob. There were so many Seers on board with this plan—so many Seers in general—that I would never convince them to keep the netherworld open long enough to free my friends. I wasn’t even sure that once they’d completed the task of jamming the portal, they’d let me escape it.
I couldn’t believe I’d actually wanted to call in Seer reinforcements. I felt cheated, tricked, furious . . . until I caught sight of someone approaching the porch from behind the crowd. At first, the figure was blurred by the darkness. But as he drew closer, I could see his face.
Joshua still wore his baseball uniform and, even from this distance, I could tell that he’d played an intense game: dirt streaked everything, from his knees to his shoulders. He must not have joined the crowd early enough to hear his grandmother’s plan, because after a moment’s search, he found my face and then flashed me a warm, radiant smile.
That one smile changed everything. After a smile like that, I had to go along with Ruth’s plan. Mostly because I couldn’t imagine a world—living or beyond—that didn’t include Joshua’s smile. And I knew, deep down, that the demons would eventually come for him. How could they not, if they really wanted me to say yes?
So it didn’t matter that I might lose my own afterlife. It didn’t matter that I would have to think, hard, of a way to save the people I cared about before Ruth trapped them in the netherworld forever. All that mattered at that moment was that I loved Joshua, and I wanted him safe.
Without another thought, I leaped off the porch, ran down the path that the recoiling Seers made for me, and threw myself into Joshua’s open arms. I didn’t even have time to register his arms around me before I planted a kiss on his waiting mouth.
It wasn’t until he kissed me back that my brain finally processed the miracle: I could feel him again.
Joshua pulled away from the kiss only long enough to gasp, “What the hell—”
“I don’t know,” I interrupted breathlessly, shaking my head. “But I don’t even care right now.”
Neither did Joshua. His lips met mine again, just as forcefully and joyously as before.
I didn’t feel the fiery tingle that had accompanied each of our touches before I Rose. Instead, I just felt him—warm and insistent and real. I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe from the ecstasy of kissing him again. I wanted to draw him into me, to join my heart to his. Because I couldn’t do that, I let my fingers run everywhere: his jawline, his neck, his chest. Joshua dropped his hands to my waist and tugged me more firmly to his hips. In turn, I tangled my fingers in his hair and moaned against his mouth.
Shock, fear, wonder, joy all flowed through me so quickly that I grew light-headed. When my knees began to buckle, Joshua held me tighter but he didn’t stop kissing me. I could read his thoughts in that kiss: just like me, he didn’t know how long we had together before this miracle vanished, and he didn’t want to waste a split second of it.
Which was apparently all we had left.
The instant Ruth boomed, “Enough!” the sensation of Joshua’s lips and arms disappeared. I actually lost my balance and fell forward with my own arms open, so that they nearly passed through his body like an insubstantial breeze. Once steady, however, I shared a brief, fraught look with Joshua and then spun around to face our interrupter.
Ruth remained on the porch, but she now stood with her feet apart, pointing at me like I was some kind of criminal. Her expression mirrored that worn by most of the Seers in the crowd: disgust.
“Abomination.”
She whispered the word, but the crowd had grown so silent that I heard her clearly. Her eyes burned with confidence, self-righteous indignation. I knew what the Amelia from last fall would have done, if she’d seen that kind of glare: she would have run away, scared and alone in the black night. But I wasn’t the Amelia from last fall. I was something stronger and fiercer.
Something that had suddenly gotten out of control.
Before I’d even had the conscious thought to summon it, my glow appeared, curling around me in licks of bright flame. The fire burned me, inside and out, and I began to storm toward the porch with wide, brutal strides.
As I walked, the Seers once again parted for me like the proverbial sea. But this time, they didn’t sneer at me . . . they cowered. With each step, I let my head swivel from one Seer to another, grinning broadly. Several of them actually responded with gasps, which only made my smile grow. Such small game couldn’t distract me. Right now, all I knew was that the vicious old woman on the porch needed to burn.
“Amelia!”
Joshua’s voice shocked me out of my fierce trance, and the glow extinguished itself immediately. My fury disappeared with it.
I blinked rapidly, before making eye contact with Ruth. She looked horrified, even more than when I’d seen her poisoned. And suddenly, I’d never felt more ashamed of myself. Fighting the sting of mortified tears, I let my head hang low.
It’s already happening, I thought bleakly. I’m letting myself go dark.
My head shot back up, however, when Ruth finally spoke. Probably because she didn’t sound scared, or even angry. Instead, she sounded elated.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, once again pointing at me. “Meet our new secret weapon.”
“So . . . I’m basically going to be a scarecrow?”
When no one answered me right away, I snorted in disbelief.
I didn’t even try to mask my bitter tone. I’d spent several hours listening to Ruth’s grand plan for me while sitting on an uncomfortable wooden pew in her old church—the place she’d taken me, Joshua, and a few Seer leaders after the rest of the crowd dispersed and hugs were exchanged with Rebecca and Jeremiah (who had no idea what had occupied their front yard, only minutes before they arrived home). Now, after hearing Ruth out for what felt like the thousandth time, I added disgruntled to tired and achy on my growing list of complaints.
On a big-picture level, I understood that this was everyone’s problem. But right now the demons weren’t targeting Ruth’s coven or their loved ones: they were targeting mine. Unfortunately, this little conclave seemed intent on pushing me to the edge of their plan. And once I’d told them about my previous interactions with the demons as well as my meeting with Serena that morning, the Seers settled on the most dangerous edge. The one where I stood on the bridge like some sacrificial lamb—practically offering myself up to the demons on a platter. All so the Seers could trap my family and friends in the netherworld forever.
“You won’t be
a scarecrow, Amelia,” Ruth chided. She tilted her head to one side and offered what she probably thought was a reassuring smile. “You’ll be a Trojan horse. A distraction for the demons, in case they try to stop us from distributing the dust inside the netherworld.”
Despite her flattering words—and her rare use of my first name—my angry smirk deepened. “In other words,” I said, “I’ll be bait.”
“Exactly,” Joshua chimed in. In fact, he growled the words, though from anger or a lack of sleep, I couldn’t tell. He leaned forward in our front pew and glared meaningfully at the Seer elders, all of whom had taken more comfortable seats in the choir loft behind the altar.
“You’re treating this like some sort of holy Seer mission,” he accused, “where Amelia and all the other people that the demons killed are just collateral damage.”
One of the elders, a middle-aged man whose sweater vest barely covered his paunch, raised his eyebrows as if to say, Aren’t they?
Seeing this response, Joshua made a disgusted noise and flung himself back against the pew.
“Screw that, dude,” Joshua spat. “You can do this without us, then.”
Unlike her companions, Ruth knew how to play the diplomat when she wanted to. She waved her hands in a sort of settle-down motion and then looked from the Seers to us with a forced composure.
“No one is saying that, Joshua.” She kept her voice low and soothing, but her grandson still laughed darkly.
“Not out loud,” he replied. “Not yet, anyway. Just give them until tomorrow night when it’s time to destroy the netherworld, and let’s see how many of them wait for Amelia to get out.”
Suddenly, at the weirdest possible moment, I wanted to throw myself at him again. To wrap myself around him like silk.
I mustered up a little more self-control and then placed my hand upon Joshua’s, which he’d clenched to the edge of the pew. He didn’t feel my touch, but he saw it. He released the pew and flipped his hand over so that our palms would have touched, if they could.