Her bright smile was the last thing I saw before my head bobbed back down for the third, and final, time. I didn’t see anything after that.
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Chapter
Twenty-Four
I woke up, still wheezing and gasping. My fingers twitched frantically, grasping around me.
At first I couldn’t feel anything, which only terrified me more. Then I felt the dull pressure of something beneath me—something solid. I turned my head as far to the right as it would go and saw dusty yellow, just inches from my face. As I squinted, the scene came into greater focus. I could see dark brown threads woven through the yellow. It took me a moment to realize the brown was my hair, fanned out upon the dried grass beneath my head.
Above me, all I could see were stars. I pushed myself up and scanned my surroundings. Far off to the west, the sky had turned a faint violet, wherein the sun had just set behind the mountains. Elsewhere, the night had already begun to darken into deep purples and blues.
And yet, even in the darkness, I recognized the curves and twists of the familiar headstones around me. I was in my graveyard again.
I reached around and tenderly touched the back of my head, at the place where it had connected with my gravestone. Nothing. No dried blood or wound, although, inexplicably, my head still throbbed slightly. I pressed my hand to my chest, just above my heart. No thumping there. No pulse.
I was dead again. For the first time that fact made me happy.
Still seated, I turned to my gravestone. Even in the dim light I could see the enormous crack now running down its center. If the gravestone hadn’t really hurt me, then I had certainly hurt it.
Well, Dad had always said that I had a hard head.
At the thought of my father, I glanced quickly at his headstone. It was still intact; and, for some reason, I sighed in relief.
Then my head shot back up and I searched for the next most important menace in my afterlife. A cursory scan of the graveyard, however, let me know that Eli Rowland had disappeared.
I looked down at my arm, where a slight bruise seemed to have formed around the place Eli had gripped me. Gingerly, I touch my bottom lip and found a thick cut there. Neither injury hurt. Yet, despite their impossibility, they were very real.
I sighed again and sat backward, pulling my legs to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I needed to leave this place, and soon. But right now I needed to think.
First things first, I remembered my death, obviously. Every horrible moment of it. I could see now where my nightmares always began. They started at the moment I first fell into the river; at the moment the river sapped me of my energy, before I surfaced just long enough to watch my friends, controlled by some dark—and definitely evil—power, watch me die.
In some ways, then, my nightmares had been merciful. The universe or fate or even my own mind had forced me to reexperience my death many times but hadn’t, until now, put me through the worst of it.
These new, disturbing memories brought something else to light, as well.
Eli had been there, watching, waiting with malicious glee. Mr. Rock Star, with his knowing smirk and cold glare. Serena hadn’t pushed me, nor had Eli, obviously. But Eli certainly had something to do with my fall. He controlled the black shapes (so much like the ones in the netherworld, I couldn’t doubt their origin), which had surrounded the partygoers and possessed them, prevented them from helping me.
As I rubbed my wrist absently, I couldn’t help but wonder what Eli had done: angered me so much, worked me into such a frenzy, that I would transport myself back to the very memory he’d referenced?
If so, then the strength of this forced materialization gave me another idea. Clearly, I was able to move through time and space, if not yet entirely by will. But I also felt sure I had additional, undiscovered powers. I now believed Eli’s claim that ghosts could do the extraordinary, particularly when we entered into a state of heightened emotion. My injuries provided one item of proof.
I thought then of the chair that had screeched backward when I’d stood up too quickly in the Wilburton High School library. That chair had moved just after I saw my in memoriam senior photo, just after I’d experienced a great surge of emotion.
And what about my years of nightmarish materializations, or the new crack on my gravestone?
Apparently, Eli wasn’t the only one with poltergeist-like powers. I too could materialize and affect stationary objects. But could I do more? How much of the ghostly and living worlds could I influence?
Asking such questions made me recall the best part of the living world I’d experienced so far.
Joshua.
If I could affect things in both worlds, maybe I could protect Joshua from Eli. If I could keep Eli from touching me—from hurting me, or angering me into an unwanted materialization—then I might have some power against him. Could I possibly hurt Eli? Make him bruise or bleed, like he’d done to me? Just enough to stop him from harming Joshua.
Maybe, if I focused hard enough, I could do . . . something. Whatever that something might be.
“Amelia!”
The unexpected shout made me leap into a crouch, clenching the grass and snarling in the direction of the voice. At the thought, the very insinuation, that Eli had reappeared, I went completely feral.
I must have looked completely crazy, too, when Joshua, not Eli, came running up to me. Seeing my wild stance, Joshua skidded to a stop.
“Amelia?” he asked again, more timidly.
I dropped out of the crouch and onto my knees. I felt humiliated, terrified, confused. Joshua’s eyes were also wide with fright.
“Are you really here?” he whispered. “I’m not crazy, right? I’m not, like, imagining you?”
“No,” I said, uncurling and reaching out to him with one arm. “You’re not crazy. I’m as real as a ghost can be.”
Joshua surprised me by diving across the grass, dropping to his knees, and pulling me to him with dizzying speed.
“Oh my God, Amelia,” he murmured in my hair. “Is it possible to be really mad at you and really relieved at the same time?”
“Probably.” I laughed, hugging him close. I pressed my face against his pale blue shirt and sighed. “I’m sorry, Joshua. So sorry. I mean, I’m glad I did it alone, but I’m not glad I did it the way I did.”
“What did you do, exactly?”
“I materialized in the graveyard. I met with Eli, and some stuff happened—bad stuff, including a nightmare—and then I just woke up. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was trying to do. I just didn’t want you to follow me, if it worked, because I didn’t want you to get hurt. But obviously you did follow me, because here you are, and here I am—”
Joshua cut off my babbling with a tense laugh. “Do you know how many graveyards there are in Wilburton? Way too many.”
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” I moaned again.
Joshua grabbed my face with both hands, gently but firmly lifting it until our eyes met. “Amelia, you can’t ever do that again, okay? Not unless you want to kill me, too.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated once more. Then I shook my head. “I just keep having to apologize to you, don’t I?”
“If you promise you’ll at least tell me before you do something like that again, then you don’t have to apologize.”
I held up one hand in a pledge. “I promise. I will always, always tell you before I do something stupid from now on.”
Joshua nodded, looking slightly mollified. “Okay. Now a second promise: you’ll never go see Eli without me.”
“How about if both of us never see him again?”
Joshua blinked. “Well, that would be more than fine with me. But how’s that going to happen?”
“I learned a few things today,” I said. “I have so much to tell you. But first, I think I have some
powers too, just like Eli does. I’m not sure which ones yet, but I think if I get worked up enough, I can use them against him.”
Joshua arched one eyebrow. “So, you think he’ll show back up again?”
“Definitely, but who knows when . . .”
I trailed off, frowning and staring down at the grass without really seeing it. As I thought back over my early-morning conversation with Eli, something struck me as odd. For the first time, I processed something Eli had said, just before he’d told me I’d been pushed off High Bridge. Something about having another appointment today.
A song suddenly filtered through my head, tinny and faint.
We’ll meet again. . . .
I felt an eerie tingle race across my skin, and it had nothing to do with Joshua’s touch.
“Joshua, Eli wasn’t at your house today, was he?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Are you sure?”
He laughed. “Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Have you checked on everyone in your family?” I insisted.
Joshua’s laugh faded. “Well, no, but—”
“How long was I gone?” I interrupted.
“You’ve been gone all day. It’s still Friday. But it’s Friday night now.”
“Where’s the rest of your family?”
“Mom and Dad are out for their date-night. And Jillian’s taking advantage by going out, too.”
“Out?”
“Jillian came home from school all excited about this party tonight. She made fun of me for not wanting to go—I didn’t, because I figured I’d be looking for you all night—and then she invited all her stupid friends over to get ready. I guess I should have followed them, but I was worried about you.”
The story bothered me, particularly the part about the party. My head snapped up, and I met Joshua’s eyes again.
“I . . . I think we need to go check on Jillian,” I said. “Sooner would probably be better than later.”
Not yet attuned to my mood, Joshua chuckled. “Jillian wouldn’t appreciate me pulling the big-brother card on her, you know.”
“Still,” I mused, biting my lip and carrying on an internal debate. Finally, I nodded. “Joshua, the night I died, I was at a party on High Bridge for my birthday. The party . . . well, I’m pretty sure the party is the reason I died. And Eli and his minions made it all happen.”
I could practically hear Joshua’s thoughts shift in tone. “What exactly does that mean to us now?” he asked quietly.
“I have no idea. Maybe nothing. But I have a weird feeling about this. What if Eli tried to get to us another way? Like maybe through this party, and what he could do to the people there?”
“Do you really think he’d do that?”
“I don’t know—nothing seems beneath him at this point.”
A sudden, chirping electronic noise interrupted my worrying. Joshua also seemed surprised by the noise, because he jerked upright too quickly and jostled me in his arms.
The noise chirped again, insistent, so he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He flipped open the tiny device and began clicking away at its keys.
“It’s a text from Jillian, inviting me to the party.”
“A text?”
“It’s like an email, but on your phone,” he murmured, clearly not interested in explaining technology to me at this moment. I couldn’t blame him. Nor was I surprised when, after he read the text, his mouth tightened into a grimace and he loosened his hold on me.
“Where’s the party supposed to be?” I asked, shutting my eyes in dread. I felt a strange, sudden ache at my temples as if in response to my fears.
“High Bridge Road.”
Everything screeched to a halt. Nothing had moved, and nothing had changed; but I felt as though I were sitting at ground zero at the exact moment before a nuclear bomb detonates.
“Joshua?” I whispered.
He frowned deeply before looking up at me. I easily read the emotions in his eyes: uncertainty, yes, but also a deep, growing fear.
We continued to stare at each other, both of us momentarily frozen. In mere seconds a barrage of thoughts ran through my mind. How fast could Joshua get to the river? Did Eli have something to do with this? And if he had, what could I do to make him stop?
My head started to throb in earnest now. Only Joshua’s voice broke through its buzzing.
“Want to go to a party, Amelia?” he whispered, panic edging into his voice.
“I think that’s a good plan,” I whispered back. Without another word the two of us were up and sprinting toward the entrance of the graveyard.
“I’ll drive,” Joshua called back to me.
“Then drive as fast as you possibly—”
A burst of fire, bright and less than fifty feet away, ended my sentence and stopped both of us short.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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Chapter
Twenty-Five
For a moment I thought something inside the graveyard—possibly a tree—had caught fire, but then I realized that the sounds accompanying the light weren’t fiery hisses. They were human murmurs.
Chants.
The fires glowed brightly and the sun had nearly set, so I had to squint just to make out the dim figures of the chanters standing just inside of the iron cemetery fence. At first, the scene made no sense. But when I looked up at the night sky, to the waning crescent moon that hung there, the pieces began to fit together until—
“Joshua, the exorcism!” I gasped. “It’s supposed to be tonight.”
In my rush to deal with Eli, I’d completely forgotten about the exorcism. But Ruth and the other Seers obviously hadn’t. They probably followed Joshua here tonight, knowing he’d lead them right to me.
Now the ache at my temples pulsed in time to their voices; it must have started when they began to chant, before we noticed them.
Joshua groaned and grabbed my hand to drag me through the cemetery, to the small hill near its gates. There, about ten people had gathered. Except for Ruth, each held a lit torch and had taken his or her place in a ring around what looked like a circle of gray powder—identical to the kind now bordering the Mayhew house—sprinkled onto the grass. Through the ring of people, I could just make out a small, square object lying on the grass. Ruth’s herb-wreathed Bible, probably.
All of the Seers but Ruth stared intently into their makeshift circle. Ruth, however, stood off to one side and looked at Joshua and me.
Joshua gave his grandmother a curt nod. “Torches, Ruth? Wouldn’t flashlights have been a bit less heavy-handed?”
The corner of Ruth’s mouth twitched in irritation. “The torches add a touch of ceremony, Joshua.”
At the sound of voices, the other Seers finally glanced in our direction. I was surprised by their faces: mostly elderly but a few young ones, not much older than Joshua and me. But only a few of them—mainly the older ones—stared directly at me. As Jillian had done outside the school and then in the Mayhews’ kitchen, the younger Seers seemed to peer with difficulty at the space in which I stood.
“Why isn’t everyone looking at me?” I managed to whisper, although everything on my body, including my vocal chords, felt paralyzed.
“Not all of them have had a triggering event,” Ruth explained, turning her sharp eyes on me. “Some of them can’t see you . . . yet.”
“Then don’t let them,” Joshua pleaded.
Thank God he did, because I didn’t think I had the strength to choke out another sentence. I didn’t know whether this group of Seers had enough power to cast me into oblivion, but I knew this headache (not yet debilitating, but getting there) wasn’t a sign of good things to come. Whatever the Seers intended to do to me, I certainly didn’t want to go through it.
Nor did I want tonight to be my last in the living world. My last night with Joshua.
> Ruth, however, shook her head at Joshua’s request. “That’s not possible. If she’s wandering among us, unclaimed by one afterlife or another, then she’s evil. And we can’t take the risk of letting her join the other spirit in hurting more people on that bridge.”
Joshua lurched forward, inadvertently yanking me with him. “You have the wrong ghost, I swear.” Ruth shook her head again; but Joshua continued, cutting her off. “No, listen to me, Ruth. Amelia has nothing to do with all the deaths on High Bridge. In fact, she was a victim of the guy you’ve been hunting—Eli. I know. I’ve seen him myself, and he’s seriously creepy.”
Ruth took a hesitant step away from her grandson as if his words confused her. Joshua took advantage and moved forward, fumbling with his free hand for something in his pocket. He produced his cell phone, flipped it open, and shoved it in front of Ruth.
At first she avoided looking, but soon her eyes were drawn to the phone’s glowing screen. She frowned, still staring at the device.
“What does this mean, Joshua?” she asked.
“It’s a text from Jillian,” he said, pushing the phone closer toward Ruth. “She and our friends are at some party on High Bridge, and we’re pretty sure Eli’s lured them there.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do,” he nearly shouted, his patience running thin. Each second of delay might cost his sister, and Joshua knew it.
Ruth still looked skeptical, with her mouth twisted with disbelief. Her eyes, however . . . in her eyes I could see doubt. I could see it each time her gaze flickered over to me.
“Ruth,” I said quietly, stepping forward with Joshua’s hand still clasped in mine. The pain at my temples grew in intensity the nearer I got to her, but I kept moving. “Ruth, I know you don’t trust me; and all things considered, I don’t blame you. But you’re right about one thing: Eli Rowland is bad news. He controls that river, and I’m almost certain he’s behind this party tonight, after what he showed me about my death today.”
I could still see uncertainty in Ruth’s eyes, so I leaned closer. “Please,” I murmured. “Just hold off on this exorcism for now. At least long enough for me to do something about Eli, and to make sure Jillian is safe.”