Now they expected me to help them bring in Simon and Derek?

Well, it was time to introduce a few obstacles of my own. So, in the spirit of proper storytelling, I told Dr. Davidoff where to find Simon and Derek.

Step one: establish the goal. “Rae and I were supposed to hide while the guys stayed behind to distract you with Simon’s magic,” I told Dr. Davidoff. “Rae ran on ahead so she didn’t hear, but at the last second Simon pulled me back and said, if we got separated, we’d meet at the rendezvous point.”

Step two: introduce the obstacle. “Where is the rendezvous point? That’s the problem. I don’t know where it is. We talked about needing one, but everything was so crazy that day. We’d only just decided to escape, and then Derek was saying it had to be that night. The guys must have picked a rendezvous point, and forgot they never told me where it was.”

Step three: map out the detour. “But I do have some ideas—places we talked about. One of them must be the rendezvous point. I could help you find it. They’ll be looking for me, so they might hide until they see me.”

Rather than escape this place, I’d let them take me out by using me as bait. I’d list places I’d never discussed with Simon or Derek, and there would be no chance they’d get captured. A brilliant plan.

The response?

“We’ll keep that in mind, Chloe. But for now, just tell us the locations. We have ways to find the boys once we get there.”

Obstacles. An essential part of the storytelling process. But in real life? They suck.

After Dr. Davidoff and Tori’s mom had gotten my list of fake rendezvous points, they left, giving me nothing in return—no answers, no clues about why I was here or what would happen to me.

I sat cross-legged on my bed, staring down at the necklace in my hands as if it were a crystal ball that could provide all those answers. My mom had given it to me back when I was seeing “bogeymen”—ghosts, as I now knew. She said the necklace would stop them from coming, and it did. I’d always figured, like my dad said, that it was psychological. I believed in it, so it worked. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

Had my mom known I was a necromancer? She must have, if the blood ran in her family. Was the necklace supposed to ward off ghosts? If so, its power must have faded. It even looked faded—I swore the bright red jewel had gone a purplish color. One thing it didn’t do, though, was answer my questions. That I had to do for myself.

I put the necklace back on. Whatever Dr. Davidoff and the others wanted from me, it wasn’t good. You don’t lock up kids you want to help.

I certainly wasn’t going to tell them how to find Simon. If he needed insulin, Derek would get it, even if it meant breaking into a drugstore.

I had to concentrate on getting Rae and me out. But this wasn’t Lyle House, where the only thing standing between us and freedom was an alarm system. This room might look like it belonged in a nice hotel—with a double bed, a carpeted floor, an armchair, desk, and private bathroom—but there were no windows and no knob on the inside of the door.

I’d hoped to get Liz’s help escaping. My roommate at Lyle House, Liz hadn’t made it out alive, so when I first got here, I’d summoned her ghost, hoping she could help me find a way out. Only problem? Liz didn’t realize she was dead. As gently as I could, I’d broken the news. She’d flipped out, accusing me of lying, and disappeared.

Maybe she’d had enough time to cool off. I doubted it, but I couldn’t wait. I had to try summoning her again.

I PREPARED FOR A séance. As set pieces went, this one was so lame I’d never put it in a movie. No sputtering candles to cast eerie shadows on the walls, no moldy skulls forming a ritual circle, no chalices filled with what the audience would suppose was red wine but secretly hope was blood.

Did experienced necromancers use stuff like candles and incense? From the little I’d learned about the supernatural world, I knew some of what we see in movies is true. Maybe, way back in history, people had known about necromancers and witches and werewolves, and those stories are based, if very loosely, on old truths.

My method—if I can call it a method since I’ve only used it twice—came from trial and error and a few grudging tips from Derek. As a guy who was taking college-level courses at sixteen, being confident of his facts is important to Derek. If he isn’t sure, he’d rather keep his mouth shut. But when I’d pushed him, he’d told me that he’d heard that necromancers summoned ghosts either by being at a graveside or by using a personal effect, like Liz’s hoodie, so I was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, clutching it.

I pictured Liz and imagined myself pulling her out of limbo. At first, I didn’t try very hard. The last time I’d focused all my power into summoning a ghost, I’d summoned two right back into their buried corpses. I wasn’t near a grave this time, but that didn’t mean there weren’t bodies around somewhere. So I kept the voltage low at first, gradually ramping it up, focusing harder and harder until…

“What the—? Hey, who are you?”

My eyes flew open. There stood a dark-haired boy about my age with the build, looks, and arrogant chin tilt of a star quarterback. Finding the ghost of another teenager in this place wasn’t a coincidence. A name popped into my head—that of another Lyle House resident who’d been taken away before I arrived, supposedly transferred to a mental hospital, like Liz.

“Brady?” I said tentatively.

“Yeah, but I don’t know you. Or this place.”

He pivoted, scanning the room, then rubbed the back of his neck. I stopped myself before asking if he was okay. Of course he wasn’t okay. He was dead. Like Liz. I swallowed.

“What happened to you?” I asked softly.

He jumped, as if startled by my voice.

“Is someone else here?” I asked, hoping he sensed Liz, beyond the pale where I couldn’t see her.

“I thought I heard…” He studied me, frowning. “You brought me here?”

“I—I didn’t mean to. But…since you are here, can you tell me—?”

“Nothing. I can’t tell you anything.” He squared his shoulders. “Whatever you want to talk about, I’m not interested.”

He looked away, determined not to be interested. When he started to fade, I was ready to let him go. Rest in peace. Then I thought about Rae and Simon and Derek. If I didn’t get some answers, we might all join Brady in the afterlife.

“My name’s Chloe,” I said quickly. “I’m a friend of Rae’s. From Lyle House. I was there with her, after you—”

He kept fading.

“Wait!” I said. “I c-can prove it. Back at Lyle House. You tried getting into a fight with Derek, and Simon shoved you away. Only he didn’t touch you. He used magic.”

“Magic?”

“It was a spell that knocks people back. Simon’s a sorcerer. All the kids in Lyle House—”

“I knew it. I knew it.” He swore under his breath as he rematerialized. “All that time, they kept trying to shove their diagnosis down my throat, and I told them where else they could shove it, but I couldn’t prove anything.”

“You told the nurses what happened with Simon, didn’t you?”

“Nurses?” He snorted. “Glorified security guards. I wanted to speak to the real boss: Davidoff. They took me to see him at this other place, looked like a warehouse.”

I described what I’d seen of this building when we’d arrived.

“Yeah, that’s it. They took me inside and…” His face screwed up in thought. “A woman came to talk to me. A blonde. Said she was a doctor. Bellows? Fellows?”

Aunt Lauren. My heart battered my rib cage. “So this woman, Dr. Fellows…”

“She wanted me to say Derek started the fight. That he threatened me, punched me, shoved me, whatever. I considered it. A little payback for all the attitude I had to put up with from that jerk. I’d just been goofing around with him when Simon got all up in my face and smacked me with that spell.”