By the time we got back to my house, the wind was so intense we had to cling to each other as we turned down Magnolia and staggered toward the gate. Dead leaves and flower petals scraped our faces, and a scrap of paper slapped against my leg, wrapping itself around my calf and staying there as I reached for the latch. The second I released it, the gate flew open, slamming back into the fence and cracking off its hinges. Tristan grabbed for it, but there was nothing he could do. It tumbled end-over-end down the street and crashed into the side of a neighboring house.

“Let’s get inside,” he said.

I nodded, and together we hunched forward, sprinting up the front walk. My hands shook as I unlocked the door, and Tristan clung to it so it wouldn’t meet the same fate as the gate. He pulled it closed behind us and turned the lock. Inside, I flicked on the first three lights I came to. Tristan followed and we met in the center of the living room, facing each other over the two-foot breadth of the wooden coffee table.

I felt queasy and nervous. An hour ago, Tristan had caught me kissing another guy—his best friend. And now here we were, alone. No matter what I said, it would never be enough. But I had to try.

“Tristan,” I began. “About Joaquin.”

He closed his eyes, as if the very sound of the name caused him pain, and held up one hand. “Don’t.”

“No, I want to explain,” I insisted.

A gust of wind hit the house so hard it moaned, then let out a series of loud snaps and crackles as ancient beams and floorboards resettled. I took a step around the side of the table and felt buoyed when Tristan didn’t move.

“I’m not going to stand here and say I don’t care about him, because I do.” I swallowed hard, gripping my fingers in front of me. “I wouldn’t have made it through the last week without him.”

Tristan stared at me, his face a complete blank.

“But the second I saw you again, the second I touched you, I knew…it’s you. It’s always been you. With Joaquin, it—”

“Stop,” Tristan said.

I froze in my tracks. I’d been inching toward him the whole time I was talking, and now I hovered just inches away, so close I could see the glint of the blond stubble beneath his jaw. My gaze flicked to his hands.

Reach for me, I willed him. Please. Just—

“So you don’t want him. You don’t want to be with him?”

“No,” I said, closing the distance between us. “I want you.”

His jaw worked and his fingers clenched. I could see, could feel how hard it was for him to hold back. “Are you sure? You’d better be sure about this, Rory, because we’re going to be here forever, the three of us. If you change your mind…it would torture you—torture all of us—forever.”

I gazed into his blue eyes, my heart thrumming inside my chest. Slowly, carefully, gently, I reached out to touch my fingertips to his chest. “I want this. I want you. Forever.”

Tristan let out a shaky, relieved sigh. He ran both his hands over my head and down the long, tangled braid of my hair. “I am in love with you, Rory Miller,” he said, using my real name, which sent a thrill right through me. “All I want is to be with you.”

I smiled and realized that I was crying. “All I want is to be with you,” I replied.

“Just try to get rid of me,” Tristan said with a grin.

Then he leaned down to touch his lips to mine, and I felt the urgency of his kiss run through me, filling every inch of me, warming my body from head to toe with an insistent, throbbing heat. I pressed up against him, pouring every ounce of the fear and frustration, of the misunderstanding and longing I’d felt over the past two weeks into my kiss. I had missed him so much. I had wanted to believe in him so much. And now he was here and he was true and he was mine.

For that one infinitesimal second I didn’t care about Pete or Liam or the universe or the Shadowlands or anything other than this. Then our walkie-talkies suddenly let out a freakish peal, and Krista’s panicked voice filled our little cocoon.

“Mayday! Mayday! Emergency! Or whatever! Over!”

We both whirled around as erratic pounding sounded on the front door. Tristan darted for it. I fumbled for my radio, which was clipped to the side of my waistband, and pressed down on the red button.

“What is it, Krista? Over.”

“It’s the visitors! Over!”

The front door opened, and Krista stumbled inside, soaked to the bone.

“The visitors what?” I said, dropping the walkie-talkie on the floor. “What about them?”

Krista gulped, bracing one hand on the entryway table. “We have a situation,” she said. “The visitors have taken over the town square.”

Even knowing how overcrowded the island had become, nothing could have prepared me for the horde that greeted us when we reached the town square. The visitors covered every inch of the park, some standing on benches, others clumped around lampposts. People streamed out of the general store to join the throng, standing on their toes and craning their necks even in the driving rain, trying to see what was going on.

Up front, of course, were the Tses, standing near the stone rim around the swan fountain, holding court with a willing group of visitors. From this distance, I couldn’t hear them, but Sebastian gestured angrily with his hands, and a few members of his audience nodded, agreeing with whatever he was saying.

“Damn. This doesn’t look good.” Tristan stopped at the corner of Freesia Lane and the square, his face going pale.

Joaquin, Fisher, and Kevin skirted around the edge of the crowd, catching angry looks from a group of young men in ponchos as they jogged over to join us. Ursula and Chief Grantz slipped away from the grocery stand to gather behind us as well.

“Kevin!” Krista exclaimed. “You’re alive!”

“Yeah, I’m fine. When the fog came in and I lost Liam, I figured I’d head home to wait it out,” he said. “I must have fallen asleep. Sorry. Joaquin told me you guys were worried about me.”

“We’re just glad you’re okay,” Tristan said, clapping him on the shoulder.

A few other Lifers circumvented the park, sticking to the outer sidewalks, and joined us, everyone drawn to Tristan like moths to a flame. Lauren and Bea jogged over from the direction of the docks.

“Speaking of Liam,” Fisher said, “we have a problem.” He took a breath and held it for a second before delivering the news. “He’s gone.”

“Gone?” I exclaimed. “How?”

“Officer Dorn had my key. He left his post for five seconds when some visitors came into the station, demanding to make long-distance calls,” Grantz said. “When he got back down there, Liam was gone, and it was only then that he noticed the key was gone, too. Someone let him out. But of course Pete’s not talking, so…”

Tristan paced away from us, his fists shaking at his sides. His hair was slicked down across his forehead, and the rash guard he’d had on ever since we’d left the beach clung to his chest in the rain.

“Who the hell is doing this?” he demanded.

“I’d say at this point, that’s only one of our problems,” Fisher said, eyeing the crowd.

“Why don’t we just start ushering them?” Ursula suggested, lifting a tissue to her nose to cover a sneeze. “Some of them are ready to cross, and if we could thin out the crowd…”

“We can’t,” Joaquin told her. “We ran out of coins earlier. No one’s leaving here anytime soon.”

“Okay,” Tristan said, gathering himself. “First things first. We have to find Liam. Bea, Rory, you get twenty or so people together and fan out to search the island. He doesn’t know it as well as we do, so it shouldn’t take long to find him. Fisher and Kevin, get a dozen of our biggest guys and get up to the bridge. Whatever happens today, he’s not bringing any more innocent souls to the Shadowlands.”