“We’re never going to see them again?” she asked, her voice breaking.

I cleared my throat. “No.”

She wiped her eyes. “Okay. This is a lot.”

“I know,” I said. “But the good news is, we’re going to be together. Lifers never move on. We’ll never have to say good-bye.”

Darcy’s eyes lit up, and she reached for my hand. “Really?”

I smiled. “Really.”

We sat there, clutching each other’s fingers and looking out at the rain. Back home, before we died, Darcy and I had been estranged for months—a stalemate over a guy I could barely even remember. She used to love stomping around the house, reminding me and my dad about how very soon she was going to graduate and how she’d be “outta here” without looking back. Then, I couldn’t have imagined sitting here with her like this, in peaceful, companionable silence. It was amazing how quickly everything had changed.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Do I really want to live with you forever?”

Fisher chuckled. I cracked up laughing and shoved her shoulder. It was a classic Darcy line, and I was glad to see she still had it in her. I knew that I should tell her what had been happening on the island—that my father and others were suffering needlessly in the Shadowlands and we needed to figure out how to get them to the Light—but I didn’t want to spoil this moment. The truth of her new existence and the news that she would never see our parents again were enough to take in on one day. I didn’t have to scare the crap out of her as well.

For now, I was going to let her process what she’d learned, and I was going to selfishly hold on to this feeling that was sprouting up inside me. This delicate, fluttering white hope that somehow everything was going to be okay.

There was a sudden flash at the corner of my vision—something was moving in the house across the street. I flinched. Then thunder rumbled in the distance, and I unclenched. It had been nothing more than a remote flash of lightning. The storm messing with my head again.

“What I don’t get is, why didn’t you tell me this before?” Darcy asked. “You’ve known for…how long?”

“A week,” I admitted.

“But she couldn’t have told you,” Fisher said. “And you can’t tell any of the visitors. If you do, you damn them to the Shadowlands—and you get sent to Oblivion.”

“Seriously? That’s a bit harsh,” Darcy said, looking over her shoulder at him.

He shrugged. “I don’t make the rules.”

“So, basically, if I want to relegate some asshole to hell I just have to tell him he’s dead?” Liam asked.

Fisher whacked the back of his head so hard his hair stuck up.

“Ow! It was just a joke!” Liam snapped, his face turning bright red.

“We don’t joke about stuff like that,” Krista said seriously. “Especially Oblivion.”

Liam shoved himself up and paced toward the closet. “I just found out I’m dead, okay? Excuse me for trying to lighten the mood.”

“Look, it’s just that there’s some history around here with this stuff. History no one wants to see repeated,” I said. “There was a Lifer named Jessica a while back who decided all the visitors deserved to know what was going on, so she told them. Just went around town, knocking on doors and spilling the truth.”

“So what happened?” Darcy asked.

“She got every last one of them a one-way ticket to the Shadowlands,” Fisher said grimly. “All those innocent people, damned forever.”

“For doing nothing wrong,” I added.

Lightning flashed again, and Darcy and Liam looked pale. Krista was about to say something when heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs, cutting her off. The floorboards in the hallway groaned, and there was a thudding knock on the door.

“Come in,” Darcy said weakly.

Joaquin opened the door, keeping one hand on the knob and one on the doorjamb. “You okay?” he asked her.

“I’ll live,” she said, then gave a quiet ironic laugh.

“Good.” Joaquin’s eyes flicked to me. “Mayor’s called a Lifer meeting at the police station. We gotta go.”

I looked at Darcy, and she endeavored to smile. “Duty calls?”

“Yeah,” I said, my stomach curling into knots. “But there are a few more things I’m gonna have to tell you on the way.”

So much for giving her time.

“Until further notice,” the mayor announced, “the island is on high alert.”

An uneasy murmur passed through the hundred or so Lifers gathered in the open area in front of the police station’s high front counter. As municipal buildings went, it was fairly small, and we were crowded shoulder to shoulder, some sitting in plastic chairs along the walls, others perched atop the marble counter, and still others—the overflow—hanging out around the officers’ desks. I glanced at my friends—Bea, Lauren, Krista, Joaquin, Fisher, and Kevin. No one said it, but we could all feel Tristan’s absence. Across the room, Pete and Cori huddled together near a potted palm. Cori’s dark curls half covered her face, and her gaze darted furtively here and there as if she thought we were here to accuse her of something. Pete glanced at us and did a quick double take, then pulled his baseball cap low on his head and trained his eyes on the ground. Everyone else was intent on the mayor, who stood at the center of the room with a three-foot radius of open space around her.

“What does that mean, exactly?” the man who ran the grocery stand asked.

Darcy shifted next to me, her arm brushing mine. She had changed into a dry black T-shirt and rolled jeans and stood straight and tall, taking everything in with a discerning, if slightly apprehensive, expression. She had dug out the butterfly necklace my mother had given her for her twelfth birthday and clasped it around her neck. Now she toyed with the pendant, sliding it up and down on the chain. For a girl who’d just had her entire life turned upside down, she was handling it surprisingly well.

“As you know, we’ve had a watch posted at the bridge for the past four days.” The mayor nodded to Officer Dorn and Chief Grantz, who began passing around stapled packets of paper. “From now on we will post similar watches in various spots around the island. Everyone will have a shift or two each day. I want you to keep track of the visitors. Where they go, who they’re with, what they’re up to. We need your help to keep track of who’s here and whether they’re ready to move on.”

Dorn handed each of us a schedule. Darcy and Liam flipped through theirs, then locked eyes, mutually overwhelmed. I was glad Darcy wasn’t the only newbie dealing with this situation. It was good to have someone in the same boat with her.

“You’ll see we’ve also put some of you in charge of the children,” the mayor continued. “As of last count, we have eight kids under the age of twelve on the island. They are staying at my house up on the hill, the better to keep them out of danger. Krista has managed to scrounge up some toys and video games from the relic room, and we’re planning to set up a playroom in one of our parlors. We need to keep these young souls as innocent as they were the day they arrived here, so if you’re in their presence, please, no mention of the unpleasantness we’re experiencing.”

The chief returned to her side and leaned in to whisper in her ear. Her jaw set, her expression darkened, and she nodded.

“Chief Grantz would also like me to remind you of our other special visitors,” the mayor continued. “It has been five days since we’ve moved anyone off this island. We’ve been concerned about those destined for the Light who might end up in the Shadowlands, but there are also those souls who belong in the Shadowlands—souls who committed heinous crimes in their lifetimes who should have been moved immediately to their final destinations. Those souls are now roaming free among us. We cannot usher them as hastily as we normally would, because we can’t risk them mistakenly ending up in the Light.”