“Ow!” The match dropped to the linoleum floor, and I stamped it out under my sneaker. “Great,” I said to myself, sucking on my fingertips. “Burn yourself over a stupid bird.”

But even as I said it, I saw another flash. Someone darting by the back window, right outside on our deck. Someone wearing a black sweatshirt. My heart hit the floor. Whoever it was had been watching me. Placing the matches silently on the counter, I tiptoed toward the door. The lurker had either sprinted down the steps to the beach or was standing in the blind spot between two windows, not three feet away.

I held my breath and slowly, shakily, reached for the doorknob.

“What’re you doing?”

My hand flew to my heart. Darcy stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the front hall, eyeing me as if I were conducting chemistry experiments on the kitchen table.

“Making pancakes?” I said dumbly, trying to recover from my moment of panic.

“Oh, yeah? How’s that working out for you?” she asked, padding over to the stove in her bare feet. She took a peek at the pan and wrinkled her nose at the gelatinous glop bubbling in the center of an oil slick.

“Not very well,” I replied, my shoulders drooping.

She picked up the pan and threw the whole mess into the sink. I opened the door quickly and glanced outside. Nothing but the marigolds rustling in the ocean breeze.

“It’s in the genes, I guess,” she said. “Remember when mom tried to make penguin-shaped pancakes?”

“Of course.” I smiled sadly as I closed the door. I would never forget that day. I was eight, and my mother had almost burned down the house with an oil fire, leaving a huge black stain on the kitchen ceiling, but instead of freaking out, she’d opened all the windows, dumped the pan and the remaining batter in the garbage, and found a coupon for IHOP.

“I think we polished off three dozen stacks that morning,” Darcy said as she opened a bottle of water.

“I miss IHOP,” I said with a nostalgic smile, wiping my hands on a kitchen towel. “The grease, the butter…the regret.”

Darcy laughed just as a crow landed on our windowsill, cawing at us.

“That should be our first meal when we get home,” she suggested, rinsing out the pan. “Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N’ Fruity.”

We locked eyes. “Extra on the fruity,” we said together.

And we both laughed. It was my mom’s line. Actually, it was my grandfather’s line, but my mom had claimed it as her own. Darcy reached for the pancake mix as tears filled my eyes.

Don’t cry. Do not cry over IHOP, I told myself, clutching the dish towel. There’s no way to explain that.

As I watched Darcy move around the kitchen, her graceful movements so much like my mom’s, I wondered what kind of selfless acts Darcy and my dad would need to do to make them Lifers—and how I could help them accomplish those feats. I’d already said good-bye to my mother; I didn’t want to have to say good-bye to them, too. Not if there was anything I could do about it.

“How about we start over?” Darcy said, pulling some eggs out of the fridge.

“We?” I asked, happily surprised.

She shrugged. “I’ve baked for a lot of bake sales. I must’ve learned something. Where’s your measuring cup?” Darcy asked, taking a clean bowl out of the cabinet.

I reached past her for the ceramic coffee cup I’d been using, and she grabbed my arm, staring down at my leather bracelet. My cheeks burned and I snatched my arm back.

“Where did you get that?” she demanded.

“Nowhere,” I said automatically. She gave me a “nice try” sort of look, and I sighed, busted. “Krista gave it to me.”

“She just gave you one. Just like that,” she said skeptically.

I shrugged one shoulder. Obviously Darcy had noticed, just like I had early on, that Tristan, Joaquin, and their entire crowd all wore these bracelets.

“So…what? Are you part of their little clique now?” she asked, opening a drawer so violently all the utensils inside came sliding to the front.

“No! Of course not. She just thought I’d like it,” I improvised. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Uh-huh.” She took out a set of plastic measuring cups and slammed the drawer. “Whatever you say.”

I swallowed hard, knowing how jealous Darcy must have felt. She was supposed to be the popular, cool girl, not me. If there was one thing she hated, it was being left out. Of anything.

“Darcy, I—”

At that moment, my dad came barreling down the stairs. I was about to ask him if he wanted pancakes when he entered the kitchen, and the question died on my tongue.

His face was flushed, his eyes wild, his normally neatly combed hair sticking out behind his ears. It was a look I knew well. For a long time, my father’s temper had been beyond short, his ability to be patient nil. Whenever the cable guy was an hour late or they forgot his fries at the drive-through window or he had to wait at the doctor’s for more than fifteen minutes, this was the look he got on his face—like that of a deranged madman.

“Girls,” he said, half in, half out of the kitchen, “I just came in to tell you I’m driving over to the mainland.”

“What?” I blurted out, gripping the counter as my legs gave way beneath me.

“Can I come with you?” Darcy asked at the same time.

“Why?” I demanded.

“Because we’ve been here for over a week and no one has contacted us,” my father explained, shaking his fist angrily. “Not the FBI, not the U.S. marshals. And I can’t dial out from this damned island. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to know what’s going on back home and whether or not Steven Nell is still on the loose.”

Sweat beaded on the back of my neck. Steven Nell wasn’t still on the loose. He was dead, just like we were, except, according to Tristan, I’d sent him to the Shadowlands. We were completely safe right now. If you considered being dead a state of well-being.

“Dad, I’m sure everything is fine,” I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

“No, it’s not! This is not okay!”

I looked at my father, his eyes alight with hopeful concern. He was just trying to protect us. Just trying to get us home. I loved my dad in that moment. More than I had in a long time. But I could not let him leave this island.

“Dad, let’s just wait a few days. Maybe by then—”

But he didn’t listen. He closed the door so hard it shook the windowpanes. I had only made it halfway through the living room when he leaped into the car and gunned it out of the driveway.

“Dammit,” I said under my breath, reaching back to untie my apron.

“Where’re you going?” Darcy demanded, throwing a hand up as I ran out the door.

“I’ll be right back.”

“But what about the pancakes?” she shouted after me.

“I’m sorry!” I called back.

Out on the street, I chased after the car. My father took the left toward town at top speed and disappeared up the hill. I ran after him as hard as I could.

What am I doing? I thought desperately, trying to control my breathing. There’s no way I’m going to catch him.

But I knew I had to try. His afterlife might depend on it.

When I emerged at the top of the hill, I saw my father’s car across the park, turning toward the ferry docks. I took a moment, relieved. At least he wasn’t going to the bridge.

The wind whipped, and from the corner of my eye I saw an odd flash coming from the rotunda windows of the library. My heart thumped. The flash came again. Then again. It was as if someone was sending Morse code, flashing the sunlight back out at the world with a mirror. I squinted but could make out nothing, and suddenly, the blinds fell.

My dad turned the corner, and I tore myself away from the window. Taking a deep breath, I sprinted across the park, then up the hill to the bluff. In the distance, bobbing over whitecaps, was the ferry. It was still a few minutes out, but once it was docked, my father was going to attempt to board it. I did the only thing I could think to do—I ran up to Tristan’s front door and collapsed against it, pounding on the wooden panels as hard as I could with both hands.