“This isn’t really my scene. You want to get out of here for a bit? Go for a walk by the water?” he asked, grazing the center of my back with his hand.

As soon as he touched me, I felt a spark, like static electricity, only sharper—hotter. My back felt prickly even after he dropped his hand—like my skin was vibrating—and a flutter of anticipation sprung up inside my chest. Maybe this was it. Maybe I was about to usher my first soul. I glanced around for Tristan again, but he was still nowhere to be found.

Then I had a thought, an inkling, a suspicion. Maybe this was how they trained the new Lifers. Maybe this was why Tristan hadn’t shown up. I was being thrown into the deep end of the pool on my first day so they could see how I’d react, how I’d handle it. There was a familiar rush inside my chest. The feeling of rising to a challenge. The anticipation of making Tristan proud.

“Sure,” I said, sliding off my stool. “This isn’t really my scene, either.”

Brian smiled and grabbed his rucksack, which had been leaning against the wall. He lifted the strap over his shoulder as he stepped aside to let me walk out first. When I crossed in front of him, I had to bite back a grin.

This was it. My first ushering. My new life was about to begin.

The calm bay water lapped at the sand lazily, thinning out and sloshing back at an even rhythm. Brian kicked at broken seashells, their pale fragments gleaming against the sand, and sighed. Gray clouds flitted across the bright moon, and each breeze seemed cooler than the last. I flipped up the collar on my thin jacket, ducking my chin down deep.

Someone whistled in the dark—a slow, mournful tune—and I shivered. My eyes darted to the black waves; I was half expecting Mr. Nell to rise up out of the bay and drag me under. But instead I saw something gleaming in the moonlight, a long black splotch with a silver streak. I took a tentative step forward and my stomach turned. It was a pile of fish. Dozens of black and silver fish, all washed up on the shore, eyes fogged over. Dead. The whistling grew louder. I froze.

“What’s wrong?” Brian asked.

“Do you hear that?” I hissed, my heart pounding as I whirled around. “Do you—”

A shadowy figure appeared on the boardwalk, and I clutched Brian’s arm. A moment later, the whistler strolled under one of the lights outside the Crab Shack, illuminating the face of one of the Lifers—the guy I’d never met who’d been loitering in the corner of the basement this morning with Mohawk Girl and another nameless female. Relief flooded my body. He stopped momentarily when he saw us, and his whistling ceased. He wore a black sweatshirt with the hood up over his reddish hair, and his pale skin seemed to glow in the darkness. His eyes, dark and fathomless, held mine for several long breaths. Finally, he kept on walking, his heavy black boots crunching on the sandy slats of the boardwalk.

Brian and I both watched until the guy stepped out of sight. Then Brian looked down at my hand, still gripping his arm. Embarrassed, I released him and tucked my hands into my pockets.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No worries,” Brian told me, walking a few paces up the beach, putting distance between us and the fish. “Actually, I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I asked, walking beside him.

“For spilling all over you about my parents.” He dug a groove in the sand with the tip of his sneaker.

My heart thumped with sympathy. “Oh, it’s fine,” I said, then hesitated. “I’m…glad you came over to me.”

“I’m glad I did, too,” he said with a grin.

And then his fingers caught me around the waist. The words What are you doing? were still forming in my mind when he leaned down and kissed me. His lips were dry and tasted sour. I yanked my face away as quickly and politely as possible.

“Oh, Brian, I’m so sorry,” I said, taking a slight step back. “I didn’t mean to make you think I—”

“Think what?” he asked darkly. “That you wanted me?”

His hands gripped my waist tighter now, and he pulled me against him, pressing my pelvic bone against his. Then his mouth came down on mine again, his nose pressing mine flat so completely I could hardly breathe.

Panic coursed through my body. This wasn’t happening. This could not be happening.

I lifted my hands and pressed them against his chest, but his grip was like a vise. I couldn’t force even an inch of space between us. With a screech, I managed to turn my head away from his, but then he swept my ankle with his foot and sent me sprawling on the sand. My cheekbone hit something hard—a rock or a large shell, and hundreds of tiny dots of light exploded across my vision.

“Don’t be a tease, Rory,” Brian spat, climbing on top of me. He pinned my thigh down with his knee and my shoulder with one hand. With his other he worked the zipper on my jacket, yanking it open with three quick jerks. “You knew what you were doing when you came out here with me. We both knew what you were doing.”

“Get off me!” I cried, kicking my legs.

Brian laughed coldly. He dipped his head closer, and I saw the sharpness in his dark eyes. The determination. “That’s not gonna happen,” he said icily. “So you may as well just relax and enjoy yourself.”

He mashed his lips against mine again, and suddenly my whole body was on fire. My brain exploded with images. Faces. Girls. A blond with terrified blue eyes, blood dripping from her nose and over her lips as she tried to writhe free. An Asian girl with dark, wet hair, a scrape across her forehead, whimpering as she curled into a ball. Another girl scratching and screaming and begging him to stop. A fourth who’d gone catatonic, staring off into space while he had his way. Each memory assailed me with such stark details that my stomach curled and lurched and burned as I recoiled in horror, but I also felt this odd satisfaction, this tingling pleasure. I opened my eyes and looked into Brian’s, and just like that, I knew.

Those positive sensations were coming from him. He’d done this before and enjoyed every minute of it.

I tried to knock him off me with my knee, but it was like he had four legs and ten arms. I felt my jeans unzip, and I did the only thing I could think to do. I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Brian laughed. He was just gripping the waistband of my jeans when all of a sudden something crashed into him so hard he was flung backward into the sand. A bare foot flew by my face and I sat up on my hands, scrambling backward on the cracked shells like a startled crab. In the darkness, I saw Tristan rear up, his blond hair a brief flash in the night. He lifted his fist high over his shoulder and swung. The crack was sickening. Final.

I pulled in a broken breath, fumbling for the zipper on my jeans, but my hands were shaking so hard there was no catching it. Somehow, I pulled myself up to standing and forced myself to take air into my lungs. Tristan’s sandals lay a few feet away, one on the sand, one on the steps, where he’d kicked them off, probably to gain more speed.

“Are you all right?” Tristan asked, approaching me slowly. I covered the V of my exposed underwear with one hand, clutching my opposite shoulder with the other. Brian lay crooked and still behind Tristan, blood dripping from his nose.

“I…I…” It was the only syllable I could get out without bursting into tears. Tristan glanced down, and the rush of heat to my face was so intense I almost passed out. He shrugged out of his sweatshirt and tied it backward around my waist, so that the bulk of it was covering my front.

“Rory,” he said, hands on my shoulders. “Are you all right? Say something. Anything.”

I couldn’t believe how badly I had screwed this up. I couldn’t believe he’d had to rescue me. All this talk about being part of his world, one of the Lifers, having this mission, and I’d already failed.