This time my foot landed where I wanted it to; this time I didn’t feel the solid, impenetrable barrier of Ruth’s magic. Instead, I felt … nothing. Nothing at all.

I sighed in relief, and stepped fully into the ring. Gabrielle glanced up from her work with a wry half grin.

“Congrats. They say the first step’s always the hardest.”

I rolled my eyes and folded my arms protectively across my chest. Just because I’d made it inside her circle didn’t mean I trusted her yet.

Gabrielle, however, didn’t seem to care much about my disdain. She was too busy placing the empty bowl near the fire and then crumbling the dried herbs into it. She grabbed the bottle of clear liquid, removed its cork, and began pouring it in careful increments into the bowl.

“Rum,” she said distractedly. “A gift for the Loas, so that they’ll help us.”

Again I couldn’t manage much more than a bewildered “Oh.”

Gabrielle dipped her fingertips into the bowl and withdrew them to make little splashes upon the ground at my feet. She splashed a few more drops on herself and then ran her wet hand down her face, murmuring something incomprehensible under her breath.

Finally, she grabbed the gourd and the bottle of dark liquid, and stood.

“Sit,” she commanded me, gesturing to the ground with the bottle. So I crossed my legs and dropped to the concrete. Then I folded my hands in my lap and turned my most skeptical expression up to her.

“Look,” I said. “I’m not sure what you have planned for tonight. But mostly I just want the bad dreams to stop. Do you think you could do that?”

I couldn’t tell whether she’d decided to ignore me or just silently process my request. Either way, she didn’t respond as she bent down to press the PLAY button on the stereo. Immediately, the pounding sound of drums filtered out, as well as other, jangling noises.

Finally meeting my gaze, Gabrielle hissed, “Stay quiet until I say.”

Then she raised her arms. In a strange, melodic language I didn’t recognize, she called out to the midnight sky. I tried to catch some of the words—Legba, souple, lavi—but wasn’t really sure what I’d heard.

Still chanting, Gabrielle closed her eyes and slowly began to spin in a circle. With one hand she shook the gourd, which made a dry, rattling sound. With the other she held the bottle upright, letting its dark liquid slosh with her movements.

Soon, the sloshing and rattling synced with the drums. Combined, the noises started to take on their own rhythm—a kind of music to which, I now realized, she was dancing. The chiming of her chandelier earrings and clanging of her bracelets only added to the effect.

Despite everything I’d been through, I remained a skeptic about things like this. Yet as I listened to the music swell, as I watched Gabrielle’s dancing grow more hypnotic and frenzied, I felt myself falling into a sort of trance. I had no idea where Joshua was, but I couldn’t turn my head to look for him. I just couldn’t pull my eyes away from the clamor occurring in front of me.

“Loa,” Gabrielle chanted over and over. “Loa.”

She repeated other words, too, like that lavi I’d heard earlier. Then she added a mantra I actually recognized: “Please.” She whispered it frantically, like a prayer.

After God knows how long of this chanting, she dropped the gourd to the earth and continued to dance as she uncorked the bottle of dark liquid. She poured its contents carefully onto her hand, which she lifted to the sky and then flung to the earth, splattering the ground with dark drops.

I leaned forward, just an inch, to examine the splatters closely in the firelight. Then I recoiled.

The dark droplets, which I’d first taken as black, were actually red. Deep, arterial red.

Bloodred.

I gasped, but Gabrielle ignored me. She’d stopped dancing and was now swaying, occasionally pouring more of the bloodred liquid into her cupped palm before flinging it onto specific places around the circle.

Suddenly, I was desperate to find Joshua. I craned my neck, searching for him in the darkness outside of the Voodoo ring. I found him quickly enough, leaning against the side of the brickred tomb. Unfortunately, he looked as transfixed as I’d just been.

I spun back around to Gabrielle, whose arms were now covered in trails of red streaks from where the liquid had escaped her palms.

“I want this to stop now,” I demanded. “You stop this right now, Gabrielle.”

The sound of drums and jangling metal, however, drowned out my demand. Gabrielle either didn’t hear me or didn’t care, since she kept swaying and chanting and pouring.

I thought that the ceremony would never end—that I would forever sit in this circle, watching a ghastly display of fire and blood—when Gabrielle froze midsway.

For a long second she remained completely motionless, completely silent. Then, without warning, her eyes flew open and she turned them on me.

What I saw in them made me choke.

Where her irises had once been a stunning, vibrant blue, they were now the color of tar. As black as her pupils, as deep and dark as the abyss I’d seen under the netherworld High Bridge.

I was choking, struggling to warn Joshua that he should run, when Gabrielle dropped into a crouch and lunged for me.

I shrieked and tried to scramble backward, out of the circle. But I suddenly found my back pressed to some barrier—one that I instinctively knew wasn’t visible.

Despite her promise, Gabrielle’s protective circle had turned on me. Trapped me.

Gabrielle reached a hand for me. This time, however, I lunged forward. She was alive and probably couldn’t touch me, but I was the poltergeist. I could at least try to fight her off. To keep her from Joshua, if I could.

But instead of clawing at me as I’d expected, she leaned in and softly pressed her blood-tinged fingertips to my collarbone. With an eerie smile, she whispered one Creole word:

Rete.

Then, with that simple oath delivered, her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed, unconscious, upon the ground.

For a moment I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

I stared down, mesmerized by Gabrielle’s slumped form, which had fallen across the hem of my dress. While I stared at her, I didn’t feel anything. Just numbness. Emptiness.

But the longer I sat there, the more a hot, uncomfortable stirring began to grow within me.

At first it felt like fear. Like adrenaline and nausea and fire mixing together in my core. Soon I could tell that it wasn’t just in my mind, wasn’t some mental side effect of what I’d just seen. This sensation was real, spreading out from my abdomen and tendriling its way to my limbs.

I thoughtlessly let it burn me for a few seconds more, until suddenly, my legs twitched beneath me. I jerked them out from under Gabrielle and sprung to my feet. I spun around toward Joshua, who was still looking gape mouthed at the Voodoo circle.

With a sharp intake of breath, I threw myself at him and very nearly shouted a prayer of thanks when I landed in his bewildered arms. Apparently, Gabrielle’s barriers had faded with her consciousness, releasing me from the hellish circle.

“Amelia?” Joshua murmured, still fighting his way out of the trance.

“We have to leave,” I said, grabbing his hand. “Now.”

He didn’t protest when I dragged him down the pathway, moving as fast as his stumbling, muddled pace would let me. I would’ve sprinted if I could, but there was no way I intended to leave Joshua stranded in this place.

A few times I took a wrong turn and ended up in a dead end of crumbling tombs and weeping statuary. Each time that happened I would groan in frustration and then spin around, tugging Joshua along with me on an alternate path.

Finally, blissfully, we made it into the broad, open area where the cemetery gates waited. I pulled Joshua toward them.