I shook my head, incredulous at her daring show of courage and stupidity.

But really, the saga of the Callioux twins wasn’t the most important thing in my afterlife right now. Ultimately, I wanted to know why my fingertips could touch the rough slipcover beneath me; why I could still smell the strange scents of the French Quarter; why my body felt beaten and tired long after those sensations should have faded.

“Okay, so now I’ve got your backstory, breaking and entering and all. But what about me? Why do I feel so weird? Why do I feel at all?”

Once again Gabrielle and Felix exchanged wary glances.

“Tell her, Gaby,” he urged.

She held his gaze for a moment longer, clearly drawing upon his strength for what she had to say next. After a disconcerting silence, she turned back to me.

“Put your fingers on your neck, Amelia,” she commanded softly.

“Put … what?”

She demonstrated by taking the fore- and middle fingers on her left hand and pressing them to her neck, just below the jawline. I frowned in confusion but then followed her lead.

After all, what could it hurt?

Only a few seconds after I’d done so, however, I jerked my hand back and shot up to sit rigid-straight on the couch. My eyes widened uncomfortably as I stared at Gabrielle. When she nodded in confirmation, I let out one hissing breath.

Because, although I hadn’t experienced it in a very long time, I recognized what I felt in the tender skin of my neck.

A pulse.

Chapter

TWENTY-TWO

Hope surged within me, so strong it made me dizzy again. My pulse sped with excitement. Now that I felt it again, I don’t know how I could have mistaken that pounding at my temples for anything else.

“Am I … am I alive?”

Gabrielle frowned guiltily and shook her head. “No. Sorry. You’re not actually alive—your body just thinks you are. It’s sort of like … an illusion.”

Everything inside me wilted. My right hand wavered at my neck, just over the place where I’d felt blood and heat coursing through my skin.

“What do you mean, ‘an illusion’?”

She wrung her hands in her lap as she struggled to come up with the best explanation. “You’re kind of … how do I put this? You’re kind of undead. Or the living dead. Pick your supernatural euphemism.”

My stomach twisted violently. I didn’t want to believe her. Yet I knew, beyond doubt, that I’d been dead yesterday. And now I was … something different.

“What are you saying?” I whispered. “That I’m a … a zombie?”

Unbelievably, Gabrielle smiled. “I don’t think so. You aren’t craving brains, are you?”

I sputtered for a moment, my mind leaping between confusion and anger. Then, weakly, I answered, “No. Not yet.”

My stomach let out a sudden, audible growl, and Gabrielle laughed. I clutched my hands to my abdomen and looked down at it in wonder. Then my eyes shot back up to hers.

“Where’s my dress?”

Gabrielle gave me a sheepish, one-shouldered shrug. She reached down to the floor and brought up a shapeless bundle of filthy, decaying fabric. If not for the familiar bodice, I almost wouldn’t have recognized the tattered silk, which looked like it had been stored somewhere damp and dank for … well, for a decade. Now the fabric literally disintegrated in Gabrielle’s hands. As I stared, gray flakes of it fluttered to the floor like ash.

“The transition affected you, not the clothes. So your dress … kind of didn’t make it,” she said. “I had to put you in one of the actress’s bathrobes when this thing started to get a little PG-thirteen.”

My eyes flickered to Felix, whose cheeks flushed. I said a silent prayer of thanks that Gabrielle had been the one to dress me … even if I couldn’t understand how.

I rubbed at my temple, where a headache inexplicably pounded. “This all happened because of that ceremony last night, didn’t it? Because of Voodoo?”

“Yes—because of a Lazarus spell.”

A shiver ran down my spine. “A what? You’d better start explaining. Like, now.”

Gabrielle shifted, still looking a little guilty. “I will, but I have to go back a bit, okay?”

I gave her one cold nod, and she went on.

“Even before I died, I was into Voodoo. Mostly just for fun, although my grandpa actually practiced it. Once, before he died, he told me about the Conjure Café. He said it was run by an old friend—one of the most powerful Voodoo priestesses in New Orleans. So when I realized that I was dead, I started haunting the place. Watching Marie, learning whatever I could. Mostly about the dead, and how to make my own spells.

“About two months ago I hit pay dirt—Marie finally left one of her conjure books open to a page with something called the Lazarus spell on it. It was perfect, exactly what I’d been looking for, except for a few minor details. So I memorized it and added my own little twists. Then I made Felix swipe some items from the Conjure and go with me to the St. Louis cemetery. There, with his help, I performed the first Lazarus ceremony—the one that changed me.”

“Like the ritual performed last night?” I asked.

“The exact ritual. It’s similar to all those Haitian Voodoo rituals you see in documentaries but different in one important way. In Voodoo, resurrection magic typically reanimates the body without the soul. But I figured out a way to revive the soul … without the living body.”

“How?” I demanded, my voice frosty with skepticism.

“The Lazarus spell is based on an offering,” Gabrielle said. “An exchange has to be made in order for it to work. When it does, the resurrection gives ghosts a quasi-physical form, and some amazing abilities. Like, we can make ourselves visible to the living whenever we want. And because we aren’t really alive, we can’t get hurt. Plus, we get to wear different clothes and hairstyles again, which is—in my opinion—an absolute necessity. The resurrection gives us sensations, too. We get to smell things … we even get to eat again.”

Felix cleared his throat and gave his sister a pointed look. “Except for …?” he prompted.

Gabrielle’s mouth twisted in frustration and reluctant defeat.

“Okay, okay.” she conceded. “There are a few drawbacks. You see, magic only works on the basis of a trade. To gain a few things, you have to give up some others.”

So far she’d given me nothing but sunny reviews about my new, in-between state of being. But I could hear the evasion in her voice.

Fighting my growing nausea, I kept my tone low and dangerous.

“What exactly did I give up for this, Gaby?”

She pinched her lips into a thin line, grabbed a loose curl of her Afro, and twisted it wildly around her index finger. Finally, at the moment my patience had almost run out, she spoke. Hesitantly, like she already feared my reaction.

“In order to live this half-life,” she said, “you have to deal with a few negatives. First, you had to experience that pain last night, where the force of the change lights you up and makes your heart act like it has restarted. So … that was one sacrifice. Next, you can’t vanish at will anymore, I think because you’re more substantial now. And last, you had to … to give up … something else.”

I gave her a withering look and leaned closer. “What ‘else,’ Gabrielle?”

She fiddled silently with her hair for a few more seconds and then, in a rush, said, “Touch. We think you’ve lost the ability to touch.”

“But I can touch stuff right now,” I argued. I demonstrated by slapping my hand against the slipcover beneath me and tugging on the terry cloth lapel of my robe.

Gabrielle smiled apologetically.