“Yeah, you get that kind of sensation back. But … well, there’s something that made you special. It’s the reason why I agreed to help your boyfriend in the first place. I thought you’d keep it after the transformation, but there must have been a complication. We didn’t figure out until last night, when Felix tried to touch you.” She cringed before finishing: “We’re pretty sure you’ve lost the ability to touch the living.”

I stared at her blankly. “What?”

Gabrielle tilted her head toward Felix in some sort of unspoken signal. He nodded and pushed himself out of the chair. Then he strode over to the couch and knelt beside me. Frowning, he laid one gentle hand upon mine.

Or, at least, he tried to. Where our skin touched, I felt nothing. No electricity or sparks. Just the standard numbness I’d felt before this transformation.

I yanked my hand from under his. “That doesn’t mean anything. That could just be specific to you and me.”

“Maybe,” Gabrielle said doubtfully. Her expression told me she knew exactly who I was thinking about when it came to touching. “Maybe the only living person you could touch was Lover Boy. We can always get him and find out …”

I shook my head weakly. “No, we can’t.”

She had the decency to look regretful for a moment. Not for a very long moment, however, as she cheerfully offered, “You can still touch me, if that makes you feel better.”

I simply scowled at her. After that I sat motionless, trying desperately to process all this information. While I did so, a few sneering comments and denials ran through my head—rebuttals to everything Gabrielle had just said. But instead of voicing my thoughts aloud, I fell back against the couch.

“I don’t feel so well,” I whispered, and my stomach snarled again as if to back me up. Felix gave me a sympathetic glance before grabbing a designer trash can from under a side table and placing it next to my feet.

“Thank you,” I murmured absently, unable to look him in the eye. For a while I just slumped into the sofa cushions, thoughtlessly monitoring the heavy thud in my chest. My mind had gone empty. Blank.

Until one word whispered in my head.

Joshua.

It felt wrong to say his name, even if I didn’t do it out loud.

My head started to spin with questions. Had I really lost my ability to touch him? And did it even matter?

Of course it mattered. It mattered terribly. Although I’d sworn to protect him—even if that meant never seeing him again—I couldn’t stand the idea that I would live at least some kind of life without him in it. Every time my heart beat, every time I experienced some previously lost sensation, he wouldn’t be there to share it with me.

I couldn’t be like this without him; I couldn’t.

Suddenly, what felt like a sea of venom bubbled up in my stomach. I flew forward, gripping the trash can in time to empty the contents of my stomach into the bin—mostly disgusting, acidic bile since I hadn’t actually consumed anything in more than ten years. When that was finished and I felt reasonably certain another wave wouldn’t cripple me, I reared back and began to yell at the Callioux twins, who stared wide-eyed and openmouthed.

“What were you thinking? And who the hell gave you permission to do this to me?” I knew I was wild and out of control, but I didn’t want to stop. “If you’d have just listened to me in the graveyard—I told you, I just wanted the dreams to end. And maybe learn how to do something about the demons. But … this? I didn’t ask for this!”

“I know,” Felix murmured, but Gabrielle’s words overlapped his.

“The demons?” she asked in a tight, strained voice.

“Yes, the demons. They’ve been after me ever since I met two of them in the netherworld. All I wanted to do was find a way to defeat them, or at least to escape them. And now I can’t even do half the things that protected me in the first place....”

Gabrielle lurched forward, diving between Felix and the coffee table until she knelt beside me. Her eyes were abruptly bright, desperate; and she clenched my hands in a painful grip.

“You’ve gone to the other side?” she hissed. “Into the darkness?”

Her intensity surprised me, and, momentarily, I forgot how mad I was.

In fact, there were only two reasonable explanations for what happened next. Maybe I questioned whether Gabrielle was the Quarter ghosts’ intermediary to the demons if she really didn’t know anything about my past. Or maybe I’d been so starved for someone who’d not only been through what I had, but also didn’t want to destroy me, that I started to spill some of my own history.

“Yeah, I have been to the darkness, actually. This ghost, Eli, used to take me there. You wouldn’t believe what it looks like, all gray and cold and twisted. I’ve been trying to get back in there so I can get my dad out of it, but I can’t.... I haven’t been able to....”

When I trailed off, Gabrielle’s expression lost its ferocious edge. Suddenly—shockingly—she smiled. Her grin, however, wasn’t full of its usual bravado, or even wry, offhanded amusement.

Instead, I saw vindication written all over her face; she practically glowed with it.

“I knew I chose you for a reason,” she breathed.

“You … ‘chose’ me?” I asked, frowning heavily. “You don’t even know me.”

“But I know what you can—could—do. I’ve met other ghosts,” she confided, “and none of them could touch the living like I saw you do yesterday morning. Even if that ability is gone, you’re different. Which means we might be able to help each other.”

“Help each other do what?”

She squeezed my hands tightly. “Get our parents out of there. Your dad, our folks. I’ve been trying to contact my parents with Voodoo spells, Ouija boards, the works. But if you can actually get in there—”

I cut her off with a shake of my head. “I told you: I haven’t been able to. Not without help from someone inside it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she insisted, still smiling confidently. “We’ll work together to get in. Once we find our parents, I’ll even help you with that demon problem.”

Before I could ask her how we were supposed to accomplish either of those goals, she let go of me and leaped up from her crouch. After taking one enormous step over the coffee table, she began darting around the room excitedly.

“First things first: clothes. Not that the robe doesn’t suit you, but it isn’t much better than the melting prom dress. Next, one of the best things about being Risen—beignets for breakfast. You’re going to love them, almost as much as you’ll love eating again.”

I quirked one eyebrow. “What was that word you just used?”

“‘Beignet’? It’s a little French doughnut totally covered in—”

“No, the other word. ‘Risen’?”

“Yeah,” she said, flashing me a wide smile. “That’s my name for what I am. Or what we are, I guess. The Risen.”

“Huh,” I muttered. I looked away from her and leaned back into the cushions, ready to sit here for a few minutes, hours, days to process everything I’d learned this morning. But Gabrielle wasn’t having that. She dove forward, grabbed my hands from my lap again, and yanked me to my feet.

“Let’s go raid the actress’s closet; trust me, it’s like Christmas Eve squared.”

In a small voice I asked, “Is it Christmas Eve today?”

Felix nodded. Although I stayed on my feet, I sank a little.

Before Joshua’s and my abrupt breakup last night—before I’d been transformed into the living dead—I honestly thought that I would spend Christmas Eve with Joshua. One last night with him before I fled. Now I felt sick again thinking that I might have ruined his Christmas.

Or saved it. Nothing destroys the holiday spirit like getting attacked by your girlfriend’s demonic stalkers.

I noticed that the twins were watching me with identical quizzical expressions so I shook my head to clear it of those thoughts. As I told myself earlier, I’d made my choice. For my loved ones, for myself.