And now she was here for me.

“Well, hello again,” she said pleasantly. “You’re finally home with us, yes?”

“This isn’t my home.” My voice sounded far stronger than I felt.

The female demon laughed, and at first her laughter seemed beautiful—crystalline and sparkling. But listening to it made my ears ring painfully. When I clapped my hands over them, she laughed even harder.

“Please stop,” I begged, nearly unable to hear my own voice.

To my surprise, she listened, and obeyed.

In fact, she was silent as the grave when she flew, lightning fast, to stand in front of me. Now only inches away, she flashed me a ghastly, needle-sharp smile. Then she touched me—wrapping her frozen, skeletal fingers around my wrist.

I tried to scream. But once again I didn’t have time. I hadn’t even opened my mouth when the fiery glow burst forth across my skin like a torch.

This was what the demons wanted; this was what they’d hunted me down to claim.

But when the red-orange glow ignited, the female demon shrieked, dropping my arm and scuttling away from me like an insect. She ducked behind her companion, peering around him only to hiss angrily at me.

I should have felt relief that she’d let me go. And I did.

I also felt very, very confused.

After all, her companion from High Bridge hadn’t feared my glow; he’d coveted it. So why on earth was she suddenly afraid of me?

Frowning, I stared down at my arm. There, where she’d gripped me, was a steaming handprint. It looked like she’d burned me, which didn’t make any sense since I didn’t hurt.

Then I realized: I’d hurt her. The handprint on my arm wasn’t a scald—it was the spot where something icy cold had touched something fiery hot.

I peered back at the female demon and saw that she cradled her burned hand in the uninjured one. Her male companion cast a scornful glance in her direction and sighed.

“Stop cowering and take her,” he commanded.

“You take her,” she spat, “if you think it looks so easy.”

He sighed again and shook Alex off his feet. The movement roused Alex from the thankful prayers he was still mumbling, and he stared reverently up at his new master.

“I assume you can touch her now, child?” the demon asked him. When Alex nodded, the demon gave him a stern look. “Then if you truly want to serve us, you’ll take her.”

Alex glanced back over his shoulder and flashed me an eager smile. In response, my glow flared brighter. Although Alex winced, his smile didn’t falter.

Unlike the female demon—unlike Eli—Alex obviously wasn’t afraid of me. He stared me down like prey, rising from his knees and stalking over to me with clenched fists.

I clenched my fists too, trying to think of how I would fight him. My pulse began to race as I came up blank. Could I burn him as I’d burned the demon? Could I hurt him as I’d once hurt Eli? Could I still act as a poltergeist and make this place quake?

Alex was stalking even closer, and I still hadn’t come up with a reasonable solution. I raised my fists to the sides of my head and groaned in frustration. Abruptly, Alex froze in place and mimicked me, clutching his head and groaning even louder.

At first I thought he was trying to mock me, but the longer he moaned, the more I doubted it. His groans turned into yowls, and his face contorted in pain. Something or someone was hurting Alexander Etienne.

I peered past him to his would-be masters, who were staring at us in disbelief and confusion. A few of them even started to hiss defensively. Over the sounds of their hissing and Alex’s groaning, however, I heard another sound. A sound I’d forgotten to track since the demons arrived.

I spun back around to find that the young Seers still held hands, still chanted. Their murmurs had lost that initial edge of reluctance and were now coursing through the air with urgency. With strength.

Even better, the darkness around them had abated. Through the purple shadows of the netherworld, I could see a faint, ghostlike outline of the footbridge. And in the sand beneath the Seers, I could see traces of concrete, shifting like seaweed underwater.

Whatever spell the Seers wove, it hadn’t just brought Alex to his knees—it had also torn through the veil of the netherworld. Maybe even weakened the magic that held this place together.

My head whipped back around to Alex and his masters, and I grinned in triumph. Although Alex continued to moan and whimper, the demons unfortunately looked far more composed now. They still hissed and spat in my direction, but one by one their glinting smiles returned. Watching me intently, they began to cluster together. Gathering … for something.

“Gaby,” I murmured, despite the fact that I held their full attention, regardless of my volume. “You need to get over here. Now.”

Still lying on her back where Alex had left her, Gaby rolled to one side, coughed, and then began to crawl slowly toward me. Without taking my eyes off the congregating demons, I crouched low and stretched out one arm to her.

“Just a little bit farther,” I urged her. “Come on....”

She’d crawled several feet, with only a few more to go, when the demons began to screech again. In a flash they shifted back into indeterminate shapes and launched up in the air like startled ravens. But as they climbed higher in the sky, I realized that they were anything but startled: they were arcing, curving back around for a swift, final descent.

“Gaby!” I cried, far past the point of urgency now. “Hurry, please.”

I took my eyes off of her for a moment, casting a panicked glance over my shoulder at the Seers. They still chanted in their circle, unaware of the shrieking army above them. Thankfully, even more elements of the living world had grown stronger around them. By now the footbridge was fully visible, and I could see the vague outline of several buildings in the French Quarter.

The netherworld was thinning all around the Seers.

But not around me. Here it was as dark and bleak as ever.

I turned back to Gaby and then leaned forward to close the gap between us. She reached out to me and I grabbed her hand, pulling her close. We huddled together a few feet from Alex—who still gasped and moaned—and stared up in fear at the wounded sky.

After a heavy silence, Gaby cleared her throat.

“Hey, Amelia,” she whispered hoarsely. “Do you know you’re on fire?”

Despite everything, I laughed. “Yeah. I don’t think it’ll be much help right now, though.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw her grin. She wrapped one arm around me and gave me a tight half hug. I read the gesture well enough: if we were going to be swept into the darkness, at least we would go together.

“Friends till the end,” I whispered with a wry smile.

Gaby snorted. “God, you’re corny.”

I laughed again and moved to give her my own half hug. But suddenly, she slipped from my arm and began crawling backward across the dark sand like a crab.

Except … she wasn’t crawling. She was being pulled.

Alex must have fought through the pain of his exorcism, because he now had his arms wrapped around Gaby’s shoulders as he dragged her across the sand. I scrambled to grab her legs, but she was struggling so hard against Alex that I couldn’t hold on to her.

The three of us were a tangle of flailing limbs and shouted threats, but no matter how hard I fought, Alex appeared to be winning. Perhaps he felt emboldened by his masters since they were only seconds away from attack.

Everything seemed lost: Gaby, Joshua, the young Seers, my own afterlife.

The unfairness of it all—the eternal unfairness of this existence—seared me to my core. I threw back my head and screamed up at the night.

And at that moment my fiery glow literally exploded.