The fire was uncontrollable. Inescapable.

I wrenched my eyes closed, shutting out the impossibly bright light until I could sense through my eyelids that it had dimmed—at least, enough for me to reopen my eyes.

The dark beach looked as though an atom bomb had gone off on it. Sand flew back in waves, showering against the pavilion, which rocked in the gale from the explosion. In an instant, the night seemed to turn to day, glowing brightly like a real beach in the sunshine.

The explosion had done another amazing thing too. Something I smelled, before I saw its source; it was a nasty chemical scent, like burning tar and singed hair.

Or singed feathers.

That’s what the black bits of ash looked like as they fell around me: burned feathers, crisping and flaking all over the slate-colored sand. I looked up to the sky for their source and gasped.

Where a hundred bird-shaped demons had been, there were now less than twenty … and most of them had flown higher in the sky, away from this beach.

Away from me.

Their screeching sounded different now, more plaintive and wounded. The remaining demons gathered together in the sky and then shifted course, toward the black waters of the river.

To go home?

Was that possible? Were they actually retreating?

Another look around me suggested that the answer was yes. All along the beach and across the pavilion, images of the living world were filtering through the purples and reds. Even when my glow began to dim, I could still see the real Toulouse Street Wharf fighting its way through the veneer of the netherworld pavilion. I could see the concrete reappearing beneath me and the lights of the Mississippi River boardwalk shining through the darkness.

Gaby saw them too. She grinned up at me from Alex’s arms, her blue eyes radiant in the gloom that still surrounded her.

“It’s closing again,” she breathed happily.

“Yeah,” I agreed as the boardwalk became more solid around me. “And you’re in what looks like the very last patch of netherworld. So—”

“So let’s speed this up,” she finished, before digging one sharp elbow into Alex’s ribs. He grunted from the blow and immediately released her so that he could clutch at his chest. Gaby took advantage of his moment of weakness to wrench away from him and scramble toward me.

She reached out one hand, ready for me to tug her to safety, when a shout made both of us pause.

“Gabrielle!”

Both of our heads whipped around toward the voice. From the corner of my eye, I saw Gaby’s smile blossom when her brother crested the top of the footbridge, which was now fully visible.

Almost involuntarily, she swung her arm around, reaching for Felix instead of me.

And in that moment Alex pounced.

He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and tangled the other in her hair. With vicious force, he yanked her back into a diminishing shadow, which was folding in on itself so rapidly that they almost didn’t fit into it.

Felix and I screamed at the same time, and I could hear his feet pounding the pavement as I dove forward.

But we were both too late.

As the murky portal constricted, I caught one last glimpse of Alex’s twisted smile and Gaby’s bright, horrified eyes. Then the dark patch closed entirely, lingering as a shadow for just a heartbeat before disappearing in the wind.

After that, everything was silent.

Only one sound disturbed the wharf: the ring of a nearby church bell, chiming twelve times and then echoing hollowly across the water.

Even when the bell stopped ringing, my hand still hung in the air, clawing at nothing.

After who knows how long, I slowly turned my head. Felix crouched beside me, his hand also grasping the void. He dropped his arm first, letting his palm smack loudly on the concrete. When I lowered my hand and placed it next to his, he kept his eyes downcast.

“How much did you see?” I whispered.

Felix shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Just the end. Just the part where she …”

He trailed off, and I nodded. “So … you do know.”

“I know.”

We fell silent again. Like him, I turned to stare at the ground, where I absently studied the cracks and imperfections in the concrete. Finally, I stirred.

“How did you know?” I asked him. “Where to find us, I mean?”

“Joshua,” he stated flatly.

That answer surprised me. I frowned and glanced back up at Felix. He looked up, too; and when his electric blue eyes met mine, I felt a pang in my stomach. His eyes were so much like Gaby’s.

“Joshua?” I repeated.

Felix sighed and ran one hand over his face before explaining.

“His family was eating at Antoine’s when Gaby called him about … his grandmother, I think? After he got the call, Joshua freaked. He got up to leave and accidentally ran into me on his way out. I guess I look—looked—enough like Gaby to send up a red flag, because he confronted me. I convinced him that Gaby and I hadn’t exorcised you, and then we decided to go find his cousins—apparently they’d gotten permission to skip dinner to go to some ‘party,’ which turned out to be … this. I guess we’re lucky his sister told him where they were really going, even if she didn’t tell him what they were really doing. Anyway, we saw his cousins first, on the other side of the bridge. Joshua had just made it across when he disappeared into this weird shadow. And then … well, you know the rest.”

He finished weakly, hanging his head again. I didn’t press him to tell me more, and he didn’t ask me to detail the things he’d missed while waiting for us to reappear.

Which is why his next question surprised me so much.

“It was Kade, wasn’t it?”

Gnawing on my lip, I nodded again, albeit more hesitantly this time. “His real name was Alexander Etienne. He was a Seer. And insane.”

“No surprise there,” Felix muttered.

The corner of my mouth lifted into what was probably a harsh smile.

“Well, you’ll be happy to know that she killed him. Even if he did take her, she at least got the chance to exact some revenge.”

Felix continued to stare at the ground. “Was it … a painful death? For Kade?”

“Looked like it, yeah.”

“Good,” Felix growled.

It was the first real emotion he’d shown. But his fierce expression disappeared almost as quickly as it had arrived—replaced once more by a blank mask. As I watched him recompose himself, I heard murmurs behind us coming from the direction of the Seers. I craned my head, looking over Felix’s shoulder at the base of the footbridge.

The first pair of eyes I caught were Joshua’s. Before I could read the thoughts in them, they darted away, toward Jillian. I followed his gaze and saw her struggling to help Annabel to her feet. Although Annabel looked rough, Jillian looked rougher—dirty and exhausted and bloody. Next to them, Hayley and Drew helped each other stand. Once all of them were upright, they turned unsteadily to face me.

I stared back at them blankly, until I realized: they were looking to me for instruction. For guidance.

I shook my head, mystified. Could these people make any decisions without a leader?

“Go home,” I told them softly, knowing that they could probably hear me across this short distance. “Go home now.”

Accepting my command without question, Annabel nodded. Then she pulled away from Jillian to join Hayley and Drew in propping up one another. Without a second glance at me, Annabel wrapped her arms around the other two Seers and they hobbled off together, disappearing over the footbridge and back into the Quarter.

Jillian waited until they’d vanished to stumble over to her brother. She kept her head bowed—either exhausted or contrite, I couldn’t tell.

At first Joshua gave her a cold glare as she approached. But once she’d made it within arm’s length, he pulled her in for a brief but fierce hug. After that, the two of them looked back at Felix and me.