DEDICATION

To Melissa Peters Allgood, who is both beautiful and good.

And to make sure that 2013 will be so much better than 2012.

CONTENTS

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Back Ad

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

O nce again, I’m staring at my own death.

My heart is pounding. My breath is coming in short spurts. And I can’t stop digging my fingernails into the heels of my palms, just so I can feel the little crescents of pain they create. Of course, those tiny bursts of pain can hardly match the throbbing in my dislocated shoulder. Not that any of that will matter in a few minutes, when I’m truly dead.

Dead. I can hardly comprehend the word, since it’s held so many definitions for me. After all, I’ve done this before: readied myself for the final moment. Sometimes it’s happened, and sometimes I’ve defied it. But tonight, I won’t defy it. Tonight, I’ll die.

Tonight, I want to.

For the first time in my strange existence, I want death. I need it, in order to do what has to be done.

Not to say that I’m not afraid; I am. Terrified, actually. But that doesn’t stop me from staring down the barrel of the gun pointed directly at me. I can’t figure out why it hasn’t fired yet. Then I notice how badly the gun is shaking. If it fires right now, I doubt the bullet will even graze my shoulder. Which obviously won’t be good enough.

Slowly, my eyes move from the gun to the person holding it.

“You okay?” I ask her.

She doesn’t respond for a moment. Then, with a bitter laugh, she asks, “Are you kidding me, Amelia?”

I just smile.

Behind her, I can hear him shouting. Screaming, actually. I know that his friends are holding him back, gripping tightly to his arms as he struggles to break free and stop us. But my eyelids are so heavy, my tears so thick, I can’t actually see him.

It’s probably a good thing I won’t be able to look into his eyes when it happens.

I turn my attention back to the gun. Not to the person holding it, this time—just to the gun itself.

“Do it,” I say, my voice quiet but urgent. “Please.”

She doesn’t reply, but I know she’s heard me. With a weird instinct, she lowers the gun until it points directly at my heart. For a split second, I think she’s chickened out.

Then I see a tiny spark of light, and my entire world rips into pain.

Chapter

ONE

TWO WEEKS EARLIER

Death, demons, deranged Seers—nothing I’d previously experienced terrified me as much as what I was about to do.

If I can even gather up enough courage to actually do this.

Steeling myself, I balled my right hand into a fist and lifted it. For a few seconds, I kept my fist suspended, letting it hover less than an inch away from my target. Then, with a frustrated groan, I dropped my hand back to my side.

My task was easy enough: all I had to do was make a fist, rap my knuckles against wood, and repeat if necessary. So why couldn’t I do it?

Why couldn’t I bring myself to do something as simple as knock on an ordinary front door?

I started pacing again, my boot heels thunking across the floorboards of the porch. The sound of them spooked me a little. Even after spending a few months as one of the Risen—actually, the only Risen ghost left in this world, as far as I could tell—I still hadn’t quite made peace with the echo of my own footsteps.

I cast a glance over my shoulder, toward the road. About fifty feet back along the curb, Joshua Mayhew leaned against the hood of his truck. He caught me staring and gave me an encouraging smile. I tried to return it, without much success.

This little project wasn’t originally his idea—it was mine. But once Joshua and I had discussed the possibility, he’d latched on to it until I finally ended up here, pacing like a crazy person.

As usual, Joshua thought this would end well. But I didn’t. I just couldn’t imagine a scenario in which the woman on whose door I was about to knock would react positively when she saw me.

And her reaction did matter, more than almost anything in the world. Still, the reason I stood on this porch today—the real reason—wasn’t because she needed to see me; it was because I needed to see her.

I flashed Joshua another tight smile and turned back to the door. I could do this. I could do this. I lifted my hand again, ready to knock for real this time.

But I never got the chance.

Before my knuckles could make contact with the door, it swung inward. Open.

The first time Joshua and I visited this place, the door had swung open on its own. But this time, someone had pulled it open. Probably because she’d finally decided to do something about the person thunking around uninvited on her front porch.

Her hand held the edge of the door, fingers gripped against the splintery, paint-peeling wood. On her ring finger, I could just make out the glint of a simple wedding band.

She still wears it.

Before I had time to process that thought, before I even had time to see her face, I felt a familiar current pass over my skin. It happened quickly—started and stopped in less than two seconds—but I immediately knew what it meant. I’d made myself invisible, intentionally vanished from the view of anyone living, including Joshua. Including the woman standing in front of me.

It was a cowardly move on my part: I’d finally worked up the nerve to knock, and now she couldn’t even see me.

She frowned, squinting into the shadows of the porch and out at the daylight beyond it. Seeing the lines on her face, the streak of gray at her temples, I sucked in a tight breath and released it in one foolish word.

“Mom?”

The woman at the door immediately jerked back like she’d been slapped. Her eyes widened, but she continued to stare out at the porch without actually seeing me.