She raised one pretty blond eyebrow. “Oh, really? Are we forgetting the night of your eighteenth birthday?”

I bristled. “You mean the night you murdered me, Serena? Because I’m pretty sure I’ll never forget that.”

“You mean the night you screwed things up for yourself. You should have gotten the hell off that bridge. You knew something was wrong: you saw it, before anyone else did. But you stayed to look for me.” She shrugged, flashing me a condescending smirk. “Weak.”

I felt that strange, floating sensation people get right before the bottom drops out from beneath them. “How . . . how do you know that? You were possessed that night.”

Serena lifted one shoulder in another, half shrug. “I know it now. And it’s enough reason for you to do the right thing and turn yourself in.”

Despite how much her words angered me, despite the hot swell of indignation in my stomach, my eyes began to sting again. Especially when the image of an eight-year-old Serena, flashing me a gap-toothed smile, rose unbidden in my mind.

“Don’t you understand, Serena?” I pleaded, sounding so fervent that I surprised myself. “Turning myself over to the dark could never be the right choice, because it wouldn’t really save anyone. The demons never stop killing people, never stop acquiring souls. There would be more murders after I gave in—maybe even ones that I’d commit. I can’t do that to myself. And I can’t let your death be so . . . so pointless.”

Serena’s smile made my skin crawl. There was something terribly wrong about that smile: it pulled hard at her cheeks, stretching her lips so far that too many of her teeth showed. Instead of looking like some angelic vision, lit up by the morning sun, she looked malevolent.

Demonic.

“Oh, bestie,” she hissed, still wearing that ghastly smile, “my death wasn’t pointless. My death was miraculous.”

Before I could ask what she meant by that, a thread of black smoke began to weave its way around her shoulders and through her beautiful hair. It moved across her like a caress, so intimate and foul I nearly gagged.

“You’re not light,” I choked. “You’re dark. They did get you.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but her nasty grin actually widened. Serena gave me one shiver-inducing wink. Then, in a voice that sounded like it rose from a rotted corpse, she rasped, “The choice, Amelia: make it soon. Or someone else joins me in paradise.”

As she hissed out the last “ssss,” the smoke enveloped Serena and she vanished, leaving nothing but a trace of handprint-shaped black ice where she’d gripped my father’s gravestone.

Chapter

THIRTEEN

I have no idea how long I stood there, dazed and staring blankly at the empty space behind my father’s grave. I only stirred when I heard a chorus of voices near the front of the cemetery. My head turned toward the noise slowly, almost reflexively, like I didn’t have the capacity to move it consciously.

A small crowd had gathered about a hundred feet behind me, milling around the freshly dug grave and the plastic chairs. Watching the black-clad figures mingle, I shuddered. At this point, I was in no mood to attend a funeral. Especially Serena’s.

I had to take a deep, shaky breath and remind myself that the thing I’d just talked to wasn’t Serena. Not really. That thing was a puppet—a newly created wraith that the demons used to terrify me. I couldn’t let their tactics work, not today.

Still, I made a mental note to discuss a few details of this new threat with the Seers. Like the fact that the wraith-Serena could still access memories from her life—the darkest ones, at least. I was bothered by the fact that she had appeared here in the living world, instead of the netherworld where I usually saw the wraiths. This appearance could mean only one thing: that the demons had a new soul reaper working for them. One that might still be somewhere close, watching me.

In case that was true, I stood a little taller and wiped the frightened wince from my lips. The phrase “game face” came to mind, and I actually smiled. My grim, close-lipped expression might not have been any prettier than Serena’s corpse grin. But if anyone—like Kade LaLaurie, for instance—watched me right now, I knew they wouldn’t see me rattled. If anything, my resolve to fight back had just strengthened exponentially.

With my shoulders pressed firmly down and my head erect, I turned from my father’s headstone and went to join the other mourners. Once I entered the crowd, I tried to keep as anonymous as possible—I moved with the flow, exchanging sorrowful looks with people just long enough that they wouldn’t bother to notice me further. I didn’t see my mother in the crowd, which was both a relief and a disappointment.

As I circled the area in which the funeral would take place, I realized that I didn’t recognize any of the other mourners. That was a little odd: I’d known Serena over half of her short life, so I should have known almost everyone there. The fact that I didn’t . . . well, it bothered me. More than it should.

I glanced over at a man in a navy pinstripe suit who was sweeping away a few stray leaves from Serena’s otherwise pristine new headstone. While I watched him work for a moment, I imagined this same man performing this same ritual on my own stone so many years ago. I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the morbid thought. As a distraction, I let my gaze trail down to Serena’s epitaph. Seeing it, I frowned harder.

I’d expected something along the same lines as mine: loving daughter, too soon lost, etc. Instead, beneath the usual information one finds on a headstone, Serena’s slab read:

THE NIGHT WILL SHINE LIKE THE DAY,

FOR DARKNESS IS AS LIGHT TO YOU.

PSALM 139:12

An ironically appropriate memorial, but not something Serena’s parents would have chosen for her. At least, not the parents I knew.

Like an answer to my unasked question, a hearse and two black Town Cars finally pulled up outside the cemetery gates. A group of old men who looked like funeral-home attendants got out of the first Town Car and moved in unison, opening the back of the hearse and removing the casket. The sight of it made me flinch, and I almost turned away. Until I caught a glimpse of the sole person exiting the second Town Car.

I guessed that was the family car—the car that should have carried Serena’s parents and her younger brother to this service. But none of them stepped out of the vehicle. Only my mother did, wearing a worn gray dress and carrying the same purse she had used when I was in high school.

Seeing her smooth the wrinkles from her dress—something I did almost incessantly when I was nervous—I frowned. Why was she the only person in the family car? Why was she in the family car at all?

My curiosity notwithstanding, I hung back, hiding in the thickest part of the crowd while my mother followed the casket’s procession. After the pallbearers had placed the casket on a steel mechanism hovering over the open grave, the man in the pinstripe suit motioned for us to take our seats. I chose one in the last row, where I could slip away easily if I needed to. Then I watched apprehensively as my mother moved to stand near Serena’s headstone.

I thought one of the funeral-home employees—most likely, the pin-striped man—would start the service. But instead, my mother stepped forward and cleared her throat.

“Serena Taylor,” she began, “was an exceptional woman. Most of you know that because you worked with her. You knew her as a good accountant: someone whose work could be trusted; someone who your clients could rely on; someone who you were friends with, outside of work. But I knew her . . . as my daughter.”