At this point, I felt a little frisson of excitement. Ruth had paid attention to me on the phone, and she clearly understood the problem: no human effort would take down that bridge, and even if it fell, nothing mattered unless the hell gate itself closed. I leaned forward, listening more closely to Ruth’s plan.

“The real solution,” she said, “is to open their gateway under its earthly façade, and then make it inoperable. Will this close hell itself? No. But it will end their reign here, in this one region; it will force them to hunt elsewhere—it will keep our children, our grandchildren, safe.”

“How?” someone called out from the crowd. “How do we make it inoperable?”

For half a heartbeat, Ruth’s gaze seemed to flit toward me. I thought maybe I’d just imagined it, until she announced the most crucial part of her plan.

“Dust,” she announced proudly. “We’ll salt the very earth of the netherworld with our Seer dust, so that nothing dark can ever tread it again.”

The crowd began to chatter so excitedly, so loudly, that no one could hear me shriek, “No! Absolutely not!”

Almost no one. For a second time, Ruth’s gaze flickered in my direction. I tried to catch her eye—tried to plead wordlessly with her to find some other way to win this battle. But she looked away quickly, turning back to her enormous new coven with a broad grin.

“We will season the waters of their river with our potions,” she proclaimed over the enthusiastic babble, “so that nothing dark will ever flow in our own river again.”

Now the crowd broke into actual cheers. I could only cover my mouth with one hand to hold back a sob. There were so many Seers on board with this plan—so many Seers in general—that I would never convince them to keep the netherworld open long enough to free my friends. I wasn’t even sure that once they’d completed the task of jamming the portal, they’d let me escape it.

I couldn’t believe I’d actually wanted to call in Seer reinforcements. I felt cheated, tricked, furious . . . until I caught sight of someone approaching the porch from behind the crowd. At first, the figure was blurred by the darkness. But as he drew closer, I could see his face.

Joshua still wore his baseball uniform and, even from this distance, I could tell that he’d played an intense game: dirt streaked everything, from his knees to his shoulders. He must not have joined the crowd early enough to hear his grandmother’s plan, because after a moment’s search, he found my face and then flashed me a warm, radiant smile.

That one smile changed everything. After a smile like that, I had to go along with Ruth’s plan. Mostly because I couldn’t imagine a world—living or beyond—that didn’t include Joshua’s smile. And I knew, deep down, that the demons would eventually come for him. How could they not, if they really wanted me to say yes?

So it didn’t matter that I might lose my own afterlife. It didn’t matter that I would have to think, hard, of a way to save the people I cared about before Ruth trapped them in the netherworld forever. All that mattered at that moment was that I loved Joshua, and I wanted him safe.

Without another thought, I leaped off the porch, ran down the path that the recoiling Seers made for me, and threw myself into Joshua’s open arms. I didn’t even have time to register his arms around me before I planted a kiss on his waiting mouth.

It wasn’t until he kissed me back that my brain finally processed the miracle: I could feel him again.

Joshua pulled away from the kiss only long enough to gasp, “What the hell—”

“I don’t know,” I interrupted breathlessly, shaking my head. “But I don’t even care right now.”

Neither did Joshua. His lips met mine again, just as forcefully and joyously as before.

I didn’t feel the fiery tingle that had accompanied each of our touches before I Rose. Instead, I just felt him—warm and insistent and real. I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe from the ecstasy of kissing him again. I wanted to draw him into me, to join my heart to his. Because I couldn’t do that, I let my fingers run everywhere: his jawline, his neck, his chest. Joshua dropped his hands to my waist and tugged me more firmly to his hips. In turn, I tangled my fingers in his hair and moaned against his mouth.

Shock, fear, wonder, joy all flowed through me so quickly that I grew light-headed. When my knees began to buckle, Joshua held me tighter but he didn’t stop kissing me. I could read his thoughts in that kiss: just like me, he didn’t know how long we had together before this miracle vanished, and he didn’t want to waste a split second of it.

Which was apparently all we had left.

The instant Ruth boomed, “Enough!” the sensation of Joshua’s lips and arms disappeared. I actually lost my balance and fell forward with my own arms open, so that they nearly passed through his body like an insubstantial breeze. Once steady, however, I shared a brief, fraught look with Joshua and then spun around to face our interrupter.

Ruth remained on the porch, but she now stood with her feet apart, pointing at me like I was some kind of criminal. Her expression mirrored that worn by most of the Seers in the crowd: disgust.

“Abomination.”

She whispered the word, but the crowd had grown so silent that I heard her clearly. Her eyes burned with confidence, self-righteous indignation. I knew what the Amelia from last fall would have done, if she’d seen that kind of glare: she would have run away, scared and alone in the black night. But I wasn’t the Amelia from last fall. I was something stronger and fiercer.

Something that had suddenly gotten out of control.

Before I’d even had the conscious thought to summon it, my glow appeared, curling around me in licks of bright flame. The fire burned me, inside and out, and I began to storm toward the porch with wide, brutal strides.

As I walked, the Seers once again parted for me like the proverbial sea. But this time, they didn’t sneer at me . . . they cowered. With each step, I let my head swivel from one Seer to another, grinning broadly. Several of them actually responded with gasps, which only made my smile grow. Such small game couldn’t distract me. Right now, all I knew was that the vicious old woman on the porch needed to burn.

“Amelia!”

Joshua’s voice shocked me out of my fierce trance, and the glow extinguished itself immediately. My fury disappeared with it.

I blinked rapidly, before making eye contact with Ruth. She looked horrified, even more than when I’d seen her poisoned. And suddenly, I’d never felt more ashamed of myself. Fighting the sting of mortified tears, I let my head hang low.

It’s already happening, I thought bleakly. I’m letting myself go dark.

My head shot back up, however, when Ruth finally spoke. Probably because she didn’t sound scared, or even angry. Instead, she sounded elated.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, once again pointing at me. “Meet our new secret weapon.”

“So . . . I’m basically going to be a scarecrow?”

When no one answered me right away, I snorted in disbelief.

I didn’t even try to mask my bitter tone. I’d spent several hours listening to Ruth’s grand plan for me while sitting on an uncomfortable wooden pew in her old church—the place she’d taken me, Joshua, and a few Seer leaders after the rest of the crowd dispersed and hugs were exchanged with Rebecca and Jeremiah (who had no idea what had occupied their front yard, only minutes before they arrived home). Now, after hearing Ruth out for what felt like the thousandth time, I added disgruntled to tired and achy on my growing list of complaints.

On a big-picture level, I understood that this was everyone’s problem. But right now the demons weren’t targeting Ruth’s coven or their loved ones: they were targeting mine. Unfortunately, this little conclave seemed intent on pushing me to the edge of their plan. And once I’d told them about my previous interactions with the demons as well as my meeting with Serena that morning, the Seers settled on the most dangerous edge. The one where I stood on the bridge like some sacrificial lamb—practically offering myself up to the demons on a platter. All so the Seers could trap my family and friends in the netherworld forever.