She lifted one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “Because you need a backup plan.”

I made a small noise of disgust. “So, what, you think I should fall on my sword if things get bad? Is that it?”

“No, you stupid girl,” she hissed, abruptly angry. “I want you to protect yourself, if you have to.”

“What are you talking about? I’ll supposedly have my glow, and anyway, I’m pretty sure kitchen knives don’t work on demons.”

“Of course they don’t. But knives can work on other ghosts.”

My frown deepened. “No, they don’t.”

“Maybe not if I wielded them, or Joshua.” She paused, giving me a smile that was both dark and conspiratorial. “But if you take a knife to another supernatural being, that’s a different story.”

At first I didn’t understand what she meant. Then I remembered: I’d hurt Eli—drawn blood, even—when he tried to kiss me. According to Eli, that was something that shouldn’t have happened. Ghosts couldn’t hurt each other physically, any more than they could strike out and hurt the living without demonic assistance. And yet, I’d done it. Twice.

I’d told Ruth about it on the phone the other day, just as an afterthought in my long story; I had no idea if what she said might actually work.

“But . . . it’s an object,” I continued to protest. “One from the living world. I’m pretty sure it will just go right through any ghost that isn’t Risen.”

“Maybe. But nonetheless, you do have the power to blood-let. So if the need arises . . . well, I’ve done what I can.”

As if to emphasize what a huge indulgence she’d made on my behalf, she wiped her hands together, symbolically cleaning them of any blood I might “let.”

All I could offer in return was a quiet, pensive, “Thanks.” Then I moved the knife to my hip and slipped the blade through the space between my jeans and belt, so that the hilt caught and held the knife at my side. Like some modern-day gunslinger in skinny jeans and thousand-dollar boots.

Ruth nodded—in approval or farewell, I couldn’t tell. She turned away and navigated back to the entrance of High Bridge. When she reached the top edge of the embankment, she paused, and I thought for one strange second that she might look back at me. Give me a salute for luck, maybe.

Instead, she began to move deftly down the side of the steep hill. As her head ducked below road level and out of my sight, I heard her call out to her Seer circles.

“It’s time.”

Chapter

SIXTEEN

The Seers hadn’t been chanting for very long, but the sound had already started to freak me out. There’s nothing like fifty or so voices speaking Latin in unison to make one’s skin crawl. I almost would have welcomed the netherworld, if only to get them to stop.

Almost.

Trying not to listen to the chants, I started to play with the hilt of my new knife, using it to slap the flat side of the blade against my jeans in a kind of rhythmic beat. Since that little sound didn’t really do much to help me drown out the noises below, I began to hum and then outright sing, as I tried unsuccessfully to summon my glow.

“Glow,” I sang, intentionally too loud and off-key. “Glow, glow, glow. Gloooooowwwww. . . .”

Catchy.

My blood seemed to freeze the instant I heard that word echo off the girders around me. I froze too, holding very still with my hand on the hilt of the knife. I listened intently, but after a few minutes of nothing but that damn chanting below me, I felt foolish.

It’s nothing, I told myself. Just the Seers’ voices, carried by the wind.

Still, it took me more than a few seconds to ease out of my rigid stance and shake my head. “Idiot,” I chided myself, laughing quietly.

“Only because you’re still here.”

That time, I knew I didn’t imagine the voice. It echoed so loudly, I had no choice but to admit that something had finally joined me on this bridge. Again, my hand flew to the hilt of the knife and I spun around, searching for the speaker. I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t find anything: it wasn’t that kind of night, and it was never that kind of place.

“What do you want?” I addressed the air itself, since I technically had no one to confront.

“To save you, Amelia.”

By now I could tell that the speaker was male, although his voice sounded distorted, like it came through some busted-up old microphone.

“Save me?” I asked, pacing nervously around my spot on the bridge, still looking this way and that for some sign of presence. “Save me, how?”

“By telling you . . . to run. Now.”

It was the pause—the slight, struggling gasp for breath—that made me realize who spoke to me.

“Eli? Eli, where are you?”

Now my pacing became urgent. If Eli was here, maybe I could find him, maybe I could get him to take me to my father and Gaby when the netherworld opened, before it was too late.

But my heart sank before he could even reply. Just as that little hitch in breath told me that the voice belonged to Eli, it also told me that Eli wasn’t here in the living world. Worse, he wasn’t any place where he could help himself, much less me.

“You’re projecting, aren’t you?” I said, answering my own question on his behalf.

“Yes.”

He hissed the word, but I could tell that he made the sound more from exertion than ferocity. Afterward he panted, as though that one word, projected from his dimension to this one, might break him.

“Eli, I can’t leave.” I grimaced and glanced around the empty bridge. “I have to stay here and do this, or they’re going to start—”

Eli’s interrupting scream was so piercing that I reflexively hunched my shoulders and clenched my hands into fists. The shriek ended almost as quickly as it began, fading with a strangled gargle. Like he’d actually been strangled.

“Eli?” I yelled, spinning around frantically. “Eli?”

“Eli is now otherwise engaged,” another voice re-sponded. I searched for this new speaker, but of course, the bridge remained empty.

For a petrified minute, nothing else happened. Then tendrils of black smoke appeared a few feet from me. They began swirling around one another, writhing like a den of snakes until they coalesced and started to form a human figure. Initially, the person’s features were indistinct, as shifting and difficult to determine as shapes in dark water. When they finally solidified, a young man in a well-cut gray suit and wire-rimmed glasses faced me. His smile seemed benign, even gracious. But I clutched the hilt of my knife more tightly.

Alexander Etienne, or Kade LaLaurie, depending on the situation. As if anyone in their right mind would want to meet this thing, in any situation.

“Hello, Amelia sweetheart,” he purred, like we were old friends.

“Go to hell, Kade.”

I spat the words without forethought, and instantly regretted them when Kade started laughing as if I’d just told the most hilarious joke. Which, considering his new home, I probably had.

Kade raised both eyebrows, just above the rims of his wire-frame glasses.

“So, Amelia, how’s life?” he asked. Then he affected a bashful frown. “Oops, I forgot: how’s half-life?”

“Where is she, you insane piece of trash?” I demanded, completely ignoring his taunts.

Kade’s frown grew even more exaggerated, until he resembled an innocent little boy who didn’t understand the question. “Where’s who, Amelia? To whom could you possibly be referring?”

“You know exactly who I’m talking about.”