After a few minutes, I sighed and lifted my head to stare down the table. Everyone that we could possibly approach for tonight’s mission was here, seated at this table. I couldn’t ask for a better moment to start recruiting. I knew that we didn’t have much time left to do so, either.

Still, I hesitated, not quite ready to end this part of the night yet. And I couldn’t even muster up the will to feel guilty about it. I waited for a lull in Joshua’s conversation, and then caught his attention.

“It really is beautiful in here, isn’t it?” I asked him, tilting my head to indicate our surroundings. For a moment, he didn’t respond—just stared at me with the same sad smile that he’d worn earlier. Finally, he turned his lips to my ear and whispered, “Yes, it is.”

I knew what he meant by that comment—knew who he meant. And I suddenly couldn’t help myself: I lifted my head from Joshua’s shoulder, threw my arms around his neck, and pressed my lips to his. When he kissed me back, a chorus of hoots and cheers from the table interrupted us. I pulled away first, smiling and blushing with equal ferocity.

“Mayhew, dude,” O’Reilly called out appreciatively from across the table. “The night is young—save some for the after-party.”

I turned my grin on O’Reilly and then, catching sight of his outfit, I burst into laughter. He wore a baby-blue tuxedo with a formal cummerbund stretched tightly over his thick frame.

“I love it, O’Reilly,” I said, pointing to his ruffled dress shirt. “It’s too bad you shaved off your beard—you would’ve looked exactly like Barry Gibb.”

Immediately, I recognized my mistake. Although O’Reilly had heard of me by now, he and I had never formally met. And judging by his politely confused grin, he didn’t feel as familiar with me as I did with him.

“You’re . . . Amelia, right?” he asked haltingly. “Mayhew’s new girl?”

I tried to keep my voice pleasantly vague as I chirped, “That’s right—nice to meet you.”

But despite my less intimate tone, O’Reilly’s grin remained unsure. “How did you know about my beard, Amelia?”

I blinked back for a second, searching for a plausible explanation. Then I smiled widely. “Who didn’t know about your beard, O’Reilly? Rumor has it, you had a colony of pygmies living in there.”

He boomed a good-natured laugh. “Actually, I think it was just a couple of birds.”

“Sexy,” Joshua interjected. “And sanitary.”

He slipped his hand beneath the table to clutch mine, probably to keep me from tapping my nails nervously on the tabletop. Thankfully, a little more banter with O’Reilly convinced me that I’d averted disaster. He no longer seemed bothered by my earlier slipup.

“Are y’all going to the after-party at Mya’s house?” O’Reilly asked me, shouting over the pounding bass line of a new song.

Joshua flashed O’Reilly a bland, if somewhat tense, smile. “No, man. Not really our scene.”

Then Joshua looked back at me, silently asking whether it was time to present our bait. I wavered, knowing what I should say. Yet somehow, I still couldn’t. I began to squirm uncomfortably in my chair, so Joshua placed a steadying hand on the small of my back.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yeah . . . just, you know, dancing,” I offered lamely.

One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “In your chair?”

“Don’t knock it. Chair dancing is a valid form of artistic expression in many cultures.”

“Such as?”

“Um . . . ours?”

Joshua laughed loudly. Then he jerked his head toward the dance floor. “How about trying those moves on your feet instead?”

I bit my lower lip and peeked over his shoulder at the dance floor. “You think we have time?”

He gave me that sad smile again. “No,” he replied softly.

But then, despite his answer, he suddenly pulled me up from my chair and tugged me toward the dance floor, where a shifting, noisy group of his classmates was jumping around like lunatics. When we reached them, Joshua spun me out into the middle of the dance floor.

At first I hesitated, uncertain about whether this was the wisest thing to do. But it didn’t take long for me to think, Why not? And why not now?

The current song was fast and wild, a frenetic mix of synth and drums. I didn’t recognize it, but that didn’t matter: the song pounded too insistently for me to ignore. The sound of it thrummed through my body, matching the race of my pulse. I began to dance to its beat, letting myself forget about everything that had haunted me since the day I died. Dark, light, love, hate—I let them go. And for a few, ecstatic moments, I was purely happy. Completely free.

Joshua must have sensed the change in me, because he moved in to dance with me. In the brief glimpses I caught of his face, I could see that we both needed this moment of abandon—we needed it desperately.

Of course, those kinds of moments don’t last forever. Soon the music shifted into a slower, sweeter song. The new song was pretty enough, but I still felt a twinge of melancholy—of loss, even. I wanted to be free, for just a minute or two longer.

When Joshua drew me closer to him, however, I knew that the moment of freedom hadn’t really ended. It had just changed into something softer and more intimate. I slipped one hand around the nape of his neck and then tilted my head back so that I could look into his eyes.

“Thank you,” I said, still needing to talk loudly over the music so that he could hear me.

“For what?”

“Bringing me inside tonight.”

“I don’t think I had much of a choice: Jillian and you kind of demanded it.” Despite the teasing words, Joshua’s smile was tender.

“Well, thank you for dancing with me, then.”

“Always,” he replied, so quietly that I read the word on his lips, rather than heard it. And with that one word, my mood darkened. We didn’t have “always” to dance together. We had right now; I knew that, as well as I knew any other certainty in my bleak future.

But I had to shut those thoughts out, before they ruined what little time I had left. So I laid my head on Joshua’s chest and clenched my eyes tightly shut. Although I’d never heard this song before, I hummed along until its melody had anesthetized me enough to meet Joshua’s eyes.

When I lifted my head again, however, Joshua was ready. He swooped in before I had a chance to speak and planted a firm kiss on my mouth. I made a small noise of surprise, but then melted into him gratefully.

He knew. He always knew.

We stayed like that for a very long time, kissing and dancing slowly no matter what the tempo of the current song. Occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of Kaylen and O’Reilly dancing beside us, or Jillian and Scott holding each other tight. But I couldn’t seem to focus on anything except this moment. This kiss. This boy.

Finally, during one of the slow dances, Joshua broke away from my lips to whisper, “Do you realize that we’re almost the only people out here right now?”

He was right: the dance floor was starting to clear out as people returned to their seats for the dinner portion of the evening. Back at our table, Jillian and Scott were already waiting, glancing impatiently between us, the tableful of potential recruits, and the doors.

“Crap, Joshua, we’ve got to go,” I cried, taking his hand from my waist and using it to drag him off the dance floor.

Joshua and I were both breathless with urgency when we reached the table. Seeing me collide with my former chair while practically panting, Kaylen smirked.

“Have a good time out there?” she asked, flicking her gaze from me to Joshua. Clearly, I wasn’t forgiven for the slumber-party incident. I was about to respond with something extra snarky, but I just didn’t have another moment to spare.

“We had a great time,” I gushed, glancing back at Joshua, who stood a foot behind me with his hand on my hip. Although I truly meant what I’d said, Joshua also knew that that was his cue.