“Such a great time,” he added, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial murmur, “that we’ve decided to share something with all of you guys. I was just going to save it for us, but . . . you all remember that I used to make the beer runs for our parties, right?”

Kaylen looked intrigued, as did everyone who’d heard him. A few of them even leaned forward over the confetti-strewn tablecloth.

“And?” Chelsea prompted as she smoothed down a stray tuft of her princess skirt in annoyance. “You don’t just say ‘beer’ on prom night, and then leave us hanging.”

“And . . . I may or may not have come through tonight. Just like the old times.”

“Dude!” O’Reilly cheered, already sold on whatever plan we were going to propose. “That’s badass.”

“Totally,” Scott chimed in, right on schedule.

“What about my dinner?” Mya groaned, leaning around one side of Chelsea’s enormous skirt.

“You can just move the keg into O’Reilly’s truck,” Joshua offered. “And then come back in to finish dinner.”

When Mya made a petulant noise, Kaylen immediately silenced her.

“Oh, shut it, Mya. All you could come up with for tonight’s party was half a bottle of your mom’s old peach schnapps. That’s hardly going to cut it for all of us.”

I released a silent cheer. When we’d been planning this recruitment, Jillian had told the Seers that Kaylen was our linchpin; wherever she went, the mob followed. Clearly, Jillian knew her audience: the other girls quickly agreed with Kaylen, nodding their assent when each of their dates moved to join Joshua and Scott on the keg-moving expedition.

I hung back as Joshua’s friends filtered out of the gym in small clusters so that they wouldn’t arouse the faculty chaperones’ suspicions. While I waited, I allowed myself precisely one minute of utter fear and apprehension. Then I followed the last small group out of the prom, praying that I wouldn’t screw this up.

Chapter

THIRTY

Thank God Joshua had parked his truck in a secluded corner of the school lot, where an overgrown blackjack oak tree threw the truck and the surrounding cars into shadows. Otherwise, every faculty member on parking-lot patrol would notice the crowd of teenagers gathered suspiciously in one place.

As planned, I waited on the ground level, watching a few of the boys struggle to position the keg so that they could roll it off the back of the truck. I said a silent prayer of thanks that the Wilburton High students were so excited—and so blinded by the darkness of the night—that they didn’t notice the addition of a few unfamiliar prom goers to their ranks. Annabel, Drew, Hayley, and Felix had joined the crowd quietly, and they now stared up at the truck as though they’d been there all along.

“It’s so damn dark, I can’t see what we’re doing up here,” one of the boys in the truck bed muttered—possibly Scott, following his preset cues. When a few people murmured in agreement, I cleared my throat.

“I’ll help.”

Even in the dark, I could feel the derision rolling off of the spectators on the ground as well as the non-Seer boys in the truck bed. But instead of contradicting me, Joshua moved to the edge of the tailgate and took my hand. Jillian and Hayley flanked my sides and, with a few tugs and pushes, I climbed into the bed of the truck.

“Thanks, Amelia,” O’Reilly said as I steadied myself. “But I think everything’s all—”

“Good?” I finished for him. “Well, let me make it better.”

Then, before anyone else could protest, I linked hands with Joshua, closed my eyes, and pictured the worst possible thing I could think of: a swarm of shrieking, birdlike demons, diving toward Joshua with murder in their cold black eyes.

Apparently he’d thought of something similar, because I heard the soft whoosh that often preceded my glow, coming from his direction. I opened my eyes to find that we’d both ignited—our fires connected and lapped at each other through our clasped hands. As I’d hoped, he could still glow, days after taking the Transfer Powder.

I’d expected gasps from the crowd, or maybe even some screams. But no one around us made a single noise. I guessed that the first sight of spontaneous combustion just had that effect on people.

“We’re okay,” I whispered to them, taking advantage of their silence and keeping my voice low. “Joshua and I are okay, even though it doesn’t look like it. But you all need to listen to me right now.”

Since Joshua and I could maintain our respective glows by ourselves, I let go of his hand and positioned myself so that everyone could see me more fully.

“Watch again,” I whispered to the crowd. Then I allowed the current of invisibility to run over my skin. I’d never done that while glowing, and the sensation reminded me of Joshua’s and my old electricity—warm and tingling, but not unpleasant.

This time, my actions shocked the audience. A few of them cried out, and someone whimpered—perhaps Chelsea. O’Reilly dropped so many f-bombs that I couldn’t even keep count. The reaction only got worse when I made myself reappear.

O’Reilly let out another expletive, and I had to give him credit for it: this one was a creative, almost Germanic combination of several curse words into one giant superswear.

Realizing that we’d terrified them into listening, I willed my glow to extinguish itself, and Joshua did the same. He stepped back, symbolically giving me the floor.

“I’m not the bad guy,” I said, loud enough so that everyone could hear me. “There are far worse things than me that go bump in the night. And I’m sorry that you all have to see this—to learn all of this. But everyone here is in danger. Some of you more than others. If we don’t do something about it—if you all don’t help us do something—then the creatures that are chasing us will go after you, too. And you really don’t want that to happen.”

“What . . . what are you two?” someone breathed. Kaylen, I thought. I looked down, searching for her in the darkened crowd. But Joshua answered her before I got the chance.

“I’m exactly who you think I am,” he said. “I’m the same guy you’ve known since kindergarten. I’m just a little more . . . enhanced, lately. But Amelia . . . Amelia is . . .”

“I’m dead,” I concluded, when he trailed off. “A ghost, to be specific. Because of that fact, I have the ability to glow like that, and the ability to go invisible. I gave some of those powers to Joshua, so that he could help me fight the things that are coming after all of us.”

“Nothing’s coming after us,” O’Reilly scoffed, suddenly capable of saying more than a handful of vulgar words. “Y’all are crazy, and we’re all just hallucinating.”

I turned back to him again and shook my head. “I wish that were true, O’Reilly. But I think you know, deep in your heart, that it isn’t.”

“Don’t you wonder?” another voice added softly, from one corner of the truck bed. “Don’t you all wonder why so many people die at High Bridge? Why some of your family members, even, have died there?”

Scott’s tone was so sincere, so heartfelt, that it struck me how much all these goings-on must have affected him, too. His gran’s superstitions notwithstanding, Scott had been just like these people only a few weeks ago. He’d been a laid-back, baseball-playing, college-bound guy, and now he was dating a possible target of hell. And that meant he might also become a target.

I smiled sadly at him—at all of them. But I shivered at what he said next.

“Some of us have talked about this,” Scott went on, more quietly than before. “About the night we can’t really remember, when Jillian fell off the bridge. Some of you pretend like it doesn’t bother you—like you don’t have dreams about shadows that try to kill you—but I know the truth: we didn’t imagine them; we didn’t hallucinate them. So don’t you want to find out what really happened? Don’t you want to stop whatever it was that did that to you?”