It occurred to me for the first time that while she hadn’t said so, she’d been looking for my opinion. My approval…No, my appreciation.

She didn’t need it. She wasn’t like that. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t have liked to have it. Spirit or no, she was still human. And all I’d been worried about had been my own too-strong reaction and what that meant for me.

I concentrated harder, funneling my fear and anger at myself into force behind my thoughts. I willedher to appear.

“You’re my spirit guide,” I said through clenched teeth. “You haveto come when I call, and I’m calling. Get here. Please?”

That last word sounded dangerously close to begging, and I didn’t care. It wasn’t for Alona, but for whoever else might be listening. God. The light. Someone was running things, and I needed whoever that was to hear me.

Please don’t do this. Don’t send her to me and then take her away. Please don’t. Just don’t. Please. I need her.

I kept repeating those words over and over again, distantly aware of the kids resuming their game and another car or two passing me.

But I didn’t stop until I felt a strange shift in the air, like the world had moved around me, water flowing around a rock.

I opened my eyes, and Alona—a beginning outline of her, anyway—stood a few feet in front of me, looking around with a startled expression.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Thank God.

But that brief moment of dizzying relief quickly dissipated, replaced by a growing sense of panic. She wasn’t filling in the way she should have. I could still see through her. For the first time, she actually looked like a traditional ghost, at least the way they were most often depicted on television and in movies.

No, no. Not good. Her energy was low enough that she couldn’t even fully appear.

“Say something nice!” I shouted at her, fighting the urge to grab her and hold on. I wasn’t sure what would happen, what I would do, if my hands passed through her.

Her lips moved to form words, but no sound emerged, and her eyes widened. She knew something was wrong. She looked down at herself, her blond hair sliding forward over her shoulder as she took in the extent of her nonexistence. And when she lifted her head to face me, tears sparkled in her eyes. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders before raising her hand slowly and turning it palm out. Stop…or good-bye.

“No!” I moved closer to her, within touching distance. “You have to do something.” I’d never felt more helpless in my life. I couldn’t do anything to help her. Then a flash of brilliance—or utter idiocy—struck. “Claim me again.” A stronger tie to me, one with a firmly held position smack in between the living and the dead, might help, even if it was only reinforcing a connection that already existed. I refused to blink, my eyes burning with the effort, as though my gaze would hold her here. “Claim me again,” I repeated, hearing the plea in my voice and praying she could, too.

Her gaze met mine and held it as she said the words. I still couldn’t hear her, but I caught a few of the words on her lips. “Will Killian.” And then last, so slowly that there was no doubt what she was saying. “Mine.” Tears slipped down her face, and I knew that no matter what differences there were between us, this wasn’t the way either of us wanted it to end.

She closed her eyes and repeated the words over and over again, just as I had earlier.

The air around her wavered, like when you open the door to a car that’s been closed up for hours on a hot summer day. And then suddenly she was there…fully there.

I reached out for her hand at the same time she grabbed for mine. We moved toward each other, narrowly avoiding banging heads in our hurry. She wrapped her arms around me, and I buried my face against the side of her warm neck and in her hair. I could feel her trembling…or maybe it was me.

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” I murmured against her skin, but I wasn’t sure which one of us I was talking to. Maybe both of us.

“You’re right. I think he’s crazy,” I heard one of the tennis court kids declare loudly in a tone that suggested a great debate had been resolved. And for once in my life, I did not care in the least.

Will would not stop looking at me.

And it wasn’t the hey-you’re-so-attractive kind of looking that I was used to, once upon a time. That would have beenfine. No, this was more like compulsively-checking-every-five-seconds-to-see-if-you’re-still-here-and-not-slowly-disappearing-before-my-very-eyes kind of looking. Which was a little disconcerting.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked for the twelfth time in fifteen minutes, with another sidelong glance at me in the passenger seat. Once we’d managed to disentangle ourselves from our stance in the middle of the road, he’d led me back to the Dodge with a tight grip on my hand. His eyes were red. He’d been crying. So had I. Though neither of us was talking about that.

“Stop asking me that,” I said, trying to sound as snappish as I would have normally. But I couldn’t blame him, for the staring or the asking. I kept checking my hands and feet to make sure they were actually there and not see-through. In the grand scheme of things, I hadn’t been gone for all that long. I’d disappeared for hours before, after the emotional turmoil of learning my mom was tossing my stuff and my dad was having a new baby. But I’d never, nevercome back as faintly as I had this time.

I’d shouted and he couldn’t hear me. I could see it in the panic on his face. I was going, going, gone—like falling off the side of cliff in the movies—until I managed to find a foothold and stop myself. But who knew how long it would last? That bit of rock or vine always gives out, doesn’t it? The only question was when.

Even now I could feel the ebb and flow of energy in a way that I had not since right before the light showed up to take me away from Will’s hospital room a few months ago.

I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the lighter, floatier, disconnectedfeeling that came with being outside of Lily’s body. Like I might drift away at any second. I hated it. When Will let go of my hand to drive, it had taken every ounce of my considerable self-possession not to scoot closer (it wasn’t like I needed a seat belt to keep me alive if we crashed) and grab hold of his arm or a fistful of his (awful) T-shirt, as if he were an anchor keeping me here. But when it came down to it, that wouldn’t stop me from disappearing, and I couldn’t stand the idea of slowly losing the feel of him until there was nothing.

So I kept my hands to myself and stayed on my side of the car.

“If you want, I can take you home…to my house…or the Turners’,” he offered, with another cautious look at me. “And you can rest if you—”

“I’m dead, not sick,” I said sharply. “Remember?” Like either of us needed any greater reminder than what had just happened.

He flinched, actually hunching his shoulders like I’d hit him. But pretending otherwise, particularly now, wasn’t going to do us any good. It was kind of pointless, wasn’t it? I felt tears welling up again and forced myself to look away from him, out the side window.

“So that’s it? With Erin, I mean?” I asked, my voice rougher than normal. I hoped he wouldn’t notice or call me on the abrupt subject change. He’d filled me in on what I’d missed, though most of it I’d already pieced together on my own. “She made off with Lily’s body.” That little bitch.“To go party, eat hamburgers, and drink beer or something?”

We were on our way to check at Krekel’s now, stopping at every liquor store along the way (thanks, Mom, for that bit of knowledge) for a quick peek around the parking lot. She couldn’t buy beer—not looking like Lily, who barely seemed as old as she was—but given what I knew of Erin, and what Will had told me, she probably had her fair share of experience with “hey, dude”-ing it from older guys.