“Aunt Twyla? Is that you?” I saw a flash of smile.

Amma shushed me.

I felt Aunt Prue’s gnarled hand clutching mine, patting me reassuringly.

Shh.

I smelled something burning, and realized a handful of herbs was smoking in a painted ceramic bowl on the windowsill. Aunt Prue’s bed was covered with her familiar bedspread, the one with the little balls stitched all over it, instead of her hospital sheets. Her flowered pillows were behind her head. Harlon James IV was curled by her feet. There was something different about Aunt Prue. There wasn’t a tube or a monitor or even a piece of tape attached to her body. She was dressed in her crocheted slippers and her best pink flowered housecoat, the one with the mother-of-pearl buttons. As if she were going out for one of her drives, to inspect every front yard on the street and complain about who needed a new coat of paint on their house.

I was right. She was number seventeen.

I pushed between Amma and Arelia and took Aunt Prue’s hand. Amma opened one eye and shot me a look. “Hands to yourself, Ethan Wate. You don’t need to go where she’s goin’.”

I stood taller. “She’s my aunt, Amma. I want to say good-bye.”

Arelia shook her head, without opening her eyes. “No time for that now.” Her voice sounded like it was drifting into the room from far away.

“Aunt Prue came to find me. I think she has something to tell me.”

Amma opened her eyes, raising an eyebrow. “There’s the world a the livin’, and there’s the world a the done-livin’. She’s had a good life, and she’s ready. And right now, I’ve got enough trouble keepin’ the folks I care about here with the livin’. So if you don’t mind…” She sniffed, as if she was trying to get dinner on the table and I was getting in the way.

I gave her a look I’d never given Amma before. One that said: I mind.

She sighed and took my hand in one of hers, my aunt’s hand in the other. I closed my eyes and waited. “Aunt Prue?”

Nothing happened.

Aunt Prue.

I opened one eye. “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

“Can’t say as I know. All that fussin’, and those Demons makin’ all that racket, probably scared her off.”

“All those bodies,” Arelia whispered.

Amma nodded. “Too many folks movin’ to the Otherworld tonight.”

“But it’s not finished yet. There’ll be eighteen. That’s what the song said.”

Amma looked at me, her expression broken. “Maybe the song’s wrong. Even the cards and the Greats are wrong sometime or another. Maybe not everything rolls down the hill as quick as you think.”

“Those are my mom’s songs, and she said eighteen. She’s never wrong, and you know it.”

I know, Ethan Wate. She didn’t have to say it. I could see it in her eyes, in the way her jaw was set and her face was lined.

I held out my hand again. “Please.”

Amma looked over her shoulder. “Leah, Arelia, Twyla, come give us a hand here.”

We joined hands, creating a circle—Mortal and Caster. Me, the lost Wayward. Leah, the Light Succubus. Amma, the Seer who was lost in the darkness. Arelia, the Diviner who knew more than she wanted to. And Twyla, who had once called the spirits of the dead, a Sheer in the Otherworld. The light to show Aunt Prue the way home.

They were all part of my family now.

Here we were, holding hands in a hospital room, saying good-bye to someone who was in so many ways already long gone.

Amma nodded to Twyla. “You mind doin’ the honors?”

Within seconds, the room disappeared into shadow instead of light. I felt the wind blowing, even though we were inside.

Or so I thought.

The darkness solidified, until we were standing in an enormous room, facing a vault door. I recognized it immediately—the vault in the back of Exile, the club from the Tunnels. This time, the room was empty. I was alone.

I put both hands on the door, touching the silver wheel that opened it. I pulled as hard as I could, but I couldn’t make the wheel turn.

“You’re gonna have ta put a little more muscle inta it, Ethan.” I turned around, and Aunt Prue was standing behind me, in her crocheted slippers and her housecoat, leaning heavily on her IV pole. It wasn’t even attached to her body.

“Aunt Prue!” I hugged her, feeling the bones behind her papery skin. “Don’t go.”

“That’s enough a your fussin’. You’re as bad as Amma. She’s been here ’most every night this week, tryin’ ta get me ta stay. Keeps putting somethin’ that smells like Harlon James’ old diapers under my pillow.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve had my fill a this place. They don’t even have my stories on the TV here.”

“Can’t you stay? There are so many parts of the Tunnels left to map. And I don’t know what Aunt Mercy and Aunt Grace are going to do without you.”

“That’s why I wanted ta talk ta you. It’s important, so you pay attention, ya hear?”

“I’m listening.” I knew there was something she needed to tell me, something none of the others could know.

Aunt Prue leaned in on her IV and whispered. “You gotta stop ’em.”

“Stop who?” The hair on the back of my neck was standing up.

Another whisper. “I know exactly what they’re fixin’ ta do, which is invite half a the town ta my party.”