And once I was there, I knew what to do, and I could do it myself. In fact, I was actually looking forward to it. I’d done a little thinking ahead of time. I could see why Amma liked crossword puzzles so much. Once you got the right mind-set, they were sort of addictive.

When I found my way into the office—past Swamp Cooler City—the mock-up of the current issue was on one of the three little desks, right where it had been last time. I fanned open the papers. This time I found the crossword puzzle without much trouble.

This puzzle was even less finished than the last one. Maybe the staff was getting lazy, now that they knew there was a chance someone else would do it for them.

Either way, Lena would be reading the crossword puzzle. I picked up the nearest letter and pushed it into place.

Four down.

O. N. Y. X.

As in, a black stone.

Nine across.

T. R. I. B. U. T. A. R. Y.

As in, a river.

Six down.

O. C. U. L. U. S.

As in, an eye.

Eight across.

C. H. A. R. I. S. M. A.

As in, charm.

M. A. T. E. R.

As in, my own. Lila Jane Evers Wate.

S. E. R. I. O. U. S.

As in, grave.

That was the message. I need the black stone—the eye of a river, and the one you wear on your charm necklace. And I need you to leave it for me at my mother’s grave. I couldn’t spell it out any clearer than that.

At least not in this edition of the paper.

By the time I finished, I was exhausted, as if I’d been running sprints all afternoon on the basketball court. I didn’t know how much time would need to pass in the Otherworld before Lena got my message in this one. I only knew that she’d get it.

Because I was as sure of her as I was of myself.

When I got home to the Otherworld—to my house, or my mom’s grave, whatever you wanted to call it—there it was, waiting for me on the doorstep.

She must have left it on my mother’s grave, like I asked.

I couldn’t believe it had worked.

Lena’s black-rock charm from Barbados, the one she always wore around her neck, sat in the middle of the doormat.

I had the second river stone.

A wave of relief settled over me. It lasted about five seconds, until I realized what the stone also meant.

It was time to go. Time to say good-bye.

So why couldn’t I bring myself to say it?

“Ethan.” I heard my mom’s voice, but I didn’t look up.

I was sitting on the floor of the living room, my back to the couch. I had a house and a car in my hands, stray pieces of my mom’s old Christmas town. I couldn’t take my eyes off the car.

“You found the lost green car. I never could.”

She didn’t answer. Her hair looked even messier than usual. Her face was streaked with tears.

I don’t know why the town was set out on the coffee table like that, but I put down the house and moved the tiny green tin car farther along the table. Away from the toy animals, the church with the bent steeple, and the pipe-cleaner tree.

Like I said, time to go.

Part of me wanted to take off running the second I heard about what I had to do to get back to my old life. Part of me didn’t care about anything but seeing Lena again.

But as I sat there, all I could think about was how much I didn’t want to leave my mom. How much I’d missed her, and how quickly I had gotten used to seeing her in the house, hearing her in the next room. I didn’t know if I wanted to give that up again, no matter how badly I needed to go back.

So all I could do was just sit there and look at that old car and wonder how something that had been lost for so long could be found again.

My mom took a breath, and I closed my eyes before she could say a word. It didn’t stop her. “I don’t think it’s wise, Ethan. I don’t think it’s safe, and I don’t think you should be going. No matter what your Aunt Prue says.” Her voice wavered.

“Mom.”

“You’re only seventeen.”

“Actually, I’m not. What I am now is nothing.” I looked up at her. “And I hate to break it to you, but it’s a little late for that speech. You have to admit that safety might not be my biggest concern at the moment. Now that I’m dead and everything.”

“Well, if you say it like that.” She sighed and sat down on the floor next to me.

“How do you want me to say it?”

“I don’t know. Passed on?” She tried not to smile.

I half-smiled back. “Sorry. Passed on.” She was right. Folks didn’t like saying dead, not where we were from. It was impolite. As if saying it somehow made it true. As if words themselves were more powerful than anything that could actually happen to you.

Maybe they were.

After all, that’s what I had to do now, wasn’t it? Destroy the words on a page in some book in a library that had changed my Mortal destiny. Was it really so far-fetched to think that words had a way of shaping a person’s whole life?

“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, sweetheart. Maybe if I had figured it out for myself, before all this, you wouldn’t even be here. There wouldn’t have been a car accident, and there wouldn’t have been a water tower—” She stopped.

“You can’t keep things from happening to me, Mom. Not even these things.” I leaned my head back along the edge of the couch. “Not even messed-up things.”

“What if I want to?”