“You can’t. It’s my life, or whatever this is.” I turned to look at her.

She leaned her head on my shoulder, holding the side of my face close with her hand. Something she hadn’t done since I was a kid. “It’s your life. You’re right about that. And I can’t make a decision like this for you, however much I want to. Which is very, very much.”

“I kind of figured that part out.”

She smiled sadly. “I just got you back. I don’t want to lose you again.”

“I know. I don’t want to leave you either.”

Side by side, we stared at the Christmas town, maybe for the last time. I put the car back where it belonged.

I knew then that we would never have another Christmas together, no matter what happened. I would stay or I would go—but either way, I would move on to somewhere that wasn’t here. Things couldn’t be like this forever, not even in this Gatlin-that-wasn’t-Gatlin. Whether I was able to get my life back or not.

Things changed.

Then they changed again.

Life was like that, and even death, I guess.

I couldn’t be with both my mom and Lena, not in what was left of one lifetime. They would never meet, though I had already told them everything there was to tell about the other. Since I got here, my mom had me describe every charm on Lena’s necklace. Every line of every poem she’d ever written. Every story about the smallest things that had happened to us, things I didn’t even know I remembered.

Still, it wasn’t the same as being a family, or whatever we could have been.

Lena and my mom and me.

They would never laugh about me or keep a secret from me or even fight about me. My mom and Lena were the two most important people in my life, or afterlife, and I could never have both of them together.

That’s what I was thinking when I closed my eyes. When I opened them, my mom was gone—as if she’d known I couldn’t leave her. As if she’d known I wouldn’t be able to walk away.

Truthfully, I didn’t know if I could have done it, myself.

Now I’d never find out.

Maybe it was better that way.

I pocketed the two stones and made my way down the front steps, closing the door carefully behind me. The smell of fried tomatoes came wafting out the door as it shut.

I didn’t say good-bye. I had a feeling we’d see each other again. Someday, somehow.

Aside from that, there wasn’t anything I could tell my mom that she didn’t already know. And no way to say it and still walk out the door.

She knew I loved her. She knew I had to go. At the end of the day, there wasn’t much more to say.

I don’t know if she watched me go.

I told myself she did.

I hoped she didn’t.

CHAPTER 15

The River Master

As I stepped inside the Doorwell, the known world gave way to the unknown world more quickly than I expected. Even in the Otherworld, there are some places that are noticeably more other than others.

The river was one of them. This wasn’t any kind of river I’d seen in the Mortal Gatlin County. Like the Great Barrier, this was a seam. Something that held worlds together without being in any one of them.

I was in totally uncharted territory.

Luckily, Uncle Abner’s crow seemed to know the way. Exu flapped overhead, gliding and hanging in circles above me, sometimes landing on high branches to wait for me if I fell too far behind. He didn’t seem to mind the job either; he tolerated our quest with only the occasional squawk. Maybe he enjoyed getting out for a change. He reminded me of Lucille that way, except I didn’t catch her eating little mice carcasses when she was hungry.

And when I caught him looking at me, he was really looking at me. Every time I started to feel normal again, he would catch my eye and send shivers down my spine, like he was doing it on purpose. Like he knew he could.

I wondered if Exu was a real bird. I knew he could cross between worlds, but did that make him supernatural? According to Uncle Abner, it only made him a crow.

Maybe all crows were just creepy.

As I walked farther, the swamp weeds and cypress trees jutting out of the murky water led to greener grass beyond the bank, grass so tall I could barely see over it in places.

I wove through the grass, following the black bird in the sky, trying not to remember too much about where I was going or what I was leaving behind. It was hard enough not to imagine the look on my mother’s face when I walked out the door.

I tried desperately not to think about her eyes, about the way they lit up when she saw me. Or her hands, the way she waved them in the air as she talked, as if she thought she could pull words out of the sky with her fingers. And her arms, wrapping around me like my own house, because she was the place where I was from.

I tried not to think about the moment the door closed. It would never open again, not for me. Not like that.

It’s what I wanted. I said it to myself as I walked. It’s what she wanted for me. To have a life. To live.

To leave.

Exu squawked, and I beat back the tall brush and the grass.

Leaving was harder than I ever could’ve imagined, and part of me still couldn’t believe I had done it. But as much as I tried not to think about my mom, I tried to keep Lena’s face in my mind, a constant reminder of why I was doing this—risking everything.

I wondered what she was doing right now.… Writing in her notebook? Practicing the viola? Reading her battered copy of To Kill a Mockingbird?

I was still thinking about it when I heard music in the distance. It sounded like… the Rolling Stones?