Don’t let him do that. You have to keep those with you!

Startled, I looked around again for the source of that other voice. Not only could I not see it, but the world around me also faded again, threatening to disintegrate into the bluish mist that clouded my vision.

Who was that? The only person who was supposed to speak to anybody after they died was God, and I felt completely positive that God’s first message to me from the Great Beyond wouldn’t be telling me to hang on to my jewelry.

Still, that was the only guidance I’d received so far. I figured I had better listen.

As Lucas picked up the jewelry, I tried to say, Don’t. Leave them behind. He hesitated, but I couldn’t be sure if that was my influence or not. What else could I do?

Then I remembered how it had felt when Balthazar walked through me downstairs. For a moment, I had felt every emotion within him as intimately as I felt my own. I didn’t know if Balthazar had sensed anything in return—as upset as he’d been, he might not have noticed. It seemed worth a try.

I focused tightly on Lucas, told myself how badly I wanted to be with him, and then—it was like I zoomed forward, almost too fast to see, and then I was with Lucas, all around him, within him. His grief welled inside me, so powerful that it blackened my vision and made me feel as though I were sinking. The yearning I felt—the sense of isolation and futility—was almost too overpowering to bear.

He shivered, as if from the cold. “It’s like she’s still here,” he whispered. “When I look at the things I gave her—Bianca’s so close.” Lucas simply put the bracelet and brooch back in the drawer. “I can’t give them up.”

“Okay.”

My focus shifted, returning to Balthazar. What I saw then burned its way into my spirit, a dark mark I’d never be able to forget: Balthazar, standing in his black T-shirt and slacks as though he were part of the night, cradling my dead body in his arms. The white sheet shrouded me almost completely, save one hand that dangled downward and the fall of my long red hair.

This is real. This is absolutely real.

I’m dead.

Balthazar said, “Do you have the tools we’ll need?”

“In the garage.” Lucas hunched over, like he was trying to protect himself. “They—they have shovels.”

Shovels? Shovels. I don’t want to see this. I want to be somewhere else—

Then I was someplace else—nowhere else, sort of. The world once again held nothing more than blue-gray mist. Amid this fog, I was lost and alone. Although I despised that feeling, I could endure it more easily than I could endure the sight of Lucas and Balthazar digging my grave.

In the mist, a face began to take shape. A girl, perhaps my age, with short, fair hair—whom I’d seen many times before.

“The wraith.” My words sounded real to me now, although I didn’t think any living person could hear me. “You’re the wraith. I didn’t recognize you before.”

“I’m hardly the only wraith,” she said. Her smile was thin and sort of smug; right now, I wanted nothing more than to slap it off her face. “And, yeah, we sound different on the other side, don’t we? Like ourselves.”

“What’s happening to me?” I demanded. “Am I really dead? If so, are you keeping me from—from going to heaven or into the light or just going to sleep, whatever it is people are supposed to do after they die?”

She stroked the mist around us with a wide sweep of her arms, clearing the swirling fog. “There are plenty of choices, you know. And I’m not holding you back from any of them.”

Now that the fog had cleared, I realized I could see beneath us. We seemed to be suspended above the trees outside the house. Movement below caught my attention—Lucas and Balthazar, driving their shovels into the earth, hard at work digging my grave.

“This was my dream.” If only I could have wept. I needed to cry so badly. “One of the dreams I had about you—Do you remember them?”

“Of course not.” She looked almost offended. “They were your dreams. Your visions of the future. I wouldn’t have anything to do with them. If you saw me, it’s the same way you saw them—as part of what’s to come.”

“You said I didn’t want to know what they were doing. Because if I’d looked that hard—I would have foreseen my own death.”

The wraith cocked her head, and her fair hair ruffled in some unseen breeze. “It’s time for you to forget about the life you lost. It’s time to embrace your future.”

“Forget? You think I could forget Lucas? And what kind of future am I supposed to have when I’m dead?” The mist thickened around us, blotting her out. “Leave me alone.”

Then I thought of Lucas and willed myself to his side. I’m coming back to you, I promise. I’m here!

The mist vanished. I found myself in the clearing behind the Woodsons’ property, looking down at a small mound of earth. Balthazar patted the surface of the dirt down with the back of his shovel while Lucas knelt by the grave. I could smell the sweat from their skin, the loamy scents of the soil and summer grass. The sky had lightened to a soft pink. A new day had started, without me.

Lucas bowed his head, weighed down by misery. Witnessing him like that was more than I could endure.

Please see me, I thought. I concentrated on all the sights and smells around me, on everything that was real and solid. I made myself part of the world. Lucas, please see me, please, please—“Lucas!”

Both of them jumped backward. Lucas said, “Did you hear that?”

Balthazar nodded. “It—it sounded like—It can’t be.”

Yes! I had it. Focusing even harder on the here and now, I put every ounce of my will into the memory of how my body had felt. How I had looked. For a moment, I could feel myself again—phantom limbs, phantom hair—and both Lucas and Balthazar gasped. They’d seen me!

But my elation distracted me, and I knew I’d faded from their sight almost instantly. Could I do it again? I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d managed it the first time. Being dead was hard.

“Balthazar,” Lucas said, “have I gone crazy?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So you saw her, too?”

“Yeah.” Comprehension swept over Balthazar’s face, but whatever revelation he’d had didn’t look like a good one. “Oh, my God.”

“What? What do you know?” Lucas said.

Balthazar started pacing beside the grave “If Bianca was born because some wraith helped out two vampires—”

“Right,” Lucas said.

“And one of the options for her future was becoming a full vampire—”

“Yeah,” Lucas said. His eyes widened.

“Then the other option must have been for her—not simply to die but to become a wraith. That’s why the Oliviers were so frantic for her to change. The alternative to being a vampire was never for Bianca to live as a human being. It was always for her to become a wraith.” Balthazar blinked at the spot where they’d briefly glimpsed me. “And now she has.”

I really wanted Balthazar to be wrong, but unfortunately, every word he’d said made sense.

“See?” The wraith—the other wraith, I should say—seemed to drift beside me. “It’s like we always tried to tell you.”

I said, “What do you mean, ‘always tried to tell me’?”

“You remember.” She smiled triumphantly, and in that smile I saw the message I’d been given at Evernight Academy, in letters engraved in frost. “Ours.”

Chapter Twenty-one

SO, THE WRAITHS THOUGHT THEY COULD CLAIM me for their own? Well, they were wrong, and I intended to prove it.

“I’m not yours,” I said to the wraith who floated in front of me. She wore a white, filmy sort of dress, maybe an old-fashioned nightgown; I wondered if it was what she’d died in. If so, I was stuck in a white camisole and blue cotton pajama bottoms with little clouds on them for all eternity. I looked down and saw the pajama bottoms, slightly translucent like the rest of me but definitely the same. Great. “I belong to myself. That’s it.”

“But you’re one of us now.” Her aqua-green face shone in the soft dawn light. “Don’t you see how much better this is?”

Lucas turned to Balthazar. “If she’s a ghost—a wraith—then how do we contact her?”

“I’m right here!” I called. But they didn’t hear.

Balthazar looked entirely lost for words. “I don’t—vampires and wraiths—we learn how to avoid them, not how to talk to them.”

“Who would know?” Lucas’s eyes were desperate. “Is there a way? Any way? I don’t know of one—maybe there isn’t one—Dammit, there’s got to be one. Gotta be.” He glanced down at the grave, and then shut his eyes tightly.

“I’m thinking, okay?” Balthazar didn’t look much more encouraged than Lucas. “Do you know anybody in Black Cross who could tell us something?”

Lucas groaned. “Plenty of people. None of whom I can ever speak to again. Except—maybe—”

He was considering it—seriously considering reaching out to Black Cross, although the hunters might well be under orders to kill him on sight. Oh, no, I thought. Lucas can’t do that. He’s upset, he’s confused, it’s a terrible idea—

The world dissolved into bluish fog again, and I lost any sense of a corporeal body. Although in some ways that sensation was liberating—kind of like flying in dreams—I didn’t enjoy not having a body. Bodies were good. Bodies told you where you were and what you could do. Already I seriously missed having one I could rely on.

As I attempted to pull myself into some kind of shape, the wraith coalesced beside me in the mist. “You’ll actually learn to have fun with this in time. But it takes some getting used to.”

“I’m not getting used to it today.” When I spoke only to her, the words had begun to feel like talking—even if nothing was actually said aloud. “We have to discuss what’s happened to me.”

“So, talk.”

“Not while we’re—floaty and lost and whatever! Take me someplace real. Someplace we can both be real.”

“Fine, be that way.”

In the blink of an eye, the mist vanished. She and I stood in the attic of Vic’s house, not far from the dressmaker’s dummy, which still wore its jaunty plumed hat. I could smell the musty old books and see the clutter piled high—although a little less, since he’d provisioned our wine-cellar home. The wooden slats of the floor showed vividly through our translucent feet.

She smiled at me, still smirking a bit. The wraith could have been pretty, if it hadn’t been for the expressions on her face. Her fair hair was stick straight and cut short in a bob. She had a narrow chin, a strong nose, and sharp, knowing eyes. It startled me to realize that she was probably a year or two younger than I was.

Well, that she’d been a year or two younger when she died. For the first time, I realized I would never get any older. That somehow felt more final than all the rest.

The wraith said, “I’m Maxie O’Connor. I died here almost ninety years ago. I’ve haunted this house ever since. You’ll feel drawn to this place, too, since you died here and everything, but I’m telling you right now, this house is mine. I let you guys camp in the basement as a favor to Vic, but that’s all. Visit, don’t stay.”

Like I’d even want to visit. Her name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it and didn’t much care. “You’re a wraith.” The next part was hard to say, but I managed it: “Like me.”