And then I wasn’t in the mist any longer.

Instead, I had appeared at Evernight.

I glanced around, trying to understand what this could be. I knew it wasn’t a memory because I was sitting on top of the gargoyle outside my bedroom window—not something I’d ever done before. It didn’t feel like a dream, either, though I couldn’t guess what wraiths’ dreams felt like, if they even had them.

No, weird though it was, the most logical guess was that I’d somehow just transported myself back to Evernight Academy. Maybe my afterlife assignment was to haunt Mrs. Bethany or something.

Peering downward, I saw the gargoyle’s scowl. Had I bruised his dignity by perching on top of his head?

For the first time since Vic’s attic, I had a definite sense of physical form. I could even see my feet dangling past the gargoyle’s claws. So I pressed my hands against the window glass, mostly just to do something with my hands, but also in hopes of peering inside.

When my fingertips touched the glass, frost flickered across the surface. I watched the tendrils spread in featherlike patterns, completely covering the pane. So much for snooping about what was going on in my old bedroom, but the effect was kind of cool.

Noise from the ground below made me look down. To my surprise, several trucks were parked on the driveway, and at least a dozen people seemed to be milling around. The other summers I’d spent at Evernight Academy had been almost unbearably quiet. Nobody came to visit, save a few deliveries and the laundry service. So who were these people?

I realized the truth as soon as I recognized that they were all wearing coveralls. These were the workmen rebuilding Evernight.

Before that moment, I hadn’t heard much of anything—mostly, I thought, because I hadn’t been listening. How weird, to have to choose to hear. Now I could make out the growling of buzz saws and the thumping of hammers. Most of that seemed to be coming from the roof, but probably people were hard at work on the inside, too. Despite the fact that I loathed Evernight Academy, I hated Black Cross even more, so it gave me grim satisfaction to think that the damage done by Black Cross’s fire was being undone. Mrs. Bethany wouldn’t stand for anything else.

Then I heard a voice from inside my bedroom. “Adrian?”

That was Mom, calling my father.

I turned back to the window, eager to catch a glimpse of her, but frost still covered the pane of glass. That had to be what Mom was looking at. Rub the glass! I thought. If you clear the glass, you can see me!

Footsteps echoed inside the apartment, coming closer. Then I heard Dad say, “Oh, my God.”

I pressed my hands against the glass eagerly. Too eagerly—the frost thickened, Now it would be even harder for them to see me. But they would, wouldn’t they?

“We knew the wraith would return.” Dad’s words were hard, even cold. “Mrs. Bethany warned us.”

“But here—in Bianca’s room—” Mom sounded like she was crying.

“I know,” Dad said quietly. “They’re still looking for her. At least we know they haven’t found her yet—that she’s still alive.”

Oh, Dad. I covered my mouth with my hand, as though I could still cry and had to hold back the tears.

“And this time we can cast them out,” my mother said, voice shaking but determined.

What does she mean by that? I tried to imagine what she could be referring to—some trick Mrs. Bethany had figured out, perhaps—

It hit me like a wall: a terrible rush of force pushed me away from the window, the gargoyle, Evernight Academy, and anything else that was real. The physical form I’d inhabited dissolved like a sand castle beneath a wave. I was too overwhelmed to know anything save that I was lost in the mist again, nothing and no one, a dead thing.

“Why did you go there?” Maxie demanded. Her presence, annoying though it was, served as my only touchstone in the swirling unreality of it all. “Do you want to be destroyed?”

“I’ve already been destroyed.”

“That’s what you think.” I could hear a sort of smug smile in her words. “It can be much, much worse than this.”

“How, exactly, does it get worse than dead? I can’t be with my parents ever again. I can’t be with Lucas ever again.”

“True. Well, mostly true.”

“What do you mean, mostly true?”

“There’s one way you can say hello to your precious Lucas. It’s going to hurt both of you more than if you just did the decent thing and moved on—but you never know when to leave well enough alone, do you? Here—try this.”

I felt as though I were being thrown forward, and then I saw Lucas. He was still in the wine cellar, but now he was alone, lying on the floor, fully clothed but with a pillow beneath his head and a sheet pulled over him. I had the sense that it hadn’t been too long since I’d last seen him—it was probably afternoon at the latest—but I realized exhaustion must have demanded that he get some sleep. Balthazar was nowhere to be seen.

Lucas stirred fitfully beneath the sheet. For a moment, I wondered why he was asleep on the floor—before I remembered that I’d died in our bed. Probably Lucas didn’t even want to lie down on that bed alone.

“You said you wanted to be with him, right?” Maxie said.

“So, do it.”

Just like that, Lucas and I were in the bookstore in Amherst, alone in the basement room where the textbooks were kept. He was kneeling on the floor, holding an astronomy textbook in his hands. A comet trailed fire on the page.

“Lucas?” I said.

He looked up, and his eyes were instantly alight with relief and wonder. “Bianca? You’re here?”

“Yeah, but—where’s here?”

Lucas dropped the book and clutched me in his embrace. The shock of feeling his arms around my back, of the welcome pressure of his body against mine, made me cry out in surprise and delight.

“You’re alive,” he whispered into my ear. “I thought you were dead. I was so sure you were dead.”

But I am dead. “Lucas, where are we?”

“I was going to find you in the stars. See?” Instead of gesturing at the astronomy book he’d dropped on the floor, Lucas pointed upward. To my bewilderment, I saw not the ceiling of the bookstore but the night sky, sparkling and bright. Lucas said, “I knew I could find you there. Remember the part of Romeo and Juliet you quoted to me that time, when you were trying to convince me Juliet was an astronomer, too?”

I whispered, “‘Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars. And he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.’”

“Yeah,” he murmured into my hair. “That’s why I knew I could find you there.”

Understanding sank in. Sadly, I said, “This is a dream.”

“I’m not dreaming.” Lucas hugged me more tightly. “I won’t believe it.”

I was in Lucas’s dream. Raquel had told me about her ghost attacking her in her sleep; I should’ve realized the wraiths could travel into sleeping minds. So I could be with Lucas but only in his dreams? It was so little, and yet at least it was something to hold on to. “Every night,” I promised him. “Every night, I’ll be here for you.”

“It’s not enough. I need you. Don’t let this be a dream.”

The reality around us vanished in an instant. Once again, I seemed to float very near the ceiling, looking down at Lucas, whose eyes had just opened. He grimaced and rubbed his face with one hand. In some ways, he looked even more tired than he had that morning.

“Bianca? Are you there?” he said. I couldn’t answer him, but he understood anyway. “You’ll always be there, I guess. Just too far away to touch.”

Being with him in dreams would give me some comfort, I realized, but it would only torment Lucas. He wouldn’t be able to hold on to the experiences the same way I could. More than that, I wasn’t sure I could make him understand that our togetherness in dreams was real. If I visited him every night, all I would accomplish would be to make him grieve for me anew, over and over again.

Lucas rolled onto one side, punching the pillow beneath his head to provide more support. “I dreamed about you,” he said. “I was in a bookstore, and I was trying to find you—I don’t remember how—God, it’s already slipping away. But you were there. Your being dead was all some big mistake, and I could hold you again. Pretty great dream—until I woke up.”

With a sigh, he threw off the sheets and rose from the floor. He moved stiffly, and I realized he had to be sore. Just as he pulled a carton of juice from the minifridge, I heard footsteps outside. Lucas went to the door and opened it before Balthazar could even knock.

Instead of hello or how are you, Balthazar said, “You were right about Charity.”

“News flash: I already knew that.” The venom had gone out of Lucas’s jabs at Balthazar, but apparently that didn’t mean he was going to stop making them. “You find her?”

“I found someone who knows her. Which means Charity will be aware that I’m in Philadelphia soon, if she doesn’t already.”

“You just let the vampire run off to play messenger?” Lucas took a deep swig of juice straight from the carton. “Not smart.”

Balthazar scowled. “I don’t stake people the first second they could be trouble, which is one of the many differences between us.”

“I guess this means you’ve got to run, huh?”

“I don’t run from a fight,” Balthazar said. “And I’m not abandoning my sister to this kind of existence.”

“Nobody’s making her act like that,” Lucas said as he stowed the juice back in the fridge. “You ought to know that by now. Or did you know it the whole time?”

Balthazar didn’t answer that question. “If I can separate her from her tribe, Charity will come around.”

“What are you going to do? Just keep her locked in a room for a century until she agrees with you?”

“Yes.”

“Man, your relationship is really screwed up.”

“Do you have a better plan for dealing with her?” Balthazar demanded. “Staking is not an option.”

“Says you.” Lucas took a deep breath. “So you want my help on this kidnapping run?”

Balthazar clearly didn’t like having to turn to Lucas for help, but he nodded. “You can handle yourself in a fight. And Charity won’t expect the two of us to cooperate. We could use the element of surprise.”

“When?”

“She’ll make her move at sundown. So, a couple of hours.” Like all vampires, Balthazar could sense how far away sunset and sunrise were. “The sooner we get out there, the better.”

Lucas didn’t need to go after Charity tonight. Really, I wished he wouldn’t go after her ever. She was dangerous, and no matter how good a fighter Lucas was or how strong I’d made him by drinking his blood, Charity would always be stronger. With her tribe by her side, I didn’t see how he and Balthazar could prevail.

But most of the time, I would at least have confidence that Lucas could get through it alive. Now he was exhausted and in mourning. Balthazar, blinded by his own guilt or grief or both, was foolishly taking the two of them out on a suicide mission.

Did Lucas know that? Horror overcame me as I realized that, probably, he did.

I watched him throw on a flannel shirt and lace up his shoes. Dread gnawed at me. Did Lucas think that, if he died, we would be together again? Or was his life not worth anything to him anymore? It was worth something to me. I wanted him to live and be safe and happy for both of us.

Lucas looked like he didn’t care about any of that.