“You’re dead.” It wasn’t a question. Yet she obviously didn’t understand. “And you’re a banshee.”

“I know it sounds weird. I didn’t believe it at first either. But I can prove it. At least, I can prove the part about being dead. Are you ready?”

“Sure.” She shrugged listlessly, then crossed her arms beneath a well-endowed chest, obviously humoring us. “Knock yourself out. Be as dead as you want to be. ’Cause we haven’t had enough of that around here.”

Valid point.

I caught Traci’s skeptical gaze and held it. Then I let myself fade from sight. I didn’t actually go anywhere, but they couldn’t see me.

As soon as I started to fade, Traci sat up straight. She didn’t look sleepy anymore.

“What the hell just happened?” She turned to Em and Harmony. “Did you see that? Did she just disappear?”

Em nodded solemnly. “She does that now. A lot. Because she’s dead.”

“How did...? When did she...?” Traci closed her eyes and shook her head, then opened her eyes to stare at the spot where I stood, though she still couldn’t see me. “What?”

“Remember the night I got stabbed?”

Traci actually jumped. Her gaze flitted over the room but couldn’t find me until I let myself reappear. “You got stabbed, and now you can do that?” She waved a hand in my general direction. “So you’re saying...you died? When you got stabbed by...?”

She couldn’t say the name of the man who’d fathered her child and stolen my life.

I couldn’t blame her. And for the first time, I thought about what that whole thing must have been like for her. What it must still be like. I was all over the news for weeks—the girl who’d survived being stabbed by her teacher. What most people didn’t know was that I hadn’t really survived.

What even fewer people knew was that before Mr. Beck had gotten to me, he’d gotten to Traci Marshall, who’d had no choice about what they did together, though she didn’t know her will was being subverted.

Now she was carrying the inhuman child of a serial rapist and murderer. The daily reminder of even what little of that she understood must have been hell.

“Yeah. I died.” I stared at the floor for a moment, pushing back remembered terror, blazing pain, and the overwhelming memory-scent of my own blood. “I’ve been faking life ever since. There was a whole cover-up and everything.”

“I don’t... How is that possible? If you’re really dead, why are you still here? How are you here?”

“The how part is a little complicated. The short version is this—there are lots of things out there you don’t know about. Things you’ll  never know about, if you’re lucky. Most of those things are dangerous and scary. I’mneither, I hope. But I am dead. I can make my heart beat, but it doesn’t do that on its own, and when it doesn’t pump blood, I get cold. Not refrigerator-cold, but cooler than the natural body temperature. I don’t have to eat, but I can if I want to. I can get hurt, and if I do, I heal really slowly, because my body isn’t as alive as it used to be.”

Though in some ways, I was more alive than I’d ever been. Thanks to Tod.

“And you can...disappear?”

“Yeah. That’s one of the convenient aspects. The downside is that I’ll never age, which means I’ll never get to live in one spot for very long.” At least, not visibly. “And I’ll never grow up or have children.”

Traci looked so sad that I wished I’d left that last part off.

“But there’s more.” I sat in my chair again, and Emma scooted hers closer. “The night I died was the night you got pregnant. Do you remember that?”

Traci flushed with the memory. “But I never told anyone...?”

“I know because the father of your baby is the man who killed me.”

“How the hell did you know that?” She leaned forward so far I was afraid she’d fall off the couch. “I never told anyone who he is. Not even my mom. I couldn’t, after I found out what he did to you.”

“He told me.” Beck had wanted me to know exactly what he’d done to Traci, and that it was all my fault, and that he would do the same to Sophie and Emma if I put up a fight while he killed me and stole my soul for his unborn son.

Traci’s gaze lost focus. “It was so weird. I’d never even met him, but the moment I saw him on the front porch, I wanted him. I didn’t want to want him—he was a total stranger—but I couldn’t help it. Then I saw him on the news and heard what he’d done, and after that, I couldn’t tell anyone....” Her eyes filled with tears, and her hand spread over her stomach.

“Traci, Mr. Beck wasn’t human,” Harmony said, and I envied the control she had over her voice. How she was able to sound calm and soothing, when surely she was as affected by Traci’s trauma as Em and I were. “He was a predator and a parasite. What he did to you wasn’t your fault. In fact, it had nothing to do with you—you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Her tears fell. “I was at home!”

“I know.” My heart ached for her, but the terrifying truth was that sometimes home is the wrong place. It certainly was for me the night I’d died. “Unfortunately, it gets worse. Traci, if your child is what his father was, there’s a really good chance you won’t survive this pregnancy. So...you have to make a decision. We’ll give you all the information we have, but the choice is yours.”