LITMIR.BIZ

      No.” I tried to speak firmly, but my voice came out edged with hysteria. “No, no, no.”

      My nerves vibrated as though they’d been strummed, echoing back anger, excitement, uncertainty, and even a touch of betrayal. I felt a sudden flush of heat, like my glow might break free and cut a path of fire across the road.

      When Scott took a step forward, I held up both palms as a warning.

      Come any closer, pardner, and I’ll blast ya.

      I heard someone choke out a strangled laugh and then realized it was me. In an effort to control myself, I took a few deep breaths.

      “No,” I repeated, locking eyes with Joshua again. “No to all of it.”

      In the past when I’d been so clearly shaken, Joshua had approached me cautiously. Almost like I was a wounded animal. But tonight he rushed to my side, unafraid. He stood as close to me as he could, brushing one hand through the air above my shoulder.

      “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Jillian asked him to pick me up. Apparently he already knows—”

      “I already know a thing or two about the afterworlds,” Scott interjected.

      I blinked back, stunned. Not because Scott had just interrupted his friend—something I’d never heard him do—but because of what he’d said. His casual use of the word “afterworlds” was particularly interesting. It wasn’t a term that the average teenage boy threw around lightly.

      The average Seer boy, however, was a different story.

      I raised my eyebrows at Joshua, signaling him to let me work through this, and then turned back to Scott. Slowly, tentatively, I took a step forward.

      “What do you know about the afterworlds?” I asked softly.

      “Probably not as much as you guys.” Scott gave me another sheepish smile. “But enough to help.”

      That answer didn’t satisfy me. I narrowed my eyes and moved one step closer, all the while keeping my gaze trained on him. “How? How do you know enough, Scott?”

      He held up one hand in a motion of caution and, with the other, pulled something from his pocket. He raised the object into the light of a nearby streetlamp so I could see it, and then took his own slow steps toward me. When we were within reaching distance, he handed it to me. It looked like a thin, cheaply made wallet, its fraying edges held together by duct tape.

      “Flip it open,” Scott urged. “To the pictures.”

      I did so gently, opening to the small plastic sleeves that held a handful of wallet-sized photos. Scott pointed to them.

      “Go to the third one. It’s a group shot.”

      I flipped to the one he indicated and examined it, frowning. The photo was tiny, almost too small for me to make out the individual features of the seven or eight people seated in it.

      “It’s my whole family,” Scott explained. “At least, all of them that live in Oklahoma. We took it a few years ago, during my freshman year. See? That’s me in the front row.”

      He smiled shyly and pointed again. I peered back down at the photo and saw a younger version of Scott, with shorter hair and a few less inches of height, smiling up from the first row.

      Then my eyes trailed to the back row, where the elders of his family stood. On the far left, standing a few feet apart from everyone else, was a white-haired woman with thick glasses and a broad smile. She looked strangely familiar, though I didn’t know why.

      Noticing my stare, Scott leaned closer and pointed to the old woman.

      “That’s my gran. She was on the decorating committee at First Baptist. The same church Ruth Mayhew used to attend.”

      Suddenly, I knew where I’d seen her face before. She’d been in the church the day Ruth marched me outside and threatened me with exorcism. More importantly, this old woman had been at my cemetery, standing in a circle of Voodoo dust, the night Ruth called off my exorcism so that I could save Jillian’s life.

      The woman in the photograph was a Seer. And Scott’s grandmother.

      Which means that Scott is . . .

      “How long have you known?” I whispered aloud, still staring at her picture. “What you are?”

      “Not long. My gran never told me about this stuff, and she didn’t raise me with the superstitions, like Ruth did with her grandkids. But I know Gran believed in ghosts. And I know she had some pretty creepy after-church activities, judging by all the jars of weird crap she kept in her house.”

      “‘Kept’?” I asked, catching his use of the past tense.

      He shrugged, but I could see a glint of sadness in his eyes. “Yeah, she passed away this January.”

      “I’m sorry,” I said softly. And I was, even if the woman had tried to end my afterlife. Loss hurt, no matter who it was you lost.

      I closed the wallet and handed it back to Scott carefully, making sure that our hands didn’t touch. He took it from me and slipped it into his pocket. Then he shrugged again, more awkwardly this time, and cast an uncomfortable glance at Joshua.

      “Jillian and I have been . . . hanging out a lot lately. She needed someone to talk to after everything that happened at Christmas, and when we put together all the different pieces about my gran—”

      “Jillian realized that she had a new Seer boyfriend?” Joshua concluded bitterly. “One who was willing to listen to all of Amelia’s secrets?”

      “No, no!” Scott flapped his hands desperately in the air. “Jillian never bitched about Amelia, not to me. She just warned me that something bad might happen again, and that we needed to be ready with a plan to fight it.”

      “Like the ‘something’ that happened an hour ago,” Jillian added forcefully. She gestured to me emphatically. “Tell them, Amelia. Tell them about your little truth-or-dare disaster.”

      I startled, surprised that I hadn’t done that yet. I’d been too wrapped up in the shock of another person knowing what I was, and why.

      With a shudder that had nothing to do with the cold night air, I repeated my conversation with the dark visitor in the mirror. As I spoke, I saw Joshua’s jaw tighten and his fists clench reflexively.

      Scott trembled too—with fear, not anger. But somehow, he found the courage to interrupt the end of my story.

      “Amelia, we have to do something,” he urged. “Don’t you see that? For your sake, and Jillian’s.”

      I wouldn’t have wanted to stand on the receiving end of the look Joshua now gave his friend.

      “And who,” Joshua seethed, “appointed you safety inspector for my girlfriend and my baby sister?”

      While Scott floundered to explain himself, I shot Jillian a similar glare. She’d betrayed my confidence, in more ways than one. At least she had the decency to look somewhat contrite, but that didn’t stop her.

      “Okay, enough,” she ordered. “So I told Scott. So we’ve secretly been dating. So what? None of this is going to help us destroy High Bridge.”

      I threw my hands up in the air. “And what exactly would the destruction of High Bridge accomplish, Jillian? Except maybe a little therapy for some of us.”

      “Oh, I don’t know, Amelia,” she drawled. “Only close the gate into the netherworld forever. No big deal.”

      “That’s . . . that’s not possible.”

      Jillian crossed her arms and flashed me a smug smile. “Well,

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