I would have given anything to be able to speak in that moment, not just to warn Emma—because that was evidently a moot point—but to ask Nash what the hell was going on. Could he see what I saw? More important, could they already see us?

My head swiveled quickly, my eyes following an eerie burst of motion, but I was too late. I spun in the opposite direction, squinting into the ghostly gloom as I tracked another movement. My jaws ached, my head pounded, and the keening deep in my throat rose in volume. Those closest to us stared at me now, only looking away when Nash drew me into an embrace, pulling my head down onto his shoulder as if to comfort me. Which was, in part, what he was doing.

“Kaylee, no,” he whispered into my hair, but this time his Influence was little help. The urge to wail was too strong, the death coming too fast—distantly I saw Emma watching us, still wrapped in an almost solid sheet of shadow. “Don’t look at them.”

He sees them too? That answered one of my questions….

“Focus on holding it back,” he said. “Your keening breaches the gap, but I don’t think they can see us yet. They will when you sing, but they’re not here with us, no matter what it looks like.”

Gap? Gap between what and what? Our world and the Netherworld? Not good. Not good at all…

I stepped out of his arms to see his face, looking for answers in his expression, but there were none to be found. Probably because I couldn’t ask the right questions.

Fine. I would ignore the weird gray reality-veil, as impossible as that seemed. But what about the reaper? If Emma was going to die—even if only temporarily—I would not let it be for nothing.

I glanced pointedly at Emma for effect, my heart breaking a little more at the alarm clear on her face, then exaggerated shrugging my shoulders for Nash, all the while choking back the scream that now felt immediate.

By some miracle, he understood.

“You can’t see him until he wants to be seen,” Nash reminded me gently, stepping close to murmur against my forehead. His very words, the almost-physical satin-soft glide of his Influenced voice against my skin, made the panic abate a bit. Not enough to offer much relief, but enough to hold back the screaming for a few more seconds. “And I’d bet my life savings he doesn’t want to be seen. You have to wait. Just hold it in a little longer.”

“What?” Emma repeated, squeezing my hand now to get my attention. “Can’t see who? Where—”

Then, in midsentence, she simply collapsed.

Emma’s legs folded beneath her with my hand still clenched in hers. Her head hit the person behind her. He stumbled and almost went down. I fell forward with her, tears flowing freely now. Nash’s hand was ripped from my grip as my knees slammed into the floor and the blow reverberated throughout mybody. And Emma’s eyes stared up at nothing, the windows to her soul thrown wide open, though it was obvious no one was home.

“Kaylee!” Nash dropped to the ground on Emma’s other side. He stared at me imploringly as people turned to look, eyes wide, mouths hanging open.

I barely heard him. I no longer noticed the dimness or the odd movement creeping back into the edges of my vision. I couldn’t think about anything but Emma, and how she lay there, unmoving, staring at the ceiling as if she could see through it.

“Let it go, Kaylee. Sing for her. Call her soul so I can see it. Hold it as long as you can.”

I looked down at Emma, beautiful even in death. Her fingers were still warm in mine. Her hair had fallen over her shoulder, and the soft ends of it brushed my arm. I let my head fall back and my mouth fall open.

Then I screamed.

The shriek poured from me in an agonizing torrent of discordant, abrasive notes that scraped my throat raw and seemed to empty me, from my toes all the way to the top of my head. It hurt like hell. But beyond the pain, I felt overwhelming relief to no longer be the physical vessel for such an unearthly din and agonizing grief over having lost my best friend. The cousin I should have had. My confidante and, at times, my sanity.

The entire gymnasium went still in an instant. People froze, then turned to stare, most slapping hands over their ears and grimacing in pain. Someone else screamed—I could tell because her mouth was wide open, though I couldn’t hear her over the much more powerful noise coming from my own mouth.

And then, before I could even process all the gawking stares aimed my way, the whole world seemed to shift.

That fine gray mist settled into place all around me, over everything normal, though that was more a feeling than a physical fact. The strange, misshapen creatures I couldn’t focus on before were suddenly everywhere, interspersed with and in some cases overlaying the human crowd, ogling me just like the students and parents, but from the far side of the grayness. They were drab, as if the haze had somehow stolen their color, and they looked distant, as if I were watching them through some kind of formless, tinted glass.

Was that what Nash meant, when he said they wouldn’t actually be with us? Because if so, I didn’t quite understand the distinction. They were entirely too close for comfort, and drawing nearer every second.

On my left, a strange, headless creature stood between two boys in wrinkled khakis, blinking at me with eyes set into his bare chest, between small, colorless nipples. An odd, narrow nose protruded from the hollow below his sternum, and thin lips opened just above his navel.

No need to mention how I knew it was a he….

Horrified, I closed my eyes, and my scream faltered. But then I remembered Emma. Em needed me.