Hereafter

“I’m here,” I squeaked. “I…I tripped.”

I breathed once. Then again. Struggled to stop the sobs from coming.

“Where?” he asked. His foot kicked the side of my leg. “Oh. Oops. Sorry. This fog is so thick. And my head…”

“Your head?”

“Some asshole tried to grab him,” Darcy said.

“Yeah, but we fought them off,” my dad replied, sounding proud.

“Yeah, we did,” Darcy replied.

I pushed myself up off the ground at the exact moment the fog began to lift. It pulled back across the water, the last wisps curling teasingly around my ankles until it was gone. My father was holding the back of his skull. I shoved the image of his death—and his looming ushering—from my mind.

“Are you all right?” I asked, grabbing at his arm.

He pulled his hand down and held it in front of us. His fingers were bloody.

“It’s okay,” Darcy said, checking the cut. “He’ll live.”

“Did you see who it was?” I asked her.

“No. Probably just some idiot messing around.” She leveled a look at me, and I knew it meant she didn’t want me to bring up Steven Nell.

“Losers,” I said, because I felt like I should say something as I stood there trembling from head to toe. “Come on, Dad. Let’s get you inside and clean that up.”

We fumbled our way up the stairs, him unsteady from his injury, me trembling from my desperation and fear. As soon as we got into the kitchen, I stopped cold. In all the relief of finding my family here and okay, I had forgotten what the fog really meant. Someone somewhere on this island had been ushered. Had they gone to the right destination?

“I have to go out for a sec,” I said, leaving Darcy clutching my dad’s arm. “Get that cleaned up, okay? I’ll be back soon.”

“Are you kidding me right now?” Darcy demanded.

I groaned in frustration. “I’m sorry! I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

Then, with Darcy shouting at me, I ran out the front door. I didn’t even care whether Nadia and her angry mob might be out there, waiting for me to run into their waiting claws. I tore up the hill as fast as I could, and as soon as I hit Main Street, I skidded to a stop and faced Tristan’s house. I saw Fisher standing in the park with Bea and Lauren. Bea shot me a knowing look, then turned toward the bluff.

The weather vane spun crazily, so fast it was nothing but a blur. The movement was so unnatural it caught the attention of a few other passersby, people who knew nothing about the truth of Juniper Landing, people who’d talk about a phenomenon like this in the morning, wondering if they could have seen it right, if it had really happened. It spun and spun until I thought it was going to snap off and go flying into the night. But then, suddenly, it stopped. The arrow pointed due south, quivering against the dark sky.

I glanced at Bea and the others. Fisher looked back at me, grim. Then someone gasped. The vane was spinning again, same as before, but this time it stopped sooner.

Pointing south.

It spun again.

South.

And again.

South.

And once more.

South.

By the time it was done, Lauren had covered her mouth with both hands. Bea was red with anger. Fisher was visibly sweating. In that one fog, five souls had been taken. Five souls had been relegated to the Shadowlands.

New rule

“I’m not going to usher him,” I hissed to Joaquin as we followed Bea, Fisher, and Krista through the crowded Thirsty Swan toward the back hallway. “He’s not going. Not now. Not when everyone’s going to the Shadowlands.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Joaquin whispered back, tugging me toward the wall. “No one will expect you to usher him. I can’t even believe he’s your charge. It’s like the universe is trying to mess with you.”

I scoffed. Like the universe gave a crap about me. But Joaquin fixed me with a stare that made me shrivel inside. Could the universe really be messing with me?

“You should have seen Darcy, though,” I said, trying to think about anything else. “She was sure Steven Nell was out there, ready to grab my father, and she just ran out there to save him. It was intense.”

Joaquin’s eyebrows darted skyward. “Really?”

I laughed under my breath. “Yeah. I’ve never seen her do anything like that before. She was, like, Super Darcy.”

“Interesting,” Joaquin said, stepping sideways to let a visitor pass by with a mug of beer. “Sorry I missed that. I was busy serving chicken soup to my ‘grandma.’”

“Right!” I brought my hand to my forehead. “How is Ursula?”

“She’s…sick,” Joaquin replied, sighing. “I’d say she’ll be all right, since it doesn’t look that bad, but with everything else going on around here, what the hell do I know?”

Bea, Fisher, and Krista were all waiting in the hall, eyeing us expectantly. Joaquin fumbled in his pocket for a set of keys, then opened the door to the stockroom and backed up against it, holding it for us. I stepped through first and slid aside to make way. The room was long and slim and cramped with boxes and barrels, old wooden things with iron clasps that looked like they’d been there for centuries. The air smelled of stale beer and sawdust, peanuts, and salt. The others filed in silently, their sneakers and sandals scraping on the wood floor. Krista hoisted herself up onto a barrel, and Bea leaned back next to her against a shelf full of condiment bottles and coffee mugs. Fisher took a spot by the back door, squaring his shoulders like a bouncer. A moment later Kevin appeared, and right away he began pacing and muttering to himself, as if hopped up on too much Red Bull. Then Lauren slipped through, shooting me an unreadable glance as she squeezed by me.

“What’s up?” I asked.

Her eyes darted to the door. Joaquin had just started to let it shut when a hand stopped it. I held my breath, expecting to see Tristan, but it wasn’t him. It was Pete. A moment later, Nadia and Cori joined him. They walked along the near wall until Pete’s shoulder knocked into a stack of boxes taller than him, and they stopped. Nadia shot me a piercing look as she settled back against the shelves.

My stomach clenched, and the temperature in the room seemed to spike. Joaquin gave me a look that was somehow alarmed and soothing all at once. Like, Yes, this is not good, but it will be fine. I pressed my sweaty palms together and hoped he was right.

“Everyone here?” Joaquin asked.

“Not Tristan,” Krista pointed out.

Joaquin glanced back toward the noisy bar. A loud cheer went up, as if the home team had just scored a goal on TV. Except there were no TVs here. No home team to speak of.

“I don’t think Tristan’s coming,” he said, closing the door.

Everyone looked around nervously.

“What the hell is going on?” Bea asked, cracking her knuckles.

“What’s going on is, I just sent someone to the Shadowlands,” Kevin blurted out vehemently. “Someone who was not supposed to go there.”

“Me, too,” Krista said quietly.

“Anyone else?” Joaquin asked, stepping farther into the room.

Nadia raised her hand, staring straight at me until I had to look away.