“I’m telling you your girlfriend went crazy and killed herself!” Mateo said. “And you’re just sitting there.”

Slowly, Maria lifted her face toward him.

“What happened to you, Maria?” He stared at her, revulsion in his eyes. “Is your stupid Kingsley Prize really worth it? Pushing a girl out a window? Killing your best friend? Having your own girlfriend drown? Have you ever even cared about anything but yourself?”

There was a gray light over Mateo’s left shoulder. Maria gazed up at it. Tears began to blur her vision.

“She drowned?” she said.

Mateo nodded. “Trust me. I was there.”

It must’ve been the lake.

Lily could swim. She could before her accident, anyway. That wouldn’t matter, though. Not against the spirits.

“That means there was no blood,” Maria said. The gray light was moving toward the field. Was it the sun? “She’d like that there was no blood.”

Mateo swore. “You’re just as crazy as she was, aren’t you.”

“She isn’t crazy.” Maria swallowed. “Wasn’t.”

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Are you sorry? It’s too late for sorry, Maria.”

He thrust something into her face. It took Maria a minute to place it.

Delilah’s lip gloss. The one she used to carry around. There was blood on the clear plastic case.

“I know what you did,” Mateo said.

Maria raised her eyes to meet his.

Lily was dead, and he was alive.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

Maria blew out the candles. They flickered out with a tiny puff of air.

“Get away from me,” she whispered.

“Why? So you can mourn in peace?” Mateo shook his head. “You didn’t let me do that. You showed up at that funeral and pretended to be so damn sad. Like it wasn’t you who put him in the ground in the first place.”

Maria jumped to her feet and shoved at Mateo’s chest with both hands. His feet stayed planted.

Mateo grabbed her left wrist. “Whatever.” He pushed her back. She nearly fell to the ground when he released her. Instead, she sat back on the risers, her eyes sinking closed.

Lily, gone. Brandon, gone. All she had left was Mateo and his anger.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. This wasn’t what she’d been promised.

A breeze stirred around her. Something else was here.

The spirits had returned.

They’d lied to her. They’d been lying all along.

“Altagracia was never among you,” Maria said. It wasn’t a question. “Was she.”

“The hell are you saying?” That was Mateo. Maria ignored him.

But around his feet, the dirt and grass swayed in the breeze. They started moving faster. Swirling. Forming letters on the ground, the way the bone fragments in the tunnel had done.

The words came into form slowly, clear in the fading gray light. They were in English this time.