“Lara Chowdhury, you have to wake up so we can get out of this place. You have to wake up, because if you don’t, you never will.” My voice cracks. “You have to wake up because you’re my friend, and I’m not leaving here without you.”

A small furrow appears between her brows. Her eyes drift open, glassy and fevered.

“Cassidy?” she says.

“Yes,” I say, the word rushing out.

She blinks, and as she does, she grows up, aging from the small girl in the bed to the one I know. She looks around.

“How did I get here?”

“The Emissary,” I say. “The bridge.”

Her eyes sharpen, finally coming into focus. “I remember.”

Lara tries to get up, but she can’t. I help her sit, and then stand, let her lean her weight on me.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “The Emissary was after me, not you, and—”

“Oh, don’t bother, Cassidy,” she cuts in, sounding more like herself. “We’re in-betweeners, after all. Death is an occupational hazard.”

I smile, almost laugh, before I notice that the hospital room is getting darker around us, the details dissolving into shadow.

“Cassidy!”

Jacob’s voice swims through the room, faint and far away. I help Lara to the door. She grabs the handle, forcing the door open, and we step through. And as we do, the hospital falls away and we’re back on the Bridge of Souls, nothing but wind, and mist, and Jacob, looking wide-eyed.

“Hello, Ghost,” says Lara, right before Jacob flings his arms around her neck. She staggers a little, but I don’t know if it’s surprise or the lingering fever, the head-swimming wrongness of this place.

“We have to get out of here,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Jacob, “about that.”

He points over my shoulder. Back, toward the beginning of the bridge. Back toward the land of the living. Back toward safety.

I squint into the mist.

At first, I can’t see anything.

And then I see a streak of black.

A broad-brimmed hat, floating in the fog.

And long limbs in a crisp dark suit.

And a bone-white mask with a frozen grin.

The Emissary walks toward us through the mist.

And even though it doesn’t have a face, somehow, it still looks very, very mad.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Back in the land of the living, the Emissary was a skeletal thing, a thin figure in a skull mask and a dark suit. Something almost human.

Here on the bridge, it doesn’t look human at all.

Its once-gloved hands are now bone-white talons, and its broad-brimmed hat is a halo of night, the air around it smudged a charcoal black. Cold and darkness spill off its limbs, and every step it takes leaves an inky stain on the bridge.

And it is coming straight toward us.