“Get behind me!” I shout as Jacob pulls Lara to her feet. One braid has come loose, her black hair escaping its plait, and she’s breathing heavily, but she’s up, and together they hurry toward me.

The Emissary doesn’t.

It moves with a terrifying slowness, the steady pace of someone—something—that knows its prey won’t escape. Jacob and Lara sink to their knees beside me. Lara understands what I’m doing. She starts to arrange the stones.

“Will this actually work?” asks Jacob, still ripping out every rope that reaches up through the bridge.

“I have no idea,” I say. “I’m making this up as I go.”

But I saw the way the spell burned through the layers of the world, from the living realm into the Veil. So maybe, just maybe, it will work here, too.

I can’t make a circle. I don’t have enough dirt, or oil, and even if I did, the Emissary would never step inside it. A line will have to do. I scatter the last of the grave dirt, little more than a smear against the darkened bridge. Lara pours the oil in a thin line, her hands somehow steady, even now.

I draw a match, before remembering—Jacob. My heart tumbles into my stomach. If I strike the match, if I do the spell, what will happen? Will he be trapped here? Will he be sent on?

There are no right answers, said the fortune-teller. You cannot win without losing, too.

Jacob meets my gaze, and smiles.

“It’s okay, Cass.”

But it’s not. I fling my arms around his shoulders. Tears slide down my cheeks. I can’t do this. I can’t lose my best friend.

“We’re running out of time,” hisses Lara as the Emissary gets closer.

“No matter what happens,” Jacob whispers in my ear, “you’ll never lose me.”

And then, before I can stop him, he grabs the box of matches and strikes one, dropping the flame onto the oil.

It catches.

And burns.

The fire spreads from the middle out, and the Emissary rears back, away from the smoldering line. Jacob sways, going gray, and I squeeze my hand around his, trying to keep him there, with me, trying to keep our line from breaking.

Shadows flicker across the Emissary’s mask. “We … will …” but it can’t seem to finish the line. It tips its head, as if trying to remember.

The spell is working.

And then the fire sputters, and goes out.

For a second, I think the spell is done, that it worked, even though Jacob is still here. But then I look down and realize, with a growing horror, that the line didn’t burn. There wasn’t enough oil. The banishing didn’t work.

The Emissary smiles, and steps smoothly over the ashes of the broken spell.

Jacob’s hand tears free of mine.