“Damn it, Theo! Give a girl a damn warning.” My heart was a battle drum.

“I was trying to be quiet,” he said, and pushed the blade down with a fingertip. His service weapon, a handgun, was in his other hand. “And noble. I heard screaming and decided keeping you alive was now priority one.”

“Rose?”

“Vehicle. Locked in.” Theo’s gaze darted wildly as clawed hands and faces coalesced and disappeared around us, looking for an opportunity to attack. “Are we . . . are these ghosts?”

“Yep.”

“Ghosts aren’t supposed to be real.”

“Your partner is a vampire.”

“Vampires aren’t dead.”

I was glad he’d remembered that. All rumors to the contrary were the basest insults.

“I definitely don’t like ghosts. And is it me, or do they . . . smell?”

“Sour milk,” I said, and he nodded.

“Old and musty and sour milky,” he agreed. “In addition to the general horror show. I’m never going to sleep again.”

“Certainly not without someone standing guard,” I agreed.

Something howled behind us, and we turned to face it with gun and blade lifted and ready. More faces emerged from the fog, stretched and horrible, eye sockets dark and empty, mouths gaping. “Go back,” they hissed, and swiped before we could dodge, pushing both of us backward. Ghosts from other directions joined in, shoving us with hands cold enough to suck the air from my lungs. They were maneuvering us south, I realized. Away from the gate and back toward Edentown.

“We aren’t going back there!” Theo shouted. “So do your worst!”

They took him at his word.

The ground began to shake again, throwing us into each other. The sound of falling bricks followed, and we turned back to see chunks of the gate falling away, hitting asphalt, shattering. The asphalt under our feet began to crack, and the wind grew fiercer, sending a hurricane of rock and grit swirling in the air.

I hit my knees and nearly fell into a growing ravine in the road—and would have if Theo hadn’t grabbed me. Hand around the belt of my katana, he hauled me back onto semisolid ground.

“I think you pissed them off,” I said as he offered me a hand and helped me to my feet, knees singing with pain from the impact.

“My bad,” he said. “Who the hell did she piss off?”

“Or what?” I said. “Something that doesn’t want her leaving.”

Another rumble, and the ghosts amped up their assault. Stones began flying off the gate’s façade like they’d been propelled from a volcano.

“Car!” Theo yelled, his hand still on mine, and we ran for it, or at least in the direction we thought it should be. The fog was still thick, green, and nearly impermeable. And when the firmness of asphalt gave way to grass, we knew we were in trouble.

“Wrong way!” I called out over the screams and howls, and we turned around and were nearly crushed by a stone, half as tall as I was, that struck the ground in front of us like an arrow and with enough force to push its shorter end nearly a foot into the dirt.