A flash of anguish twisted his features, telling me that whatever the answer was, it wasn’t a good one. His lips started to form words, but nothing came. I wanted to give him a shake or a shove, something to knock the truth out of him. But then, at last, he spoke.

“They’re okay . . . Charlie’s with friends. Your dad . . . he’s fine but . . . Stephanie, there’s something more important. It’s why I came. I need you to just listen to me without saying anything. It . . . it’s about him.”

My fingers leapt to press Lucas’s lips. He hadn’t said either of the names. But what if he did? Speaking the name would surely call him here. Unless he was already present. Watching. Listening . . .

I scanned the vacant cemetery, fighting to see through the screen of snow that, in thickening, turned the light of the moon bleary.

Life-sized angels populated the grounds, some leaning grief-stricken into crosses, others shedding tears over their stones, their wings outspread or tucked close to form the silhouettes of hearts.

I shoved Lucas backward, and he went at my insistence, both of us stopping at a craggy oak. The two of us then hid behind it, huddling close to each other. In reality, there was nothing that could shield us from Erik’s sight—not if he was determined to see, to hear. And Erik must have been the one to bring me to this dream.

If that was the case, Lucas had chosen an inopportune moment—perhaps the most inopportune—to come to me this way.

“We’re coming for you,” Lucas said. “But if our plan’s going to work, there’s something we need you to do.”

His words and our surroundings still warring for my attention, I shook my head. Because while I wanted more than anything for Lucas to come and take me out of Erik’s dark world, the idea was also something I couldn’t bear the thought of. I’d made my deal with Erik. If Lucas showed up now, I wouldn’t be able to leave with him. Not if I wanted us both to make it out alive. Not if I wanted him to.

“Whatever you’re planning,” I said, speaking fast to keep him from trying to interrupt me, “don’t. It’s too dangerous. He’s already attacked someone. He—”

“Rastin,” said Lucas, uttering perhaps the one word that could have muted me in that moment. “Stephanie, that man who came looking for you, that was Rastin.”

“Rastin?” I blinked rapidly, my heart beginning to race. Because the pieces kept coming together to suggest Lucas couldn’t be a figment.

Lucas nodded. “He got my message. That’s how I’m even able to be here right now.”

I gaped at him, his words sparking in me a potent hope. Again, I gripped Lucas by the arms, my nails digging in this time. Because that voice that I’d heard shouting my name from the other side of the house—it had been familiar for a reason. Because I had heard it before. Through one of the earbuds Lucas and I had shared that day in the library.