Max swallowed and looked to me. I wanted to communicate with him somehow, but I didn’t know whether I wanted him to stop this or continue. Something paralyzed me. I wondered if Marianne was already inside of me, if that’s why I couldn’t think clearly or even move my limbs, or if it was just crippling fear and sadness.

Like a judge’s gavel falling after the pronouncement of a sentence, Max cleared his throat and whispered, “Yes.”

With a warning noise and a flinty look, Bella stepped forward and lit Max’s candle. Then, turning to me, she asked for my permission, as well.

Only now could I find my voice. But when I opened my mouth, I didn’t tell them I’d changed my mind, that this wasn’t the way. I opened my mouth and issued a calm, “Yes.”

And then it was out of my hands. Bella lit my candle, but instead of stepping back to her place, she gripped my wrist and raised the crystal point above her head again. “Keepers of the afterworld, return now the soul of Marianne Galbraith to this circle.”

Bella’s eyes closed. Her hand burned where it gripped my wrist. Her entire body seemed to vibrate power.

I kept inhaling huge quantities of air, like a drowning person anticipating being claimed by the waves. It would have helped if I could have known what was happening, but this was, conveniently, the part Bella had left out. The air buzzed with even more tension, if that were possible. As Nathan fervently shouted the Lord’s Prayer, I sent up one of my own.

When the wait seemed interminable, when it looked as though we had failed, Marianne’s soul entered the circle. I could pinpoint the exact moment her spirit arrived. Nathan’s madness subsided for a moment, then returned as a fierce panic. His body arched from the bed like the string of a drawn bow, and he screamed, the most pitiable sound of pain and fear I’d ever heard. He was terrified he’d hurt her. I couldn’t help but remember the way he’d pinned me to the floor in the shop, threatened me with a chunk of broken glass. He hadn’t been afraid to hurt me.

Max was visibly shaken. He clasped Nathan’s wrist and turned wide, frightened eyes to Bella. “We have to stop this!”

“Marianne Galbraith,” Bella shouted over Nathan’s voice. “Take this empty vessel and do with her what you will!”