Elliott would probably want to save everyone anyway, I tell myself. It seems like the sort of thing he’d do. But if I were in his shoes—if I could safely go home to a living world, if I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would never see my brother again no matter what I did—I’d leave everyone else behind in a heartbeat. Especially the guy responsible for my brother’s death.

That’s a chance I can’t take. I can’t risk the possibility that maybe, deep down, Elliott might be like me after all.

I lie on the floor. I stare up at the stars, then change my mind and roll onto my stomach. Earth glows beneath me, a sliver of its edge washed in the brilliance of dawn. I stare at it long enough for the lights to stay in place even when I close my eyes.

I’m coming, Ty, I promise silently. Whatever it takes.

“Okay,” I tell Mirage. “Do it.”

Good luck, he whispers.

An electric jolt sparks in my brain. I jerk once. And then I wake up on Cisco Island.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

AND PROMPTLY FALL FLAT ON MY FACE.

Splat. I manage to catch myself on my hands and knees in ankle-deep standing water. It immediately soaks through my clothes—the old shirt and jeans I was wearing back in the clearing, along with my socks, as I’m once again shoeless. Cold wetness sluices over me and I shiver.

The ripples of my landing flatten out. The water is still. I spot my reflection—lank dark hair, pale skin, black veins creeping under my sleeves—and instinctively scramble backwards, my brain screaming, Mirror!

“What are you doing? Stop making a scene,” hisses an unfamiliar voice.

I go still. I don’t reply, for fear my voice will be recognized by whichever islander is addressing me.

But someone else replies for me. “The mayor is the only one allowed to make a scene,” she quips, half mocking and half bitter. The first voice shushes her.

My pulse stutters. I wouldn’t have any control over where you appear, Mirage said. Apparently he wasn’t joking. Wherever I’ve landed, there are at least two people who don’t seem to have noticed my appearing-from-thin-air trick but still might recognize me at any moment. The best I can hope for is that these two islanders are the only ones nearby. I can handle two people. But the way they were talking about the mayor kind of made it sound like …

I pray very hard—apparently all it takes is a life-threatening situation or two to make a convert out of me—and turn my head.

Shoes. Lots of shoes. Attached to lots of feet.

Mirage has dropped me in the middle of a crowd.