I slowly turned to Bobbie, doing my best to ignore the other wraiths now plucking at my gown and pulling at my skin, clamoring for my attention. The bullet had passed through Bobbie and slammed into the wall. Jamie shot again. Bobbie stood unaffected, looking at me with round, shocked eyes.

“How could you do this to me?” she asked in a pathetically desperate voice.

By now the whole assembly had seen the other wraiths emerging from me, doubling back and spreading their fanged jaws, silently roaring in my face or cowering and whimpering.

I felt fear, enough to make me tremble, but I also knew the truth. So I looked directly at the wraiths circling me and held up one hand. “No,” I said.

As one, they all slowed as if caught in thick air. Some stopped altogether and stared back at me.

“I am the light. There is no darkness in light. The light is love. There is no fear in love. I am love, so there’s no place for you in me. So . . .” I searched for clever words, but found none. “So, no.”

I watched as my fears faded, one by one. Black to gray to nothing. They didn’t leave me, they simply vanished. But of course. Fear was of my own making, fueled by me, and I had pulled the plug through the full awareness of who I was.

To me, their departure was as though a thousand-pound weight I didn’t know I’d been wearing had been suddenly cut free. For a moment, I was sure that my feet lifted off the ground. A wave of peace rose through me and filled my chest, my mind, the air. I felt like I could walk through walls.

My fears were gone.

And Bobbie?

I turned back to the corner where Bobbie remained, staring at me, looking utterly abandoned and forlorn.

“I don’t need you either,” I said.

“Please, I can’t live without you,” she begged.

“I’m sorry.”

With a last mournful whimper, she faded into nothing. Like a fog under a hot sun, Bobbie was no more.

Lift your eyes, Grace. The kingdom of heaven is the perception of light. If your perception is clear, you will see that your whole body is full of light. Only blindness keeps anyone from seeing it.

My mind filled with a knowing that set my bloodstream on fire and transported me to a different kind of awareness. With my eyes open to the kingdom of heaven, I saw.

Where there had once been darkness, now there was only light. Warm, brilliant, washing through and over every surface. The floorboards, the chairs, my fingers. I caught my breath.