I pushed off Savannah enough to look behind me and my heart dropped. My whole body went ice-cold, goosebumps sharp against my clothes. Ten feet away, there she was. Devon Bishop. Just like last time, her entire body trembled. And I hated the parallel I saw in Savannah. Devon’s head jerked left and right, up and down, making her dark hair swish around. She mumbled a stream of words, but they weren’t coherent. Her eyes rolled in different directions. She gasped and her back arched. Her whole body convulsed and twitched. She collapsed and flopped on her back like a fish out of water. Her arms and legs thrashed. She swung her head back and forth. Even from here I heard her teeth rattling against each other.

“It’s the same. It’s the same,” I heard myself whisper. Then I saw something new. “No, wait, not the same⁠—”

“Frankie, talk to us!”

Devon’s body was blue. I opened my mouth to ask Tegan what that meant when the blue lifted off of Devon’s body in the shape of Devon. I choked on a gasp. That was her soul. I knew it with every fiber of my being. The glowing blue form of Devon thrashed above her body and a pained wail left her spirit-form. Her soul dropped back into her body, causing her limbs to thrash against the ground, but it was only a second before her soul began to lift again.

“NOOOO!” I screamed so loud my voice cracked.

Her soul wasn’t touching her body at all. She was dying. I was still screaming when Devon’s spirit looked right at me. Then her ghostly gaze dropped to Savannah in my arms and back to me. I had no idea what I was doing or where the idea came from, but I jumped to my feet and dragged Savannah’s trembling body with me.

“HOLD ON!” I screamed to her. “I’M COMING!”

I’d never met this woman but that didn’t matter. My heart was breaking. I had to save her. I had to stop her soul from getting too far away. I’d heard the others talking about the Strait of the Dead for our afterlife. If I didn’t do something right now, her soul was a blink away from the express pass to the afterlife. I couldn’t let her die. Devon’s soul was a fighter unlike I’d ever thought to see. Her spirit form was being dragged away by an entity I couldn’t see, yet she grabbed ahold of her own body, looking like a flag desperately holding on to the flagpole in a hurricane. I dragged Savannah’s body over to her and threw her on top of Devon’s glowing blue soul.

The blue soul vanished.

“DEVON!” I screamed.