The gate was still moving, but it was too slow. It wouldn’t be open in time. Finn punched the button through the open window in the guard’s shack, but the gate gained no speed.

“Who is that?” Anabelle asked, staring at him as she clutched the wheel.

“It’s Finn,” I told her. The explanation would have to wait.

“Go!” Finn shouted again, and Anabelle stomped on the gas again. The car lurched forward, and I fell against the rear bench seat. We flew past the guard shack as Finn took aim at another one of the guards. Light flashed from the barrel of his gun.

The gate knocked off the passenger’s side-view mirror, then scraped the entire length of the vehicle on the right side as we breached the New Temperance town wall and shot out into the badlands.

Anabelle took a hard right just outside the gate, and I tumbled across the floorboard onto my sister. “Mellie, are you okay?” I asked, lifting myself off her with one hand on the seat.

“Fine,” she said, as I crawled onto the backseat, trying to get a good look at her as the lights from the gate faded. “But totally lost. What happened to Finn?”

More gunfire rang out from behind the wall, and I caught my breath. Was Finn shooting, or being shot at?

“Finn’s human, but he can possess people like a demon,” I explained. Both Mellie and Anabelle started to throw questions at me, but I held up one hand to stop them. “For now, you’ll have to trust me.”

When the squeal of metal told me the gate was closing behind us, I stood on my knees to stare through the window. The gate was almost shut, trapping the guards inside until they could reverse the motor, and I still saw no sign of Finn.

“Anabelle, stop!” I shouted.

She slammed on the brakes. The car skidded on bare dirt and chunks of asphalt from the crumbling road. For several tense seconds, I stared at the gate as the opening narrowed, waiting for Finn even though I might not be able to see or hear him coming. I couldn’t leave him. But we couldn’t wait much longer without putting ourselves—and Melanie—in danger of being recaptured.

And finally, when my chest ached and my nerves were like live wires shooting sparks beneath the surface of my skin, a man slid through the gate just before it slammed shut. He raced toward us, arms and legs pumping, automatic rifle aimed at the ground.

“It’s Finn!” I shouted, though I couldn’t see the guard’s eyes from that distance. “Unlock the doors!”

Anabelle hesitated for a second; then she punched a button in the driver’s door and the locks thunked open. I got out, and Finn threw himself into my arms, gun still aimed at the dirt, new tall, firm body pressed against me as his borrowed heart thumped against my chest.

“Are you okay?” he whispered into my ear, and I nodded against his shirt.