I dream I am walking on water. My feet skim across its surface, step after step. When I reach the middle, my feet sink down and touch the silt. The water is ice cold, numbing my skin.

On the other side of the stream, I see people waiting for me. They are surrounded by blazing auras, the flames licking and crackling in haloes around their heads.

I force myself to look back from where I came. Another group of people stand on the streambed behind me. Their auras are different—suspended in the air like red mist.

Violette stands at the front, her birdlike form leaning forward as if she wants to charge into the water and drag me back. Behind her are numa who I recognize from my past. Maurice sneers at me, baring his teeth.

I turn back toward the far bank and wade in the direction of the people with the burning haloes, sloshing through rivulets that cascade over my numb feet toward some distant destination downstream.

The faces of the assembly become clearer. I recognize Ambrose first. He’s twice as big as everyone else. Next to him is Charlotte, and next to them—standing so close together that you couldn’t slip a piece of paper between them—are Gaspard and Jean-Baptiste.

I thought he was dead. I dismiss the thought as quickly as it comes. This place exists outside life and death, I understand. This is the eternal: past, present, and future.

Jules and Ava are on the other side of Charlotte and Ambrose. They smile at me, then turn toward each other and exchange a tender glance.

I see Charles and Uta and Arthur and a whole host of other people I don’t recognize. As I approach, Vincent and Kate step forward. They hold their hands out to help me up. Kate’s halo flares like a supernova; I squint to look her in the face. As I hold my hands out to them, I notice that Vincent isn’t wearing his usual suspicious expression. Instead, his smile is genuine.

“Welcome, kindred,” he says.

They pull me from the water, but I don’t move. It’s as if my feet are stuck in cement. The others group around them and reach toward me, a host of hands to drag me from the stream. The water sucks me back, reluctant.

“Jump toward us, Louis,” Kate says, her eyes flashing like sapphires in sunlight. “You have to give it everything.”

I push against the stream bed with all my might. The others give a mighty pull. I feel a sharp pain, as though joints are being pulled from sockets.

Then, something gives way.

Chapter Twenty Six

I bolt up, gasping for breath.