My presence is fighting the cancer, helping make him healthy again. And I feel stronger every day.
Kids like you? They always take someone with them. Try not to, Lucy.
“Where’s Colin?” Jay asks, looking behind her. “I’m not sure he knows yet. But maybe, because he’s been camped out at Joe’s and—”
“Jay, I think Colin went to the lake to find me.”
• • •
Jay begins throwing supplies in a bag, shouting for Lucy to wait just a second, to let him call 9-1-1. But she can’t. Every particle of her body propels her out the door and down the stairs, sprinting to where she knows Colin is.
Her chest burns from trudging through the snow at this pace, and looking down as she runs, she sees two sets of footprints, converging. Colin’s and hers. Equally deep. The ice groans in warning beneath her weight, and she slips for the first time, cracking her solid hip on the surface. Closer, closer.
Lucy hates how strong she feels. The only thing keeping her going is that she’s still here. If Colin died, she would vanish, right?
“I’m almost there. Please don’t go looking for me. I’m here.”
At the edge of the ice lies a pile of clothes. Jeans, boots, his favorite blue hoodie. In the water, there are no bubbles, no ripples, no movement. Just blue water that slips into darkness.
Her scream carries through the trees and echoes off the surface of the water. The force of her anguish tears her in two and pulls her down to the brittle, thinning ice.
Every piece finally fits.
I’m no Guardian; I’m a lure.
She feels the streak of hot tears falling down her cheeks—the first ones she’s cried since waking. In the distance, sirens fill the air, the sound ringing in the empty silence of the frozen lake. Closer. Closer.
As she stares at the pile of clothes, they become covered with fluffy flakes of snow. When she looks to the sky, she finds only brilliant blue above. Holding her hands up in front of her, Lucy watches her skin disintegrate into snow and ash and air. She watches as she’s blown into the wind.
Epilogue
IT WASN’T AS SIMPLE AS slipping into the blackness and finding him there waiting. She expected it to be simple. She moved with the same instinct as before. But instead, she was back in her mirror world, alone, and more aware this time. She’d never been lonely there before, because she’d needed only to look out into the other sky and see him. But when she returned alone, she remembered every minute with Colin, every smile, every sensation of him.
Time was her sole, begrudging partner. It twisted and slept, lingered interminably and then would burst past her in the few moments Lucy let herself enjoy her lush memories of togetherness. Minutes passed differently under the lake than they did above it. A minute here could be a second or a year to anything on earth. How long would it take him to get here? How long had it been?
Every time the strange sun rose, she thought, Today is the day we’ll be back together. Every day she walked to the gate, but the longing to walk through was gone, like it had drifted off with her body into the snow.
And then everything changed.
It was a different sort of morning, cold like the first day he went into the lake, with air so sharp you hesitate before taking it into your lungs, even if it gives you your shape and its coldest elements are your only essence.
She had a good feeling that morning, one she couldn’t explain. It was weather that would make Colin’s eyes flame golden and she would know he was thinking about falling into the water, about touching her with same hands and same lips and same skin.
The trail was deserted, of course. Downy snow buried the dirt and grass. Apples that hung ripe and round the day before lay like glittering rubies in the snow. And then he was there.
His eyes were full of confusion. He looked at his arms, at the apples in the snow, at the ice-blue sky, and at the path in front of him. When he saw Lucy, his face relaxed and he blinked once and then twice for her, the second one bringing with it a smile.
CHRISTINA HOBBS & LAUREN BILLINGS are the New York Times and international bestselling authors of the Beautiful Bastard and Wild Seasons series. Separated by the pesky state of Nevada, these coauthor besties speak several times a day, agree that Ruby Pumps is the best nail polish color ever, and would, if given the choice, spend all day staring at the ocean from the San Clemente Pier. You can find them online at christinalaurenbooks.com or on Twitter at @seeCwrite and @lolashoes.
Simon & Schuster • New York
authors.simonandschuster.com/Christina-Hobbs
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An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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www.SimonandSchuster.co.uk
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or
places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 by Lauren Billings and Christina Hobbs
Jacket photograph copyright © 2014 by Ali Smith
Jacket photograph by Ali Smith
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Jacket design by Lizzy Bromley
Interior design by Hilary Zarycky
The text for this book is set in Stempel Schneider.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lauren, Christina.
pages cm
Summary: “Lucy and Colin discover they have a connection on the grounds of the private school they attend, but Lucy has a startling secret”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4814-1368-8 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4814-3039-5 (eBook)
[1. Dead—Fiction. 2. Ghosts—Fiction. 3. Supernatural—Fiction.
4. Love—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L372745Su 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013038763
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Her
Chapter 2: Him
Chapter 3: Her
Chapter 4: Him
Chapter 5: Her
Chapter 6: Him
Chapter 7: Her
Chapter 8: Him
Chapter 9: Her
Chapter 10: Him
Chapter 11: Her
Chapter 12: Him
Chapter 13: Him
Chapter 14: Her
Chapter 15: Him
Chapter 16: Her
Chapter 18: Her
Chapter 19: Him
Chapter 20: Her
Chapter 21: Her
Chapter 22: Him
Chapter 23: Her
Chapter 24: Him
Chapter 25: Her
Chapter 26: Him
Chapter 27: Her
Chapter 28: Him
Chapter 29: Her
Chapter 30: Him
Chapter 31: Her
Chapter 32: Him
Chapter 33: Her
Chapter 34: Him
Chapter 35: Her
Epilogue
About Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings