“Darcy’s going to make more than a hundred grand this year, just by signing that contract. So if she starts college now, she won’t get any financial aid at all.”

“Oh,” Darcy said. Her two-book advance was about the size of a four-year education. By the time she’d finished college, every penny would be gone.

“Well, that doesn’t seem fair,” her father said. “I mean, maybe there’s a way to change the contract and delay the—”

“Too late,” Darcy said, marveling at her little sister’s deviousness. “Already signed and mailed it.”

Her parents were staring at each other now, communing in some unspoken parental way, which meant that they would discuss the matter in private, later. Which meant that Nisha had opened the door a tiny crack.

Now was the time to seal the deal.

“New York’s a lot closer than Oberlin,” Darcy said. “I’ll only be a train ride away, and Aunt Lalana lives there, and there’s a much bigger Gujarati community than in—”

Annika Patel raised her hand, and Darcy stammered to a halt on the word “Ohio.” Maybe it was best to save a few arguments for later, in case this battle went to round two.

But already something momentous had happened here at this table. Darcy could feel her course in life, which had been set so determinedly since she was a little girl, bending toward a new trajectory. She had changed the arc of her own story, merely by typing a couple of thousand words each day for thirty days.

And the taste of that power, the power of her own words, made her hungrier.

Darcy didn’t want this interruption to last only a year. She wanted to see how long she could stretch this feeling out. To be dizzy with words again, like in that glorious week at the end of last November when everything had fallen into place. Darcy wanted that feeling not just for a year.

She wanted it forever.

CHAPTER 4

WHEN MY EYES OPENED, EVERYTHING was wrong.

My head hurt from having fallen to the floor. I touched my hand to my brow and felt the stickiness of blood. I was too dizzy to stand, but managed to sit up.

Beneath me was an expanse of gray tile, just like the airport floor, but everything else had disappeared. I seemed to be sitting in the midst of a formless gray cloud. All I could see were shadows, wisps of motion in the fog.

Hitting my head had done something to my senses. The light filtering through the mist was cold and hard, and there were no colors, only grays. A roaring sound echoed in my ears, like rain on a metal roof. The air tasted flat and metallic. My body felt numb, as if the darkness I’d fallen through had left me chilled.

Where the hell was I?

A dark shape flickered in the corner of my vision. But when I turned my head, it vanished back into the mist.

“Hello?” I tried to call, but could barely squeeze the word out. Then I realized why—I hadn’t taken a single breath since waking up. My lungs were like the rest of my body, filled with cold black ink.

I sucked in a startled gasp, my body starting up like an old car, in jerks and shudders. A few shallow breaths forced themselves into me. I shut my eyes, concentrating on breathing . . . on being alive.

When I opened them again, a girl stood in front of me.

She was about thirteen, with large, curious eyes that met my gaze. She wore a skirt that fell to the floor, a sleeveless top, and a scarf across one shoulder—all of it gray. Her face was gray too, as if she were a pencil drawing come to life.

I drew a careful breath before speaking.

“Where am I?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You can see me?”

I didn’t answer. In that billowing cloud, she was the only thing I could see.

“You’ve crossed over,” the girl said, stepping a little closer. Her eyes focused on my forehead. “But you’re still bleeding.”

My fingers went to my brow. “I hit my head.”

“So you’d look dead to them. Clever girl.” She spoke with an accent that I couldn’t recognize at first. And though I could understand her words, what the girl was saying made no sense. “You’re shiny. You thought your way here, didn’t you?”

“Here? Where am I?”

She frowned. “Maybe not so clever after all. You’re in the afterworld, my dear.”

For a moment it was like falling again, the floor dropping out from under me. The distant rumbling sound grew louder in my ears.

“Are you saying . . . I’m dead?”

She glanced up at my forehead again. “The dead don’t bleed.”

I blinked, not knowing what to say.

“It’s very simple.” She spoke carefully, as if explaining something to a child. “You willed your way here. My brother is just like you.”

I shook my head. Anger was rising up in me, along with the certainty that she was trying to be confusing.

But before I could say something rude, an awful sound came through the mist.

Squeak, squeak . . . tennis shoes on the tile floor.

I spun around, staring into the formless gray. “It’s him!”

“Stay calm.” The girl stepped forward to take my hand. Her fingers were cold, and their iciness flowed into me, stilling my panic. “It isn’t safe yet.”

“But he’s . . .” Squeak, squeak.

I faced the sound as he emerged from the cloud—the gunman who’d shot at me. He looked even more hideous now, with a gas mask hiding his face. He was coming straight toward us.

“No,” I said.

The girl took my shoulder. “Don’t move.”

Frozen by her command, I expected the terrorist to raise his gun and fire. But he walked past us—through us, as if we were smoke and mist.

I turned and watched him recede into the cloud. His passage swirled the gray behind him, clearing a column of air. I saw plastic chairs and television screens and bodies lying on the floor.

“This is the airport,” I murmured.

The girl frowned. “Of course it is.”

“But why—”

Inside the swirling clouds something flashed, a metal cylinder clattering along the floor toward us. The size of a soft drink can, it rolled to a stop a few yards away, spinning and hissing, spraying more smoke into the air. In seconds the clear passage that the gunman had created filled with mist again.

“Tear gas,” I murmured. This wasn’t heaven. It was a battle zone.

Security is responding, the woman on the phone had said. I finally realized that the roaring sound was gunfire, muted by distance or whatever had gone wrong with my senses.

“Don’t worry,” the girl said. “Nothing can hurt you here.”

I turned to her. “Where’s here? None of this makes sense!”

“Try to pay attention,” she said, exasperated now. “You’ve thought your way into the afterworld, and if you go back to reality, you’ll be shot. So stay calm!”

I stared at her, unable to speak or move or think. It was all too much.

She sighed. “Just wait here. I’ll get my brother.”

* * *

I was afraid to move after she left.

The mist—or tear gas, I suppose—would clear now and then, and I could see bodies around me. Their clothes and faces were gray, like the rest of the world. Everything was leached of color, except for my own hands and the red blood I’d wiped away from my eyes.

Wherever this was, I didn’t belong here. I was too alive.

It was long minutes of waiting before another shape loomed out of the mist—a boy my age. I could see the resemblance to his sister, except that his skin wasn’t gray like hers. It was as brown as mine at the end of a long summer at the beach, and jet-black hair fell just above his shoulders. He wore a silk shirt that rippled like a dark liquid across his skin.

Even in that awful moment, I could see that he was beautiful. He shone somehow, as if sunlight were breaking through the mist, just for him. He was one of those boys with a perfect jaw, who looks stunning when he’s clean shaven, but just that little bit more handsome with the barest shadow of stubble.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said.

I tried to answer, but my mouth was dry.

“My name is Yamaraj,” he said. “I can help you.”

He had the same accent as his sister—from India, I thought, with a touch of England. His words came out precisely, like someone who’d learned English in a classroom.

“I’m Lizzie,” I managed.

He looked puzzled a moment. “Short for Elizabeth?”

I just stared at him. It was such a strange thing to say.

Something flashed in the corner of my eye—another man, running fast, ducking and weaving as he went. He wore a gas mask, a black uniform, and a bulletproof vest. He must have been one of the good guys, but at that moment he looked like a monster.

Yamaraj put his hand on my arm. “This is almost over. I’ll take you someplace safe.”

“Please,” I said as he turned me away from the muted roar of gunfire.

But then I saw what was ahead of us—the metal gate that had doomed us all. A dozen bodies lay at its foot, still and silent. One woman had her arm flung across a child. Another man’s fingers were bloody from clawing at the unyielding steel.

I froze. “This is where they caught us!”

“Close your eyes, Elizabeth.” His voice had a quiet intensity that forced me to obey, and he led me gently forward. “Don’t worry,” he kept saying. “The overworld can’t hurt you if you stay calm.”

I wasn’t calm at all. But my panic was like a poisonous snake at a zoo, staring at me from the other side of thick glass. Only Yamaraj’s touch on my arm kept the glass from shattering. His skin seemed to burn against mine.

With every blind step forward I expected to feel a body underfoot, or to slip on blood, but there was only a slight tugging on my clothes, as if we were walking through brambles.

“We’re safe now,” Yamaraj finally said, and I opened my eyes again.

We were in another part of the airport, where rows of plastic chairs faced the sealed-up doors of boarding gates. Televisions were mounted on the walls, their screens blank. Sliding walkways moved between glass barriers, empty.

The light was just as hard and cold here, and everything still gray, except for Yamaraj, shining and brown. But the tear gas was only wisps and haze around us.

I turned to stare back the way we’d come. The gate was in the distance, the fallen bodies on the other side.

“We walked through that?” I asked.

“Don’t look back. It’s important that you stay—”

“Calm. I get it!” Nothing makes me more annoyed than someone telling me to stay calm. But the fact that I could snap at him meant that I was coming out of shock.

My anger sputtered when I turned to face Yamaraj. His gaze was so steady, and the glint in his brown eyes softened the hard light around us. He was the only thing in this world that wasn’t gray and cold.

“You’re still bleeding.” He grasped the tail of his shirt with both hands, and with a sharp movement ripped a piece away. When he pressed it against my forehead, I could feel the warmth of his hand through the silk.

My mind steadied a little. The dead don’t bleed. I wasn’t dead.

“That girl who found me, she’s your sister?”

“Yes. Her name is Yami.”

“She said some weird stuff.”

A smile touched his lips. “Yami is unhelpful sometimes. You must have questions.”

I had a hundred, but they all boiled down to one.

“What’s happening?”

Yamaraj looked past me. “A war, perhaps?”

I frowned. This boy wasn’t from around here. “Um, this isn’t a war. It’s some kind of terrorist attack. But what I meant was . . . I’m not dead, am I?”

His eyes met mine. “You’re alive, Lizzie. Just hurt and scared.”