Finally, she nodded and perched on the edge of an armchair, and I knew Em could see her when she jumped a little. “Madeline, this is Emma Marshall. Em, Madeline.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Madeline said, though she sounded anything but.

Em nodded. “Thanks for letting me join your reindeer games.”

“Excuse me?” Madeline said, but before I could explain, the doorbell rang.

I peeked through the window to find Nash and Sabine on my porch, and Luca on the sidewalk behind them. “Great. The gang’s all here,” I said, pulling the door open.

The necromancer followed Nash and Sabine inside, and suddenly my living room was crowded. Styx decided we’d exceeded the maximum capacity defined by the fire code and started growling at everyone, so I had to put her in the backyard.

“Luca told us you left for an extraction, then never came back,” Nash said, eyeing me like I might be secretly broken as I closed the back door.

“I told them you were here with Tod, and that you were fine,” Luca added.

“You didn’t answer your phone,” Nash said. Sabine groaned and pushed my front door shut. “What?” he demanded, scowling at her. “This morning she insists that all we have is one another, but this afternoon she won’t answer my calls. How am I supposed to take that?”

“I didn’t get any calls,” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket again. But there they were. Three missed calls and two voice mails. All from Nash. All between twenty-five and thirty-two minutes earlier. When I was otherwise occupied, and wouldn’t have noticed an explosion in the living room, much less my phone buzzing from the pocket of my pants. On my bedroom floor.

I flushed, and Sabine’s gaze narrowed on me. “Sorry,” I said. “It was on silent. I didn’t hear it ring.”

“This is not a high-school social,” Madeline said. “Your friends will have to leave.”

“They don’t call them that anymore, Aunt Madeline,” Luca said, and it was obvious that only he and Emma could see and hear her.

Madeline frowned. “Friends?”

Luca laughed. “No, socials. They’re called dances now.”

“Wait a minute, aunt?” I said. “You’re his aunt?”

“What the hell is going on here?” Sabine demanded, glancing at those of us she could see.

“Okay, that’s it!” I stood in the middle of the room and glanced around until I was sure I had everyone’s attention. “We are now operating under a full-disclosure policy. Everyone in this room knows who and what I am, and they all have experiences or skills that could come in handy. So, Madeline, show yourself.”

“Ms. Cavanaugh, this is completely inappropriate… .”

I turned on her, and my temper got the better of me. “I’m an eleventh-grade girl who was murdered inher own bed by a mystical dagger-wielding incubus posing as a math teacher, about an hour before I was resurrected in order to extract stolen souls from monsters for the rest of my unnatural life. What part of that led you to assume anything I do or say will be appropriate by traditional standards?”

Madeline gaped at me for a second. Then she blinked and nodded. “A valid point.”

“Good. Then make yourself visible and introduce yourself to the rest of your crew.”

“My crew?”

“What crew? What the hell is going on here, Kaylee?” Nash asked.

I could tell the minute Madeline appeared to the room in general, because both Nash and Sabine focused on her instantly. “Madeline, this is Nash Hudson. You saved him from going down for my murder. And this is Sabine Campbell, his…Nightmare.” I wasn’t sure how else to explain their relationship. “Madeline is my boss in the reclamation department. And evidently Luca’s aunt. That part’s new to me.”

“Great-great-aunt,” Madeline supplied. “I was originally recruited for my own abilities as a necromancer, but they turned out not to extend into the afterlife—evidently being dead interferes with one’s ability to detect the dead. When I realized we would need the skills I lost, I brought my nephew on board, because his mother didn’t inherit the gift. It seems to skip random generations.”

“My parents think I’m at some fancy boarding school, on a soccer scholarship,” Luca added with a conspiratorial smile.

“So, what kind of crew is this, and why do you need us on it?” Sabine asked.

“It’s the reclamation department,” I said, just as Madeline said, “I don’t need you.”

“The hell you don’t,” I snapped. “Luca and I are all you have left, and we’re not going to be enough against Avari, especially now that he’s figured out how to cross over. You’re going to need everyone you can get, and everyone in this room except for you and Luca has survived an encounter with Avari, which puts them at the top of a very short list of people who can help you.”

And that’s when the room exploded into chaos and questions.

“Who and what is Avari?” Madeline asked.

“What do you mean, he can cross over?” Nash demanded, looking more scared than I’d seen him in a long time.

From Sabine: “Why are you and Luca all she has left?”

Em said, “What about Tod? Can’t he help? And his boss? What’s his name?”

“Okay, one thing at a time.” I wanted to bury my head in my hands. Or curl up in bed and pull the covers over my head. Instead, I took a deep breath and sat on the arm of my father’s chair. “I don’t want to have to repeat this, so everyone get comfortable and listen up.”