Throat tight with dread, I stepped into the middle of the hall, glancing back and forth to make sure I was alone. So far so good.

I didn’t want to cross into the Netherworld. And I especially didn’t want to cross over in my school, which I knew for a fact to be Avari’s new base of operations, unless something had changed in the past six weeks. But I wasn’t going to hang Emma out to dry, even knowing that crossing into the Netherworld could mean forfeiting my last two days of life.

Fortunately, with no mental patient yelling at me and no hospital aide shouting for security, I might just be calm enough to put aside fears of my own demise long enough to focus on one from my past.

Sucking in a deep breath, I closed my eyes and thought back to the last death I’d seen—the last soul I’d sung for. Other than Danica’s baby, that was Mrs. Bennigan, who’d died in her classroom the day after Mr. Beck’s predecessor had died at his desk. While she’d breathed her last, I’d hidden outside with Nash, trying to hold back the song my body demanded I sing for her. The song that now echoed inside of me, in memory of her.

The clawing pain in my throat was both familiar and welcome, because with it came the first thin tendrils of sound—a muffled version of the fabled bean sidhe wail—which wanted to burst forth full-strength from my mouth. But this occasion called for stealth on both sides of the world barrier, so I swallowed all but a soft, high-pitched whine which resonated in the windowpane in the door to my left. It was a sound no human could have made, but it was quiet enough to go unnoticed.

A second after my wail began, the gray fog rolled in out of nowhere. The Nether-fog was liminal—a visual representation of the barrier between worlds—and while I stood in it, I wasn’t fully present in either the human world or the Nether. I was caught between, kept company by only the slithering, skittering creatures crawling through that fog, their very presence a constant warning to move on, in one direction or the other.

I took one step away from the wall, and with a single thought of clear intent echoing in my head—I intend to cross over—the fog around me dissipated and the Netherworld came into startling, horrifying focus.

The first glimpse is always the worst—until you blink, and see it all for a second time, and you realize it’s not going to go away with just a click of your heels.

The building around me hadn’t changed. Because it was heavily populated during the school year, Eastlake High bled through into the Netherworld almost exactly as it existed in the human world. The real difference lay in what the Nether did with that building.

In the Netherworld version of Eastlake’s math hall, the walls were crawling with Crimson Creeper, a mass of slithering, dark green vines sprouting red-edged variegated leaves every couple of inches. The vines werecarnivorous, of course, and they’d snatch anything edible within reach, which was why I’d crossed over in the middle of the hall. But the real danger was the thousands of needle-thin, titanium strong thorns. One prick would inject a predigestive poison to begin dissolving the victim’s organs from the inside out. And all the vine had to do then was coil around the body and wait for its liquefying meal to soak in like plant fertilizer.

I’d been stuck by an infant vine once, and the pinprick scars around my ankle were a lasting reminder never to tangle with it again.

Unfortunately, lengths of the vine crisscrossed the open doorway, blocking the Netherworld version of Beck’s classroom, beginning a couple of inches from the ground. I couldn’t get to the closet, where I’d planned to cross back over, without getting rid of the vines. And every minute I wasted in the Netherworld was a minute Emma was alone with Mr. Beck and his incubus charm.

For one long moment, I stood still, listening for evidence of any Nether-life. When I heard nothing immediately threatening, I jogged down the hall, careful to avoid twisting vine feelers and to peek into open classrooms before I passed by them. I turned right at the corner and ran past the foreign language labs and into the science wing, and only released the nervous breath I’d been holding when I saw that one of the three chemistry labs was open and free of Creeper vines, except for one stretching across the top corner of the doorway.

The usual stools were missing from the lab, but the high, black-topped lab stations were still there, and so far unmolested by the Netherworld population and plant life. I opened several drawers and pawed through piles of useless pencils, erasers, pens, rulers and the occasional stirrer without finding anything useful. All the good stuff was locked in the cabinets at the back of the room.

But when I glanced up, I realized that the padlocks hadn’t bled through from the human world. Did that mean the supplies weren’t there, either?

Conscious of the clock ticking steadily in my head, I raced across the room and threw open the first cabinet—then grinned like a fool at the full shelves.

I pulled on a pair of thick neoprene gloves from the third shelf, then pawed through a series of Bunsen burners and test tubes before stumbling upon a basket full of scissors on the far right. I grabbed the biggest pair I could find, then tugged a pair of goggles into place over my eyes, just in case. Then I ran, my sneakers silent on the linoleum. I was several feet from the hallway intersection when a familiar voice spoke from a classroom to the left, and I froze in terror.

“I believe this is the second such gift you’ve brought me,” Avari said, and tiny icicles formed in my veins. “One might think you were paying tribute. Or trying to appeal to my mercy.”