“Wow.” Tod stepped back for a better look, and I had to glance down to see why he was staring. Sophie’s dress was too small for me, which meant that my meager assets were heaped above the strapless, gold-embroidered bodice, and my waist cinched by the torturous ribbing. The skirt flared with several gathered layers of material, and only barely brushed the ground around my shoes. It would have been longer on Sophie, but I wasn’t going to complain about the length of a stolen dress.

“You really think I’m going to blend in wearing this thing?” I eyed him skeptically, suddenly certain the reaper was playing a horrible, ill-timed joke.

He grinned. “Actually, now I’m pretty sure you’re gonna stand out, but in a good way.”

“But I still look human.” Especially with chill bumps popping up all over my exposed arms and shoulders.

“So do sirens. And anyway, they’ll probably assume there’s a tail or a third leg under your skirt.”

“How very comforting…” I mumbled, slamming the front door. Then I took a step forward and realized I’d closed Sophie’s skirt in the car. Frustrated, I opened the door and pulled the material free, wincing at the grease stain obvious on the white beaded satin, even in the rapidly fading daylight. Sophie was going to kill me. “Let’s get this over with.”

With any luck, I could reclaim my men and return Sophie’s dress before she discovered it missing. And under the circumstances, I’d be happy to let her wonder about the unexplained stain for the rest of her life.

“Okay, now try to walk around like you belong there, but don’t make eye contact with anyone,” Tod said, taking my hand as he half led, half tugged me across the street. “And if it looks like it’s going to go bad at any time, I want you to cross back over. You won’t do anyone any good if you get caught.”

“The same goes for you,” I pointed out, then clenched my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering as we came to a stop in front of the still-spraying fountain.

“Acknowledged.” Tod grinned again, but this time his smile felt forced. “You ready?”

“Not even a little bit.” But I bid a silent farewell to the human world, anyway, and closed my eyes as his hand tightened around mine. Tod was going to cross me over, so I could save my voice for the return trip.

Since they didn’t have to conjure up a death song, reapers crossed almost instantly, and I found the process disorienting, compared to my own routine.

While my eyes were still closed, the air around me took on a different quality as it brushed my bare arms and shoulders. It was every bit as cold as the December chill in the human world, but felt somehow sharper. More dangerous.

The sounds from my reality faded rapidly. Gone were the growl of a distant engine and the Christmas music tinkling faintly from inside the school gym. The park lights no longerbuzzed overhead, nor did the wind rattle the skeletal branches of the trees all around us.

Instead, a constant hum of strange conversation filtered into my ears, and even the familiar words were spoken with an unfamiliar lilt, or pitch, or syllabic stress. Even the light pitter sound of the fountain had changed, as if something thicker than water now splashed onto the brick ledge to my left.

I opened my eyes and gasped. I now stood beside the stone park fountain in Sophie’s white Snow Queen dress, both of which had bled through from one reality to the other without so much as an atom out of place. Except that now the fountain shot a thin stream of blood high into the air, to splatter into the gruesome crimson pool at its base.

I really should have seen that coming.

But the fountain was just the beginning. Unlike the park in our world, on this side of the gray fog, Tod and I were no longer alone.

Not by a long shot.

24

“YOU OKAY?” TOD WHISPERED, leaning so close I could feel his breath on my ear, warm in contrast to the bone-deep chill of the Netherworld.

“Mmm-hmm,” I mumbled, afraid to speak for fear of somehow giving away my species. His hand squeezed mine, reassuring me with the physical presence he couldn’t avoid in the Netherworld.

All around us bodies milled, clustered in restless groups or walking aimlessly around the grassless park. Some whispered words as thin and wispy as the wind, while others thundered in deep, round tones. Everywhere I turned, sparkling, flowing gowns were decked with large multilobed feathers from birds I couldn’t identify. Long swaths of crystalline material draped forms whose gender I couldn’t determine.

Several people wore masks, and as I watched, a man with three legs and a tail lowered a visage painted with four glittering lilac eyes to reveal a smooth, featureless expanse of chalk-white flesh where his face should have been. I gasped, and Tod squeezed my hand, then pulled me swiftly through the crowd.

He stopped at a tree with a massive, twisting trunk in varying shades of a deep, earthy gold and tugged me beneath branches bowed with thick, spiky, rust-colored foliage. “If you want to blend in—” he whispered “—it might help not to flinch and gasp every time you see a Netherworlder. I hear they’re pretty common around here.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” But the featureless face was new to me. As were the short, thick creatures with wickedly curved claws instead of fingers, and long, sharp beaks where their noses should have been. “Do you see Alec?”

“I don’t know. What does he looks like?”

“You’ve never seen him?” Frustrated, I reached up to brush a spiky, orange-ish plant pod from my hair, then stopped myself just in time. For all I knew, the tree we stood under was just as poisonous as the Crimson Creeper that had nearly killed me a month earlier.