“You!” I said as he ducked beneath the limbs into our private powwow.

“You, too,” the boy said, in a voice I’d last heard from Emma’s mouth.

“You know each other?” Tod’s eyes narrowed as he glanced back and forth between us. But I couldn’t tear my gaze from Avari’s proxy.

“You’re Alec?”

“Since the day I was born.” He shrugged, dark eyes watching me closely. “Though the name’s about all I have left from that existence.”

“I saw you in the razor wheat on Wednesday.”

Alec nodded. “I was looking for you, and your house seemed like a good place to start.”

Great. A sarcastic demon proxy.

“But I have to say you look better in formal wear than pajamas,” he continued, eyeing Sophie’s dress—and me in it—appreciatively. Suddenly I wanted a coat, to cope with more than just the cold.

“Wait, why were you looking for her on Wednesday?” Tod asked. “Nash didn’t go missing until yesterday.”

“Yes, but I wanted out of here two and a half decades ago, and she seemed like my best shot in years.”

I propped both hands on my hips. As badly as I wanted to know who he was and how he’d known I could get him out, I had more important things to worry about at the moment. “I’m not taking you anywhere until you take me to Nash and my father.”

“Are they at Prime Life?” Tod asked. The Netherworld version of Prime Life, one of the largest life insurance companies in the country, was Avari’s home base when he was in town.

Addison shook her head in stiff, obviously painful motions. “Not that I could find. And I looked everywhere I had access.”

“They’re in there.” Alec pointed off into the throng and I followed his finger toward the building rising over the heads of the crowd gathered in front of it. Eastlake High.

Or the Netherworld version of it, anyway.

“Why are they in the school?” I asked, dread clenching around my stomach with an iron grip.

“Avari’s planning something big, and I think he wants them both nearby to boost his energy,” the proxy said, and Addison nodded.

“He wants them near?” I repeated, glancing again at the second floor of the school, which was all I could see over the crowd. “Does that mean they’re not actually with him?”

“They don’t have to be in the same room, no,” Alec said.

“They just have to be close enough to draw power from.”

I shrugged, a thin pulse of hope threading through me. “So, we can just go get them, right?”

“In theory…” Addison started, and that was enough for me.

“Let’s go.” Human-looking people were rare enough in the Netherworld that four of us together might be noticed, so Addy and Alec each started off on their own, one veering to the left and one to the right. Tod and I stayed together for strength in numbers, since neither of us belonged there or had any defensive abilities. We headed down the middle, hoping to avoidnotice at the edge of the throng, where the crowd was least dense.

The multitude swallowed us whole, and I let it, breathing deeply through my mouth as we walked, trying to calm my racing pulse in case any of the predators could hear it. Sophie’s skirt swished around my ankles, brushing other pieces of clothing made of rich, iridescent materials I didn’t recognize, several of which seemed to move independently of their wearers.

A tail brushed my hand and I shivered. A soft, warm breeze caressed my face and exposed cleavage, and as it passed, I both heard and felt the words it whispered into my ears, though I couldn’t understand a bit of what was said.

I clung to Tod’s hand as we crossed the crowded street, grateful for how very there he felt in the Netherworld, though no doubt his physical vulnerability made him feel exposed and defenseless. And finally, when we stepped past the edge of the crowd onto the sidewalk in front of the school, I exhaled. We were still alive, and we were almost there.

“Ready?” Addison appeared at Tod’s side and took his hand, just as Alec emerged on my right.

We both nodded. Then the double front doors of the school opened, and my gaze was drawn toward the literally dazzling figure that emerged.

“Who’s that?” I stared at the girl, who looked completely human except that she glowed with a beautiful, intense inner light. As if she were lit from within, like a human candle, shining so brightly it hurt my eyes to look at her.

Her eyes were dark pinpoints in a face so brilliant I couldn’t make out her actual features, and though her short, fitted dress was a pristine white, it was dull in comparison to flesh that gleamed and glittered like sunlight on the ocean. In one glowing hand, she carried a slim, dark cylinder I couldn’t identify from that distance.

“That’s Lana. She’s one of the lampades,” Alec whispered as the girl sank onto the top step, like a school kid waiting for a ride. “She’s one of Avari’s favorite pets in decades. This whole celebration is for the lampades. About them. And Avari has two of them for the first time in living memory. Lana, and her sister, Luci. They just got here yesterday.”

“What are they?” I asked, unable to drag my focus from the girl glowing like a living jack-o’-lantern, even though the light hurt my eyes.

“Lampades are the only creatures I know of that exist in both worlds at once, in the exact same time and place.” Alec headed slowly away from the crowd and we followed him, the cold Netherworld wind seeming to push us along. “If you were to cross over, you’d see her sitting there in your world just like she is here. Lampades are walking liminalities. You see how Lana’s glowing like someone shoved a lightbulb up her butt?” Alec asked, and I nodded, amused by the visual in spite of the circumstances. “That’s liminal light, and it runs through her like blood runs through us. A concentration of that light can temporarily merge corresponding sections of the Netherworld and your world if she shines it at a liminal space, like a window, or a threshold.”