Then everything began to go gray, and an instant before my eyes closed, he fell to the earth at my side. The last thing I saw was Luca, his beautiful eyes half-closed, staring at me from a foot away while his hand crawled slowly toward mine.

I tried to reach for him, but moving felt impossible. I strained, and our fingers touched.

Then everything went dark.

A scratchy, slithery sound snaked its way into my head, pulling me from sleep, and dimly I realized I’d been hearing it for a while. But I couldn’t place the sound. Maybe it was left over from my subconscious, a relic from my dream about a beautiful boy and the hellish world we’d been trapped in.

I groaned and waited for the nightmare to fade, like dreams always seem to. But this one was sticking. I could still smell the heavy outdoorsy scent of that awful vine and the rotten stench of the yellowish fluid it had leaked.

I rolled over to pull my pillow over my head, but my hand landed not on my pillow, or my comforter, or even my foam mattress topper, but on something spiky and stiff. Something that scratched my palm and sent chills up my arm. Something like…grass.

My eyes flew open, but I couldn’t make sense of the lattice four feet overhead, threaded through with that damn green vine. Only it didn’t look very green in what little light filtered through, and the lattice wasn’t actually a lattice. It was some kind of metal dome covered in crimson creeper from the ground all the way up, leaving no gap more than a few inches wide.

“No, no no…!” I pushed myself upright and squeezed my eyes shut, then rubbed them for good measure. When I open my eyes, it will all be gone. I’ll be at home. In my room.

But when I opened my eyes, nothing had changed.

“What the hell is this?” I demanded, though there was no one there to answer as I crawled closer to the side of the dome, trying to ignore the fact that I was getting Netherworld grass stains on a pair of designer jeans. Through one of the larger gaps between the vines, I could make out an ancient-looking swing set and an old-fashioned metal slide shaped like a rocket ship. A very familiar rocket ship.

Recognition clicked into place in my head, and I groaned. “Seriously?” I said, inching away from the thin end of a vine reaching for me. I was on the elementary school playground. Inside the damn jungle gym. Caged by playground equipment and malevolent plant life.

What could be worse? The fact that the sky had changed since I’d passed out on command in front of the hellion. The yellow was darker now—more of a burnt umber—and the anemic sun was nowhere to be seen.

Also, Luca was gone. I was alone, in hell, and both the gloves and the box cutter were missing.

Okay, think, Sophie!

I could get out of this. I had to get out of this. I hadn’t spent the past ten years of my life dancing my tail off alongside girls with half my naturaltalent and a third of my dedication just to die in some scary-ass alternate dimension before I had a chance to truly shine in my own world.

On my knees, I eyed the vines critically, trying not to see how they slithered over one another. Trying not to hear how the thorns scraped the metal bars. They were constantly moving, but they seemed to be moving evenly, so even the occasional gap that opened in my living cage was too small for me to fit through without scraping myself on a poisonous thorn.

“You should have kissed him,” a voice said from my left, and my head swiveled in that direction so fast I swear I heard my own neck pop. A girl sat yoga-style on the ground in a dirty pair of jeans and a tee so faded I couldn’t tell the original color. Her tangled blondish hair was inches from the arced side of the jungle gym, but she didn’t even appear to notice the vines at her back, and though she watched me, her eyes never seemed to truly focus.

She hadn’t been there a second ago.

“Okay, I’ve had enough of people appearing out of nowhere. I don’t know about the Netherworld, but in my world, that’s considered rude.” And impossible, thanks to the laws of physics. Or maybe gravity. I was fuzzy on the scientific details. “Who the hell are you?”

Her eyes were normal, so I’d ruled out “hellion” and “creepy dead guy from the hall,” but I was no longer prepared to assume anyone was harmless based on appearance alone.

“Doesn’t matter anymore.” The girl swiped one arm across her forehead and left a smear of dirt in its place. There was something familiar about her blue eyes. I felt like I should know her, but I couldn’t quite remember where I’d seen her. “You matter. Until he’s done with you.”

Her voice was familiar too. “Are you real?” Or was I hallucinating, on top of everything else? “Do I know you?”

She laughed, but I didn’t see what was funny. “I don’t even know me most days, so how can I know if you do?” She blinked, then frowned at the ground. “That’s pretty good,” she mumbled, running one hand through her nest of pale hair. “Maybe for the third verse…”

Her eyes completely lost focus then, and she sang beneath her breath, a clear, frail melody questioning her own existence. I didn’t know the tune and I wasn’t even sure all the words were real, but I knew that voice. She closed her eyes, and I studied her, and I probably would have drawn the obvious conclusion earlier, if not for the sheer impossibility of it.

That, and her complete lack of makeup.

“Addison Page,” I said, and her eyes flew open, her focus crisp at last. “You’re Addison Page.”

She nodded slowly. “I’d almost forgotten….”