“But it’s not?” Control the dead? What did that even mean? How can you control something that isn’t even alive?

“Necromancy is as real as I am.”

I lifted one brow at him and stepped over a tangle of vines wrapped around something still squirming within the knot. “I’m kind of questioning my own sanity at the moment, so I’m not convinced you’re real right now either.”

Another laugh. “Necromancy is real. I’m real, you’re real, and all this is real.” He spread his arms to take in the deadly vines, their rank, leaking juices, and the building they seemed determined to take over from the inside out. “Normally, I’d try to acclimate you to this new reality slowly—well, normally, I wouldn’t have told you any of this—but since we’re here, obviously, I think we’re in a sort of deep immersion situation. Like when you move to a foreign country, to learn the language.”

“Okay, so what is a necromancer?” That word had triggered something in my memory. Something too disgusting to be academic, despite the educational sound of the word I couldn’t quite remember. “You, like, like the dead? Physically?”

Luca frowned in confusion. Then his eyes widened, and he laughed again, louder this time. “No. That’s a necrophiliac. Same root word—completely different concept.”

“Oh. Good.” ’Cause…ew. “So, what’s a necromancer? What do you do?”

“That’s kind of complicated. The part that’s easy to explain is that I…recognize the dead.”

I burst into laughter, then slapped one hand over my mouth and glanced over my shoulder. The hall was still empty. I wasn’t sure what we were hiding from, but I really didn’t want to be found.

“So, you see dead people? Is that what you’re trying to say? Like, ghosts?”

“No. Not ghosts. People. Like that guy in the hall, with the white eyes. He was dead.”

I stopped walking again, and Luca tugged me forward to avoid a thin vine snaking toward me from the vent in a locker. “But he was moving. Dead people don’t move. That’s kind of a trademark characteristic of the deceased.”

Luca shrugged. “There are several different kinds of ‘dead.’ That guy was a reaper. They’re not supposed to kill at random, but they’re also not supposed to show up, fully corporeal, in the middle of a high school hallway either. Which is why we were going to run. But then we wound up here instead.”

“Wait, reaper, as in Grim Reaper? That was the Grim Reaper?”

“That was a reaper. One of many. But something’s wrong with him.”

I blinked, and he pulled me forward again when my feet stopped working. “Okay, time out. That’s all the crazy I can take for now. I want to go home. What do I have to do? Click my heelstogether?” My shoes weren’t ruby, nor were they slippers, but for what my dad paid for the designer label, they damn well ought to take me wherever I wanted to go.

“Um…I don’t think that’ll do it, Dorothy, so I suggest we find someplace safe to figure this out.”

Figure it out? “Wait.” Irritation flared in my chest, like when I spent too much time with Peyton. “You know where we are, but not how to get back? How is that even possible?”

“Crossing dimensions is a little more complicated than crossing the street.”

“So, are we stuck here forever?”

“Nope. We’ll be devoured alive long before forever gets here.”

Great. Man-eating plants, animated dead guys and one-way travel. “Anything else I should know?”

“Yeah. Don’t drink water from any local source.”

“Why not?” I hadn’t realized I was thirsty until that moment. Was that some kind of subliminal suggestion? Or whatever?

“The water here has chemical properties, and drinking it is like drugging yourself,” Luca said, and chill bumps popped up all over my arms.

“With what?”

“Sedatives. Amnesiacs. Stimulants. Something different from every source.”

“Amnesiacs?” I frowned, trying to wrap my mind around the concept. “Like, it makes you forget who you are?”

“It works differently on different people,” he said. “Some forget their names. Others forget where they are. Some lose memories from childhood.”

Maybe I wasn’t thirsty after all.

We were nearly to the corner when I realized we’d passed several classrooms, but with the doors closed and covered by vines, this creepy distortion of a hallway felt more like a tunnel, especially where the lights overhead were dimmed by the thick growth of plant life.

“Where is everyone else from school?” I asked, then flinched when I stepped on a vine and it squished beneath my shoe, hemorrhaging that horrible yellow fluid.

“They’re gone. Well, actually we’re gone. They’re all still in our layer of the cake,” he whispered, peeking carefully around the corner of the vine-covered wall. “Shh…” He looked both ways, then stood very still and closed his eyes, like he was listening. So I listened too, but at first, I couldn’t hear anything except the rush of my own pulse in my ears. Then there was something else. A sharp metallic scraping sound anyone who’s ever been in a classroom would recognize as desks sliding across the floor.

My eyes flew open and I let go of his hand. “Someone’s in the math hall.” I glanced at the ground then stepped carefully to the left, avoiding a twist of vine, but Luca pulled me back. “Whatever’s down there isn’t human. Come on.”