"Speakin' a things that aren't normal, look who's here." Link pointed to the curb in front of a house with red shutters. Lucil e was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, staring at us as if we were holding her up. "Told you she'd come back."

Lucil e licked her brown paws sulkily, waiting.

"Couldn't live without me, could you, girl? I have that effect on women." Link grinned, scratching her head. She batted his fingers away.

"Come on, now. Aren't you comin'?" Lucil e didn't budge.

"Yep. He's got that effect on women," I said to Liv as Lucil e stretched out in front of the house.

"She'l come around," Link said. "They always do."

That's when Lucil e took off running down the street, in the opposite direction from the way we went.

It was the middle of the night and pitch-dark by the time we found ourselves heading out of town. It felt like we had been walking for hours. The main road was always busy during the day. Now it was deserted. Which made sense, considering where it had led us. "You sure about this?"

"Not at al . It's only an approximation based on the available data." Liv had been checking her little telescope about every five blocks. There was no doubting the data.

"I love it when she talks nerdy." Link pul ed on her braid and Liv batted him away.

I stared at the tal stone columns flanking the entrance to Savannah's famed Bonaventure Cemetery, on the outskirts of town. It was one of the most famous cemeteries in the South, and one of the most wel protected. Which was a problem, since it had closed at dusk.

"Dude, this is a joke, right? Are you guys sure this is where we're supposed to be?" Link didn't look too happy about wandering around the cemetery at night, especial y with a guard at the entrance and a patrol car that passed by the front gates every so often.

Liv looked up at a statue of a woman clinging to a cross. "Let's get this over with."

Link pul ed out his garden shears. "I don't think these babies wil do the job."

"Not through the gates." I pointed at the wal on the other side of the trees. "Over them."

Liv managed to step on every part of my face, kick me in the neck, and wrench her sneakers deep into my shoulder blade before I shoved al six pounds of her over the gate. She lost her balance at the top and landed with a thump.

"I'm fine. No worries," Liv cal ed from the other side of the wal .

Link and I looked at each other, and he bent down. "You first. I'l climb up the hard way."

I stepped on his back, grabbing onto the wal . He pushed himself up until he was standing. "Yeah? How are you gonna do that?"

"Gotta look for a tree that's close enough to the wal . Has to be one somewhere around here. Don't worry. I'l find you."

I was at the top. I clung to the wal with both hands.

"I didn't ditch school al these years for nothin'."

I smiled, and let myself fal .

Five minutes and seven trees later, the Arclight led us deeper into the cemetery, past the crumbling Confederate headstones and the statues guarding the homes of those who had been forgotten. There was a tight cluster of moss-covered oaks, whose crossed branches created an arch over the path, barely wide enough to squeeze through. The Arclight was flashing and pulsing.

"We're here. This is it, right?" I looked over Liv's shoulder at the selenometer.

Link looked around. "Where? I don't see anything." I pointed to space between the trees. "Seriously?"

Liv looked nervous, too. She didn't want to climb through brambles of Spanish moss in a dark graveyard. "I can't get a reading now. It's going crazy."

"It doesn't matter. This is it, I'm sure."

"You think Lena and Ridley and John are back there?" Link looked like he was planning to go back and wait for us out front, or maybe at a rib joint.

"I don't know." I pushed the moss aside and stepped through.

On the other side, the trees were even more ominous, hanging over our heads and creating a sky of their own. There was a clearing ahead of us, with a huge statue of a beseeching angel in the center of the graves. The graves were bordered in stone, outlining the breadth of each plot. You could almost see the coffins buried in the earth beneath them.

"Ethan, look." Liv pointed past the statue. I could see silhouettes framed by a tiny slice of moonlight. They were moving.

We had company.

Link shook his head. "This can't be good."

For a second, I couldn't move. What if it was Lena and John? What were they doing in a graveyard at night, alone? I fol owed the path, flanked by even more statues -- kneeling angels staring into the heavens, or the ones looking down at us as they wept.

I had no idea what to expect, but when the two figures came into view, they were the last two people I expected to see.

Amma and Arelia, Macon's mother. The last time I'd seen her was at Macon's funeral. They were sitting between the graves. I was a dead man. I should have known Amma would find me.

There was another woman sitting in the dirt with them. I didn't recognize her. She was a little older than Arelia, with the same golden skin. Her hair was woven in hundreds of tiny braids, and she was wearing twenty or thirty strands of beads -- some gemstones and colored glass, others tiny birds and animals. She had at least ten holes winding around each ear, and long earrings hung from each hole.