I stared at her, speechless. In every dream I'd had of her since the day she died, every photograph, every memory -- she was never as real as this.

"There is so much I need to tel you, so much I can't say. I've tried to show you the way, send you the songs...."

She sent me the songs. The songs only Lena and I could hear. I spoke, but my voice sounded far away, as if it wasn't my own. Seventeen Moons -- the Shadowing Song. "It was you, this whole time."

She smiled. "Yes. You needed me. But now he needs you, and you need him, too."

"Who? Are you talking about Dad?" But I knew she wasn't talking about my father. She was talking about the other man who meant so much to both of us.

Macon.

She didn't know he was gone.

"Are you talking about Macon?" I saw a spark of recognition in her eyes. I had to tel her. If something had happened to Lena, I would want someone to tel me. No matter how much everything changed. "Macon's gone, Mom. He died a few months ago. He can't help me."

I watched her shimmer in the moonlight. She was as beautiful as the last time I saw her, when she hugged me on the rainy porch before I left for school. "Listen to me, Ethan. He'l always be with you. Only you can redeem him." Her image began to fade.

I reached out, desperate to touch her, but my hand only slipped through the air. "Mom?"

"The Claiming Moon has been cal ed." She was disappearing, vanishing into the night. "If Darkness prevails, the Seventeenth Moon wil be the last." I almost couldn't see her anymore. The mist was swirling slowly again, above the circle.

"Hurry, Ethan. You don't have much time, but you can do this. I have faith." She smiled and I tried to memorize her expression, because I knew she was slipping away.

"What if I'm too late?"

I could hear her distant voice. "I tried to keep you safe. I should have known I couldn't. You were always special."

I stared at the white haze, churning like my stomach.

"My sweet summer boy. I'l be thinking of you. I love --"

The words dwindled into nothing. My mom had been here. For a few minutes, I had seen her smile and heard her voice. Now she was gone.

I had lost her al over again.

"I love you, too, Mom."

6.19

Scars

There's somethin' I've got to tel you." Amma wrung her hands nervously. "It's about the night a the Sixteenth Moon, Lena's birthday." It took a second to realize she was talking to me. I was stil staring into the center of the circle, where my mother had been a moment before.

This time, my mom wasn't sending me messages in books or the verses of a song. I had seen her.

"Tel da boy."

"Hush, Twyla." Arelia put her hand on her sister's arm.

"Lies. Lies are da place where darkness grows. You tel da boy. Tel him now."

"What are you talking about?" I looked from Twyla to Arelia. Amma shot them a look that Twyla answered with a shake of her beaded braids.

"Listen to me, Ethan Wate." Amma's voice was uneven and shaky. "You didn't fal from the top of the crypt, at least not the way we told you."

"What?" She wasn't making any sense. Why was she talking about Lena's birthday after I had just seen the ghost of my dead mother?

"You didn't fal , see?" she repeated.

"What are you talking about? Of course I fel . I woke up on the ground, flat on my back."

"That's not how you got there." Amma hesitated. "It was Lena's mamma. Sarafine stabbed you with a knife." Amma looked right into my eyes. "She kil ed you. You were dead, and we brought you back."

She killed you.

I repeated the words to myself, the pieces snapping together so fast I could barely make sense of them. Instead, they made sense of me --

the dream that wasn't a dream, but a memory of not breathing and not feeling and not thinking and not seeing --

the dirt and flames that carried my body away as my life flowed out --

"Ethan! You al right?" I could hear Amma, but she was far away, as far as she was that night when I was on the ground.

I could be in the ground now, like my mom and Macon.

I should be.

"Ethan?" Link was shaking me.

My body fil ed with sensations I couldn't control and didn't want to remember. Blood in my mouth, blood roaring into my ears --

"He's passing out." Liv was holding my head.

There had been pain and noise and something else. Voices. Shapes. People.

I had died.

I reached under my shirt, running my hand over the scar on my stomach. The scar from where Sarafine had stabbed me with a real knife. I barely noticed it anymore, but now it would be a constant reminder of the night I died. I remembered how Lena reacted when she saw it.

"You're stil the same person, and Lena stil loves you. Her love is the reason you're here now." Arelia's voice was gentle, knowing. I opened my eyes, letting the blur of shapes become people as I settled back into myself again.

My thoughts were so jumbled. Even now, nothing was making any sense. "What do you mean, her love is the reason I'm here now?"

Amma spoke quietly, and I had to strain to hear her. "Lena's the one who brought you back. I helped her, me and your mamma."

The words didn't fit together, so I tried unrol ing them out again for myself. Lena and Amma brought me back from the dead, together. And together they had kept it from me until now. I rubbed the scar on my skin. It felt like the truth.