Something in my face must have told Lucas how I was feeling, because his eyes went wide. He came to my side and put his hand to my cheek. For a second, he struggled for words, but then he gasped out, “I love you.”

“Love.” I couldn’t say anything else. Lucas’s face dimmed as the light in the room went away. It would be so easy to let go.

I gave in to the tide pulling me downward.

And then I died.

Chapter Twenty

NOTHING WAS CONNECTED ANY LONGER—THAT’S the only way I know how to describe it. For instance, I still understood that gravity was at work—I could feel the difference between earth and sky—but it didn’t seem to apply to me. I could drift upward or downward, and sometimes it felt like I was doing both at the same time.

After days of feeling my body ache worse, until at the end it had seemed as though nothing existed but weight and pain, I was now feather light and free. Yet it was an empty sort of sensation. I felt hollowed out. Lost.

I tried to open my eyes, but I realized that I could already see. What I saw made no sense, though. The entire world had blurred into a milky blue gray, through which shapes wafted without ever taking recognizable form. I tried to move, but although I was entirely unencumbered, my limbs didn’t seem to respond.

How long has this been going on? I thought. I had no sense of how quickly time was passing. I could’ve been like this for ten seconds or a year, and I couldn’t remember how to tell the difference. Silly, start by counting your breaths. Or your heartbeat. Either one will tell you.

But then I realized I had no heartbeat. Where my pulse should’ve been—the steady, unceasing warmth and rhythm right at the center of me—there was nothing.

The shock slammed into me, a blow that was somehow even stronger for having no body to strike. My terror slashed through the mist that surrounded me, and for a moment the scene cleared and I could see.

I remained in the wine cellar, although I no longer lay in bed. Instead, I seemed to be floating just beneath the ceiling. Below me, I could see myself, lying beneath the covers. My face was as pale as the sheets, and my eyes stared blankly.

Next to the bed, Lucas knelt, his forehead on the mattress next to my motionless hand. He’d covered his head with his arms, like he was trying to shield himself from something, although I didn’t know what. His shoulders shook, and I realized he was crying.

The sight of him in so much pain made me want to comfort him. Why didn’t I sit up and comfort him? I was lying right there.

Wait, that’s not me. I’m me. How could there be a difference between the person I saw lying in bed and the one who was seeing all this? None of it made any sense.

Lucas, I called. Lucas, I’m right here. Look up. Just look up. But I had no voice to speak with, no tongue or lips to shape my words.

To my astonishment, he lifted his head. Yet Lucas didn’t turn his face up toward me, and he didn’t even seem to have heard anything. His eyes were bloodshot and dull. Roughly he wiped at his cheeks with the back of his hand, then reached toward me—the me that lay on the bed. As I watched, both horrified and fascinated, he passed his fingers over my eyelids to shut them. That seemed to take the last of his strength, because as soon as he was done, Lucas slumped forward to lean against the metal bed frame, as motionless as the body in the bed. My body.

No. That couldn’t be right. I wasn’t going to think like that. Whatever was happening right now was a mistake, just a big mistake, and we could fix it once we finally figured out how.

I’d gotten through to him just now, hadn’t I? When I’d called Lucas, he’d heard me, even if he didn’t realize it. I had to call him again. Lucas, I’m right here. Right here. All you have to do is look at me.

He didn’t budge.

Maybe it would help if I got closer to him, I thought. But how was I supposed to do that? I didn’t quite understand how—or if—I could still move, since my body and I seemed to have become separated.

Then I looked at Lucas again and saw the sheer anguish on his face. He looked so desperately lost and alone. I wanted to hold him, to comfort him somehow—

And that wanting was like a tow line, pulling me from the ceiling down to his side. Suddenly I could feel the warmth of his body all around me, comforting as a blanket and I sensed that I’d broken through. “Lucas!”

He jerked backward. His eyes went wide, and Lucas pushed himself away from the bed, crawling back toward the corner.

Why was he scared? Lucas, I’m right here.

But already I could tell that he hadn’t heard the last thing I’d said, and I didn’t think he could see me. Lucas blinked a couple of times, then sagged back against the wall. No doubt he thought he’d imagined it.

Then all of a sudden, I couldn’t really see him either. The blue-gray mist closed in again, and once again I felt myself drifting, unanchored. Was I traveling up or down? Was I traveling at all? There wasn’t any way to tell.

I have to find my body again, I told myself. If I find my body, I can simply climb back inside. In my imagination, I saw it working a lot like getting into a sleeping bag and zipping it up. Seemed easy enough. So why couldn’t I find my body?

It’s not yours any longer.

Startled, I tried to look around to see who had said that. But I couldn’t really look anywhere, much less see anything besides the billowing mist. Nor had I heard another voice, exactly, so much as I had perceived one.

I’m going back to the wine cellar, I decided. I want to be with Lucas. So I’m going to be with him—right now.

Just like that, I was with Lucas once more—but not in the wine cellar. He stood in the driveway of the Woodsons’ house; I seemed to be right behind him, as if I were peeking over his shoulder. Apparently it was nearly dawn; the sky had begun to go gray and stark. A car had just pulled into the driveway, and as we watched, a tall figure stepped out.

Balthazar strode across the grounds toward Lucas, his face drawn and tense. Bruises still showed on his skin, and he walked more slowly than he normally would, but obviously he had mostly recovered from his injures. “How is she?” he said. Then he got a good look at Lucas’s face and stopped in his tracks. “Oh, no.”

“She—” Lucas couldn’t get the words out. I could see the muscles in his jaw working, like he was struggling even to speak.

“She’s gone.”

“No.” Balthazar shook his head. His expression was flat, almost panicked. “No, you’re wrong.”

Lucas said, “Bianca is dead.”

His saying it made it real. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I wanted to run, but that was impossible, too. There was no more hiding from what had happened.

Balthazar said, “Let me see her.” Lucas answered by stepping aside. As Balthazar rushed past him, he seemed to run through me—oh, that felt weird, but sort of amazing, because for one second, all Balthazar’s strength and desperation and love echoed inside me. It wasn’t like being alive, but it was something real, more real than I was.

As Balthazar ran into the wine cellar, he seemed to tow me after him. Maybe that was because of the way he’d run through me; I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I felt myself flowing past the long corridors of wine bottles, toward Balthazar’s silhouette—and then past him, so that I was in the room, looking back at him, as he looked down at me.

My body lay exactly where I’d seen it last, when Lucas had shut my eyes. Balthazar stood there, staring down at me for a few long seconds like he couldn’t believe any of it. Then he slumped against the wall and just—fell. He slid down until he was on the floor, and he clenched his fists in his curly hair.

I tried to hover over my body; it looked fine to me. A little sick, maybe, but it didn’t really look any different from the way I guessed I did when I was sleeping. The only change was that I wasn’t breathing. And I could fix that, couldn’t I? All I had to do was hop back in.

Well, that sounded easy, but it wasn’t. I kept looking down at myself, trying to feel the same magnetic pull that both Lucas and Balthazar had on me now. If I could tap into that same energy, I reasoned, I’d be drawn back into my body and would be alive again.

But the pull never came.

After a while—several minutes, I thought, but I couldn’t be sure—Balthazar pushed himself to his feet. Behind him, I heard Lucas’s footsteps. Soon they stood together at the end of the bed, looking at me.

Balthazar’s voice was hoarse as he asked, “What happened?”

“It was like I said in the letter.” Lucas sounded so tired. I wondered how long it had been since he’d slept. “She just kept getting weaker and weaker. We knew there was nothing a doctor could do, so I just had to watch—”

Lucas swallowed hard. Balthazar hesitated, and I thought for a moment he might pat Lucas on the shoulder or something, but he didn’t.

“I tried to get her to change over,” Lucas continued. “I offered to let her use me to turn into a vampire. But she wouldn’t do it unless I came over, too. I said no.” He thumped his fist against the wall. “Dammit, why didn’t I just let her do it?”

Balthazar shook his head. “Bianca made the right decision. Not only for you but for her, too. There are worse things than death.”

“You’re gonna have to forgive me if I can’t agree with you right now.”

“I understand.”

They stood together like sentinels watching over me. I kept wanting to shout at them that this was all a mistake, that there was something we could do to fix this, but that had begun to feel like a lie.

I’m dead. This is the out-of-body experience that I always read about, and any second there’s going to be some kind of bright light, and I’ll have to go into it.

I wanted to cry, but crying required a body. Even that release was lost to me. All that sorrow and terror was bottled inside me with nowhere to go.

At last, Lucas said, “I can’t call the police or an ambulance. There’s too much about this I can’t explain.”

“No, you can’t do that,” Balthazar said. “You’ll have to bury her here, and before the sun comes up, so nobody will see. I’ll help.”

Lucas took a deep, shuddering breath. “Thank you.” It was the first time I’d ever seen him drop his guard around Balthazar. They looked at each other without any rancor; the jealousy and defensiveness between them had vanished.

Balthazar walked around the side of the bed and brushed my hair back from my face. He bent over and kissed my forehead; as he did, he shuddered, and I could tell he was struggling against tears. In an instant, that had passed, and he was once again purposeful and solemn. Balthazar pulled back the quilt and bundled the sheet more tightly around me before picking me up in his arms.

They’re going to bury me. If they bury me, I can’t ever return! I didn’t let myself admit that I might not be able to go back no matter what. All I could think was that I had to prevent them somehow from doing this. Please, Balthazar, Lucas, stop. You have to stop!

Instead, Balthazar took me a few steps from the bed. His eyes were troubled, and he couldn’t quite look down at what he was doing. He whispered, “Cover her face.” Lucas, his face drawn, pulled the sheet up over my head. Once that was done, Balthazar seemed more focused. “Is there anything you want to—is there anything you want Bianca to have with her?”

Lucas took a deep, shuddering breath. “Yeah.”

He walked to the cardboard dresser where I kept my few things. As he opened the top drawer, I saw two of my only three pieces of jewelry: the jet brooch he’d given me in Riverton when we were first falling in love and the red coral bracelet I’d received as a present on my last birthday. Lucas’s hand closed around them both, and I knew he meant to put them in my hands so I’d have something of him with me for eternity.