“Amelia.”
Maybe I should have been more skeptical, demanded more proof. Instead, I started to cry. Because I knew how my father’s voice sounded when he spoke the name he’d helped give me.
“Dad,” I called again, frantic. “Dad, where are you? I’ve been trying to find you. I’ve been trying to—”
“There’s no time, Amelia,” he interrupted. “You have to listen to me. They’re coming.”
Immediately I knew whom he meant. And the warning chilled me just as much as when Eli delivered it last night. But this time I steeled myself against the fear and drew my head up so my father would see—if he could see me at all right now—that his daughter’s backbone had survived her death.
“I know, Dad. That’s why I’m leaving Oklahoma.”
“That’s not enough,” he said. “You have to—but not without—”
The same static interference that had broken up the girl’s voice now distorted my father’s. Like the two of them were speaking on the same radio frequency.
“They want—but it’s hard to—the rivers—mustn’t rise.”
“What? Dad, I can’t hear you. ‘The rivers mustn’t rise’?”
I moved to the right and then the left as I’d seen Joshua do when he wanted to get better cell phone reception. Then I craned my neck up, my face pointed to the sky as if my father’s face might appear there.
No such luck. My father continued to speak, but infuriatingly, I could only catch a few words at a time. Worse, his voice began to fade, the volume lowering until I could barely hear him at all.
“Darlin’, you need to—please—not soon eno—”
His last word faded entirely and, after a long silence, I realized he was gone.
I stood perfectly still, staring at the field of wildflowers without seeing them. My father had tried to warn me about something, that much I knew. Something to do with the demons of High Bridge. Something urgent.
A thin shiver of fear ran through my heart. I’d wanted to contact my father so badly, for so long. But his visit—if that’s what just happened—brought me no comfort. Still, I wanted it to, very much. So for a brief moment, before I tried to analyze what few words he’d given me, I closed my eyes. In the quiet of my own mind, I replayed his warning, if just to hear his voice.
When I opened my eyes, I had the second shock of my already-strange day.
Without any effort on my part, I’d moved again. Instead of a flowering prairie, the window of the SUV faced me. Through it I could see other cars, so close to the SUV that I could touch them if someone opened the window. But these cars weren’t passing us on the highway. They were parked in line outside a long stretch of ancient-looking, cramped-together buildings. I leaned closer to the window, just enough to see the tops of the buildings reaching up to a dark, starry sky.
The cars, the buildings, the night sky—all things that shouldn’t be there, if you considered the fact that the last time I sat in this vehicle there had been nothing to see outside but a midafternoon snowstorm raging over the middle of Nowhere, Texas.
I frowned and then turned toward the interior of the SUV. There, two astonished faces stared back: Jillian, sitting openmouthed and wide-eyed in front of me; and Joshua, looking basically the same, beside me.
Another uncontrolled materialization, I supposed.
I sighed wearily and met his eyes. “How long was I gone this time?” I asked him.
“Gone?” he whispered, frowning. “Amelia, you’ve been right beside me for the last twelve hours.”
I opened my mouth to respond to Joshua but then popped it shut. What did he mean, I hadn’t left his side? That wasn’t possible. Not after everything I’d just seen and heard.
I tilted my head to one side, studying Joshua’s confused expression. “Did I … was I sleeping again?”
Still staring at me intently, he nodded. “Yeah, for a couple hours, actually. But in the last few minutes, you were … shouting.”
“Huh?”
“Shouting. Loudly.” His eyes darted to the front of the car and then back to mine. “Even my dad said he thought he heard something. That whole inactive-Seer thing, I guess?”
“Oh.” My voice sounded flat. “Sorry. I didn’t know. I must have been … talking in my sleep.”
Or screaming out to my dead father.
Across from me, Jillian whipped her head from side to side, obviously trying to shake away the fact that I’d frightened her. Then she rolled her eyes, composed her face into its far more common look of disapproval, and dropped back down into her seat. Before she sunk out of sight, I heard her mutter, “God, you’re creepy.”
Before yesterday her words would have bothered me. Hurt me, like they always did. Tonight, however, I didn’t really have the energy to care what Jillian thought I was.
I glanced back up at Joshua. He still watched me with that slightly unnerved expression.
“Sorry,” I repeated in the same emotionless tone I’d used earlier.
He gave me a small, uncertain smile. “No biggie. It was just a little, you know …”
“Creepy.” I sighed.
Then, with a shrug, I turned away from him to scrutinize the fabric of the headrest in front of me. At this moment, all I wanted to do was bury myself in my own thoughts. But Joshua leaned forward, trying to recapture my gaze.
“Want to talk about it?” he offered quietly.
“Not really.” After a beat I added, “No offense.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw him shake his head as if to say None taken. Which probably wasn’t entirely true.
I felt a twinge of regret, so sharp it actually hurt. I didn’t want to hurt Joshua. In fact, I wanted to tell him everything I’d just seen. But I shouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not now, when our expiration date loomed so close. Besides, I could hardly force more than a few words past the bitter taste of disappointment in my mouth.
I just couldn’t believe it: the whole thing had been another useless, haunting dream? Standing in the field, seeing the girl, talking to my father—all an illusion? It seemed impossible.
But if Joshua said I hadn’t left, then I suppose I hadn’t. Instead, my brain had created everything in some sort of frenzied, tantalizing fit of wish fulfillment. After ten years apart, and after months of searching for him, I guess it made a cruel sort of sense that I would imagine some mystical interaction between my father and me.
I
