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I nodded. “I think so. What is this place?

She looked around as people passed by, ignoring us. “The Middle World. Some call it Purgatory. It’s a prison where the spirits go when their bodies are still connected to the earth in some way. A part of me is a vampire up there. You were here not so long ago.”

I thought about her words. Vampires were undead, but their souls were taken from them when they were turned. Was this the place where those souls ended up?

“We can’t move on until our bodies on earth die, or you help us come back using your blood. We’ve all hoped you’d save us; bring us back to our bodies and consciousness. But now you’re here. Which means we’re doomed.”

I looked again at the people walking around in their lost state and asked, “What did you mean by me being here before?”

“Of course, you don’t remember. After the village hanged you at the gallows, you came here. You’re bound to your coven, so your spirit doesn’t truly move on unless they all do.”

I thought about how Caleb had finally found a way to bring me back twenty-two years ago and how difficult it must have been for him to find my soul. It could only be done by a special kind of magic. It was magic that could only be done once.

Was I doomed to be in this place forever? What would happen to me if I were truly bound to the earth, and now my body was dead again? What about these souls that were stuck here?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I tried. I tried, and I failed you.”

She smiled for the first time since I’d stopped her. “You can still watch over them.”

“How?” I asked.

She smiled one last time and faded into the crowd without answering me. I now stood alone.

I kneeled on a grassy lawn near a tall tree with beautiful amber leaves breaking off the branches and falling around me. Looking ahead through the crowd of people in front of me, I could see through them, like a window had been opened for me. My body lay in Joel’s backyard, with Dorian holding me in his arms. And he was weeping.

I wished they could hear or see me so I could comfort them in their pain. Lily buried her face in Joel’s chest, sobbing over my death.

I really was gone.

CHAPTER 39

Caleb

“NO!” I GASPED out all the air in my lungs. Every part of my being prayed that I didn’t just feel that. The coven stood still, their eyes wide open, and we couldn’t move. Another surge rocked through me, making me collapse to the ground.

“Oh, my God!” Leah screamed. She held her chest, and we all cried out in agony, feeling a deep sense of sorrow and pain we hadn’t experienced since the witch trials.

We felt it. We felt Mercy die.

“Let’s go. We need to move. Now,” I yelled to the coven as we bolted outside and into Leah’s car.

Joel had just texted me that he was teleporting Mercy and Dorian to his home after they escaped. But minutes later, we felt her life be taken from us. Did the killer find her and use the dagger?

I drove as fast as I could, not caring if a cop tried to pull us over. Not caring about the hundreds of laws that I was breaking to get there.

“Caleb, she’s already gone. Slow down before you kill someone,” Ezra said.

I ignored him. I had to get there.

We pulled into the driveway, jumped out, and hurried inside. We didn’t see anyone in the kitchen or even the family room. “Joel!?” I shouted. The voice that followed wasn’t his. It was Lily’s.

“Caleb, come quickly.”

Once we entered the backyard, the first body I saw was Bradley, lying lifeless on the floor with a hole in his chest and his crushed heart on the ground beside him. I cringed, but my attention immediately pulled to Lily sobbing under a willow tree. She and Joel held each other tightly. They kneeled next to Dorian, whose back was facing us. When we walked around to face him, he held Mercy’s lifeless and bloodied body in his arms. Lily gripped the dagger in her hand, then placed it on the ground when we ran over to her.

“No!” I screamed, kneeling beside them, the coven following behind me.

I felt numb. We couldn’t lose Mercy again.

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