Dust to Dust by Melissa Walker

makes you wish you were dead.
    It is that horrible and all-consuming.
    As the details of my surroundings start to fade away behind a veil of black, a pair of glowing eyes appears, floating right in front of me. Within seconds, there are hundreds more, piercing through me along with this unrelenting searing pain. A collection of voices seeps into my ears, singing to me sweetly, as though trying to comfort me.
    We’re coming for you, we’re coming for you.
    In an instant, they all merge together, forming a devilish roar that sends me to my knees.
    And then it’s over.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
Ten
    I HEAR HIS VOICE before I open my eyes, and when I do, the room is dark. I try to get my bearings, but I just see plain gray walls around me. And then he speaks again.
    â€œCallie.”
    â€œThatcher?”
    I look around, letting my eyes adjust in the small, square room but I don’t see him. And yet he’s here. He came to see me. For a moment I think I died—for real this time. I don’t feel devastated. I feel almost . . . hopeful. I’m in the morgue, on a slab.
    But then I sit up and my hands touch the fabric underneath me. Slabs don’t have sheets.
    â€œWhat’s wrong? What are you doing in the nurse’s office?” His voice is a whisper, a dream.
    That’s when I notice the small window with slits of sunlightpoking through the drawn shades. The nurse’s office . I flex my fingers and toes, then my arms and legs. I wrap myself in a hug, trying to see how my body feels, expecting to be sore all over from the incredible anguish I felt in the hallway. But there’s nothing. I feel fine. Did the nurse give me a painkiller or something?
    â€œWhen did you get here?” I ask quietly, and I can’t tell if I hear his answers out loud or in my head.
    â€œJust now. I didn’t plan to linger, but you seemed hurt.”
    â€œIt happened in the hallway,” I say. And then I tell him about the searing, ripping, earth-shattering pain that I felt.
    â€œDid you see or hear anything? Or anyone?”
    The hairs on my arms stand up as I recognize fear in his tone.
    â€œNo,” I say. “I couldn’t. Not until just now with you. There was only this terrible . . . it felt like every part of me was being crushed.”
    â€œI’m so sorry,” he says. “I should have been closer. I might have been able to—”
    â€œIt’s not your fault,” I tell him. “I went off the meds on my own and I knew there was a possibility that the pain might overwhelm me at first. I—”
    â€œI don’t think this has anything to do with your past injuries.”
    â€œThen what was it? What caused the pain?”
    â€œNot what. Who .”
    â€œWho?”
    I hear the regret in his voice, and I can almost picture his solemn face when he says, “Reena and Leo.”
    â€œOh no,” I say, my heart beginning to race.
    I close my eyes, which helps me block out this bland room andimagine that Thatcher and I are talking together in a better setting. One where the mist moves around us and the air sparkles with an ethereal glow. I picture us in the Prism, where we met. Where we . . . connected.
    â€œYou remember them, don’t you? And the rest of the poltergeists?”
    â€œYes,” I say. “Everything has been coming back to me slowly.”
    As I tell him about what I heard in my room, what I felt in the cemetery, and the memories that have been flooding back, a deep chord of dread starts to sound within me.
    â€œThatcher? Can they still use my energy?”
    â€œThe other Guides and I, we think they’re still trying,” he says. “But now that you’re back on Earth, alive, we don’t believe there’s any way they can draw the level of energy they’d need for another