“It isn’t in my power to bring people back,” she says. “I told you, I don’t even know how you or I got here. I still don’t know how we are here now.”
“You have to try,” I tell her, my firm voice tinged with desperation. “He doesn’t deserve to die, just like you didn’t deserve it. You have to save him.”
Catherine only looks at me, seeing that I won’t back down. “I will try, though I doubt it will do any good.” I’m ready to push her further, but the fog begins to thicken between us. “I have to go, Lily.”
She’s all but lost in the mist, and I can barely see her now. “Wait! Promise me that you’ll save him!”
Her image is gone, but I hear her voice in my head, one last time: “I have to go now. And so do you.”
I try to speak, but the breath is squeezed out from my lungs then forced back in. A razor sharpness slashes through my mind as a heavy weight covers me, digging me into the fog. I go down and down, deeper and deeper, until I plummet into a sea of emptiness.
It’s dark. So dark, until I open my eyes.
“Lily?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Lily? Are you okay?”
My vision slowly comes into focus as I see Zoe standing in front of me. She’s staring at me with worried eyes, and her hand is on my shoulder. My heart is beating in a strange rhythm as I look at her, and there’s a quiet buzzing in my ear. I turn my gaze further to see where we are, and I’m standing just outside the chapel, next to the open door. This evil, cursed chapel. I look inside, and there are red velvet ropes all along the interior, and people taking pictures with their cell phones.
Oh my god. I made it back. I actually made it back.
Zoe is holding both my shoulders now, her expression filled with concern as the soft buzzing begins to fade. I feel immobile as my feet stay planted just outside the chapel doors.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she says.
Oh, if she had any fucking idea.
I reach a hand up to feel hers on my shoulder, needing physical evidence that she’s real. “You’re really standing here, right? And you see me?”
“Of course I see you. Are you sure you’re okay?”
She takes hold of my hand and lowers it between us. I look down at the contact, still bewildered and in a daze. The fingers I’m moving seem the right size. They have the right feel. These are my hands. These are my actual hands.
I use my other hand to reach up and grab the tips of my hair. My distinguishably red hair.
“Take out your phone,” I suddenly tell Zoe. “Take out your phone and pull up your camera. I need to see what I look like.”
“What’s going on?”
“Zoe, please!” I shout.
“Okay, okay!” She fumbles as she pulls her phone out and quickly switches it into camera mode. She hands it to me, and I reverse the angle to see myself. I look for a very long time.
I’m me.
I’m me.
I’m me.
I stare and stare, and I start to cry. I drop her phone to the wooden floor and squat down, coveringmyface inmyhands and cry until it feels like I’m going to burst.
I’m home. I’m here. No one is trying to kill me. No one is trying to marry me. No one is coming to lock me away. Because I am Lily Whitaker. Lily Whitaker.
I feel Zoe crouching next to me, rubbing my back even though she has no idea what’s wrong with me. She wouldn’t be able to guess it in a million years even if she tried.
“It’s all right,” she tells me in a soothing voice. “Everything’s fine. You’re fine.”
