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      Ending any series is hard. Ending this series has been particularly hard for me, both creatively and emotionally. I’ve been working with Kaylee and her friends and family since January of 2008. We’ve been through seven novels and several novellas together. Kaylee and the gang have lived in three different houses with me, in three different states. I’ve spent more time in the Soul Screamers world than in either of my adult series to date.

      Saying goodbye has been bittersweet. But Kaylee has grown up and I’ve grown up a little bit with her, I think.

      This book is dedicated to Kaylee, who’s suffered through so much for our entertainment. She’s been a good sport—a fighter to the end—and it has been my pleasure to finally give her the happy ending she deserves. (Don’t peek! I promise, you’ll hate yourself for it later…)

      And…

      This book is dedicated to every reader who’s ever written to ask me for a release date, a spoiler or a snippet of the text. My words may have brought Kaylee to life, but your interest kept her going.

      Thank you all.

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Thanks to Natashya Wilson and the rest of Harlequin Teen for launching the Teen line with Soul Screamers and for supporting Kaylee the whole way.

      Thanks to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz, for making things happen.

      Thanks to my critique partner, Rinda Elliott, for untold hours plotting, and whining, and planning over the phone. I hope we get to do all that in person very soon.

      Thanks to No. 1, who sees the crazy, frazzled writer my official author photos hide well. Thanks for knowing when to offer coffee, when to make fajitas, and when to back quietly away from the office door. You’ve made this possible.

      Thanks most of all to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for guidance, support, enthusiasm, and—most importantly—for smiley faces in the margins.

       1

      I used to hate the fact that my world is built on half-truths, held together with white lies. My life itself is an illusion requiring constant effort to maintain. I lie better than almost anyone I’ve ever met. But if I know the truth about anything, it’s this: when people say the devil is in the details, they have no idea how right they are.…

      “It was a nice service, right?” My best friend, Emma, smoothed the front of her simple black dress, both brows furrowed in doubt. She shifted her weight to her right foot and her heel sank half an inch into the soft ground. “I mean, as far as funerals go, it could have been worse. People cried.” She shrugged, staring out at the slowly departing crowd. “This would have been awkward if no one had cried.”

      It was awkward anyway. Funerals are always awkward, especially in my social circle, where the definition of “death” is under constant reevaluation.

      “It was a lovely service, Em.” I watched as people fled the open grave in slow-motion retreat, eager to be gone but reluctant to let it show. There were teachers, shell-shocked but in control, looking out of place without their desks and whiteboards. Parents, looking helpless and scared. Classmates in dark dresses, black slacks, and uncomfortable shoes, most in the same clothes they’d worn to the past few funerals.

      We were all much too familiar with the routine by now. Whispered names and details. A day off for mourning. Excused absences for the viewing. Counselors on call for grieving students during every class period. And finally, the funeral, where we said goodbye to yet another classmate most of us had known for most of our lives.

      I was one of those who’d cried, even though I was among the few who knew that the star of the show—the recently deceased herself—was actually still with us. Right next to me, in fact. A guest at her own funeral.

      Sabine leaned closer, Nash’s hand clasped in her right one, because her left was still encased in a cast. A curtain of thick, dark hair fell over half her face, shielding her from most of the thinning crowd. “So, seeing yourself in a coffin wasn’t awkward? ’Cause it was awkward for me, and I’m not the one being buried today.”

      “Oh, no, the viewing was totally horrible,” Em admitted, her brown eyes wide. Those eyes were all that was left of her, other than her soul. Everything else was Lydia’s. Thin, angular face. Petite bones and slim build, similar to my own. Limp brown hair. Freckles. Feet that didn’t quite fit into Em’s favorite pair of shoes, stolen from her own closet while her mother and sisters shopped for her casket. “But the funeral itself—that was nice, don’t you think?”

      It was, as it damn well should have been. Em had left funeral details—in her own handwriting—in an envelope on her vanity table the day we’d picked up her shoes and a few other essentials. Once Ms. Marshall was thinking clearly, she’d probably wonder why her seventeen-year-old daughter had given so much thought to how she wanted to be buried, but grief had eclipsed her skepticism at least long enough to arrange the funeral of her daughter’s—albeit morbid—dreams.

      “It was beautiful, Em,” Tod whispered, and I glanced up to find him standing next to me, where there’d been only damp grass a second before. It took more self-control than I’d known I had to keep from throwing my arms around him and trying