He just nodded.

Jumping out of the car, I opened the back, and lifted my arms for Luke to deposit Chloe into them. I wasn’t certain my arms could take any more trauma after holding that shield for what seemed like hours, but the moment he set Chloe’s body into them, strength pumped through my body as adrenaline flooded my system.

She was so light.

So tiny.

Tiny Chloe with red hair and a vivacious personality. I’d never forget the first day I met her. She’d invited me to her birthday party when I’d had no friends, and she hated Tiffany just as much as I did.

Shea filed in right beside me, hand on my shoulder, running with me. Whether she thought I was crazy or not, didn’t matter. She was in it with me no matter what. My ride or die.

“Hang on, Chloe!” I shouted again, willing her soul to stay earthbound just a little longer.

We took the stairs two at a time, Shea propping me up so I could manage the weight. I was running on pure adrenaline and panic, but it was working so far.

My mom was waiting out in the hallway, the scent of sage wafting out through the open door. The moment her eyes landed on Chloe, she frowned. No one had seen more death than my mother. She’d worked at the reanimation clinic for almost ten years, sometimes reanimating as many as ten bodies a day. Still, nothing prepared you for seeing a dead loved one.

“I’ve run the bath. You know the drill. Is a member of the family coming?” My mom was curt, all business.

I nodded. “Donnie, her older brother.”

My mom nodded. “How many minutes have passed exactly?”

Shit. Maybe ten? Possibly twelve. “Uhh.”

“Roughly eleven minutes.” Luke came up behind me with his phone in hand. “Donnie’s coming.”

My mom pushed me forward. “We have no time to waste. Wash her well, or you know the consequences.”

I did. If even one strand of Shea or an Abrus demon’s hair was on Chloe’s body when my mom started the reanimation process, it could bind that persons soul to her. Shea and I ran into the bathroom, where we quickly stripped her clothes, careful not to touch her hastily stapled wound. We dunked her into the water, and I started to scrub.

“This water’s hot!” Shea hissed, grabbing a wash cloth and helping me scrub Chloe’s feet.

I nodded. “Any DNA that’s not Chloe’s could ruin the whole process,” I told my bestie. Growing up she hadn’t exactly asked my mom about her work. This shit freaked her out.

Shea just bobbed her head and kept scrubbing. I took the most care with washing her hair; I was hurried, yet, I wanted to make sure we did this right. Once we were done, my mom brought freshly bleached towels from her reanimation kit, and we wrapped Chloe like a mummy, only allowing her face to be exposed. As we carried her to the kitchen table, I whimpered when blood started to soak through the white towels. Her wound had opened.

“We’ll worry about it later,” my mom called out as we set her on the table that I knew had been bleached as well. My mother was the best reanimator Demon City had ever seen. It was a shame to see her unemployed like this or working odd-end jobs.

She glanced at her watch. “I need to get started, but I can’t do it without consent.”

Shea frowned. “I’m sure her brother won’t care, just start!”

My mom shook her head. “Shea, you know I have a certain ethical code.” My mom, the only one in Demon City who had morals!

I was about to insist when the apartment door burst open, the faint siren still wailing at Fallen Academy a mile away.

“I’m here!” Donnie was covered in demon blood, still holding his sword. The moment his eyes fell on Chloe, he swayed in place, and Luke had to reach out to steady him.

“Donnie, I am a reanimator. There is a unique process called soul infusion where I might be able to fully bring Chloe back, if she hasn’t crossed over yet. But I need consent from a family member in order to—”

“Do it,” he croaked.

My mom swallowed hard. “It might not work. She might not be the same. She might not want to have come back. She might have periods of forgetfulness and—”

“Kate, please! Just do it!” he screamed.

Taking a deep breath, she nodded. “All right, then. Please guard the door,” my mother instructed Shea. “It’s forbidden to raise the dead in Angel City, and I’m doing it in a housing facility that holds the military and their families. If one of them walks in, I’ll be arrested.”

Shit. The gravity of the situation hit me then. This new life I’d given my mom, that I’d fought so hard to bring her to, I was potentially taking it away by asking this of her. Still, I couldn’t bear to tell her to stop. I couldn’t bear to lose Chloe.

The orange and purple kaleidoscope of Necromancer magic that I was so used to seeing as a child, lit up the kitchen like a disco ball. My mother was powerful, and a small burst of pride ripped through me to see her use her ability. Her hands glowed with the magic I knew would tether my friend’s soul back to her body.

“I see her. She hasn’t left yet,” my mom said dreamily, staring at the corner of the room. She could see souls and auras, and all that weird shit that I didn’t understand—something only a Necromancer could do.

“Chloe!” Donnie sobbed.

Just then the front door opened, and Shea allowed Lincoln and Angela to walk inside. I hadn’t seen Luke’s sister in a while, but she looked bloodied from fighting as well. I scanned my husband’s body quickly, relieved to see no big injuries, but it was hard to tell whose blood was whose.

“I thought you could use some help, Kate,” Lincoln told my mom as he pushed Angela forward.

Of course! Angela was a Necromancer. She’d hardly had the training for something like this, considering they didn’t teach it at Fallen Academy, but my mom simply nodded.

“Wash your hands and anchor her feet for me please.”

Angela went right to it as if she knew what anchoring was. I sure as hell didn’t.

The rest of us paced the living room, wearing tracks in the freshly vacuumed carpet.

Lincoln made his way over to me, reaching out to grab my hand. “Are you okay?” he whispered. He must have freaked when he received my text that we were under attack.

I nodded. “Did Mrs. Greely and the patients make it out okay?”

“They hid until we could purge the campus of all the demons. They’re safe now, but they could really use healers. You and Noah, Raph and me. We need all hands on deck after tonight,” he told me.

I’d missed an entire year of healing training. I was still a baby second year when it came to that, but when you were given this power, it came with a certain responsibility.

Looking over at Chloe’s cold, mummified form, I couldn’t bear leaving her, or my mom, like this. “You and Noah go. I’ll meet you the second I know Chloe will be okay.”

Lincoln frowned. “I don’t want to go without you.”

Despite the demon blood splashed on his uniform, I pulled him in for a tight hug. Our year apart had left its mark on the both of us, neither one willing to be without the other for very long, especially in times of crisis.

“I’ll be right behind you,” I promised, then popped up on my tiptoes to kiss him.

Relenting, Lincoln gave me a curt nod. “Is it true? Angela said Chloe could actually be fully brought back, not like those zombies roaming Demon City.”

“It’s true. I never would have settled for a Chloe zombie,” I told him.

“All right. Meet us at the healing clinic the second you’re done here. The only people who know about Chloe dying were in that room, and I’ve sworn them all to secrecy, so your mom won’t get in trouble.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Even Michael?”

A slight grin pulled at his lips. “Michael’s the biggest rule breaker of them all.”

That was true. Human wife. Legion child. Michael broke all the rules.

“Thank you.” I squeezed his hand.

With one last look at me, Lincoln grabbed Noah, and they sprinted away.

Luke and Donnie gasped at the same time, and I spun on my heels to see my mother holding a sage smoke bundle about three feet from Chloe’s body. There, standing in the middle of the kitchen, was a smoky spectral outline of Chloe’s form.

Her soul.

“Chloe!” Donnie ran forward, but my mother held up a hand.

“Stay back, or you could contaminate the process,” she told him in an iron voice.

He skidded to a stop.

I’d seen my mom reanimate hundreds of bodies, maybe thousands. Never, ever, had I seen this. The soul was always long gone, the body demonically reanimated to look and feel like the family’s lost loved one in a vain attempt to give them that person back, but it wasn’t really them. Not like this.

This was incredible.

“Hey, sweetie.” My mom spoke softly to the smoky apparition of Chloe, who stood in the kitchen looking around the room and then at her body. When she saw the form on the table wrapped in white towels, her hands flew to her mouth.

“It’s okay, hon. We’re going to help you back,” my mother told her calmly.

Chloe looked at me wide-eyed, and then Donnie. Startled, she took a step back, away from her body, and then glanced over her shoulder, where a small white light began to glow.

“She’s leaving!” my mom called out and flung her right wrist, sending a whip of braided purple and orange light to wrap around Chloe’s soul’s abdomen.

The Nightblood grasped at the rope traumatically, trying to yank it off, pulling with everything she had, while looking over her shoulder at the white light that was growing brighter. Suddenly this felt wrong. I was reminded of the enlightening moment I’d had with Michael. Death was a natural part of life, and we all deserved to return to the white light, take a rest between lives.

“Chloe, please!” Donnie choked. “I need you. Mom and Dad need you.”

She stopped fighting and let her hands go limp, looking up at her brother. She took one last glance over her shoulder, and the brightness intensified. For a crazy moment, I thought I saw Bernie, like a flash of a figure walking past the light. Before I could say anything, it was gone.