plains ended less than a dozen yards in front of us. Beyond that was…nothing. They didn’t end in a cliff or a wall of darkness or anything so dramatic. They just ended, like hitting the last page in a book. I can’t describe it any better than that.
“Well, come on,” she said.
I couldn’t move. There was something indescribably terrifying about the view in front of me, the yawning nothingness of it.
“Oh, hell,” Eve said. “It’s just a way station.”
She grabbed my elbow and propelled me forward. When we reached the end of the plain, my brain went wild, digging in its mental heels. That response shot down to my legs and they stopped moving. Eve sighed and, without a word, stepped behind me, and pushed.
I’d been tricked. In that last second before Eve shoved me through, I realized the truth. Eve wasn’t helping me. She didn’t want me going back to Savannah. She hated me, hated what I was doing to her daughter, hated how I was raising her. This was her revenge. She was—
“There,” Eve said, stepping beside me. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
I looked around. Fog surrounded me, a strange, cold, bluish mist.
I rubbed my upper arms. “So what is this place? A way station between what?”
“Between planes, the nonearthly realms of the ghost world, like where you landed. From here I can transport us to another plane, or to any place on earth. Well, our version of earth.”
“But how—”
“Think of it as a cosmic elevator. A modern one, though. No elevator attendant on duty. Can’t just walk up and say ‘Miami, please.’ Don’t I wish. No, it’s strictly do-it-yourself, and you have to figure out the right incantation to get to each place, like breaking a code. Different place, different code.”
“So I assume they don’t like ghosts traveling.”
Eve shrugged. “They aren’t totally against it, but they’d rather you found a place and stuck to it, at least for a while. Frequent commuting is not encouraged. It confuses the older ghosts, seeing new faces popping in and out all the time.”
“But you know the codes.”
She grinned. “Not as many as I’d like, but I’m racking up far more frequent flier miles than the Fates would like. They’ve rapped my knuckles a few times. Not about using the codes, because, technically, that’s allowed, but they don’t always approve of the methods I use to get them.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And that’s all you need to know about that. Now hold on.”
Eve murmured an incantation in a language I’d never heard. Then she turned and walked back in the direction we’d come.
“It didn’t work?” I said as I hurried after her. “So now what—”
“More walking, less talking, Paige.”
I took one more step and my foot sank into what felt like a steaming pile of horse shit. I yelped and jumped back. I looked down. Warm, slimy mud oozed into my sandals.
“Gross, huh?” Eve said. “Come on.”
I followed. The mist still swirled around us. I opened my mouth to ask Eve something, then caught a whiff of the air and gagged. In grade school, a sadistic teacher had forced our class on an educational tour of a sewer plant. It had smelled like this, only better. One more cautious step, and a wave of humid heat washed over me. Then the mist cleared.
I looked around. The first association that clicked was: the Everglades. But it wasn’t. It had the same smell, the same feel, the same general look, but everything was multiplied a hundredfold. I touched the nearest overhanging fern. The leaf was bigger than I was. Massive twisted trees loomed overhead, pale moss dangling all around them, like a tattered wedding dress on a bridal corpse. An insect the size of a swallow buzzed past. As I turned to get a better look at it, something deep within the swamp shrieked. I jumped. Eve laughed and steadied me.
“Welcome to Miami,” she said. “Population: a few hundred…none of whom you want to meet.”
“This is Miami?” I said.
“Weird, huh? Watch this.”
She murmured an incantation, then rubbed her hand in front of us, as if cleaning glass. There, in the spot she’d cleared, was a tunnel view of a city street, neon signs blazing. A pair of headlights rounded the corner and headed straight for us. I locked my knees so I wouldn’t bolt. The car zoomed to the edge of the “window,” then disappeared.
“That’s your Miami,” she said, then pointed at the swamp. “This is ours.”
She swiped her hand over the image, and it dissolved.