Free Never to Sleep by Rachel Vincent

But I no longer felt qualified to say what was possible and what wasn’t. So…did that mean that Addison Page really was dead? And what about me?
    “Am I dead?” I asked softly, trying to block out the scratches and thumps, and the slivers of moonlight that were starting to shine in around the widening gaps in the door frame. “You said you thought you felt something earlier.” When he’d pulled me off the ground, in the hall. “Was that because you’re a necromancer, and I’m dead?”
    Luca laughed, and I felt like an idiot for asking such a stupid question. But I had to know. “You’re very much alive, and obviously determined to stay that way. But I do think you’re connected to death, somehow. Touched by it.”
    “Because my mom died?” Even after spending who knew how many hours in this bizarre hell world, my mother’s death still ranked as my single worst memory ever. Or, my worst not-a-memory. I’d been unconscious in the moment of her death, and I’d missed her every moment since. My mom had known me like my father never could, and everything I truly understood about myself had come from her.
    But Luca shook his head slowly. “I don’t think that’s it. Unless…were you hurt when she died, like, in the same accident or something? Is it possible you died too, even for just a minute?”
    “No.” I frowned. “I don’t think so.” But the truth was that I had no idea. No one who was there that night would tell me what happened. Nash and his mom were off the hook, but my dad and Kaylee—they were family. They owed me the truth.
    But Luca misunderstood my confusion. “That happens more than you’d think. People die, and doctors resuscitate, but once death’s touched you, you’ll always bear its mark, even if I’m the only one who can feel it.”
    Another thud shook the shed, and I jumped, my next question forgotten.
    Luca lifted my chin and kissed me again, and this time instead of pulling away, I pulled him closer. His hand slid around my neck, his fingers curling in my hair.
    “What was that one for?” I asked, when he finally let me go.
    “Just for fun. Because I’m not sure I’ll get another chance.” He lifted my cut palm, and I stared at it, wondering if all that cutting and bleeding and running had been for nothing. What was the point, if I was just going to die anyway? If we both were?
    “That’s unacceptable.” I pulled my phone from my pocket to check the time, but the lit screen was blank, like cell signals weren’t the only things missing in the Netherworld. Like maybe time had no meaning here either. “We’re not going to die here, or anywhere else in this nightmare of an alternate dimension. Addison said I could go home, and I believe her.”
    “And Addison would be…?”
    “The dead pop star,” I said, and that time Luca looked skeptical, but I hardly noticed, because I was going over everything Addison had said. Again. “She said I could go home, but I had to want it, more than anything else. She said to go back the way I came. But what does that mean?”
    “It sounds like she thinks you brought yourself—and maybe me—here,” Luca suggested, reseating another loosened bat.
    “But I didn’t do anything. That dead guy just appeared there, and his eyes were empty. I started screaming and closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew, we were here, and nothing made any sense.”
    “There has to be something else,” Luca said. “You must have done something we’re not remembering.”
    Something heavy slammed against the door, and I shrieked when the top hinge ripped free from the wall. And just for a second, everything changed. The floor of the shed was suddenly filled with thick, rolling gray fog, and through it, I could see the ghosts of things—mostly sports equipment—that didn’t exist in the Netherworld. But they existed in our world, in this very shed.
    In an instant, that flash of impossible things was gone, and Luca hadn’t seen it. He jumped to