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memory touched by evil will make our amulets spark.” I pull the black chain around my neck until the deep violet stone falls out and over my collar. I hold the jagged, ombre purple stone out to my brother. “Do you still wear your amulet?”
    The smooth, round onyx stone of his necklace surfaces above his own collar. “Always.”
    “Good. To leave,” I instruct, “say Absum .” He silently forms the word on his lips and I nod. “Ready?”
    He smiles conspiratorially. Ready , he says in my mind.
    I can feel the anticipation sparking between us like electricity, and I harness the energy for the incantation. I grip his hand tighter and close my eyes. With my free hand, I hold my amulet over the basin.
    “ In nomine Lucifer nos postularemus animae. Memoriis mortuorum loquar.”
    A violent wind whips around us, and when I open my eyes, the contents of the basin are bubbling higher and higher until it stills suddenly, the liquid smoothing into a tranquil, reflective surface. It looks like a dark, nauseating mirror.
    With Azael’s hand in mine, I feel the world shift and fall from beneath us. The clearing disappears and we are momentarily thrown into darkness before we land with a sharp clack on a long, tiled corridor. I let my amulet fall back to my chest and smile breathlessly.
    It worked!
    Azael opens his eyes, his pupils nothing more than pinpricks, and lets a barbed smile spread across his own face.
    “We’re in.”

Chapter 5

    “It doesn’t look like much,” Azael complains, his voice flat and unimpressed.
    Brightly lit black and white checkered tiles run down the middle of the corridor with imposing, glossy black doors lining either side of the hall. The doors stretch father than the light reaches and eventually fade into shadows.
    I let go of Azael’s hand and step forward on the reflective tiles, the click of my boots echoing. “Would you like to try a door?”
    He makes his way down the corridor slowly, stopping to point at the doors he passes. “Eenie, meenie, miney—”
    I shove past him to the first door on the right and wrap my hand around the door handle, pushing into the room with Azael on my heels. The room is cold, quiet, and blindingly bright, even more so than the hallway. My eyes rage against the brightness, making me dizzy as hazy halos of light cling to my eyelashes and stretch into one another. When my eyes adjust, the light distortion fades and I can scan the room.
    White walls, white floor, lighted ceiling. Empty.
    “No.” I shake my head in confusion, denial. “This isn’t right.”
    “Screw up the spell, then? I guess Gus isn’t the great teacher he believes himself to be,” Azael says, leaning against the doorframe.
    I shake my head again. “No. No, I did it right. But this… is wrong. It shouldn’t be empty.”
    “Then what should it be?” He cranes his neck into the room and peers around the door. “Is it a hospital? I mean, it looks sterile enough to be one.”
    “A memory.” I carefully step farther into the room, as though I’m afraid the floor will fall through. “This should be a memory,” I repeat.
    The soul holds life. Reanimating like I did is like opening a time capsule. I should be able to pick through each day of their life, each significant event—from birth to death—and live it as though I were there with them. Behind one door may be their first kiss. Behind another, their wedding, their parent’s death, a graduation. It shouldn’t be empty. This isn’t right.
    Something about this room feels wrong, but I can’t put my finger on it. I turn around slowly in the middle of the room. It gives me an uneasy, hollow feeling, like something is missing. Of course something’s missing. There should be a memory—it shouldn’t be empty.
    But the room feels more than empty. It’s like there was something here that shouldn’t have been. An intruder, a stranger to this soul that snatched whatever was once here. There’s a feeling that something was