"My entire life is destroyed. My mother is missing. My sister is dead. My father, he doesn't care. I have nowhere to stay. I may not graduated, and I'm in love with you. You're not even alive and now you may be taken away from me." I laughed, derisively. "Sounds like soon I'll need a heart-shaped coffin box."

"I'm sorry, Ellie."

"How do I even go back to school? To work? Or anything? I'm sure the brutal murder will be broadcast nationally. If I return, I'll be asked millions of questions that I can't answer."

"I don't want this for you. I will do whatever it takes to make this right again. I promise." He took my hand and we ran.

We ran through the night, we ran from the shadows, the pain, death. At the end of the woods, the meadow lay stretched out in front of us. The rain ceased and the sky shimmered in a galactic color, a mixture of pink, purple, blue, and starlight, which lit the field for miles. What would've been beautiful, became nightmarish.

The sky pulsed, and sent tiny quakes through my body, as The Society descended. The facial expression on Marcus: Not good. He swallowed, his Adams apple bobbing up and down in his throat.

One sentence, spoken by the blonde: "You messed up, Marcus, and now, we kill her."

I shivered. "I never got your name," I said.

"Jillian," she said, eyes dead, but glowing with sinister intent.

I looked up to Marcus for help.

"Oh," Jillian said. "Worry not, My Dear, we kill him, too."

Marcus didn't move a single muscle. He appeared to be a mannequin.

The two guys standing beside Jillian, shed their red robes. Marcus gripped my arm so tight, I thought he'd break it. He whispered to me, through clinched teeth, "Wish, Ellie. I give you the power of wishing. Anything you wish for, will come true."

"Maybe not to die?" I said. "Not like this."

"Wish harder."

The way they stood there watching us, tempting us to make a move, was unsettling. I took a deep breath and exhaled. "Run!" I yelled. I broke free of his grip, and darted in the other direction. Jillian stepped out in front of me, the same way Marcus had when I discovered what he was in the woods that evening. She held me up in the air, by my throat. I couldn't breathe.

"All you do is run," she said. Then she launched me, a hundred feet, and I hit the ground with a thud. It felt like my bones shattered, only they hadn't. When I'd gone airborne, I'd lost my breath. I lay on the ground unable to move, trying to remember how to breathe. My lungs were on fire. Felt like my breath had been sucked out of me. I struggled for oxygen. Gasped.

My eyes searched for Marcus. I saw him leap incredibly high into the air and land five hundred feet away in front of the guy who was heading in my direction. He jerked him up and body slammed him into the ground, creating a crater.

The sound of the guy digging into the earth reverberated. The force snapped the guy's neck. He was dead.

"I suggest the two of you leave," Marcus told Jillian and the other guy.

"Not until we kill her." The guy said.

"No problem," Jillian said. And at that precise moment, the sharpest pain pierced through my body and took my breath. Jillian had jammed a sword through my heart and cut me open to bleed.

"We'll be leaving now."

Marcus was horrified. Frozen in place.

I couldn't see. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't hear. I was dying. I was dead.

Love Forever, Marcus I woke up with a blinding light in my face. This could've been heaven. But it was and it wasn't.

It was because I realized I wasn't dead.

I went downstairs in an unfamiliar house, but one I somehow already knew, and found my mother and my sister Darcy, sitting at the breakfast table. When they saw me, Darcy said, "Happy eighteenth birthday, Ellie." She hugged my neck. Her flesh was real. I must've been ghost white, because when I pushed her off me and stared at her, her face cringed. "What's wrong, Ellie? You look spooked."

I almost pa.s.sed out. I fell onto the steps of the stairway. "Ellie, are you all right?" My mother asked.

I looked up. This couldn't be real. No way. My mother, up early, presents on the table, birthday cake, balloons? And Darcy? Darcy was dead. Only she wasn't. She stood above me, pixie haircut, freckles across the bridge of her nose, blue skirt on, dangling jewelry, age twenty.

"I'll get her a cold towel." I heard someone else say.

Moments later, "Here," my sister said. And she pressed it against my forehead. A guy wrapped his arm around Darcy's shoulder and I realized it was her boyfriend. "You look like you're in shock," she said. "Chill out, you're not that old."

It wasn't heaven because my mom said, "Your boyfriend came by really early and left you this." My pulse pounded. I knew she meant Marcus. She handed me a card. I was almost too afraid to open it. Taped to the inside was a silver raven necklace. I clutched it in my palm.

Inside it read: I would do anything to keep you alive. To keep you happy. Safe. You mean everything to me, Ellie. I hope you have an amazing eighteenth birthday with Darcy and your mom and I'll be seeing you on the other side, but not until you've lived a long, happy, life.

Love Forever, Marcus.

PS: Death isn't so bad. For you, I'd die again and again and again.

And the words disappeared right after I'd read them. Tears formed in my eyes. Lump in my throat. "What does it say?" Darcy asked. I dropped the card to the floor and Darcy picked it up.

"It's blank. Oh, no. He forgot to write you a birthday wish."

I flew up off the stairs and ran outside. He wasn't anywhere to be found. I ran all the way to the graveyard, the meadow, the woods, my heart pounding the entire way.

"Marcus!" I yelled.

He couldn't be gone. He just couldn't. The letter had read that he'd be seeing me in the afterlife. Did this mean that he was going to pa.s.s through to the afterlife during the Risorgimento? His last Vicennial?

"Marcus," I spoke to the wind. "You can't leave me like this. This isn't fair. Life doesn't mean anything without you. Being happy means being with you."

No response. I was breathless.

I just collapsed to the ground of the woods as one silent tear fell. I heard a flapping of wings, and looked up, but it was only an ordinary bird.

He was nowhere to be found.

He had to come back.

I knew he'd be back. He had to. My mom had seen him. He couldn't just disappear like that. People would ask questions. My mom. Darcy. People at school. This wasn't the end. If anything, it was the beginning.

And with that rea.s.surance, I stood up, and returned home to my pleasant neighborhood and to my sister Darcy, whom I loved dearly.

The weather was uniquely warm for this time of year. November usually brought cold winds, rain, or snow. But that day, The Second day of November, my eighteenth birthday, the sun was bright and incredibly warm. So Darcy and I took our cake out into the backyard and decided to eat it first, while Mom and Darcy's boyfriend prepared the grill.

She put on her sungla.s.ses and, wearing her swim suit, she laid out for a tan on a blanket in the green, green gra.s.s and I stretched out beside her. And everything went to being the way I'd always imagined it to be. Us, together, with sunbursts in our eyes. I wanted to know what her boyfriend's name was and where they'd met, how long they'd been dating, but I figured these were things I was already supposed to know. I didn't want them to think I was weird or something, or that I suffered from temporary brain damage, although I began to wonder if I had been in a long, long dream this entire time, myself.

And then she said to me, "Way to go, Sis, your boyfriend's extremely hot. But I think I'll have to have a little chat with him, next time I see him, for not writing in the birthday card he gave you. And for not staying a while. What an airhead."

Next time. There would be a next time. I would see him again. I put on my shades and closed my eyes, and let the sun sink into my skin. I'd needed it for a very long time, and it was finally here.

Section Two

Marcus Marble Marcus Anthony Marble Born: December 31, 1892 Died: November 17, 1911 The Memory of Becoming an Evermore I awoke in a satin tomb, nearly suffocated. Nothing but black, everywhere, and I clawed my way out of that grave, hate in my chest, thunder in my head.

I didn't know what was happening, or why I'd come back. The experience was nightmarish, something one would only expect to occur in a dark slumber.

I recall all.

Burning in my lungs, that hadn't breathed air, gasping for life. Dirt under my nails. The icy rain, drenching me.

I stood up on my feet, trembling, and weak. Images of what might've been my previous life, flashed before my eyes. My eyes, I opened them.

A black raven landed atop my tombstone. He stared at me, his beady eyes demanding my attention. My chest burned like fire. My head roared. And I heard a throbbing voice echo, "Forever, forever, forever, forever, forever."

I screamed. Rain fell down around me. I dropped to the ground and held my head, throbbing in pain. My heart in agony. It felt as though the bird was tugging at me, drawing me near, trying to pull me in.

At that precise moment, the bird pulled me into him, and I felt my bones break as they collapsed into a smaller birdlike structure.

"Evermore, evermore, evermore..."

I became the raven, only I was a white one, and I was still very much dead. But I was at unrest. I was undead. The chosen one, doomed to live forever. This was worse than the non-existence that death offered me. During death, I could not feel.

Now I could hear, see, smell, feel, everything...brightly...deeply.

I could hear all sounds, feel all things. Even things humans had not the ability to feel. I felt the lamenting heartache from the dead. The moaning torment, the pain of the decaying. I felt their agony.

I had supersonic sight. I could see the Eiffel tower from where I stood in North America. I heard every creature's thoughts, felt every creature's emotions. I heard the symphony of the whirling wind and drumming rain. I heard the heavens thunder.

I flew upward and into the branches of the trees, but before I landed my flight, I crashed to the ground in my human form. The fall did not hurt as it might've for a human.

I fell on my back, and stared up into the cobweb of tree branches to see a guy staring down at me, from the tree, with a smirk on his face. "Can't believe they sent me all the way down here for this." He indicated me.

He leapt down, landed on his feet, and extended a hand to help me off the ground. I took his hand and he jerked me forward with a firm pull. "I'm Michael," he said. "Michael Corbin. Welcome back."

"What am I doing here?"

"You're an Evermore. You need to come with me."

I shook from the cold rain. I wrapped my arms around my body. "What is an Evermore?"

"Guardian of the dead and dying, creators of life, destroyers of evil."

I coughed in a mad fit, then I said, "I don't understand."

"You're the eternal one. But don't worry. There's a way out. This can be a blessing or it can be a curse. You choose now."

"It already feels like a curse, man."

He ignored my statement. "There's three ways to get to Nevermore. We teleport, we fly, or I carry you on my back through a skylight-windfall." He smirked at the last transportation method.

I made a face. "Well I'm certainly not riding on your back. Don't even think about it. Better watch yourself."

He smiled. "You better watch yourself."

I stared at him through the strands of my hair. "Don't tell me you're gay. I don't need this of all things, right now."

He shrugged.

"Nevermore some fairyland?"

He ignored me. "Well, you can't teleport. You're not strong enough. That was never an option. So you're flying." He walked off, then turned back to look at me. "Better learn to shape-shift, and fly, quickly, or you'll be stuck down here like this forever." Then he ran at the speed of light and burst into a black raven.

"Man, wait on me, will you?"

I rubbed my hands together, then took a running start, and thinking about the moment before when I'd became the bird and flew up into the tree, my body shifted into a white raven, and my wings flapped through the sky, furiously, to catch up with Michael. I followed him through the velvet lit sky, through the wispy and dark clouds, and five minutes later, he flew through a skylight into a dark room and I flew in behind him.

He transformed into his human form and so did I, stumbling back a little, and knocking a gla.s.s vase off a desk, sending it shattering to the ground.

"Do you have to make such an obnoxious entrance?" Michael said. "Everyone already knows you're here."

"Well excuse me for not being exactly skilled in shifting. I've never done this before."

"Here," he tossed me a new suit of clothing. "Remove your dirty attire and put this on. You need to make a stunning impression on the Master, who's been waiting on you." He stared at me.

"Can I get a private moment, please?"

"Get over yourself. There's a thousand guys here in Nevermore. Why would I want an amateur?" He strolled over to the double doors ahead of us. "I'll wait outside the door. Hurry up."

I pulled off my wet t-shirt, and jeans, and replaced them with the elegant clothing Michael had given me, dress coat and all. Then I knocked on the door to let Michael know I wanted out. When the door opened, I was greeted by loud music and bright lights and ball gowns, lace, and masquerade masks.

"What's all this?"

"The Risorgimento. Some people are being united as one tonight, meaning they'll never have to leave Nevermore, while others are pa.s.sing through to the otherside, allowing new members in. You're the first new member."

"Who's pa.s.sing through to allow room for me?"

"No one, yet."