“If it brings back Chloe, then I’m insane. I don’t care!” I shouted, cutting down a drunken Mugwort demon who lunged from the shadows. Lincoln, Emberly, Catia and Michael were still fighting the demons in the gym, but at better odds now. When I’d shouted to Linc that I was going to see my mom to bring back Chloe, he’d just looked at me like I’d grown two heads, then barked for Noah and Shea to escort me.

We raced across campus, time ticking away as Chloe’s soul detached more and more from her body.

“Chloe, stay here! Stay with us!” I shouted to the night like a madwoman. “We’re going to bring you back.”

Noah and Shea exchanged a look, one that said they might be planning to sedate me. Yet, Luke looked determined, brow furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line, and I knew he would be my partner in crime.

The second we reached my car, I was relieved to see the parking lot was crawling with Fallen Army. They’d just come back from the raid to find their home was also raided. Now they could rid the campus of demons. We gingerly helped Luke in the back, his limp redheaded best friend in his arms.

“Let me close her up quickly, or she’ll lose all her blood,” Noah instructed, pulling a little surgical stapler from his pants pocket—all of the healers and medics carried them in the war zones.

Noah lifted the hoodie to reveal an open abdominal cavity, and both Luke and I looked to the side, unable to see our friend in that condition. The snapping sound of staple after staple set in place, made Luke wince as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Noah was right to do this. If my mom reanimated Chloe without all of her major organs inside of her, she wouldn’t survive. Still, that didn’t make it any easier to see, or hear.

“All right,” Noah announced, chucking the bloodied stapler into the back of the car. We all climbed inside, Noah driving, Shea in the middle row, and me in the passenger seat.

“Drive like hell to my mom’s apartment,” I told Noah, and he obliged, even burning rubber.

I dialed my mom, who picked up on the first ring.

“Tell me you’re safe,” she answered.

“I’m safe, but Chloe’s not. I need you to prepare to reanimate her. You still have your supplies, right?”

My mom gasped. “Chloe? Oh, honey.”

My throat tightened at my mom’s emotional voice. When I’d been taken to Hell, she had started weekly dinners with all my friends. Chloe had become part of the family.

“Mom, do you have your supplies or not!” I snapped.

“Honey, I can’t reanimate her. It’s against Angel City rules.”

Is she serious right now? She’d been dating Raph for all of a month and now she was Miss Rule Follower.

“Mom, it’s only been like seven minutes, eight tops. We can do a soul infusion and—”

“A soul infusion! Where did you learn about that?” she questioned me.

So it is real.

“I overheard Master Burdock saying it when I worked with you at the clinic.”

He’d been talking to a woman on the phone, telling her if they could get the deceased to the clinic within twenty minutes of death, she could undergo a process called a soul infusion, where you called them back from Heaven, Hell, or wherever, and it was like being alive again. I remembered wondering why we hadn’t done that with my dad, but he also mentioned the body needed to be in good shape. Getting hit by a bus did not leave my father in any sort of good shape, and he’d been dead too long when we’d received the call, so I’d never even brought it up to my mom.

I sure as hell was bringing it up now.

“Honey… that’s a taboo process. You’re talking about cheating death here, and you’re asking me to play God.”

Yeah, I was, and I would expect her to do the same for me.

“Mom. It’s Chloe. She looked for me with Shea when Lincoln and Noah couldn’t go into Hell. Would you really deny her this chance at life again?”

Okay, I was being shitty, and totally planned on making her feel bad about it until she said yes. She’d ‘played God’ and reanimated thousands of bodies for Demon City, so how was this different?

She sighed. “I’ll need family consent, and I won’t do it unless I could fully bring her back. Reanimation isn’t—”

“I know, Mom. We’re downstairs. Get ready!” I hung up just as we pulled into the parking space. I knew what reanimation was and wasn’t. I didn’t want a robot Chloe who spaced out every five minutes, and didn’t have the same personality. I wouldn’t do that to her. But if this soul infusion thing was real, then we had to try.

“Luke.” I swallowed hard, hating what I had to ask of him next.

He looked over at me, and the desperation in his gaze gutted me.

“I need you to call Donnie and get him over here. He needs to give consent.”

Luke had to call his own boyfriend and tell him that his beloved sister was dead, and then have Donnie give permission to reanimate her. It was shitty, but I knew Donnie wouldn’t be as receptive to anyone else.

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.