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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. I took a few steps, shoes squelching in the mud.
"Stick close," she said. "I'm serious about there being things out there you don't want to meet."
I looked around and shook my head. "So all the cities are gone in the ghost world?"
"Nah. Miami's special."
"What are the other cities like? Do they look like ours?"
"Kind of. That's the cool thing. They look like the real ones, but they're stuck in the past, at some important point in their history, their heyday or whatever."
I looked around. "So Miami's heyday was back when it was a primeval swamp?"
Eve grinned. "All downhill from there, huh? Or maybe it's a metaphorical thing."
"You said ghosts live in the other cities. What if you lived in Miami while you were alive? Would you have to relocate?"
"Mostly, yes. But those things I was mentioning, the ones that live here? Rumor has it that they used to be--"She grimaced and made a zipping motion over her mouth. "No more questions, Paige."
"But shouldn't I know--"
"No, you shouldn't. You don't need to. You just want to. God, I'd forgotten how curious you are. When you were little, I swore your first word wasn't 'Momma,' it was 'why.'"
"Just one last--"
"One last question? Ha! Do you have any idea how many times I fell for that one?" She started walking. "One last question. One last game. One last song."
"I just--"
"Stop talking and get moving or you'll learn more about this swamp than you ever cared to know."
Blindsided
EVE KNEW HER WAY AROUND THE GHOST-WORLD MIAMI from her frequent visits over the last two weeks. What had lured her to this hell swamp? Us. She'd been keeping tabs on Lucas and me since we'd arrived in Miami, as she'd been periodically checking in on Savannah while she was under Elena's care. Apparently, she'd been doing this since her death, reassuring herself that her daughter was safe, and now keeping track of her guardians as well. It was a strictly visual supervision, but only because she hadn't figured out a way to extend her protectorship to a more active form. Not surprisingly, the Fates frowned on the whole guardian-angel routine. Interfering with the living was forbidden. Even checking in on loved ones, as Eve was doing, was discouraged. To make the full transition to ghost life, you had to break all ties with the living world. Eve was having some difficulty with the concept.
We had to walk two miles to get to where our hotel would be in the living world. I hoped Jaime was there. Otherwise, we were in for a long hunt.
Two miles wasn't relatively far, given the size of Miami, but when you were walking through a swamp, up to your ankles in muck, blazing a trail through the vegetation with fire spells, every few yards seemed like miles. Fortunately, Eve had forged some paths earlier, including one to our hotel. Otherwise the vegetation would have been impassable. Already, in the half day she'd been gone, the vines had wound over her trail, the lush vegetation filling in so fast you could almost see it growing.
As we hacked through a particularly overgrown area, I thought I did see the vegetation growing, as ferns a few yards ahead swished in the still, fetid air. Then I saw a shape move behind the fronds.
