The night was sleepless - filled with tossing, turning, and vivid nightmares about a certain boy chopping off my head. Light was streaming in through the curtains when I woke for the thirteenth time, and though I remained exhausted, I gave up on the idea of rest. Maybe it was trauma or a side-effect of being an almost zombie, but I got the inkling that no amount of sleep would make me feel well rested.

I only bothered to wash my face and brush my teeth before going down for breakfast, a decision I sincerely regretted upon entering the kitchen. There were three seated at the table - Gran, Adrian, and Amanda. All of them looked far better than I.

"You're up," Adrian noted, looking up from a bowl of cereal. "Get your beauty sleep?"

Gran took one look at me and snorted. "As if."

"Gran!"

She smiled, stood up, and took her plate to the sink. "You know I'd never lie to you."

"You could have told her we were coming," Amanda said, looking into a bowl of red goop in front of her. "Woken her up."

"She needed rest. The girl was screaming most of the ni - Don't get any of that blood on my table, Amanda!"

The color drained out of Adrian's face. "Blood?"

Amanda just frowned at her bowl. "Are you sure you gave me the right heart? This shouldn't have turned out so thick."

Gran scowled. "You asked for the heart of a bull, so I got you a bull's heart. If there's a problem, it's on your end, Seer."

Adrian pushed away his cereal.

"Bull heart?" I echoed, taking the bowl for myself.

"Mhm," Amanda said. "It's one of the animals Osiris is associated with."

I picked up a clean spoon, setting Adrian's aside before I began to finish up the cereal. "Are you going you drink that or something?"

"What? No, it's for the sacrifice."

"I thought you were doing a summoning."

"Well, we have to offer something. He's not just going to pop in for us."

I wiped milk off the corner of my mouth. "When will we do it?"

"Once Amanda eats," Gran said, turning on the sink to wash the dishes. "This requires a lot of energy."

"Have you done this before?" Adrian asked Amanda.

Amanda face turned to stone, and she met Gran's gaze before answering with an unconvincing, " No, of course not."

After Amanda ate her breakfast and Gran chastised me for eating Adrian's, I was sent out with the bowl of sludge, pouring it around the house the way I had been told to. The blood and the rotting flesh on my arm were unsettling enough to make me start considering veganism. When I went back inside, the rug in the living room had been pulled away and Amanda was crouched in the middle, carving a massive symbol into the floorboards.

"This is nuts," Adrian whispered.

"So is being a zombie."

"There's still glitter on you, by the way."

I was past caring about that. It wasn't like Osiris would care. And if for whatever reason he did, I'd be sure to tell him that his son was to blame. Maybe he'd go to the underworld and throw a glitter bomb in Anubis' face for me.

"Sit around the circle," Amanda told us both, plopping down beside Gran.

Adrian pulled me down with him. "Do we need to hold hands or something?" 

Amanda smiled at his tone. "It's incredible. The both of you came back from the dead but continue to be so skeptical of the mystical."

"So, no hand holding?"

"Yes, hand holding."

The four of us joined hands and Adrian looked over at me, winking. "Lucky you."

"Your hands are sweaty," I said humorlessly.

The smug look on his face dropped and his sweaty hands got even sweatier. I did my best not to look too amused.

"Both of you, eyes closed," Amanda instructed, "and focus on your connection to Anubis."

I shut my eyes, thinking of the tattoo. Of the endless desert. Of the jackal that pissed on my grave. I thought of my decomposing skin and my nightmares. I thought of my insatiable hunger and the glitter I couldn't seem to get off.

My heart started to pound. I was so angry. So irrationally angry. I was angry at Jake. I was angry at Anubis. And I was absolutely furious with that stupid jackal. The anger that had been absent when I first returned was hitting me all at once, knocking the wind out of me, making my blood boil.

There was a bloodcurdling scream.

My eyes flew open.

Amanda was sitting there, her once-blue eyes rolled back into her head, leaving only the whites visible. Her mouth was wide open in a long, continuous shriek as her body jerked side to side, back and forth, like a puppet being controlled by some cruel master. I yanked my hand away from Adrian and Gran, clapping them over my ears.

"What the-"

The scream came to an abrupt stop and Adrian halted mid-sentence.

Amanda was looking at Adrian and I with golden eyes that didn't belong to her. Jerking forward, she pressed a finger to both our foreheads, and in a voice too rough to be her own she hissed a single word.

"Sleep."

All at once, I was plunged into darkness.