by Brodi Ashton
Page 25
“Whoa,” I said. “Take it easy. ”
He lay back down, and I checked his wound. It had stopped bleeding, but I tied my shirtsleeve around his neck anyway. With that kind of wound, a strong breeze could open it up again.
“I’m okay now, Nik. ”
“Good. But we’re going to stay here for a little while. ” When he tried to protest, I said, “Staying in one place is the best chance for the others to find us. ”
Cole furrowed his brow. “You haven’t seen them?”
I shook my head. “Only Max. His Siren appeared as his sister, but he figured it out quickly. I don’t know how. We split up, hoping to find you and Ashe. ”
He looked worried. Neither of us considered for a moment just leaving them behind and continuing on.
“Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Do your kisses have this effect on everyone?”
“It was the Siren—” I stopped. He was obviously kidding. But I flashed back to the kiss again.
That kiss. Now that we were so far away from the danger, the thought of the kiss brought heat to my cheeks. The kiss had given me a glimpse into Cole’s memories, as well as an intense power surge. I was sure it helped me kill the Siren. But afterward, Cole seemed tired. And when the Siren tackled him, he hadn’t put up much of a fight.
“Why was that kiss so weird?” I said. “Did it make you weak?”
He smiled. “Everliving kisses. They’re never what they seem, are they? Kisses in the Everneath work in the opposite way as kisses on the Surface. Up there, you have more energy, so a kiss means energy transfers from you to me. Down here, with the Everneath draining you constantly, I have more. So energy flows from me to you. With a kiss, you were feeding off me for a change. ”
I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “Everything’s upside down here. ”
“But … what about the Wanderers? How come they drain me?”
“You need to stop thinking of Wanderers as true Everlivings. They aren’t anymore. All they are is hunger, and you will always have more energy than they do. They have nothing to give. But I do. ”
“I saw a memory. Of yours,” I said quietly.
He brought his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on top, displacing the makeshift bandage. “I’m sure you did. ”
I moved the bandage back into place. He didn’t ask me which memory I saw.
“You saved me back there,” he said.
I thought about the Siren. “At first I wasn’t sure you wanted saving from her. ”
“She did have her fine points. ” He smiled, and I was relieved that he was making light of the situation.
I’d been thinking about it. To get someone to follow them, a Siren would most likely appear as that person’s deepest desire. The thing they wanted most. Cole’s had become me, only it wasn’t me as the queen, which I assumed would’ve been what Cole wanted most. It wasn’t even me as an Everliving.
It was me, simply as me.
Maybe the Siren wasn’t what we most desired above all else. Maybe it was what we most desired at that moment.
I didn’t know. And seeing Cole’s face, the fatigue under his eyes, the worried lines around his mouth, I didn’t want to ask him.
“When did you know that the Siren wasn’t me?” I said. “Was it the kiss?”
He gave me a sad smile. “It was when I saw that her tether pointed to me. ”
“But … you were about to go with her?”
“A moment of weakness. Destroyed by a kiss. ” He was looking deep into my eyes. “Why did you kiss me?”
I blushed. “Because my Siren was Jack. He kissed me, and I knew it wasn’t him. I figured that if I did the same with you, you’d know I was real. ”
“You reached that particular conclusion fairly quickly. ”
“No—I didn’t—I—” I stammered. Imagined the kiss again. I was lost in it. But I could never admit that.
He leaned closer. “Tell me you didn’t feel something, Nik. ”
“I don’t know what I felt,” I blurted. How was I supposed to know when the rush of energy masked everything else?
Cole didn’t pull away. “Just so you know … my tether always points to you. ”
Ashe had told me the same thing, and now I could see it in Cole’s eyes, the tilt of his head, every decision he made. My face was behind it all. I knew it now. And I’d used it to bring him down here. What was I doing to him?
That kiss. It wasn’t just about the energy. It was about the memories. It was our connection to each other, again. A connection that only comes with spending a century together. Would it ever be broken?
I opened my mouth to say something, but Max appeared from around a turn, out of breath. He closed his eyes in relief that he’d found us.
“I couldn’t find Ashe. He’s gone. ”
“What do you mean he’s gone?” Cole said, standing up.
Max shook his head and gasped for breath. “I couldn’t find him. ”
Cole’s face drained of any color it had left. Max looked like he was about to be sick. It hit me then just how dangerous this maze was. I’d known it from the beginning, but in the course of a couple of hours, I’d had my mind erased, my body nearly torn apart by wind; Cole had been attacked by a Siren; and now Ashe was gone.
I thought about how quickly things could change. How fast the wind had messed with our minds.
Everything felt heavier now.
Cole looked at his watch. “We need to kick Nikki,” he said.
“What?” It couldn’t be time yet, could it? But then I thought of all we’d been through. It had felt like three days.
“It’s been a day. You need to sleep. ” He turned away from me, and I caught a glimpse of his expression. It was grim. With his back to me, he said, “We’ll keep looking for Ashe while you’re gone. Max, do it. ”
“But—” The word was all I could get out before Max’s foot was in my gut, and then I was gone.
Seconds later I was on the floor of the Shop-n-Go again. It was dark. I was alone, and on the Surface.
TWENTY-FIVE
NOW
The Surface. The Shop-n-Go.
Half an hour later, I was curled up in the storage closet next to the mop and a stepladder, with three PARK CITY: ABOVE THE REST T-shirts balled up under my head.
There was no way I was going to contact Will when I hadn’t found Jack yet. I couldn’t face telling him about everything that had happened, especially the part about the Jack-Siren.
Because it hurt. Thinking he was so close. Feeling as if he were in my arms again.
I hated the maze. Yes, we’d made it to the next ring; but every time I reached the Surface without Jack, it felt like another failure.
I pulled the foil blanket I’d stolen from the camping section of the store up and under my chin and closed my eyes. For once I was grateful that every convenience store in Park City had a camping section.
I closed my eyes. Sleep couldn’t come fast enough.
I dream.
But Jack isn’t there. At least he isn’t there the way he’s been there for the past months.
Instead, I dream about the first time he told me he loved me. We are in his uncle’s cabin, sitting by the fire and sipping hot chocolate. The dream feels forced, as if I’m half awake and consciously dragging my sleeping brain through my memories.
I relish in the sweet memory; but I feel a tug at my heart, warning me of a bigger problem.
The Jack from the Tunnels is gone. I search for him, trying to find my way to my house and my bed so he can find me.
But he doesn’t. I am alone.
My eyelids finally abandoned their fight, and I woke up. Jack wasn’t there. No matter how much I’d tried to force him, the real Jack wasn’t in my dream. I’d been so worried about how much more he might have forgotten, but I didn’t think it was possible that he wouldn’t be there at all.
I threw
an ammonia bottle against the wall. I was not losing Jack. I would not lose him.
The bottle rolled back to me. I picked it up and threw it harder. This time it cracked, and yellow ammonia pooled around it.
The sound of glass shattering mirrored the feeling in my heart, and I had the sudden urge to break everything within my reach. I wanted to throw the door open and run through the Shop-n-Go tossing bottles and smashing counters. For a second I even imagined throwing Ezra’s chair through a window.
I put my head in my hands. If I didn’t do something to distract myself, I’d tear the place apart. That’s when I realized a soft light was coming from underneath the storage-room door.
It was morning.
I had to talk to someone. There was no way I could face Will one more time, still a failure. My father was out of the question. If I were to show up again after disappearing from Dr. Hill’s office, only to disappear again once Cole found me …
The smell of the ammonia became overpowering in that small room. I had to get out of there. Really, there was only one other person I could talk to. Mrs. Jenkins. Maybe she’d come across something new. Maybe she would just let me smash things. Maybe she would want to smash them too, and curse the day she’d ever learned about the Everneath.
I opened the closet door a couple of inches and looked out. The sun was peeking in through the glass windows, and Ezra was sitting at the counter, earbuds in his ears, hunched over the paper.
I threw the door open and went up to the counter where Ezra was working on a crossword puzzle. He looked up.
“I need to borrow your phone,” I said.
He handed it to me as if a girl emerging from his storage closet at dawn was no big deal. I called Mrs. Jenkins to come pick me up.
Mrs. Jenkins sat quietly on her couch as I gave her a quick account of the past few days. When I’d finished, she leaned back.
“So at some point soon, Cole’s hand will appear and take you back under?”
I nodded. “And I feel like we’re running out of time. Jack … he didn’t show up in my dream last night. …” My voice cracked. We were both quiet as I took a deep breath. “I’m running out of time. ”
“You never had time to begin with. I wish I knew what to tell you. ”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re flying with our blinders on. Nobody’s ever tried to do this. Nobody’s ever been in this situation before. ”
At that, I glanced at the urn on her mantelpiece. “Adonia,” I said. “I guess she’s come the closest. Were there any stories passed down from her? Any details about her that would help me?”
Mrs. Jenkins looked at the urn too and shook her head slowly. “I can’t think of anything that would help. She didn’t make it the full six months of her Return to the Surface. She was killed by the queen before the Tunnels even came for her. ”
“I know that part, but how did she end up going to the Feed in the first place? If she didn’t love her Everliving, why did she ever choose to go?”
“Oh, I don’t know that she didn’t love Ashe. At first. But she was still obsessed with the true love of her life, a soldier whom she believed had died in battle—”
“Wait!” I interrupted. “Did you say Ashe?”
She nodded. “That was the name of her Everliving. ”
“Ashe,” I repeated. “Ashe was the one who betrayed Adonia. Turned her over to the queen. ”
She nodded again, confused.
“I met an Ashe,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “He helped us. He’s a friend of Cole’s. ”
She squinted curiously. “Did he have dark hair and dark eyes?”
I shook my head. “No. He was really gray. Everywhere. It’s like he was made up of smoke or something. Cole said he didn’t used to look like that until he missed the last Feed. But Ashe is a common enough name, right?”
The look on her face told me she didn’t think it was a coincidence. “Ashe is still alive. Of course that makes sense. But Adonia’s story is very old. It’s strange to think he’s still … there. ”
I couldn’t figure out how to feel about this new bit of information. My stomach started to churn thinking about it, but I wasn’t sure why. Mrs. Jenkins’s obvious unease with the news wasn’t helping matters.
Ashe took Adonia to the Feed as his Forfeit, just as Cole took me. Adonia survived, as I did. But how? Who was her anchor?
“You said her soldier died before the Feed?” I asked.
“No. That was the awful part. He was captured by the other side, and everyone believed he was dead. But he wasn’t. He was a prisoner of war. ”
I nodded. That’s how Adonia survived. With an anchor, just like I did. Did she know he was still alive? Is that why she chose to Return to the Surface?
But her Everliving betrayed her. Instead of letting Adonia have her final six months on the Surface, Ashe turned her over to the queen. The story didn’t have anything to do with me.
