by Gina Damico
Lex and Driggs squeezed each other’s hands a little tighter and took off for the hotel, Lex kicking off her shoes on the way. The girl just wasn’t built for heels.
“How did she find us?” she huffed as they ran.
“Don’t know,” Driggs said, panting. “Maybe someone in Croak tipped her off. Maybe they tortured it out of Pandora or Wicket.”
Lex grimaced and tried to clear that image from her head. “This screws everything up! What about the other Juniors? What about Broomie?”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” he said, though his voice was uncertain. “We’ll all be fine.” He pulled her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.
Lex’s throat tightened. “So much for a perfect evening.”
“At least I didn’t have to pay for the steak.”
They jumped over a body lying in the neon-lit street. Driggs gave it a longing stare as they passed; Lex knew he wanted to go back and try out his unDamning powers, but there was no time. The growing din echoed off the walls of the buildings, peppered with shouts, screams, and more breaking windows. They’d managed to slip by Zara, but they could still hear her yelling, demanding to know where something or someone was.
The lobby of the hotel was empty. Lex and Driggs quietly inched up the stairs and headed to Lex’s room. She grabbed her stuff and changed into regular clothes and her hoodie, all the while telling herself that Elysia’s stuff was missing because she was somewhere safe, not because Zara had already gotten to her.
Over in Driggs’s room, Ferbus’s things were gone too. After Driggs had changed and stuffed everything else into his bag, he looked forlornly at the suit, in a sad heap on the bed.
“Just leave it,” Lex said. “Put it out of its misery.”
They crept down the hall to Uncle Mort’s suite. Lex slid the key into the door and pushed it open.
Broomie had her arm raised, ready to hit Lex with the butt of her scythe. “Christ Almighty, it’s you,” she said, lowering it.
“Shhh,” said Lex, relief washing over her as she stepped into the room. The rest of the Juniors sat on the king-size bed, all hugging their bags and looking terrified. Riqo stood at the window and was peering through the curtains at the street beyond the pool.
“About a dozen bodies, as far as we can tell,” Broomie filled them in. “LeRoy, bless his heart—he’s opened up the Mayor’s Mansion and barricaded nearly everyone else in there.”
“Why aren’t you with them?” Driggs asked.
Broomie looked at him as if he were a moron. “And let her catch all of you?”
“I told Uncle Mort that we had a plan,” Lex said, “but he wouldn’t listen—”
“Shh!” Riqo hissed nervously from the window. “I see her.”
“She’s not coming here,” Broomie said, her voice shaky.
“Sure she is,” said Ferbus. “We all know who she’s after.” He glared pointedly at Lex.
“Shut up, Ferb,” said Elysia. “If she wants Lex, she’s going to have to get through all of us first.”
Lex’s throat got tight. “Thanks, Lys.”
“You’re welcome.” She frowned. “Did you lose your shoes again?”
“Coming closer,” said Riqo, still looking out the window. “She is—” He gave them a helpless look. “She has entered the hotel.”
Lex tried to get angry, angry enough to be able to Damn, but her hands weren’t growing any hotter. She was too scared.
Driggs swallowed and put his arms around her. They sat down on the bed with the others.
And waited.
Waited.
Someone shuffled outside the door.
Pip looked up at Broomie. “What do we do?”
Elysia whimpered. “We don’t even have our scythes.”
“Well, I do,” Broomie said, reaching into her hoodie pocket. She raised it and slowly approached the door.
“Broomie, no,” said Lex. “Uncle Mort said not to go near—”
The door swung open. A figure carrying a bag darted in, then wheeled around to face them, dodging Broomie’s scythe mid-thrust.
“—the door,” Uncle Mort finished Lex’s sentence. “Guess you really do listen to me every once in a while, huh, Lex?”
He hurried to the bed. “She’ll be here any second. Take these.” He emptied the bag onto the bed, scattering a bunch of scythes across the mattress. Lex recognized the emerald of Bang’s, the purple amethyst of Elysia’s, the orange agate of Ferbus’s.
“What did you do to them?” Driggs asked, reaching for his sapphire.
“Not me. LeRoy.”
“Huh?”
“Turn your Cuffs on,” Uncle Mort instructed. “They should be working now.”
“But that’ll give away our location!” Lex said. “Norwood will know where we are!”
A loud boom shuddered at the door. Zara was trying to kick it down. “Lex!” she screamed, kicking again.
“Turn the goddamn Cuffs on!” Uncle Mort repeated. The Juniors reluctantly obeyed as he flung his bag over his shoulder and shook Broomie’s hand. “Thank you both,” he said, reaching for Riqo’s as well. “We’ll be in touch.”
“What?” Lex exclaimed. “They’re not coming with us?”
“But we can’t just leave them here!” Pip said.
“Don’t you worry about us, mate,” Broomie said. “We’ll head her off. The important thing is that you get out, go somewhere safe.”
“No!” Lex yelled. “This was not part of the plan!”
Broomie gave them a guilty smile as she backed up into the bathroom. “Not part of your plan. It’s been our plan all along.”
Riqo followed her. “Good luck, amigos. Oh, and Pipito? Here.” He tossed a sack to Pip, then gave them all a little wave and shut the door.
“Scythe. Now,” Uncle Mort instructed the Juniors.
The door was splitting. “LEX!!”
“Scythe where?” yelled Driggs, squeezing Lex’s hand.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?”
A terrifying crack filled the room as the door splintered apart.
A stare-down ensued. Zara stood there, breathing heavily. She was gaunt, even skinnier than she had been all those weeks before. She looked as though she hadn’t slept in months, the skin on her haggard face nearly translucent. Loathing filled her eyes as her gaze swept across the Juniors. They stared back, barely blinking.
The bathroom door swung open. Broomie and Riqo exploded out of it with a shout, scythes drawn for a fight they couldn’t possibly win. Yet for the slightest of seconds Zara was distracted. She swung her scythe without caring where it landed, finding it a home in Riqo’s chest. Blood spurted out of his mouth, staining the white carpet—the Juniors screamed—
“Go!” Uncle Mort yelled over them.
They scythed and were gone.
21
They landed in a dark room, their flailing bodies crashing to the floor in a heap.
“Cuffs off!” Uncle Mort shouted. This time they complied instantly.
Bang was the first to extract herself from the mess. She felt along the wall for a light switch, but instead found a hanging cord. When she yanked it, a set of curtains swept aside to reveal a wide floor-to-ceiling window.
Outside sat a gigantic mountain, its snowy pathways dotted and bathed with light. Every few seconds a figure came racing down the trails. Chairlifts swayed as they climbed up the slope, as did dangling skis and snowboards.
“Oh my Lord,” said Elysia. “We’re in Aspen.”
Ferbus finally found a light and snapped it on. They were in yet another deluxe hotel suite, this one complete with fireplace. “Whoa,” he said as everyone staggered to their feet. “Upgrade.”
Lex wasn’t paying attention; she was too busy trying to strangle her uncle. “We left them!” she cried, grabbing him by the neck of his hoodie. “Why?”
He broke away from her grip. “They wanted to stay and defend their town.”
“
But Zara’s going to kill them! She stabbed Riqo!”
“Doesn’t mean he won’t make it. He’s a strong kid. And if not—” Uncle Mort’s eyes lowered. “He’ll go to the Afterlife. At least she didn’t Damn him.”
“How optimistic of you,” Lex spat.
They glared at each other.
“Hang on,” said Ferbus. “How do you know we’re in Aspen, Lys? And more important,” he said, looking at Uncle Mort, “why are we in Aspen?”
Uncle Mort sat on the arm of the couch and took a weathered atlas out of his bag. “Don’t look at me,” he said, skimming it and nodding at Elysia. “It was her idea.”
Elysia looked more confused than any of them. “I—when we scythed, it just popped into my head. My parents came here for their honeymoon, and I remember looking through their photo albums. I think this was their room! It looks just like the pictures . . .” She stopped and looked at the others, who were gaping at her.
Elysia looked ready to cry. “I thought we were gonna die,” she said in a quieter voice. “My parents were the last thing I thought of, and then we were here. I didn’t mean to.”
“Don’t worry, Lys,” Uncle Mort said. “You did splendidly.”
The rest of the Juniors patiently waited for an explanation, but Uncle Mort didn’t immediately deliver—either because he was trying to formulate one or he was a lot more worried about Broomie and Riqo than he was letting on.
Eventually he rubbed his eyes and stood up. “Okay. The reason we’re in Aspen is because this time around, you’re the ones deciding where we Crash to.”
He took a deep breath. “When I took your scythes, I brought them to LeRoy—he owed me a favor, if you’ll recall—and had him link up all our scythes to all our Cuffs, so that where one of us wants to Crash, the others instantaneously follow. The downside is that we’ll be back on the grid and show up on the CuffLink, so whoever has been helping Zara will no doubt be able to hack back into that system and pass on our location to her. But there is a slight delay, which means that if we keep our destinations fairly random and unpredictable it’ll be harder for her to track us.”
“Destinations?” Elysia asked. “As in more than one?”
“Well, now that our Cuffs are connected, our maximum distance is limited to just over six hundred miles. It’s going to take a few Crashes to get across the country and back to Croak.”
“Wait, why are we going back to Croak?” Ferbus said. “Norwood and Heloise still want to chop us up and use us for firewood!”
“And don’t you think Zara will follow us there?” Elysia said. “We’ll be putting everyone in danger again!”
“Not as much danger as they’ll be in if we don’t,” Uncle Mort said. “We need to figure out how to get the Wrong Book out of that cabin before Zara does.”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to do,” said Driggs.
“Besides,” Uncle Mort went on, “certain things in the Grimsphere are swiftly deteriorating. Things that you kids need not worry your little heads about, but suffice it to say that if Norwood and Heloise keep getting in the way of situations they know nothing about, things will end badly for all of us. I need to get back before they screw the pooch any more than they already have.”
He stood up. “So here’s the plan. We’ll squat here for the night—should be safe, since I don’t think Zara anticipated us leaving, and she couldn’t have traced us that quickly. Do not, under any circumstances, turn on your Cuffs. We’ll leave in the morning.”
Everyone nodded except for Lex, who let out a snort.
Uncle Mort looked at her. “Is there a problem, kiddo?”
“Yes. This is ridiculous.” She got to her feet, feeling angrier than she had in a long time. “Why are we running from her? We fled like cowards yet again, just abandoned all those innocent people! They don’t know what to do! They don’t even know what’s going on!”
“Zara was looking for us,” Uncle Mort said. “Now that we’re gone, she won’t stick around for long.”
“People are still dead! And here we are, selfish as always, escaping with our tails between our legs and leaving Broomie and Riqo behind to finish the mess we started, if they even survive! Why can’t we fight her?”
“Because we’d lose!”
For the next few seconds the only noise was the skiers swooshing down the slopes outside.
“Zara can be defeated,” Uncle Mort continued in a measured voice, watching Lex. “In fact, I’m counting on it. But the losses we’d sustain if we fought her at this very moment are losses I am not willing to suffer. I’ve no doubt that you could take her, Lex, but we all know by now that Zara doesn’t play nice. She won’t go after you first. She’ll Damn Elysia, then me, then everyone in this room, then Driggs. And after that, she’ll finally come for you, and then, yes, I believe you could beat her. But by then, what would be the point?”
Lex was too angry to speak, her hands scorching. For one quick, sick moment, something inside her longed to lunge at her uncle, to feel the heat of his skin sizzling and melting under the power of hers. It would be so easy, such a simple way to quell the chronic, insatiable hunger. Why hadn’t she thought of Damning any of these idiots before? They were practically defenseless, trusted her completely, would never see it coming—
With a horrified gasp Lex wrenched herself out of the kitchen. She ran out onto the frigid balcony, where a deck chair instantly met its fiery end.
As the flames died down, she hugged herself and propped her arms up on the balcony railing. For a few minutes she just stood there watching the mountain, until the door opened behind her.
“Moved on to lawn furniture, I see,” Uncle Mort said. “I’ll alert the area Home Depots.”
Lex said nothing.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” he said.
She just kept looking at the slopes, knowing that if she looked at him, she’d break down. “That wasn’t me in there,” she rasped. “It really is a disease. I can see why it’s been so easy for Zara to go after innocents, to throw away all those moral convictions in a heartbeat.”
Lex closed her eyes. When she spoke again, it was in a small voice.
“I’ve tried so hard to be good.”
Uncle Mort walked up next to her and rested his arms on the railing so that his shoulder touched hers.
“You are good, kiddo.”
Neither said anything for the next few minutes. They stared straight ahead, watching the carefree skiers, their breath puffing and fading into the cold night.
“I’m sorry for blowing up in there,” Lex muttered. “I just feel so stupidly helpless.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s hard to sit by and watch others fight your battles for you. But Zara has nothing to lose. You have everything. Do you really want to make that gamble?”
She looked up at the stars. “No.”
Another silence.
“But she killed my sister, Uncle Mort. Sooner or later I’m going to fight her. I won’t be able to help it. You know that.”
“I do. All I’m saying is, wait until you have the advantage. Back there in DeMyse, trapped in a hotel room full of your friends—wrong time, wrong place, wrong everything.” He sighed. “Part of being a good strategist is knowing when you’re licked. Believe me, I’d have loved to swoop in and save every one of those DeMysians. But my number one priority is the safety of you kids, and that meant getting you all out of the city, even as it burned. So that’s what I did. And I’d do it again. And again. Every time.”
Lex swallowed over the lump in her throat. “I guess I should say thank you.”
“Don’t strain yourself. Go back in there and calm everyone down, and we’ll call it even.”
Lex gave him a small smile and headed back inside. The Juniors watched her. “Sorry, guys,” she said. “Just my daily freak-out. Don’t mind me.”
“It’s okay, Lex,” Elysia said with a weary smile. “We’ll be sleeping in the same room where my parents spent their first night
s as newlyweds. I’m right there in Crazytown with you.”
Ferbus got up and headed toward the kitchen. “I’m starving,” he said. “Anyone have any food?”
The Juniors dug around in their bags and shook their heads. All but Pip, who frowned, took out the sack that Riqo had tossed him, and opened it.
“I do.” He looked up with a sad little smile. “Blueberries.”
***
No one slept well that night. Partly because they were still shaken up and worried about Broomie and Riqo, partly because Elysia kept complaining about the “yuck factor,” but mostly because the couple who’d originally booked the suite wouldn’t stop banging on the door. They were soon joined by the hotel staff, none of whom could break in, not even with the master keys. Then again, it’s fairly difficult, even with a key, to open a door that’s been blocked by a wardrobe.
“You guys ready to go?” Uncle Mort said the next morning over a breakfast of coffee, a few leftover blueberries, and a packet of peanuts split seven ways.
“Yeah,” Driggs said dryly. “I think we’ve had enough of the high life.”
They stood in a circle and took out their scythes. “Who’s next?” Bang signed.
“I’ll go,” Ferbus said, grinning.
Uncle Mort raised an eyebrow. “Okay,” he said warily. “You’re not thinking of a casino, are you?”
“Nope!”
“Or a strip club?”
“Not . . . anymore.”
“You know what? Just empty your brain completely. Shouldn’t take long.” Uncle Mort looked around the circle. “Remember, guys—simultaneously. When I say go, turn on your Cuffs and leave them on; we’ll be doing these jumps in quick succession, and we won’t have time to switch them on and off. I’m guessing Zara will be caught off-guard by this first Crash, but after that, she’ll know we’re on the move, so be ready for her. Got it?”
They nodded nervously.
“Cuffs on. Ferbus, whatever pops into your head. Scythe!”
***
They landed in a field with a light dusting of snow.
“Middle of nowhere?” Elysia said, looking around. “Interesting choice.”
“No waaaay!” Thrilled, Ferbus broke from the group and started running toward a series of objects on the horizon.
