The Ends of the World

by Maggie Hall

  “Well . . .” Cole squinted into the distance. “Probably not quite yet, but . . .”

  I had to have heard him wrong.

  “Cole, no,” Lydia pleaded once more, but it was too late. It was way too late.

  “What do you mean by that?” Stellan sounded lethally calm.

  “How stupid are you?” Cole said. “How else do you think we got here? The old man can hold up to a surprising amount of torture, but everyone snaps eventually.”

  My lungs were collapsing. I couldn’t breathe. “Fitz is alive?”

  Cole shrugged. “Barely.”

  It only took a second, but I did realize what was happening. I didn’t try to stop it.

  Jack swung his gun away from his guard on Lydia. And he shot Cole Saxon in the head.

  CHAPTER 15

  Cole dropped like an abandoned puppet, falling into the water. Lydia screamed, the sound reverberating around the cavern. And she kept screaming as she abandoned any pretense of being a good hostage, throwing herself into the water by her brother. She kept screaming as Elodie emerged from the pyramid and ran down the stairs.

  I’m glad it’s this dark, I thought desperately. Seeing that would have been worse.

  Lydia took a breath, and then she screamed again. The sound was chilling, grating, scraping my nerves and my heart and my insides raw.

  Still screaming, Lydia pulled her bag out of the water and rummaged in it. I wanted to tell her, You can’t save him, this isn’t something you bandage up and come back from, but Elodie was grabbing us all, and only then did I realize that Lydia had a gun in her hand. We were on the steps—we had nowhere to go.

  Stellan recovered first and took a shot in Lydia’s direction. Her screams stopped and I thought he’d hit her, but I saw a shape swimming away under the water.

  We’d splashed in, too. “We have to take her with us. We have to get her,” I yelled, but I cut off when a gunshot reverberated in the cavern, whizzing so close to my face that I gasped.

  “Where is she? Where’d she go?” Stellan and Jack both took shots back the way we’d come, but the shooting didn’t stop. We were as likely to get hit as we were to hit her.

  “We have to go!” Elodie urged again over the screams. “We’ll catch her somewhere else!” We swam around the edge of the pyramid as fast as we could. Lydia was still screaming, and still firing, but without light, the shots were all over the place. We ran up the narrow stairs, and were almost to the top.

  I barely heard the shot before I felt it.

  I couldn’t think. I couldn’t see. The only thing was the pain, the searing, like my arm was being prodded with a hot poker, and the realization in the same second—she shot me. I’d been shot.

  I felt arms around me, pulling me. I realized I was screaming, and then I was splayed out on the ground, Elodie leaning over me with a light, her face terrified, then relaxing.

  “It’s her shoulder. It’ll be okay,” she said, from far away. “Avery.” She shook me. “I know it hurts like hell, but you’re going to be okay. We have to go.”

  Hands came around my face. Stellan. “Breathe,” he said, and placed one of the hands on my stomach. “Breathe into my hand.”

  I did. I sat up. Another bullet ricocheted into the clearing from below, and we all ducked. “Go,” I said through clenched teeth, and dragged myself into the low tunnel.

  Each time I jostled my arm, it was like the bullet was hitting me again. Stellan scooped me into his arms the second the tunnel was tall enough to stand in. Elodie tied her soaking wet jacket tight around my shoulder, and then we were all running, down tunnels, out through the pile of broken bricks, stopping at the bottom, where the last rays of the late-afternoon light poured in.

  “Let me go first,” Jack said. “We’ll leave through the museum—avoid those guards out back in case they’re Lydia’s.”

  I made Stellan set me down and tried to concentrate on the plan.

  “Shoot through the lock . . . ” I heard, and then Jack was going up the stairs, yelling something, and then we were all running, Elodie mumbling into her phone to Mariam, me trying not to trip over my own feet, dizzy. I knew vaguely I hadn’t lost that much blood. I was going into shock. I forced my focus ahead.

  Jack shot through the lock on the back door of the museum and kicked it open, and then we were running straight through the same exhibits we’d seen earlier. There was still a metal gate pulled down over the front door, and Jack shot out the padlock on that one, too. Elodie hauled it up, and we all ran to the open door of Mariam’s cab. Jack pushed us all inside, and through my haze, I saw armed guards rounding the corner.

  “Jack,” I called. Stellan turned just in time to grab his arm and haul him into the van. They both flopped across me, just ahead of a gunshot that pinged the car where Jack had been.

  “Go!” Elodie screamed. It wouldn’t be that easy. Mariam wouldn’t know how to drive like this was a getaway car. She’d probably be too shocked to do anything. I was about to yell at Elodie to get in the driver’s seat herself when the cab took off. Elodie heaved the sliding door to the van closed, and yelled, “Lose them. Hide us.”

  We screeched around a corner, and then another. I caught glimpses of Mariam’s furrowed brows as she watched for pursuers in the rearview mirror, but she wove quickly and expertly through the tiny streets until we were on a freeway, wedged between a bus and a truck piled high with scraps of wood, with at least six other vans that looked just like ours.

  Elodie, crouched by the door, put her head in her hands and then looked up at us. I was draped across Stellan’s lap, blood soaking through Elodie’s jacket on my shoulder. Jack had pulled himself partly off of us, but he and Stellan were holding on to each other. Elodie threw herself at us, landing on top of the pile in a four-person embrace, her face buried in my neck while mine was smushed into Stellan’s, and I didn’t even know whose hands I was clinging to, but I was clinging hard.

  • • •

  “It’s just a deep graze, but it needs stitches,” Elodie said a few minutes later, when we’d all calmed down enough to think. She was examining my shoulder. “One of us can do the stitches, but we need supplies . . . Mariam, do you know anyone who works at a doctor’s office?”

  Mariam’s eyes were huge in the rearview mirror, but she was still driving. “My friend’s brother cleans the floors at an office of a . . . a doctor for the skin?”

  “A dermatologist. Perfect. The office will be closed—can he get us in? We’ll pay him a lot of money, and I promise he won’t get in trouble.”

  After making a short phone call, Mariam steered us off the freeway.

  We huddled into a small, dim exam room at the dermatologist’s office. Elodie injected my shoulder with a numbing solution, and then left Jack to clean it and stitch it up while she and Stellan went outside to talk to a certainly traumatized Mariam and probably to have a long-overdue conversation themselves. As much as we’d been at each other’s throats since Jerusalem, the past couple hours had begun to knit the four of us back together.

  I stared up at the dark wall, decorated with curling posters showing the stages of skin cancer. Jack closed the door, crossed the room to where I sat on the exam table in a circle of light, and pulled me into a careful but bruisingly tight hug. I hugged him back with one arm, burying my face in his shoulder. “Are you okay?” I murmured.

  He pulled away. “Am I okay? You’re the one who’s been shot.”

  “I know, but you—” He’d just killed someone he’d been charged with protecting his whole life. He seemed strangely calm. It probably hadn’t sunk in yet.

  “Yes, well.”

  I glanced down at where his hands were still resting on my waist. He did, too. He cleared his throat and let go of me, picking up the needle he’d already prepared for my shoulder. I felt a tug as he put in the first stitch, and looked down at my shoulder, watchi
ng him loop it through my skin and tie it off. I never thought I’d be able to watch something like that without it bothering me. I never thought I’d be comfortable with a lot of the things I did now.

  “Avery,” Jack said quietly, “he’s alive.”

  It took me a second to realize he was talking about Fitz. The feeling of something good happening wasn’t one I was used to anymore. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around it, especially since being happy about anything felt wrong when so much was still grim. Fitz was alive, but he’d been being tortured. I’d just seen my half brother killed. My mom was still dead. The juxtaposition of emotions was enough to make my head spin. “Yeah.”

  “We can get him out.”

  “I know. We thought for so long—”

  Jack nodded and threaded the needle again. “It’s like . . . suddenly I don’t even care that he’s Order.” He paused, and I could see him judging my reaction. I just sat quietly and let him go on. “I still don’t like that he’s lied to us, the same as with Elodie. But . . . I thought I’d gotten him killed. I thought I’d gotten Oliver Saxon killed. I’d forgotten how it was not to feel so terribly guilty about those things.”

  “Jack—” I reached out for him, and he shook his head, pulling the thread through my skin with a tug.

  I sat back down and watched him string another piece of thread. I couldn’t help but think about the first time he’d done something like this, when we’d practically just met, and I’d been stabbed at Prada. I let myself look at him like I had then: this boy who was almost intimidatingly gorgeous, but also quiet and kind. Who, for some reason, had taken an interest in me. Now he was just as handsome as ever, his dark hair still damp from the tunnels, the same intensity burning in his gray eyes, his drying T-shirt clinging to him.

  Jack looked up to find me watching him. His eyes searched mine. I had the sudden feeling that this was supposed to be the part of the story where I realized I was wrong, and everything was forgiven. Where, after detours, Jack and I found our way back into each other’s arms, where we realized we were meant to be all along.

  “Can I tell you something?” He finished the stitch and set the needle down on the tray. When he turned back to me, there was a calm on his face I’d never seen. “I feel better about Fitz, and about Oliver. I still feel terribly guilty about what I did to you.”

  “Jack—”

  He shook his head. “You don’t need to do that. We both know it was bad. We both know you haven’t entirely forgiven me, and I understand why. I’d like to try to explain just a little. I wasn’t lying when I said that it was all for you. I thought going to the Saxons like that was the best way to keep you safe.”

  “I know—”

  “But it was also because I thought it was the right thing to do. What Stellan said wasn’t wrong. I had never done anything as terribly wrong as wanting you like I did, and giving in to it, and I thought I was making up for it in some way by doing the right thing then. I’ve thought about it a thousand times since—what the right thing really means. Stellan was wrong about that. I’m not a daft child. I know I don’t actually have to ask their permission to think.”

  “I know. He knows, too. We were just all in a mood.”

  He picked up the needle again. “The point is that I do care about doing what’s right by you. I care about you very much.”

  “I know,” I whispered, and the feelings I’d been suppressing for so long rushed back in even stronger. How much Jack had done for me. How much I’d cared about him, as a friend and as a lot more. That version of us was simple. It was naive. It was sweet. I missed it. And I had forgiven him.

  So why wasn’t I jumping on this perfect moment to tell him so? To tell him that I wanted us to get back together?

  The moment I posed the question, the answer hit me so clearly I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it earlier.

  I thought Jack and I had broken up because of his spying for the Saxons. I thought if I forgave him for that, things would change between us. But well before then, I’d been annoyed with his making my decisions for me, protecting me when I didn’t want protecting. That was really what had driven me away from him. I’d thought he’d started acting differently. But I was wrong. Jack hadn’t changed.

  I had.

  When we’d first met, his looking out for me had been exactly what I needed. He was safe. Caring about him didn’t feel like throwing myself off a cliff like so much of this new life did.

  That’s why I’d fallen for Jack so hard, so fast. He was exactly what I’d wanted, back when I was a different person. And now he wasn’t. Not in that way.

  It seemed so obvious. What we used to have was sweet and happy and nice. And we would never be back there.

  I knew he wouldn’t push me on it. If I changed the subject, he’d let it go. But I couldn’t keep doing that.

  “I care about you, too.” I paused, looking up at the open cabinet of medical supplies, steeling myself. “Can we talk about something? About us. I know we haven’t really had time to think about it—”

  He was leaning close enough to my shoulder that I felt him tense. “Oh, I’ve had plenty of time to think about it.”

  I bit my lip. He was right. I’d been avoiding this conversation because I hadn’t wanted to deal with clarifying my own feelings, and that was cruel of me. “I guess I just mean that don’t know about you but clarity in something sounds good right now. So, um. I really do care about you a lot. But I don’t think we’re going to get back together.”

  He froze, like he was surprised I’d said it so bluntly. I was a bit surprised myself. “Right. Of course. I’m your Keeper. And even if I wasn’t, I did something unforgivable.”

  “That’s not why.” If that was the only problem, we’d be back together already. I still did care about him. Part of me even still wanted to be coddled and looked after. But a bigger part of me didn’t.

  “The truth is,” I said, studying the scrapes on my hands, “I’m not the same person you asked to prom in Minnesota. I really do care about you so much, and what we had for a while was—I’ll never forget it. But I don’t think we’d work like that anymore.”

  As much as I was sure this was the right thing to do, I braced for his reaction. He’d get over it eventually, but right now, I expected him to mumble something noncommittal and finish my stitches in awkward silence. But he said, “Have you really just given me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech?”

  There was a lightness to the words I wasn’t expecting at all. He looked up and smiled a little, bringing out that adorable dimple that had always seemed out of place on someone so serious. Since when did Jack make jokes?

  He really was the perfect guy. He just wasn’t perfect for me in the way I used to think he was. I was weaker around him. And softer, and probably nicer. But that wasn’t who I was anymore, for better or worse. Sometimes, the story didn’t turn out how you thought it would.

  It’s not you, it’s me was surprisingly accurate. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  Jack shook his head and opened a bandage. “One more thing, though. Perhaps it’d be less awkward to put it out in the open.”

  I knew exactly what he was talking about, of course.

  “Are you and Stellan . . .” He trailed off.

  “No,” I said, and wondered why, for just a second, I felt like I should qualify that. Probably because we had kissed that time. But it seemed unnecessarily mean to bring up right now, and I did know one thing that was irrefutably true. “You and me were—are—our own thing. It had and has nothing to do with him.” Whatever pull I had to Stellan—destiny or otherwise—and the relationship I’d had with Jack had always felt like entirely separate things: two parallel tracks rather than a collision course.

  Jack smoothed on my bandage and threw away all the wrappers left on the sterile tray. “Okay. I hope, though . . .” He shifted uncomf
ortably, and then said, quickly, “I hope you two can take care of each other. I know there are things only you understand. He needs it, too.”

  I blinked at him, surprised. If it were anyone else, I might have thought he was being sarcastic, or trying to manipulate me somehow. But I knew Jack really meant it.

  He took a deep breath and let it out. When he looked back up, he looked . . . at ease. More than he had in a long time, and I felt terrible for not doing this earlier. Jack hated gray areas. Now things were black and white again.

  “Jack?” I slid off the exam table, the thin sanitary paper crinkling under me. “I know I’m the one who’s been antisocial lately. But I don’t want you to just be our Keeper. I hope we can still be actual friends.”

  He smiled. “We’ve been friends since we were eight years old and thought each others’ names were Allie Fitzpatrick and Charlie Emerson. Yes, we can still be friends. Would you like to throw in an I love you but I’m not in love with you for a trifecta of cliché breakup lines?”

  “Oh.” I felt myself flush. “I—”

  He opened the door for me. “Avery, I’m only joking. Let’s go figure out how to save Fitz.”

  • • •

  We met back up with Stellan and Elodie and made a plan for the night, and for tomorrow. The combination of painkillers and the numbing injection had finally made my wound feel okay, and the stitches looked good, so Elodie took a handful of the supplies, cleaned the room so no one would know we’d been there, and pressed a huge wad of bills into the hands of the boy who had let us in. And then we were back on the road, out of Alexandria. We had a plan about Fitz, but there was no way we could fly out of here right now—Lydia would have the Saxons watching everywhere. So we were going to spend the night in a nearby town and regroup while things got set in motion behind the scenes.

  The van’s fabric seats were damp, and it smelled like blood. I couldn’t believe Mariam hadn’t dumped us out on the side of the road yet. I guess the fact that we obviously had a lot of money to pay her went a long way. Elodie had talked to her while I was getting stitched up, and had learned a lot. Mariam had four sisters and two brothers, and her taxi was their primary source of income since her dad had gotten sick.