The Eternity Key

by Bree Despain

  “Tobin, are you okay?” Mom asks. She reaches out like she’s about to test my forehead for a fever. I must look pale.

  I step away from her touch and head for the front door.

  “I need some fresh air,” I say, and put some distance between us as quickly as possible.

  chapter twelve

  HADEN

  Dax and I managed to duck past the security guards at the Motorcycle Man’s former apartment complex and take a roundabout way back to our residence. I sit at the kitchen table, typing out a message to the others, informing them that the lead was a dead end—that we’d lost the trail on the Motorcycle Man, maybe this time for good—and then delete it before pressing send. I know I need to tell them, and I know his getting away wasn’t my fault, since he was gone before we even got there.

  However, it still feels like a failure on my part. If I’d thought of tracking down the Motorcycle Man myself, if I knew more about things like motorcycles in the first place so I didn’t have to rely on Lexie’s intel, or if I’d gone to the dealership on my own instead of waiting for Joe, maybe I would have gotten there soon enough. Maybe I’d have the Compass in my hands right now.

  I decide to grab the hydra by the tail. I type out the text and finally hit send. Now they all know that I’ve failed.

  “We’ll figure something else out,” Dax says, looking at his phone, which just beeped with my text. I looped him in on it even though he’d already witnessed what happened firsthand.

  “As in what?”

  “I don’t know. But if Sarah, the Oracle said that we’ll find the Compass, then we’ll find it.”

  “You expect it to magically appear out of thin air?” Garrick says sarcastically from where he’s been perched in front of the Xbox. The amount of disrespectful comments I’ve been getting from him lately makes me wish I still had the authority to put him in his place. I contemplate smacking the controller out of his hand, but I’m trying to show more restraint when it comes to Garrick.

  The doorbell rings, and Dax gets up to answer it without being asked. I wonder if he realizes that, if I am no longer a Champion, then he is no longer my servant.

  “Haden,” he calls. “It’s for you.”

  I go to the door and find Daphne standing on the porch. She’s hugging her tote bag to her chest, and tears streak her face. “Can I stay here tonight?” she asks, wiping her eyes.

  I can feel my mouth pop open and heat rush up my back. I don’t know how to respond. She shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be seen together, lest Terresa or Calix figure out who she is, but I’m not about to send her away in this state.

  “Of course,” Dax says, ushering her into the house before I can even find my voice. He glances around the yard, making sure no one is watching, before closing the door, and escorts her to the family room. She takes a seat in the same armchair she’d been standing behind when she swore she didn’t want anything to do with me.

  “I’ll make up one of the extra rooms upstairs,” Dax says. “And then Garrick and I will go pick up some tacos for dinner.”

  Dax disappears for a few minutes and then returns, swinging his Roadster keys in his hand. “Let’s go,” he says to Garrick.

  “No way,” Garrick says, mashing the buttons on his controller. “I just made it to level thirty-seven. I’m not moving from this spot.”

  “I’ll let you drive,” Dax says.

  I gape at him in surprise. He won’t even let me drive Venus.

  “Seriously?” Garrick says, tossing aside his controller.

  “Only if you get your butt out the door right now.”

  Garrick grabs his jacket and bolts out to the garage.

  “You’re really going to let him drive?” I ask.

  “The sacrifices I make for you,” he says. “Just make sure it was worth it.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Tell her,” Dax says, giving me a very loaded look.

  I glance at Daphne in the next room. She’s still hugging her tote bag to her chest. “Now hardly seems like the right time.”

  “Now is the perfect time.”

  “She’s clearly upset about something.”

  “Exactly.”

  I give him an incredulous stare.

  “She’s upset. She wants to be comforted. And where did she choose to go?”

  “Here,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean anything—”

  “It means everything, you idiot. She could have gone home or to Tobin’s or Lexie’s, but she didn’t. She came here. And I can guarantee it wasn’t to see Garrick or me. She came for you.” He raises his eyebrows, and his meaning starts to dawn on me. “I’ll make sure Garrick drives real slow. I’ll make sure we don’t come back for at least an hour. Don’t waste it. Tell her.”

  “Maybe you should stay here,” I say, feeling suddenly panicked. Daphne and I haven’t really been alone together since the brief, few moments she held my hand before we left Ellis. Now that it’s been nearly three weeks of our lives being all consumed with finding the Key, I am not sure I know how to pick up where we left off. I don’t know where I stand with her. And it feels like I don’t know how to talk to her about anything other than strategy anymore.

  “No way, man. Now’s your chance.” He slaps me on the back. “Make me proud.”

  I watch him leave, horror-struck, to say the least. They’re gone for a good two minutes before I have the presence of mind not to just leave her sitting on the armchair by herself. I walk into the family room. She glances up at me.

  “Would you like something to drink?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says softly.

  It takes a bit of searching to find a clean cup, what with the takeout containers everywhere, and dishes overflowing from the sink and strewn all over the house. I finally find a clean water bottle in one of the upper cabinets and bring it to her.

  “Thanks,” she says, and takes a sip. “You guys aren’t big on cleaning up after yourselves, are you?” She wrinkles her nose. “What’s that smell?”

  “Oh yeah.” I grab the to-go containers and trash off the coffee table in front of her. “It’s been a bit of an adjustment without Simon around. Three guys all on their own for the first time. It’s been all taco heaven all the time, and we’ve been out looking for the Key and such so much, it’s like we’re only here long enough to make a mess and then leave again without cleaning.” I carry the trash to the kitchen and shove as much of it as I can in the compactor. “Garrick isn’t too keen on taking orders right now, either.”

  “Have you seriously only been eating fast-food tacos for the last three weeks?” she asks, sniffling, but it sounds like that idea amuses her.

  “There may have been a chimichanga or a burrito mixed in there somewhere, but they all taste the same to me. Dax is a little obsessive about Mexican food, and since none of us knows how to cook—”

  “None of you knows how to cook?” she asks.

  I shake my head and then scoop some of the refuse off the kitchen counter into the trash bin. Daphne sits on the armchair for a moment, silently brushing tears from the corners of her eyes. Just when I think she’s about to close herself off from me completely, she sets aside her tote bag and stands up.

  “We need to do something about that,” she says, coming into the garbage heap of a kitchen. She clicks her tongue as she throws open a cupboard under the oven and pulls out a large pan that I didn’t even know was in there.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to give you your first cooking lesson.” She smirks and goes to the fridge. “You guys are going to die of malnutrition otherwise.”

  “Um …” I’m not sure how I feel about this proposal—lords do not prepare their own food—but the idea of it seems to amuse her, so I go along with it. “What are we making?”

  “Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.” She opens the fridge and starts rooting around in its contents while I stand behind her. She opens a drawer and closes it. “Well, that looks li
ke nothing but turnips. And that’s just plain disgusting,” she says, pointing at a molding green smoothie that Simon left behind. “Ooh, eggs. These look like they’re still good,” she says, checking a series of numbers on the side of the oddly shaped container. She hands the eggs to me and then reaches for a bottle of milk in the door. She pops off the lid and makes a gagging face at the sour smell that wafts out of it. “Ugh. When was the last time you went grocery shopping? Oh yeah, never.”

  She thrusts the milk bottle back in the fridge and then opens the freezer. She pulls out a frosty package of Multigrain Super-bread and hands that to me also. “We’re looking good so far … and I’m guessing since Simon was a health nut, there’s probably some almond milk.…” She walks into the pantry and comes out half a minute later with an armload of objects. “Jackpot! We’ve got almond milk, real maple syrup, and cinnamon. We are going to eat like kings tonight.”

  She sets her bounty on the corner of the counter that I had cleared off a minute ago. I put the eggs and the bread with it. “What in Tartarus are you going to make with all this?”

  “French toast. And you’re making it, not me.” She places her hands together, gives me a short bow, and says in a strange voice, “I am here merely to instruct and observe, young grasshopper.”

  I roll up my sleeves and follow Daphne’s instructions. I am used to learning through mimicry—Underlords have a natural talent for watching, absorbing, and mimicking actions much more quickly than humans—but she insists that I do everything myself rather than observing her. She has me crack eggs into a pot since we can’t find a clean bowl, and then I add a cup of the creamy-colored almond milk and mix it together. I want to ask how exactly it is that someone milks an almond, but I figure it is a stupid question so I merely wait for her next instruction. She makes me dip the bread in the concoction and place each slice in the heated pan. They sizzle when they hit the butter that’s been melting in the pan. I go along with it, watching the way she twists and puckers her lips and tries not to laugh at my awkwardness in the kitchen, until she tells me to sprinkle cinnamon over the cooking bread.

  “Are you sure?” I balk. “That sounds disgusting.”

  “Trust me, it’s divine. Just shake it all over the top.”

  I give the spice container a small shake and watch tiny flecks of brown speckle the top of the eggy toast.

  “No,” she says. “Don’t be afraid of it. There’s no such thing as too much cinnamon. Give it a good shake. Like this.” She clasps her hand over mine to take control of the cinnamon, but her touch is so unexpected that a shock of electricity sparks out of my fingertips. She pulls her hand back at the same time that I let go of the cinnamon. It falls into the pan, dumping a heap on one of the bread slices.

  “Okay, so maybe that’s too much cinnamon,” she says, shaking her hand.

  “Sorry,” I say sheepishly. I don’t like the idea that I may have failed my first cooking attempt, but I am even more chagrined over shocking her—and she most definitely noticed. If the way she makes me feel isn’t written on my face or screaming out through my tones, which only she can hear, then the fact that I shoot lightning out of my hands at her simple touch is probably as obvious as it gets.

  Hades, I’m hopeless.

  “It’s okay,” she says, with a laugh. “We’ll just give that piece to Garrick and watch his face when he bites into it.”

  She smiles so deviously that I can’t help but laugh, too.

  “There it is,” she says. “You really should laugh more often.”

  She seems to be staring at my lips, so I give her a small, tight smile. She seems happy, but I know she’s just using me to distract herself from whatever had her upset when she came over.

  At the moment, I am okay with that.

  “Oh, it’s time to flip ’em over,” she says, turning away. When she turns back, she’s holding out a flat-headed cooking tool.

  I temper myself as I reach for it, making certain I don’t shock her again. I let my fingers linger longer than necessary against hers as I take the tool from her. She doesn’t pull away.

  But I do when I feel a sharp pain at my ankle. Brim yowls at me when I almost step on her.

  “Whoa, it’s okay,” Daphne says, scooping up little Brim in her hand.

  “She must have smelled the food,” I say, flipping the bread over. “I think she’s pretty sick of taco meat.”

  “Poor baby,” Daphne says, scratching Brim’s ears. Brim leans into it. “I’ll scramble some eggs for you as soon as Haden’s done.”

  When the French toast and eggs are finished, Daphne wraps the extras in foil to keep warm for Dax and Garrick, and then she and I take our food to the coffee table. Brim eats her eggs straight out of the pan while Daphne and I opt to share the one clean plate I can find. She sits crossed-legged beside the table and digs into the syrup-covered French toast with her fork. I tuck my legs behind me and lower myself down next to her.

  She laughs, covering her full mouth with her hand.

  “Pardon?” I ask.

  “You’re so formal sometimes,” she says, with her mouth full. “Even the way you sit down. You’re so stiff. Like a soldier who’s afraid his drill sergeant is watching and giving him demerits.”

  I don’t know what a drill sergeant is, but I do know what she means. “To be fair, I was raised a soldier, and there usually is someone watching and judging me at every moment.”

  “Good point,” she says, and takes a second huge bite. She chews and swallows and then cocks her head to the side, looking at me. “It must be nice, then,” she says. “I mean this place is a wreck and you’re going to need some serious lessons in how to be human and all, but I’m sure it’s nice not to have Simon over your shoulder anymore. That guy was a real psycho.”

  She takes a third bite, savoring it like it’s the best thing she’s eaten in a long time. I’m betting it hasn’t occurred to her that she’s eating a dead man’s food.

  However, her statement makes me stop and think. I’ve spent so much time being paranoid about the Skylords and obsessing over finding the Key that I haven’t really had a chance to think of it that way. “Yes,” I say. “It’s the first time in my life that I haven’t had my father or his guards or his emissaries watching me. I’ve never really been …”

  “Free?” she guesses.

  I nod.

  “Does it feel good?”

  “When I was boy, after my mother died, I used to sit up in the owl roost in one of the palace’s towers and watch the owls fly in and out. I wanted to be able to fly like them. To escape whenever I wanted, to be light as a feather. That’s what I always imagine freedom would feel like. But this, it feels different. It feels … heavy.”

  “How so?”

  I look down at the scar in the palm of my hand. It’s the imprint of the talisman I’d had to electrocute in my grasp in order to break free from Father’s hold in the Underrealm. “Don’t misunderstand me; I’m grateful for it, but freedom begets responsibility. Everyone is looking to me to figure out the answers, to know what to do. They want me to lead, and I don’t want to fail them. I don’t want to fail … you.”

  I look up and meet her eyes over the plate of French toast. Her bemused attitude is gone, and I notice tears pooling in her eyes again. Whatever distraction she had found before has been broken.

  “What is it?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

  Why did you come here?

  My instinct is to grab her up in my embrace. To wrap my arms around her and tell her everything is going to be okay, but I don’t have the right to presume that she would be receptive to this. Instead, I place my hand near hers on the coffee table. “Are you hurt? Did something happen?”

  I imagine all sorts of terrible things involving Skylords or the Motorcycle Man, and I curse myself for letting her teach me how to cook instead of asking her right away. I feel like a complete koprophage.

  “Nothing,” she says, and picks up her fork. She sets it back down. “Everyt
hing. From Joe trying to buy my forgiveness to having my whole grip on reality turned upside down. To missing home. Missing the holidays with my mom and Jonathan because it was so important that we come back here, and now we’re not any closer to finding the damn Key than we were then.”

  She wipes away her tears with the back of her hand. “You know what I miss the most, even though I never thought I liked it in the first place? Jonathan always throws this big New Year’s Eve party every year. Practically the whole town comes, and he spends all night trying to find just the right person for everyone to kiss at midnight.” She shakes her head. “Jonathan thinks he’s a real matchmaker, going around trying to pair everyone off. He usually picks out some jock from my school for me or one of the bag boys from Sunup Market, and goads me all night long until I agree to give the poor boy at least a peck on the lips at the stroke of midnight. Man, I thought I hated that, but when I spent this last New Year’s Eve alone on the couch with some stupid Ashton Kutcher movie, I started crying in my microwave popcorn because I didn’t have anyone to kiss.”

  “Oh,” I say, because I suddenly can’t find any other words. I’d spent all of New Year’s Eve sitting outside her house in my car. If I had known she didn’t want to be alone, I would have … I don’t know what I would have done.

  We sit in silence for a moment, me feeling uncomfortable in my own skin.

  “Are you going to eat any of this?” she asks, cutting off another bite. “I eat when I’m emotional, so you had better dig in before it’s gone.”

  I nod and take a tentative bite. It’s sweet and rich, but I know I want more. The flavor of the cinnamon and the maple are the perfect combination. After a couple of more forkfuls, I feel my courage building.

  “Why do you kiss someone at midnight?” I ask, feeling my cheeks flush with heat at the thought of her kissing other guys. I should have realized I wasn’t the first.