Not in a maze. And yet the exercise of putting pencil to paper and getting to the end of a maze never disappeared. Nobody lost points for going the wrong way at first in a maze. But they did in life. Every wrong turn had an effect on the rest of the maze. Every mistake affected the path, didn’t it?
My wrong turn—choosing to go to the Everneath with Cole—had taken a life.
No. My choice hadn’t taken a life yet. Jack wasn’t dead yet.
Mazes. Why was I dwelling on them? Last night Cole had described the Everneath as a maze. I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. There was something there. It was as if seeing Tommy’s maze had caused a flash inside my head. Not a big flash but more like the negative of a photograph. A little seedling deep in my mind, prompting me forward.
Grabbing the new mythology book that had been sitting on the table all day, I ruffed up Tommy’s hair and then went to my room. I pushed aside the stacks of books next to my computer to make space. Where had I read about a maze before? Or a labyrinth?
I rifled through the scattered notes on my desk, a compilation of every myth and legend that I thought might have something to do with the Everneath. Cole used to tell me that myths and legends were rooted in truth. The problem was discovering which ones were specific to my case.
But none of my latest notes mentioned a maze. Leaning back in my chair, I grabbed the new book my dad had given me and skimmed the topics page.
There was nothing about mazes under the Ms, so I tried L for labyrinth. There I found the reference for “Labyrinth, Minotaur.”
I smacked my head. Of course I should’ve remembered the story about the Minotaur—the half-man, half-bull creature—who was trapped in the labyrinth. Every nine years, fourteen young Athenians were sent inside the maze as a sacrifice to ward off a plague. This happened until someone, a hero maybe, entered the maze and killed the Minotaur. And then found his way out. Who was it?
I had picked up the book to thumb through it to the page listed in the index when I heard the garage door open. My dad was home early. He never came home early. Then it hit me.
“Crap,” I muttered. I’d forgotten about Mrs. Caputo’s detective coming to interview me.
I threw the book on my bed and closed my eyes. Last night I hadn’t been nervous about facing the detective, but maybe that was because I’d been exhausted and weakened by my encounter with the Shades.
Today it was daunting.
You can do this, I told myself.
A knock sounded at my door.
“Come in,” I said.
My dad came in and sat on my bed, and I covered my notes with my books. Why did I even try to hide it? It was stupid, really. My dad knew how much I was obsessed with myths.
He ignored the books. “You ready to get this over with?”
“Mrs. Caputo blames me.” I picked at the quilt on top of my bed. “Even if I tell the truth, I don’t think she’d let the detective she hired with her own money give up on what she considers her biggest lead.”
“From everything I’ve heard, Detective Jackson is a reasonable man. I’ve checked him out. Just because Mrs. Caputo is paying his bills doesn’t mean he can fabricate evidence against an innocent person where there is none.”
I considered this. Fabricating evidence. A nosy detective. It all seemed so routine for a missing boy. But we were dealing with the extraordinary. An underworld that wasn’t supposed to exist. Immortals who would never die. It seemed a little beyond what an earthly detective could do.
Detective Jackson smelled like smoke, and he had a wicked comb-over. It swept from the top of one ear and meandered up and over the slope of his head until it ended in a gelled curve behind his other ear. It gave the illusion that his face was on the side of his head.
I couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Nikki,” my dad said, nudging my knee.
“What?”
“Are you going to answer the question?” Detective Jackson said.
How long had I been staring at his hair? “Sorry, can you repeat it?”
“That last night you were with Jack—”
“March twenty-seventh,” I interrupted.
“Yes, I know.” He could’ve surprised me. It didn’t seem to matter what he knew. He still asked the same questions over and over. “That night, was he acting different? Strange? Stressed out?”
Oh boy. That was an understatement. It was the night I was supposed to disappear forever.
“No,” I said. “We were playing poker in the park, with his brother, Will. Jack was winning a lot.”
“Poker in the park,” he repeated.
“Yes.” I’d told him this several times.
My dad interjected. “The kids did that a lot. It wasn’t—”
The detective held up his hand. “Please, Mayor. Let her answer.”
“He’s right,” I said. “We did that all the time. The guys had their own set of poker chips that their grandpa had given them. Red ones. And blue ones. And black ones.” I stopped, realizing that was probably a little too much detail.
“Right. So, after the poker game you left to go home.”
“Yes.”
“And then Will left.” He looked at his notes as if he really had to concentrate to get the next part right. “And he took Jack’s car with him. And drove it home. So Jack was alone, in the park, not a friend in sight, and car-less.”
I cast my eyes downward. It was closer to the truth than the detective knew. Jack ended up alone that night. Not a friend in sight.
My dad must have seen the discomfort in my face because he said, “We’ve been over this. Can we move on?”
“I’d love to move on,” Detective Jackson answered. “To the point where Jack just disappears … ‘runs away’ according to his note … without a car.”
My dad looked at me. Neither of us said anything.
“Maybe he took a bus,” my dad said, and I cringed. Wouldn’t there be some sort of paper trail? I stayed quiet.
“I thought that too. But there was no record of him buying a ticket,” the detective said.
“There wouldn’t be if he paid cash,” my dad replied.
Good point, Dad!
“There was nothing on the security footage either,” the detective countered.
“Cameras miss people all the time. I’m sure you know this.”
The detective’s steely demeanor broke for a moment. “We checked bus stops in surrounding cities as well.”
My dad leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together. It was about to get good. “You mean to tell me you checked every single direction a bus could’ve gone from here? Every stop? Every small town? Everywhere? You must have endless resources.”
My dad gave Detective Jackson the same stare he’d used on Councilman Fred Graves during their first primary debate, when the councilman had argued against environmental protection in favor of government money.
The detective tore his gaze away and looked at me. “What do you think, Nikki? Is that what happened? Jack just took a bus and paid using all that extra cash he’d saved working as a delivery boy, and ducked beneath all of the cameras—”
“We’re done here,” my dad said, cutting him off. “Now you’re asking Nikki to speculate as to Jack’s motives and actions only he could know. We’ve just crossed the line from interview to waste of time.”
I had to make an effort not to cheer. My dad stood up, and I did the same. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Nikki, go to your room. I’ll show the detective out.”
Thank you, Dad. My dad came through for me at the most surprising times.
“I have some errands to run,” I said, and my dad waved me away, keeping his eyes on the detective.
I ran to my room, gathered up my notes, and headed out the door, hoping Mrs. Jenkins would know what to tell me.
On the way to Mrs. Jenkins’s house, I called Will. I’d promised to tell him everything, and I hadn’t been very good about keeping that promise over the last twenty-four hours.
When he answered, I took a deep breath and told him about my trip to the Everneath, my encounter with the queen, and how Cole had said that the Shades would track my energy if I tried it again.
When I’d finished, he was quiet for a moment. “You went to the Everneath. And came back again.”
“Yeah.”
“Last night. After graduation.”
“Yeah.”
He breathed loudly into the phone. “Are you crazy?”
“I saw Cole, and I had to take my chance.”
“So, what are we going to do?”
“I’m on my way to talk to Mrs. Jenkins. Maybe she knows a way to hide my energy. Maybe there’s some trick to avoiding the Shades.”
I heard what sounded like a door closing in the background. When he spoke again, his voice was low. “You’re talking about going again?”
I didn’t answer right away, as I turned off the highway and onto the frontage road.
“Becks, you still there?” Will said.
“Yes. And yes, I have to go again if we’re going to save Jack.” He was quiet. I rounded the last corner before Mrs. Jenkins’s house. “Look, I’m here. I’ll call you when I’m done, okay?”
“Okay.”
Mrs. Jenkins and I had a strange relationship. It was her daughter, Meredith, who’d given me the ancient bracelet that had led us to the theory about Cole’s heart. Mrs. Jenkins was a member of the group known as the Daughters of Persephone, which was dedicated to finding the next queen of the Everneath. She raised Meredith to be a Forfeit in the Feed in the hopes that the power would fall to her daughter. Meredith was Max’s Forfeit, but she hadn’t survived like I had. She’d emerged from the Feed as an old woman suffering from dementia. After six months on the Surface, the Tunnels had come for her.
She didn’t have someone like Jack to take her place.
At the time, Mrs. Jenkins had seemed so unfeeling, but I think Meredith’s fate wore on her mother’s soul. When I lost Jack, I had come to Mrs. Jenkins, searching for a way to get back to the Everneath; but she only told me what I already knew: I would need a piece of Cole.
Still, we’d talked a few times since then. I was always hoping some spark of intuition would hit her and she’d have answers, but it never happened. I wouldn’t have called us friends. More like two people who shared a similar sense of loss. The Everneath had taken someone I loved, and it had taken someone she didn’t know she loved.
In that way her pain was greater than mine.
I knocked on the door, and when she opened it, she raised her eyebrows. “Nikki.”
“Mrs. Jenkins. Cole’s back.”
She nodded and ushered me inside. While she stayed in the kitchen to brew tea—a mainstay in her home—I brought her up to speed on Cole’s return to Park City and my spontaneous trip to the Everneath.
She emerged carrying a tray with two teacups and a kettle. It struck me at that moment how alone she was. I couldn’t imagine she had an excuse to use the tea tray very much these days.
“So, Jack is still alive?” she asked. She had always been amazed to learn about the dream connection, even though it was her own daughter who had figured out that the Forfeits who survived the Feed were the ones who had anchors on the Surface.
“Yes. Meredith’s theory is still true. I’m Jack’s anchor now, like he was for me. But I don’t know how much longer he can survive.”
I told her about him forgetting things. She got a faraway look in her eyes and stared at her fireplace. “Meredith was so smart to figure it out. I always thought she would be the next one to survive,” she said, inclining her head toward the jar on her mantelpiece. I knew what was inside that jar. The ashes of a Forfeit named Adonia. The last person in Meredith’s family line to have survived the Feed.
Adonia didn’t last long. Apparently, she didn’t want to fight the current queen and try to take over the throne, so—according to Mrs. Jenkins—Adonia’s Everliving betrayed her. Told the queen where she could find her. And the queen sucked out all of her energy until there was nothing left.
I guess that was one reason I had to be grateful to Cole. He never turned me over to the queen.
“Meredith had the numbers,” Mrs. Jenkins went on. “She was the thirty-third female born from the descendants of Adonia’s mother.”
I frowned. “What does that have to do with it?”
“The number three is important with the Everlivings. Symbolic. I thought it would mean something for Meredith. Make her special.”
Her voice had taken on a dreamlike quality. Mrs. Jenkins believed the queen had the power to immortalize entire ancestral lines at her discretion. If Meredith had survived the Feed and taken over the throne, it would’ve meant eternal life for Mrs. Jenkins.
She had a way of drifting off like this, as if her thoughts always revolved around Meredith’s failure and her own missed opportunity. I tore my gaze away from the jar and tried to focus her. “Mrs. Jenkins, I’m going to the Everneath again. With Cole back, I know I can steal another piece of his hair, and—”