I ran out of the school and met Jack outside.
“That was fast,” he said as I climbed into his car.
“He wasn’t there.” I shut the door. “It’s inconvenient, but I can get a hair tonight when he feeds me.” I tried not to sound worried, but Jack pressed his lips together.
“He was probably in school yesterday only so he could give me the bad news about feeding on him every night. Now that he’s delivered it, there’s really no reason for him to be here at all.”
Jack nodded. “I know. But it seems like he would take every opportunity to be with you, especially without me.”
“We’ll get it tonight.”
We spent the rest of the day throwing out other ideas for our next step, but everything came back to getting to the Everneath, and whereas last night I was dreading meeting up with Cole, tonight I couldn’t wait to see him.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’d stolen a hair from Cole, and since he was always one step ahead of us, I worried that he would see it coming. So after dinner, when Jack and I were in my room, I made a suggestion.
“I think I should go to Cole’s alone tonight.”
Jack was sitting at my desk, thumbing through Mrs. Jenkins’s papers for the thousandth time. When he heard my suggestion, he froze.
“Hear me out,” I said. “Cole has an annoying habit of anticipating our next moves. He always guesses what we’re going to do. If I go alone, and if we pretend we’re still fighting about whether I should take the throne to save my life—then don’t you think he’ll be more confident?”
“I think you’re overthinking this.”
I clasped my hands together and sat on the edge of my bed, across from his chair. “I’m thinking that every step of the way, we can’t blow any chance to get it right. We might not get another one. And I want to increase our odds any way I can. I think it would be best if we looked like we needed some space from each other. For a night. I’d rather overthink than underthink.”
He frowned. “I don’t like this.”
“Of course you don’t like this. I’m going to spend the night with Cole. Nobody likes this. Well, except Cole. But when I wake up with new energy tomorrow, I want to be able to grab a hair and run without a fight. Take him completely by surprise. I don’t want him on edge because you’re there. I want him to feel safe enough to close his eyes. I want him comfortable and pliant.”
He nodded. “I see what you’re saying, but—”
“You saw how it went last night. I slept through the entire thing. Easy peasy. I’ll just drive there, go inside, feed, grab the hair, and get out. We’ll meet up in the morning.”
Jack smiled. “You have your stubborn face on.”
I put my hand up to my cheek. “I don’t know about that. It feels like my ‘clarity of thought’ face.”
He took a deep breath. “Okay. But you are in my arms until the moment you leave.”
“And in them again the moment I get back,” I said.
For the next few hours I dozed off and on against Jack’s shoulder. At eleven thirty, I kissed his cheek. “See you early in the morning. And get ready, because we’re taking a trip to the Underworld.”
Jack smiled. “It’s a date.”
I scooched out of bed, but when I stood upright, I had to hold the bedpost to steady myself.
Jack shot up next to me. “You okay?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. “Just a little wobbly. Nothing a little energy won’t fix.”
“Let me drive you.”
“I’m fine. Really.”
I grabbed my car keys, and we both climbed out the window. Jack walked me to my car, kissing me as if he’d never see me again.
The lights were off at Cole’s place. I’d been there before when the lights were off, but usually there was some light coming from somewhere. I scanned the balcony from where I’d parked my car and figured out why it looked so much darker. The porch light outside his front door was off, which was strange because it usually went on automatically in the dark.
It had probably just burned out.
Still, I climbed the outside stairs on my tiptoes, an unexplainable chill running down my back. It wasn’t until I got close to the front door that I knew something was wrong. The door was ajar, the newly repaired lock smashed.
I turned around and ran into the chest of a tall man.
“’Scuse me, I—” My voice cut off when I saw his face. Black eyes. Cracked lips smiling around a black hole of a mouth.
I shuddered. It was the man from the other night.
But this time there was nowhere to run.
I tried to scream, but he clamped a large hand over my mouth, spun me so I was facing away from him, and wrapped his other arm across my chest. He began to drag me toward the stairs. I kicked against the cement, flailing against him. It didn’t do any good. Each failed attempt drained me of more energy, as if I had only one good kick left in each leg.
I opened my mouth and chomped down hard on one of his fingers, but he didn’t even flinch.
I couldn’t breathe with his hand over my mouth. I clawed against the arm across my chest, but he had me by at least a hundred pounds.
Air. I needed air.
I raised my hands above my head and tried to claw at his face, aiming for where his eyeballs should be; but everything around me was getting darker, and whatever energy I’d come there with was now gone.
I went limp in his arms. He didn’t even break stride.
TEN
NOW
The Surface. Outside Cole’s condo.
My feet smacked against every step as he hauled me down the stairs. I gave a feeble push against the cement, hoping to throw him off balance, but my strength was gone. I wasn’t sure I even moved my feet.
When he reached the bottom, he kicked the metal door open and took a couple of steps outside, and then I heard the sound of glass shattering.
His arm across my chest loosened, but only for a moment.
Another sound, this time like a fist making contact with a face.
His grip loosened just enough for me to slip out and down to the ground. Strong hands lifted me up.
“Becks! Can you hear me?” I opened my eyes to see Jack’s face, but it was only for a split second. The man with the black eyes grabbed him from behind, forcing him to let me go.
I sank to the ground again. The man was almost as tall as Jack, and just as thick. I couldn’t believe he was still standing, considering Jack had smashed something over his head.
Jack punched him in the face. The man stumbled back a few steps and then lunged at Jack, who anticipated the move and stepped to the side just in time. The man went past him, and Jack kicked him in his back as he went. This time he didn’t let up. He threw punches again and again until finally the man fell backward.
Jack rushed to my side.
“Becks. Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. At least I thought I shook my head. I had no energy left. Jack crouched down next to me, and that was when I saw the dark shadow of the man stagger up off the ground.
“Behind you,” I whispered.
Jack turned and kicked the man away before he had a chance to stand up fully. Then he wasted no time. He gathered me in his arms and took off.
I closed my eyes and let the darkness close in around me.
Intense sunlight urged my eyelids open. Too intense for morning. I blinked back the haze, and when my eyes focused, I saw Jack’s face.
He was sitting on the edge of my bed, and he was so pale it looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.
“Becks,” he said, his voice cracking. “You came back to me.”
“I didn’t go anywhere,” I said. Then I thought about the sunlight. “What time is it?”
“Four o’clock. You’ve been out for more than fifteen hours.”
I tried to sit up but lost any arm strength halfway through the motion. Jack helped me the rest of the way.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
He grimaced. “I tried. Every hour. I even splashed your face with cold water.”
He gestured toward my nightstand, where there was a nearly empty bowl and small puddles of water everywhere. “It didn’t work.”
I realized I wasn’t sitting up on my own; I was propped up against Jack. If he let me go, I’d fall back on the bed.
“What’s wrong with me?”
Jack closed his eyes for a few long moments and then opened them again. “You missed a Feed.”
My breathing became rapid. “We have to find Cole.”
“I know.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s my dad?”
Jack nodded toward the door. “He left a note this morning saying he had an early meeting. It’s a good thing, too, because if he had seen your face . . .”
My hand flew up to my cheek. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing. It’s just, you have the dark circles again. And you look like . . . Well, it’s just a good thing he didn’t see you.” He ran his hand through his hair. “You’re black and blue.” He glanced down at my arms. “Look. It’s the same on your arms.”
I followed his gaze. The skin looked almost translucent, with purple and blue patches starting near my wrist line. They grew denser as they traveled upward to my biceps.
Jack touched my inner arm, just below the elbow, and the skin reacted like water-soaked paper, as if it were on the verge of falling apart.
The sight of it made bile creep up my throat. I looked as if I were wearing someone else’s skin.
“I thought about taking you to the hospital, calling 911, anything. But I knew they’d check for a heartbeat first . . . .”
“They can’t do anything to help me.”
The events of last night came crashing back into my head. The man with the black eyes and mouth who wouldn’t stay down after a severe beating. The lights out at Cole’s place. The front door that looked as if it had been kicked in.
“We have to go to Cole’s. What if he’s been . . . ?” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Jack’s face was grim. “I know. Now that you’re awake, we’ll go.”
“Together.”
He tightened his embrace. “Do you think I’m ever going to let you out of my sight again?”
With those words, I sighed and melted into his chest for a moment.
Jack didn’t put voice to the consequences if we couldn’t find Cole. We both got out of bed, though Jack moved much faster than I could. My yoga pants and hoodie were hugging my body before I knew it, and I realized that Jack was ushering me around the room, pulling things out of drawers, dressing me. Spinning circles around me.
Frantic.
But everything for me was moving slower. I started to tell Jack he didn’t need to go so fast, but it took several seconds at least for my brain to send the message to my mouth. Jack bounced around the room like a movie on fast-forward.
“Jack . . . ,” I said, wanting to warn him that my muscles weren’t working properly, and definitely not when I wanted them to.
“I know, Becks. I can see it. I’ll help.”
His words spilled out of his mouth like tiny pieces of paper in front of an industrial fan. I had to concentrate hard to understand them as they tumbled to the ground.
“Ready?” he asked.
I tried to smile, but the way things were going, it wouldn’t show up until sometime next week.
He pulled me tight against him, and with congruent movements, we were out the door, my backpack perched on Jack’s shoulder.
The house seemed to melt away behind us, swirling in a colorful mass as we sped away in Jack’s car. The vibration from the acceleration rattled my teeth, and I gripped the door handle to steady myself.
Jack’s eyes were hard brown circles bouncing back and forth between my face and the road in front of us.
His fingers gripped the steering wheel so tightly that I worried he’d rip the whole thing off.
In a deliberate move, I raised my hand and placed it limply over his fingertips.
“Don’t break . . . ,” I said, quicker than I realized I could but still unable to finish my sentence.
He smiled sadly at me. “I’m trying not to.”
Of course my words reached deeper than mere concern over the steering wheel. Right now, we were doing everything we could not to splinter our souls. Again.
We made it to Cole’s, with Jack only running two and a half red lights. Half because he swore it was still yellow. Not that I had the capacity to call him on it, but he knew what I’d been thinking.
Jack pulled into the handicapped parking stall closest to the stairwell. I almost expected him to dive over the hood of the car to get to me, but he didn’t. Barely.
He threw my door open, then gently, but quickly, scooped me up in his arms.
“Faster this way,” he said.
He was strong. I mean, I’d known it all along; but feeling his strength as he ran up the steps with me in his arms, it was unearthly. My bulk was nothing to him. He gracefully skipped the top three steps, bounded smoothly down the hall and around the first corner.