For a long while silence fell upon us, only broken when Jack flipped on the turn signal for our exit at Kimball Junction.
As he checked his blind spot, he caught my gaze and shrugged, as if to say You still believe the amnesia is an act?
The harder question was, What do you do with someone who doesn’t remember all the bad things he’s done? How do you hold him responsible when he doesn’t even remember who he is?
If this were all an act, I think he would’ve played his hand by now. That being said, I know neither of us trusted him. I didn’t owe Cole forgiveness. But did I owe it to this amnesiac in the backseat?
Jack finally broke the silence. “What do we do now, Becks?”
What were we going to do? I stared out the window for a moment. We’d done everything we could to make sure Cole wasn’t lying, so there was only one thing left to do.
“Pull over at that café here,” I said, pointing to a little place near the strip mall.
“Why?” Jack asked.
“I think it’s time we go to the Everneath. But first we need to eat.”
Ten minutes later. At Sunrise Café.
We ordered giant plates of eggs, bacon, and toast; and when the waitress left to put in the order, I pulled out a pen from my backpack and handed it to Jack, along with a napkin.
“Let’s go over what we know from Professor Spears,” I said.
Jack nodded and began to write. According to the professor, we have three obstacles we have to bring down in order to destroy the Everneath. Number one is the membrane. Number two is the link between the Shades. Number three is the hearts. He rubbed his forehead so hard, I thought he would rub off his eyebrows.
“I think number one and number two are related. I think the membrane will be more easily destroyed if we go after the link between the Shades first.”
Jack nodded. “That makes sense. As much as any of this makes sense. What do you have in mind?”
“There’s someone who might be able to help us with the Shades.”
“Who?” Jack and Cole said in unison.
“When Cole and I were searching for you in the Everneath, we had help from an old friend of Cole’s. Named Ashe.” I checked Cole’s face for any signs of recognition at the name, but there wasn’t anything I could see. “Ashe looked different from other Everlivings. He was gray all over. Looked as if he was made of smoke. Cole had seemed surprised by Ashe’s appearance. Apparently he hadn’t always looked like that. At one point when we’d almost made it to the Tunnels, we were attacked by Shades. We couldn’t touch them, but Ashe . . .” I sighed. “Ashe’s fists made contact with the Shades. He could connect with them when we couldn’t. He’d missed the last Feed, and that made him look more like a smoky version of a Shade. I’m sure he’s least part Shade.”
Both Jack and Cole were listening intently. I kept waiting for Cole to jump in, or at least reach the conclusion I was trying to guide him toward, but he looked as though he had never heard this story before.
“So,” I continued, “maybe if Ashe is part Shade, he’ll know how they’re all connected. He’s very loyal to you, Cole.”
“Why?” Cole asked.
Oh jeez. How did I explain that Ashe’s Forfeit, Adonia, had survived the Feed; and when she decided not to become an Everliving, Cole hunted her down so Ashe could turn her over to the current queen? And then Adonia became the queen?
“You helped him find something once. Something he had lost.” I shook my head. Cole had once used the same generic phrasing with me to explain Ashe’s loyalty.
Cole hung on every word as if he had no idea where I was going with this but couldn’t wait to find out.
“So,” I said again, “we’ll probably need to go to the Everneath. Find Ashe.”
Jack crumpled the napkin. “But why would Ashe help us? Why would he betray what the Shade connection is if he knew we wanted to destroy it?”
The waitress set down a plate of eggs in front of me, and I put a forkful in my mouth while I thought for a moment.
“We won’t tell him we want to destroy it,” I said. “We’ll tell him we’re there to try to jog Cole’s memory. But really you and I will be investigating the Shade link.”
Cole sat back, lacing his fingers together and bringing them up to his chin. “We could do that. Question, though: How do we get to this . . . ‘Everneath’?”
Jack rolled his eyes, then looked at me. “To the Shop-n-Go?”
I nodded.
Technically, Cole could take us down to the Everneath from anywhere, but in the state he was in and the way he’d forgotten everything, I didn’t want to make it harder than it already would be.
So we headed to the Shop-n-Go.
When we got to the store, it was open again, the busted lock fixed. But another clerk, not Ezra, stood behind the counter. The new clerk looked barely out of high school and very bored.
“Crap,” I said.
“What is it?” Cole asked.
“It’s not Ezra.” At Cole’s confused expression, I explained. “Ezra is the clerk you and your band paid to keep watch over the entrance to the Everneath.” I shook my head. “It just seems like a sign that something is wrong.”
I walked up to the new clerk. “Where’s Ezra?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” he said. “He sorta had a breakdown.”
“What do you mean?”
The clerk narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“Ezra’s my cousin. I’m worried.”
The clerk shrugged, as if he couldn’t be bothered being suspicious of me anymore. “He called me to replace him. When I got here, he was freaking out. Looked scared. Said he wasn’t coming back. That’s all I know.”
Jack pulled me away from the counter, and we went to the back of the store. I tried not to think about how ominous Ezra’s actions sounded. Once we were in the back, we all three faced one another, forming a triangle around the spot where I’d first seen that woman slip through the floor. Where I’d slipped through the floor myself after I’d ingested a hair of Cole’s.
“Let’s take each other’s hands,” I said.
Cole took one of mine, Jack took the other, and then, reluctantly, Jack took Cole’s hand. We formed a ring. I briefly thought about all the ways this could go wrong. We could land in the middle of the city square of Ouros. Worst case scenario, we’d appear during one of the queen’s Feasts. We could drop into the middle of a Shade convention or something. At least we couldn’t land anywhere in the labyrinth. Direct teleportation inside the three rings was impossible without an Everliving already there to grab your hand.
“Okay, Cole. We want to land in Ouros. But not in the main square. Anywhere but there,” I said, referring to the Common where Ashe lived. “Does that name mean anything to you? Ouros?”
He shook his head.
“Imagine . . . an ancient city. Surrounded by a circular wall. Single-level dwellings on the outside that give way to larger buildings toward the center.” I closed my eyes, trying to think of something that would set Ouros apart from the other Commons, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I would just have to rely on the fact that Ouros was Cole’s home, and hopefully it would be the most familiar to him.
I closed my eyes. “Okay, Cole. Let’s go.”
He squeezed my hand. I waited for that feeling of falling through space, of being tossed around in a washing machine.
But it never came.
I squeezed one eye open and looked at Cole. His eyes were closed, and he had a peaceful look on his face. I opened both of my eyes and caught the new clerk giving the three of us a very strange look.
“Cole. Are you doing anything?” I whispered.
He leaned toward me and spoke out of the side of his mouth, keeping his eyes shut. “What am I supposed to be doing?”
“I don’t know. Can’t you . . . think downward?” I’d been in his position recently enough that I realized the futility of how it felt.
He pressed his lips together and then began to sink lower. But he was only bending his knees.
Jack sighed and opened his eyes. “It isn’t working.”
I released Cole’s hand. “Give me a strand of your hair,” I said.
“What?”
“No humans can get to the Everneath unless they have a ferryman to take them there. You, as an Everliving, are supposed to be able to come and go as you please, from anywhere; but that obviously isn’t working. Maybe your body just doesn’t remember what to do. In the absence of an Everliving escort, a human can go to the Everneath if he or she ingests part of an Everliving.”
Cole’s eyebrows shot up.
“Maybe if I do that, it will kick-start the process. Which means I need to swallow one of your hairs.”
He looked relieved, as if he’d thought I was going to ask for a finger or something. He plucked a hair off his head and handed it to me.
I put the hair on my tongue, cringing, and said, “Once we get going, Cole, think of Ouros.”
I grabbed both of their hands again and swallowed.
And then the turbulence began.
FOURTEEN
NOW
The Everneath. Outside Ouros.
When the turmoil finally stopped, I opened my eyes and stared at a sky that was too blue, as if it had gotten itself confused with the sea. Instinctively, I raised a hand to shade my eyes from the sun, but of course there was no sun, because this was a fake sky. A sky I’d hoped never to see again.
I turned my head. Jack was flat on his back on one side of me. Cole was on the other, sitting up, his knees drawn against his chest and his elbows resting on them as if he were sitting somewhere on a beach. He was staring straight ahead, frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
He flinched at the sound of my voice and shook his head. “Nothing. I keep waiting for something here to click.”
I sat up and squinted my eyes at him. “Does anything look familiar?”
“No. But I’m still hoping.”
He smiled at me, but something about the smile seemed sad. I reached for his hand, then caught Jack watching right before I closed my fingers around Cole’s. I stared at Cole’s eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Cole said, pulling his hand away.
“Where are we?” Jack said. His face looked tense.
That’s when I noticed a faint, colorful mist coming from Jack. His energy was leaking out around him, although it wasn’t very strong. Maybe that was because of all the time he’d spent in the Tunnels. I realized this was his first time coming back to the Everneath since that day he’d clawed his way out of the Tunnels.
I put my hand on his cheek. “Do you feel well?”
He nodded and closed his eyes. “I’m not sure.” He opened them again and looked around. “What’s with the air here?”
“That’s your energy. Leaking out. Stay next to Cole, because he’ll soak it up.”
Jack eyed Cole and then looked at me again. “Why can’t you soak it up?”
I stepped close to him, but the energy only floated around me too. I didn’t absorb any of it. “You know why. I can only feed off Cole.”
Jack sighed and scooted closer to Cole.
I looked around. We were at the base of a giant gray wall. I knew that wall. It surrounded the Common areas. Opposite the wall were flat, single-level, ancient-looking buildings.
As long as this was Ouros, we were on our way to finding Ashe. I looked at Cole and smiled. “You did it, Cole. I think we’re inside Ouros. I think we’re good.”
“We’re not quite good,” Jack said.
He was looking at a poster hanging on the nearest building. Cole’s picture was front and center on the poster, and underneath it were the words:
ESCAPED
THREAT TO THE QUEEN
REWARD:
TWO DAYS IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
Cole looked at the poster with a clueless smile on his face. Jack pulled Cole’s hoodie up and forward, covering as much as he could.
He turned to me. “Which way do we go?
I looked down the several passageways that branched out from where we stood and, with a sinking feeling, realized that nothing looked familiar. “I don’t know. The streets all look the same. I don’t even know if we’re starting in the same place I did before.”
Jack pulled me aside. “Sometimes, during football practice, Coach would leave it to me to call the plays. I struggled in practice because there wasn’t anything on the line. But during the games, when the adrenaline was high and victory was at risk, I always made the right call. Maybe Cole needs a little bit of adrenaline.”
“What did you have in mind?”
He glanced toward Cole to make sure he wasn’t looking and then gave me a tiny nod.
“I think I hear something . . . ,” Jack said.
“What is it?” Cole asked, starting to turn around.
“Shades!” Jack shouted.