Evertrue

NINETEEN

NOW

The Surface. Nebraska.

I told Jack all about the memory, about how Cole had gone to a strange man with a huge head and had promised him a pendant called the Helmet of Hermes in exchange for someone’s memory of Adonia killing the previous queen.

“I know it was a memory of Cole’s. Maybe it’s still buried deep in his subconscious, and it could only come out in a dream.” I thought about the timeline. “It obviously happened before Cole was captured. What if the guy with the huge head betrayed him? What if, when Cole didn’t have the”—I shook my head—“Helmet of Hermes thing, what if he turned him in?” I sank into the chair and put my head in my hands. I couldn’t stop obsessing over the fact that this might have been the point that got Cole in so much trouble.

Jack put his arm around me and kissed my forehead. “Shh. It’s done, Becks. It’s in the past. There’s nothing you can do about it now.”

“I know,” I said softly. I leaned my head into Jack as I thought about the rest of the dream. “You know, Cole always said surviving the Feed made me different in a way that would help me take down the queen. I think I got a good look at how that would have to happen. But Adonia was conjuring up blizzards. When I first got to the Everneath, I conjured up the entire Fiery Furnace at Arches National Park, but once I got rid of it, I had enough of a problem conjuring up a tether and turning it into a stick. Cole said it was a problem with my focus.” I grimaced as I remembered how Cole and Max had been overcome by hunger in the Ring of Fire, and the only way I could get them to move was to poke them with a hot stick I’d made out of the tether. “I doubt I could kill the queen with a twig.”

“Maybe Cole was planning on teaching you how to do more. He did say you had a long way to go.”

I thought back to the memory. “Right before the blizzard got really strong, Adonia touched the necklace. I think it was her heart. Maybe she got even more strength from it.”

Cole stirred next to me and promptly rolled off the bench.

“Ouch!” he said. He sprang up, looking from Jack to me with a confused expression on his face.

I wondered if the recollection meant he had recovered his memories, and I grabbed Jack’s hand in preparation to face a Cole who knew the truth.

“What happened?” he said.

“Cole, you have amnesia,” I said slowly.

He tilted his head. “I know that. What happened just now?”

I glanced at Jack. “You fell off the bench?” he said.

Cole sighed. “Oh. Okay. Are we going to destroy the Everneath now?”

With a screech of brakes, the bus pulled up to our stop. “We’re going back to Park City first,” I said.

Cole nodded. “Park City. Where’s that?”

Cole fed me again at the airport, and after so much continuous contact, I felt stronger than I had in a long time. Stronger I think than even before I’d lost my heart.

As we traveled, I couldn’t stop thinking about how Adonia touched her necklace—her Surface heart—to get more strength. If I had to face anyone, where would I get strength without my heart?

Once we landed at the Salt Lake City airport, we took a taxi to the Shop-n-Go to retrieve Jack’s car.

“My credit cards are almost maxed out,” Jack said as he started his car. He had used his emergency ones to buy our airplane tickets as well. “Hopefully there’s enough left to get us a hotel.”

I shrugged, a little lost in thought as I stared out the window.

“Becks? You okay?”

I turned to Jack. “I think I need my heart.”

“What?” Jack said.

Cole leaned forward from the backseat.

I shifted in my seat so I could see both of them. “It’s the memory of the queens. If we try to take down the Everneath and we run into Adonia, I don’t think I’ll stand a chance fighting against her unless I have my heart.”

“Well, hopefully we won’t run into her,” Jack said.

“But even if we get that far, to the point where we destroy all our hearts, I’m going to need to know where my heart is.”

“Where do you think it is?” Cole said.

I pressed my lips together and breathed out through my nose, trying to keep my composure. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m guessing you hid it somewhere.”

“Why would I—” Cole stopped and tilted his head. “Oh, yeah. I stole it.”

I closed my eyes and put my face in my hands for a moment.

Cole tapped my shoulder. “You know, if I shared a memory with you, then maybe my memory is coming back. Can’t we go to my condo and see if I can—I don’t know—see if I can feel where I hid it?”

Jack groaned. “Cole, your place was ransacked.”

“But they obviously didn’t find it, because they’re still looking for me. I bet I hid it well.”

Jack glanced out the window. “We should follow up on the Cronus lead from Ashe.”

“Say we found something and destroyed the Shade network,” I said. “We’d still need my heart.”

“I just think it might be a wild-goose chase,” Jack said.

Cole put his hand on my arm. “What’s on your wrist?”

“What?” I said. Jack and I both looked down at my left arm, the one that hadn’t had the shackle; only now, at my wrist line, the faintest black mark encircled my wrist. Not nearly as dark as the other shackle, but definitely visible.

Jack couldn’t stop staring at it. “Let’s go find your heart,” he said.

I nodded. “We’ll talk to Will and have him research anything and everything he can about Cronus. By the time we’re done searching Cole’s condo, hopefully he’ll have something for us.”

I stared at the new shackle. Was it growing darker even as I watched? I waited a few long minutes. No, I couldn’t tell a difference.

But even though I couldn’t see it growing darker, I knew it was.

Jack turned the car in the direction of his own house, and I called Will to give him a heads-up; but no one answered.

“He’s probably passed out,” Jack said, referring to his older brother’s love of drinking.

When we got to Jack’s house, we found Will asleep on the Caputos’ couch. Jack shook his older brother awake.

“Wha—” Will startled up to a sitting position.

He looked from Jack, to me, then to Cole. The second he saw Cole’s face, his eyelids narrowed into tiny slits. “You,” he said accusingly. “You . . .” He jumped up from the couch, but he’d obviously been drinking, because he staggered to the side a few steps and then fell.

Jack ran to him. “It’s okay, bro. He’s helping us.”

Will looked at him as if he were crazy. “Are you nuts? He’s ‘helped’ us before, and we barely survived. He helped Nikki all the way into the Everneath!”

“We need him,” I said.

He stared at me. “Why? What’s wrong?”

I grimaced. “Um, I’m sort of turning into an Everliving. And we’d like to destroy the Underworld.”

Will was silent for a moment. And then . . . “So, the usual.”

Jack helped Will back up to the couch and explained the Cole situation. He also told him of our plan to destroy the Everneath.

Will looked as if he could’ve used a few more drinks to process everything Jack was saying. It was moments like these that made me realize how totally ridiculous the entire thing sounded.

But at the end of it all, Will stood up. “I’m in. What can I do?”

I explained our clue about Cronus Tantalus and then handed him the documents from Mrs. Jenkins.

“And try the internet,” I said.

“All right. Google can destroy worlds.”

We left Will with a fresh cup of coffee and an open laptop, and headed to Cole’s condo.