Evertrue

TWENTY

NOW

The Surface. Cole’s condo.

Minutes later, Jack pulled into the parking lot below Cole’s condo. We all got out of the car and started jogging toward the stairs that led to Cole’s balcony and the front door.

Jack led the way. But as he turned the final corner, he stopped so quickly, I had to dig my toes into the ground so as not to run into him. He put his hand back, catching me around the waist and pulling me directly behind him.

“What is it?” I whispered.

Jack turned slightly and put a finger to his lips. “I closed the door when we were here before. I’m sure of it,” he whispered. “And now it’s open again. Stay put.”

I nodded and backed away from the corner. Cole wrapped his arm around me and pulled me so now I was directly behind him.

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need two bodyguards.”

He grinned apologetically. “Sorry. It just felt natural to do that.”

“It’s fine.” I couldn’t help a smile. “Just . . . stop.”

We peeked around the corner. Jack was a few yards away, standing with his back to the wall just to the side of Cole’s door, which was hanging off its hinges.

A chill ran down my back. Jack leaned around the doorframe and apparently didn’t see any immediate danger, because he crept inside.

Cole started out, but I grabbed his shirt and yanked him back. “What are you doing? The bad guys could still be there! Again!”

Cole leveled his gaze at me. “I thought you wouldn’t care.”

“I . . . don’t. I mean, I don’t want you to get hurt. In your present state . . . That is . . .”

Cole smiled sadly. “You mean, if I still had my memory, and I was the bastard of your past, the one who stole your heart, it’d be fine.”

Shaking my head, I was about to protest, but then I realized . . . he was right.

I looked back toward Cole’s door. There was no sign of movement. “He’s been in there too long.”

“It’s only been a few seconds.”

“I’m going.”

“Then so am I.”

Upon first glance inside, I couldn’t see Jack. But the condo seemed to be in the same state of disarray as it had been before. It was difficult to tell, given that it was trashed, but it didn’t look more trashed.

“Jack?” I whispered.

There was no answer.

“Jack!” I said a little louder.

“In the back,” Jack said. “There’s no one here.” We followed his voice toward the farthest bedroom. Cole’s bedroom.

It was in worse shape than the living room. Cole walked in and righted a lamp that had been overturned.

“Does anything look familiar?” I asked.

He didn’t get a chance to answer. The front door slammed shut, and immediately cold air breezed in and settled over us.

There was a frozen moment in time when I could see my own breath. Jack was the only one with a good view down the hallway. Whatever he saw made his mouth drop open.

Then he dived for me, his shoulder catching me in my stomach. I barely had time to brace for impact before we crashed to the ground. He kept his hands on my back, trying to cushion the fall, but I still heard something crack. Lightning quick, he shoved me under the bed and followed, and I had just one moment to glimpse what looked like floating black oil crossing the threshold of the room.

A Shade. It could only be a Shade.

Jack put his hand over my mouth with a warning look in his eyes. He didn’t have to use words to tell me not to breathe.

But the Shades could sniff out humans so easily. I had no idea if I could ever hope to hold my breath long enough.

Cole hadn’t made it under the bed with us. I saw his black boots for a split second before the Shade rushed inside. Then Cole’s boots disappeared off the ground. A moment later, he landed with a thwump on his back on the wooden floor.

He glanced at me. I tried to call his name, but Jack held his hand over my mouth too tightly.

And then it was too late. A black, oily shroud covered Cole’s face and upper chest, wrapping itself around and around, like a flat, black python. Cole’s legs kicked and thrashed.

I struggled against Jack, trying to reach Cole, but Jack locked his muscles down tight. I couldn’t move.

All I could do was watch Cole’s feet. Finally they fell still.

But the Shade didn’t let up.

My first instinct was to go to Cole. I tried again to pry Jack’s hand off my mouth, but he was too strong. He held his arm around my waist even tighter, as if to tell me it would all be okay. But it wasn’t. Cole wasn’t moving. My lifeline was dying right in front of me.

Cole’s hand had flopped underneath the bed, inches from my own. I took it, and held it, and tried to squeeze it reassuringly, even though I knew he was probably dead.

The Shade tightened around Cole’s head like coiled cords being cinched. I held tight to Cole’s hand. His other hand was up over his head, toward the fireplace. He was reaching for . . . something.

What if I could reach what Cole was looking for? I bit down on Jack’s finger, and he finally released his death grip. Scrambling out from under the bed, I climbed over Cole’s body to where his hand was flailing. Hopefully the Shade was so busy sucking the life out of him that it wouldn’t notice me.

Cole was reaching toward the poker next to the fireplace. I dived for it, grabbed it, and placed it in Cole’s hand. In a move so fast I could barely see it, Cole brought the poker around toward his own face and sliced through the Shade at his throat.

With a hiss, the Shade disintegrated, turning into a dusty smoke before disappearing completely. Cole sucked in a deep breath and coughed it out, the color drained entirely from his face.

“Cole!” I threw myself at him and touched his face. His cheek cooled my fingertips.

I lowered my face until it hung inches above his so he could feed. But within a few seconds, his face changed from pale to ghastly white and then almost to gray. Yanking back my head, I realized my mistake. I was still automatically feeding off him. I’d just made it worse.

Jack had watched me try to feed Cole, and he seemed to figure out quickly why it didn’t work.

I looked at him imploringly.

He registered my expression. “Uh-uh. No. No way.”

“He’s in bad shape, Jack. He’s not even conscious.”

“I don’t care. There is no way I’m letting him feed off me.” Jack sprang to his feet and paced across the room, running his fingers roughly through his hair.

I didn’t say anything else. How could I? I was asking him to give up part of his soul to save the guy who had destroyed our futures.

I watched as Jack’s feet pounded against the carpet. He marched so forcefully that I was surprised he wasn’t shredding the carpet as he went.

He walked one more time to the other side of the room, stopped, and faced the wall. Then his shoulders heaved up and down as he expelled a breath of air.

“I have to,” he said.

I shook my head. “No, you don’t.”

He turned. “Yes. We do. It’s you and me. It’s us. It’s ‘we.’ And ‘we’ have to survive.” He managed a smile. “As long as there’s no tongue.”

“Your lips don’t even have to touch.”

With a determined blaze in his eyes, he crouched beside Cole and brought his face to within a couple of inches of Cole’s mouth and breathed out. Once he had expelled all the air inside his lungs, he raised his head, took another deep breath in, lowered his head, and breathed out again.

The change was immediate in Cole’s cheeks first. The slightest shade of pink returned. His face lost the sickly gray pallor. And then, after the fifth breath, Cole’s eyelids fluttered open.

It took him a moment to focus on the face hanging above him, and when he did, he sprang up into a sitting position and immediately grabbed either side of his head.

“Ow.” He pressed his palms against his temples as if he were trying to hold his head together.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He winced. “I don’t know. What was that?”

Jack, who was now sitting against the bureau panting, jerked his head toward Cole. “What was that? A Shade attacked you. You killed it with a poker. How did you know to do that?”

Cole breathed in and out a few times before going on. “I wasn’t even thinking. I just did what felt natural. I don’t remember even thinking about the poker. I just let my hand do what it wanted to do.”

Jack looked away, shaking his head. I think he was angrier that he’d had to resort to feeding Cole.

Cole turned the poker over in his hands. He reached toward the music stand in the corner of the room and grabbed something small and black off it. He held it against the poker. It stuck. “It’s magnetic. It must be made of iron.”

“So?” I said.

He looked at me. “I don’t know. I just . . . feel like that should mean something. I think iron hurts Shades in their Shade form. That’s why they prefer the ten-Shade bounty hunter form.”

Jack looked at the spot where the Shade had disappeared. “I bet this one was left here as a lookout. He probably alerted the network, which means we don’t have much time.”

Cole stood up. “I’ll look for your heart, but I think I’ll have better luck if the two of you aren’t watching over my shoulder.”

I nodded, and he walked down the hallway.

“Let’s call Jules,” I said. “See if she’s had a chance to talk to my dad. I want to know they’re safe.”

Jack pulled out his phone and dialed, then handed it to me. I didn’t even have to ask her anything. She answered the phone and said, “Your dad’s gone. I told him you’d called me from Los Angeles. I said I thought you were in trouble and that you were staying at a shelter. There are quite a few of them there, so the search should take him at least a few days.”

“What about Tommy?”

“He took Tommy to your aunt’s.”

I released a sigh of relief, satisfied that this wild goose chase would keep my family safe. “Thank you.” We hung up.

I leaned against Jack’s chest and brushed some stray hairs out of my eyes. “Where do we go now? We’re out of money. What are we going to do? Camp?”

Just then Cole called from somewhere in the condo. “I found something!”

We sprang up and raced out of the room and into the kitchen, only to find Cole with a handful of plastic cards in his hand. “I didn’t find the heart, but look. Cards. In my name. Does that mean anything? That’s good, right?”

Jack stared at the credit cards. “Yeah. That’s good. Except for the part about the heart.”

“At least we tried,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before we run into anyone else.”