Evertrue

TWENTY-NINE

NOW

The Surface. The hotel.

No way,” I said. “No one else is going to lose their life over me.”

“Silly Becks,” Jack said, ruffling my hair as we walked to his car. “You’re assuming that we’re all going to die. When did you develop this cup-half-full kind of attitude? Will’s already been helping us.”

“On the Surface. It’s a whole different kind of danger in the Everneath.”

“Will loves danger.”

I glanced at him sideways. The sun was shining through the window now, directly on Jack, making him a little too glorious for me to argue with.

“I have a good attitude.”

“Sure you do,” Jack said.

“I do,” I insisted. “I just have to measure my attitude with reality.”

“That’s called having a bad attitude.”

“No, it’s not. It’s called being realistic.”

“Or pessimistic.”

“Shut up.”

Jack smiled. “Ah, there’s that can-do spirit. Let’s go start a war. And let’s bring Will. This is just the type of thing he’ll love to do.”

Pretty soon, the four of us were sitting around the table in the hotel room, strategizing. We decided that the best time to try for the network was during one of the queen’s Feasts in one of the Commons. I’d learned of the ritual the first time I’d gone to the Everneath looking for Jack. The Shades and the queen gathered in the center of whatever Common they were in and then proceeded to make a feast out of humans and Everlivings alike who had crossed the High Court one way or another.

I remembered there being thousands of Shades in attendance, so that had to mean there’d be fewer Shades to deal with around the baetylus.

Everyone agreed. We were about to get to it, but Cole raised his hand. “How are we going to destroy the vault of hearts?”

We all looked at one another.

“We’ll have to figure that out later,” I said.

“We should figure it out now,” Cole said. “What if we get the opportunity to do something, but we can’t because we don’t know what that something is?”

I tilted my head, trying to decipher what he’d just said.

“He’s right,” Jack said. “We have to be ready for anything.”

Will leaned forward. “In the war, I was in munitions for a rotation.”

Jack took in a deep breath. “So?”

“So, I’ve got some old friends at Fort Douglas. They could help me concoct something along the lines of an incendiary device.”

Jack glanced at Will and wrinkled his eyebrows.

Will rolled his eyes. “You know, something that would make stuff get blowed up.”

I shook my head, thinking of my own cell phone’s behavior in the Everneath. “Stuff from the Surface doesn’t work right in the Everneath.”

“Electronic stuff doesn’t work. But something that is a simple elemental chemical reaction . . .”

Jack grinned. “Elemental chemical reaction?”

Will looked faux offended. “Hey, if I’m interested in a subject, I learn about it. And when I wanted to forget where I was in Afghanistan, I blew stuff up. It was much less destructive than other stress outlets.”

Jack nodded. “Okay.” He took out his phone and called Professor Spears, putting it on speaker. When the professor answered, Jack caught him up on our strategy meeting. “Will thinks that he could blow up the vault of hearts, because it would involve a basic chemical reaction. Do you think this would work?”

Professor Spears was quiet for a moment before saying, “Will’s probably right.”

Jack’s eyes went wide.

“The problem is finding enough of a fuse . . . and an ignition made of Everneath energy that would start the chain reaction. A simple match isn’t going to cut it.”

Jack turned to me. “You have the ability to conjure things up, right? Isn’t that what happened to you because you survived the Feed?”

I nodded, remembering the vague image of Adonia’s soldier, Nathanial, I’d conjured up when we were trying to escape her clutches. And more recently the railroad tie I’d made to block the door.

Cole scoffed. “She can, but she’s not very good at it.”

I glared at him. “How do you know?” I said.

Cole’s mouth fell open with a smile. “I remembered it! I was exasperated trying to teach you to harness your energy projection. It was a problem.”

My cheeks went pink at how difficult it had been for me to control my projection. “It doesn’t come naturally,” I muttered. I thought about how easily Adonia had created a blizzard. She’d probably only gotten better since she’d become queen. By the time I conjured up another railroad tie, she’d probably have already sandwiched me in between two spiky walls like she did the original queen. “I need a weapon the queen is specifically vulnerable to. Killing the queen is key for me.” I flinched involuntarily at the word killing. I couldn’t believe I was speaking so flippantly about ending someone’s life.

“I think if you can destroy the vault,” Professor Spears said, “you’ll kill the queen. Or significantly weaken her.”

We hung up with more of a plan than we’d ever had before, but we still had one significant problem. Destroying the vault of hearts would get rid of all the Everneath hearts . . . but what about the Surface hearts?

We could only hope an answer would present itself before it was too late.

While Jack and Will took care of a few things at home, namely a way to disappear without causing their mother to call in a search party, Cole went to the Everneath alone to find out when the next Feast was taking place. I was worried about him going by himself—especially given that there were Wanted signs with his face on it plastered everywhere—but he seemed to need a chance to prove he could do it.

I called my aunt Grace’s house and spoke to Tommy for a long time. He was enjoying spending time with our cousins and had been thrilled when my dad had taken him there.

I told him I loved him. I wished I could call my dad.

Will and Jack met me back at the hotel, and we waited for word from Cole. After what seemed like hours, there was a soft knock at the door.

I swung it open.

Cole was standing there. “Tomorrow. If we leave at ten thirty in the morning, we’ll arrive in the Everneath just in time for the Feast.”

It was a restless sleep that night for all of us. Jack, Cole, and I slept in the king-size bed as we had been doing the entire time. Will slept on the floor. He said his time in the army made him used to sleeping on hard floors, so being on the carpet was comfortable.

But I was up most of the night, and I could swear that I never heard the even breathing of sleep from any of the guys.

I did doze off and on while feeding on Cole; and once when I woke up, I saw that Cole was sitting up, his feet hanging over the side of the bed, his hands on the mattress on either side of him.

“Are you going somewhere?” I whispered.

“No,” he said without turning his head. “I just got to thinking about the band.”

“Do you remember them?” I said.

He shook his head. “No, but I feel . . . protective of them. If they’re in the accelerated Feed right now, will destroying the baetylus hurt them?”

Crap. I’d been so intent on destroying the Everneath and everyone responsible for its existence that I hadn’t thought about what it would do to the band if we were successful. Cole may have felt protective of them.

I didn’t.

But I felt protective of Cole. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I’d been so worried about letting go of my anger and my hate, but my mistake was thinking it was actually my choice. I had about as much choice in the matter as an ice sculpture on a sunny day. Drop by drop, without my permission, my anger and hate had melted away. Maybe I would get screwed because of it. But I no longer had a choice.

“I don’t think it will hurt the band. Since it would break the Shade network, it might simply end their accelerated Feed. And then they’d have time to get out before we destroyed the hearts. Because we don’t know how we’re going to do that. So there will be time.”

Cole nodded. “Thank you. I needed an out I could focus on.”

I smiled. “I am familiar with the need for a way out, no matter how implausible. It can give a hopeless situation hope.”

He sighed and lay back down.

There was no point in trying to sleep now.

When we got up, we packed our bags in silence. Maybe we were all focused on our shreds of hope. We hauled our bags to the car and drove up Parley’s Canyon.

At ten thirty we made our way to the back of the Shop-n-Go. We clasped hands and formed a tiny circle, Jack on my right, Cole on my left and Will straight across from me.

“Any second thoughts?” I said.

“Yes,” they all three said in unison.

“Um, too bad.”

We stood there for a moment.

I’d come to love each of them in his own way, but it was the boy holding my right hand, the one who had nearly beheaded me with a baseball when we were twelve, who would hold my heart for the rest of my life.

I think he felt the moment too. He stared at me and then tugged on my hand to pull me near and kissed me.

I’d always loved kissing him. I remembered fantasizing about it for the entire year before we started dating. I wanted to kiss him every day until the day I died . . . which might be in a short time.

The fingers in my left hand went limp. I pulled away from Jack and looked at Cole.

“Are you ready, Nik?” Cole said, his eyes tight.

I didn’t know what to say to him. So I just nodded.

This time Cole needed no prompting to get the traveling going. We were in the throes of the transfer from this world to the next. And soon we would try to destroy the baetylus.

We were quiet when we landed in Ouros. We had a purpose. Jack hung the Helmet of Hermes around his neck, and the excess energy that had been leaking out of him in a colorful mist immediately disappeared. The professor’s theory was right. The pendant would hide energy.

Jack led the way toward the secret entrance that Ashe had taken to get to the baetylus, and we all followed close behind. Cole stayed next to Will, whose excess energy was much more noticeable than Jack’s.

But we didn’t get very far before we saw the posters. One single word was printed in the middle of them. FEAST

And underneath that word were three faces. Max’s, Oliver’s, and Gavin’s.

Jack, Will, and I came to a screeching halt. I turned toward Cole, who seemed confused. He looked from my face, which I’m sure had a horrified expression, to the poster, and then back to me.

“Do you know those three guys?” he asked.

I covered my mouth with my hand.

Jack stepped toward Cole. “They’re the rest of your band. It’s your band on the menu at the Feast.”