Evertrue

TWO

NOW

The Surface. Home.

I raced through a dinner of pizza and wilted salad with my dad and Tommy. It reminded me that if my life ever got back to normal, I was going to make some changes of the nutritional variety around here.

I shoved the last pepperoni into my mouth and put my napkin down on my plate.

My dad froze with his full piece of pizza halfway to his mouth. “Is there some speed-eating award you’re going for tonight?”

Tommy giggled.

“No. I’m just getting ready to go out with Jack,” I said, pushing myself back from the table. “May I be excused?”

“That’s fine. But don’t be too late. Summer school starts tomorrow, right?”

I sighed. As if he didn’t know. As if he didn’t make special arrangements with Mrs. Stone to allow me into the class even though my grades weren’t exactly stellar.

My dad still had hope for my academic excellence.

“I’ll be there.” Right after I break into the Dead Elvises’ condo and retrieve my missing heart.

I stood up and ruffled Tommy’s hair as I walked out of the kitchen. Jack would be waiting for me in my room to make our plans. My stomach erupted in butterflies. Breaking and entering.

This was a first for me.

Midnight. The parking lot of Cole’s condo.

There were no lights on inside Cole’s place.

At least I guessed there were no lights on. I couldn’t see every angle from where I sat in the passenger seat of Jack’s car.

Jack opened the brown paper bag at his feet and took out one of the black ski masks. He tossed it onto my lap, and my feet literally went ice-cold.

“What if it’s a trick?” I said.

Jack froze, one side of his lips raised in a half smile. “You mean like an ambush?”

I nodded.

Jack turned fully toward me, resting one elbow on the steering wheel and flashing me a reassuring smile. “So you’re saying the Dead Elvises faked a concert tonight in the city, and fake sold tickets, and fake booked the venue, all so they could turn out the lights in their condo and wait, real quiet like, crouched behind the furniture, on the off chance we were planning to break in?”

I nodded again. “Exactly. That sounds reasonable. We should just go home.”

He shook his head. “We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t have to. If it didn’t mean the best chance to cure you.”

“I know,” I said. “But I can’t help wondering if it’s a trap.”

“Cole needs you alive. That’s why we can feel safe doing this.” At my concerned expression, he added, “Look, Jules is at the concert. I’ll text her to see if the band’s really there or if they’re just holograms.”

He pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen. I stared at the darkened condo again and bit my lip.

“Have we thought through everything?” I said.

Jack continued to type while talking. “We know they don’t have an alarm system.”

“Not as of a couple weeks ago,” I said, remembering the last time I was in Cole’s apartment. Before we’d gone to the Everneath to save Jack. Before Cole had betrayed me. It was a lifetime ago.

“You know the code to his door,” Jack said.

“One-four-oh-seven,” I said. I’d seen him open the door enough times to remember.

“And we know Cole has a safe in his wall,” Jack said.

I nodded. I remembered seeing it.

“We know the one thing we’re looking for,” Jack said.

I nodded and frowned. “A compass. My heart.”

If we could find it and break it, maybe that would cure me. If not, it was still a big step toward making me human again.

Jack reached over and squeezed my hand. “It’s in the safe. Has to be. And once we get into the safe, you’ll know this was worth it.”

He took the cordless drill out of the bag next and held it pointed outward, like a cornered cowboy would wield a gun.

I stared at it. “Explain the drill again?”

“Safecrackers always use drills,” Jack said, exasperated, as if he’d told me this a hundred times.

“Safecrackers in the movies,” I clarified.

“Yes, and all movies are rooted in some truth.”

“Like Xanadu? With the roller-skating Greek muses?” Xanadu had been one of my mom’s favorite obscure movies.

“Yes,” Jack said, forcing a straight face. “Everyone has a roller-skating Greek muse. And you, Becks, are stalling.”

I nodded. “I’m about to commit a felony. Of course I’m stalling.”

“It’s not a felony. It’s self-defense.”

I took a deep breath and then pulled the ski mask over my head. “Let’s do this.”

Jack’s phone vibrated with a text and he checked the screen. “Jules says she’s loving the concert.” He put the phone in his pocket. “It’s not a trap. We’re a go.”

We left the car and crept up the stairs to the balcony where the front door was located. There was movement in the front window of the condo adjacent to Cole’s, and I started to rethink the ski masks.

“You know, if someone did see us, the masks would probably draw more attention to us, not less.”

“Too late,” Jack said.

We reached the door, and I entered the code into the keypad. The light above it turned red and flashed several times before going dark again.

I tried the handle, but it didn’t budge.

“Do it again,” Jack said.

I reentered the code, paying special attention to the numbers, but again it flashed red.

“Crap,” I said.

A motion-sensor light turned on at the end of the balcony. I ripped off my mask. “Let’s go.”

Jack shook his head. “We’re already here. We’re not wasting this opportunity. There’s only one thing to do.”

“Jump off the balcony?” I suggested hopefully.

Jack smiled. He took a step backward, raised his foot, and lurched at the door. It cracked open, shattering the part where the lock had once been. A dog barked in the distance.

“Seriously?” I whisper-yelled. “That was the ‘only one thing to do’?”

“We’re in, aren’t we? Besides, if we steal back your heart, Cole will definitely know we’ve been in here, so it won’t matter that the door is broken.”

We went inside and shut the door behind us. Jack turned on a flashlight and tossed it gently to me, then grasped the drill he was carrying in both hands and held it in front of him.

I wasn’t sure he’d even need the drill. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he could simply grab the safe in his hands and rip it clean in two.

We made our way quickly to Cole’s bedroom. I shone the light until it landed on the metal box in the wall.

“There it is,” I said.

We ran forward. Jack tossed the drill onto Cole’s bed. From here I could see that the drywall around the safe looked to be covered in fresh paint, as if it had just been installed. I didn’t get a chance to comment on it because Jack reached an arm back and punched a hole in the wall to the right of the safe.

“Jack!” I said.

“I’m fine.” He reached his arm into the hole he’d just made, past his elbow, grabbed hold of the back of the safe, and ripped the entire thing out of the wall.

My mouth hung open for a long moment. Moves like that only happened in superhero movies. I didn’t know he was that strong.

He brought the safe over to a desk in the corner of the room, then picked up the drill again. But before he turned it on, I caught a glimpse of something scratched into the metal surface of the front of the safe. We didn’t see it earlier because of the dark.

“Stop,” I said. I pointed to the note.

Turn me, it said.

Underneath the words was a large arrow pointing to the side of the box, where a small crank was sticking out of a hole in the metal.

“Why does it have a crank?”

“More important,” Jack said, “why does it have a note?” After a moment’s hesitation he reached out and pinched the end of the crank.

“Wait!” I said.

He froze.

“What if it’s booby-trapped?” I said. “Like with a bomb?”

He looked at me. “That makes no sense.”

“Well, what if there’s something horrible inside?”

“Like what?”

I shrugged.

Jack started to turn the crank.

“Like a head!” I blurted out. “A severed head.” I put my hands on the safe, measuring the length, height, and width. “That’s about head size.”

I could tell Jack was raising an eyebrow even under his ski mask. I reached up and pulled off the mask. Yep, he was raising an eyebrow.

He tilted his head. “So Cole decapitates some random person, puts his head in this safe, adds a crank, and leaves a note so that anyone who breaks in would be . . . grossed out enough to leave without taking anything?”

I nodded again.

He turned the crank one full rotation. Nothing happened. He turned it again, and again, and a slow tune began to play.

Jack looked up at me. “Is that . . . ?”

“‘Pop Goes the Weasel.’” I nodded, my metaphorical heart already sinking. Nothing good could come out of “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

Jack turned the crank faster and faster; and when he reached the “pop” part of the melody, the top of the safe burst open, and a clown’s head exploded out. I jumped at least a foot off the ground, even though I could see it was a harmless piece of plastic on a coiled spring.

On the clown’s bow tie hung another note.

Jack leaned forward to read it.

“It says, ‘Bet you were expecting a heart, shaped like a compass. . . .’” Jack paused and pulled the note off the bow tie. “. . . And then he drew a frowny face.”

I snatched the note from his hand, looked at it briefly, crumpled it up, and threw it into the corner of the room. At the same time, it felt as if I’d crumpled up any lingering hope and thrown it away.

“I hate Cole,” I said. I looked at Jack, the full weight of my immortal future pressing heavy on my shoulders. “Tell me it’s going to be okay. Tell me I’ll be human again.”

Jack nodded and put his arm around me. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be human again.”

Jack held me for a few moments until his phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket.

He read the screen and frowned.

“Who’s it from?” I asked.

“Cole. It says, ‘No, she won’t. She’s going to be a queen.’”

My eyes darted around the room, searching for whatever microphone was relaying our words back to Cole, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I closed my eyes.

“I’d rather die than be your queen,” I said.

Moments later another text buzzed through, and Jack read it aloud. “It says, ‘Let’s see what the Hulk has to say about that.’ I can only assume by ‘Hulk’ he’s referring to me.”

“It’s not his choice whether I live or die,” I said loudly toward the ceiling. Then I turned toward Jack and whispered, “It’s not your choice.”

“I know,” Jack whispered back. “I know, Becks.”

I put my hand over my mouth, annoyed at myself for giving voice to the one wedge between me and Jack, the one thing that we would always disagree on. I would rather die than rule the Everneath. Jack would rather I live, no matter the cost. It was true, but it gave Cole too much information. When it came to me, he had a track record of exploiting any and all weaknesses he could find.

And now he was listening to every word we were saying. Max and Gavin probably started their guitar-and-drum duet when Cole discovered we were in his place.

Jack mouthed the words Let’s go.

I nodded. I didn’t want to let Cole overhear anything else. Jack took my hand, and I followed him to the front door and through it to the balcony. He shoved the door closed despite the shattered lock, and we had just started down the balcony when I noticed a dark figure blocking the staircase. Jack saw him too and jerked to a stop.

I couldn’t see his face, because he was backlit from the light on the stairs, but his silhouette showed he was wearing a hat with a wide brim—maybe a cowboy hat?—and a long coat, like a trench coat.

Whoever it was, he just stood there. I couldn’t actually see if he was looking at us or not, but for some reason I felt his eyes on me.

“Try to act normal,” Jack said. It was a little late for “normal,” considering we’d just come stumbling out of the condo, shoved the broken door shut, and then frozen at the sight of the man.

Nevertheless, we started walking toward him.

He made no move to stand aside. Jack flipped on the flashlight and shone it momentarily in the guy’s face, and at first I didn’t notice anything strange until I got a look at his eyes. They were pitch-black. A chill went down my back as the man smiled, revealing two rows of black teeth.

We stopped again.

“Um, let’s go down the back way,” I said, my voice cracking.

“What back way?” Jack whispered.

I pulled on his arm. “I don’t know, but there’s got to be a back way. If not, we’ll make one.”

Jack nodded. “I think that’s a good idea.”

We ran in the opposite direction, following the balcony past several other condos, until we saw an emergency exit sign. Jack barreled through the doorway, and we ran to the car.

When we got there, I lunged toward the passenger’s side. I was about to rip the door open when my knees buckled beneath me. I caught the side of the door just before I fell to the ground.

“Becks? You okay?”

“Yes,” I called out, trying to mask how out of breath I was. I still didn’t know what this new weakness meant, and until I did, I didn’t want Jack to worry.

Part of me, the naive part maybe, hoped the weakness would go away before anybody else noticed. Part of me hoped the weakness had nothing to do with my missing heart.

But another part of me knew it had everything to do with it.