“Elvis Presley as a corpse. You wanna come look?” I flashed my most dazzling smile.
“You had me at corpse,” she said.
Jack shifted his stance to one that was decidedly more offensive and chuckled. “Saying good-bye here. Remember?”
Nikki gave him a dismissive peck on his lips. “Two weeks, Jack. It will fly by.”
That should’ve been the end of it. Nikki edged away from Jack and toward me, but Jack grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back. “No you don’t,” he said. “The corpse can wait.”
I wasn’t sure if he was referring to me or the screen. I would’ve asked him to clarify, but Jack’s lips were suddenly very busy moving against Nikki’s. I resisted the urge to dry-heave and looked toward the sky, the trees, the buses, anywhere that wouldn’t trigger the upchuck reflex.
Jack needed to learn some manners. Damn epic love.
Finally, with a popping noise that sounded like a toilet plunger releasing suction, Jack pulled back. “What were you saying about two weeks?”
That it will be a welcome break, I thought.
But Nikki disagreed. “That it will feel like forever.”
I considered for a moment grabbing Jack, squishing him into the shape of a giant football, and spiking him into the bus; but I refrained. Jack may have had a small brain, but the rest of him was quite large.
The buses pulled away, and I could taste the desperate longing coming from Nikki. Maybe she needed a little bit of help seeing what kind of person Jack really was.
I tugged on her arm. “Cheer up, Nik. You can help me splash some shirts.” Before I could think of how I was about to break one of the unbreakable rules in the Everliving world, I focused on the amalgam of emotions inside of my chest, handpicked a few strands of suspicion, intertwined those with a length of inferiority complex, pushed the mixture up into my throat, and blew it out in a smooth breath onto Nikki’s face. All she would smell was the mint tea I had just downed on the way here.
I didn’t care about what she would smell, though. I cared about what she would feel afterward.
I studied her face. Her eyebrows furrowed, and her forehead creased as she watched the bus pull away. Her lips turned downward, and I tasted the reflection of the worry I’d just blanketed upon her.
Exactly the effect I’d intended.
“You okay?” I asked, knowing full well she wasn’t. Time for me to replace that uncertainty she was feeling with my own brand of comfort.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said hesitantly.
I led her toward GraphX, trying not to dwell on the fact that I’d just broken my first Everneath law. It was okay to manipulate human emotions by stealing their worst ones. But to take the stolen ones inside of ourselves and force them onto a human? There were rules against that. It was unethical in our world, a world that prided itself on the free choices of our Forfeits. It was a fine line, but it was there.
Hopefully the Shades wouldn’t be able to detect it. The consequences of such an action would be harsh.
But all I needed was my foot in the door. Just one more opportunity to see Nikki. One more chance, which might lead to another chance, and another … Was it too much to hope that this string of chances would eventually lead Nikki to the Feed?
I closed my eyes. I’d already begun to consider it a Feast.
SIX
NOW
London: City of Love. No, wait … that’s Paris. London is the City of Pain.
The 747 touched down in Gatwick airport early in the morning. The more popular airport for London was Heathrow in London, but we always flew into Gatwick. The big stars used Heathrow, and there were usually paparazzi waiting in the wings there.
Not that we were big stars in London, but when you were trying to find the Delphinians, anonymity was the way to go.
As we stepped outside into the drizzle, Max shot me a wary look, as if the dark clouds held more meaning.
I shrugged. “It always rains in England.”
“Yeah, because that’s what I’m worried about. The rain.”
I raised my arm, and a traditional black taxi pulled over. We got into the cab, our luggage consisting only of two backpacks, one for each of us.
“Bankside House,” I said.
Max audibly groaned. “Seriously?”
I smiled. Bankside House was about as shabby as a hotel could get without being a hostel. Most of the rooms housed students from the London School of Economics, but the top floor accommodations could be rented out.
“Please tell me we’re at least getting a room with a private loo.” Max always was the fastest to adapt to a new environment.
I stared out the window at the dreary London weather. “The Ritz Carlton would draw too much attention.”
“But there’s gotta be someplace between a Rolls Royce and a push scooter. What’s the point of having money if we refuse to spend it?”
I turned toward him. “Because spending money is not the same as having a thrill. And are you not entertained?”
He gave me a half a grin and stared out his own window. “Watching you face your certain death by Dephinian Sword is not the same as entertainment. But I’m entertained. Enough. For now.”
“Good. Bankside it is.” I went back to staring out the window. The buildings here had a constant layer of what looked like soot. Every time I was here, I imagined that same layer of soot building up in my lungs.
The cabbie turned a corner, and we saw the London Eye, a Ferris wheel so huge that each enclosed glass pod could hold twenty or so people and take them to the highest heights above London. The Eye was a focal point of the South Bank, the name given to the neighborhood south of the River Thames.
As we passed it, I no longer thought about the soot in my lungs. After a couple of decades, we were finally back in London. I missed this city.
I didn’t get the chance to feel nostalgic for long. As the cabbie pulled up to Bankside House, a cloaked, hooded figure stepped out of the shadows as if he had been waiting for our arrival. He was just normal looking enough not to garner unnecessary attention, unless you were watching for him.
I was one of those who would’ve been watching for him.
The cab pulled to a stop, and I tossed some money over the seat as we got out.
“Delphinian Scout up ahead,” I said to Max out of the side of my mouth.
Max’s step hitched for a split second. “Can’t be. How did they know we were coming?”
“The Fates.”
“But why would they specifically look for us?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s something to do with Nikki. Everything weird and different has something to do with Nikki.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
As we approached, the scout stepped in front of us, essentially blocking the entrance to Bankside House. There was no way we’d get inside without confronting him.
Scouts weren’t the brute strength of the Delphinians; but they’d report back to the muscle if we didn’t comply, and you didn’t want to get on the bad side of Delphinian muscle.
When we were about five yards away, the scout lifted his hood and looked directly at me with large black eyes.
“Coleson,” he said.
“It’s just Cole,” I replied.
“Maxwell,” the scout said, acknowledging Max without looking at him. “What is your business with the Delphinians?”
I smirked. “If you went through the trouble of twisting time to see we were coming, surely you made the effort to find out why.” Of course, it wasn’t actually the scout who would’ve twisted the time. It was the Fates.
The scout regarded me coolly. “The Delphinians do not need to play their hand at all times, especially when you can change your pathway at any given moment just by changing your mind.”
“Don’t like to play your hand, and yet here you are to greet us.”
Max shifted uncomfortably at my side. I was being a little too contrary with the scout.
“We’re here for information,” I said.
“About Forfeits surviving the Feed,” the scout added.
I tensed. They already knew way too much about us.
“I’m willing to pay,” I said.
The corner of the scout’s mouth turned up. “Oh yes, you’ll pay.” He made it sound ominous. “The Scholars will discuss the details with you. I have merely been dispatched to bring you to them.”
“Then let’s go,” Max said.
The scout waved a hand toward the road, and a black cab—similar to the one we’d just taken except with tinted windows—pulled up to the roundabout in front of the Bankside.
“Shouldn’t we get to check in first?” I said.
“No. You may find your stay to be shorter than expected.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded foreboding.
He held open the door for Max and me.
“I didn’t catch your name,” I said.
“Scouts are unnamed; you know this.” He shut the door and backed away from the cab, waving it onward.
Stupid Delphinians and their stupid traditions.
The cab pulled away from the curb, and I caught sight of the scout tugging his hood forward again and disappearing down the street to where he would probably drop down a manhole that wasn’t really a manhole or something just as cryptic.
A tinted window between the front and back of the cab shielded our view of the driver. I couldn’t even see a silhouette. The car could’ve been remote controlled for all we knew.
We wound through the streets, taking corners just slow enough not to screech. The driver didn’t need to try so hard to disorient us, if that was his intention. We were in London, where the street system was as logical as a bowl of spaghetti.
At one point we crossed over to the other side of the Thames, where the City of London proper was located. The car careened to the west of St. Paul’s Cathedral, at least that was the way it seemed to me to be going. I wouldn’t have bet my arm on it, though.
After a few more minutes of erratic driving, the cab slowed in front of a row of elegant residences with small alleys separating them. Another cloaked figure stood at the entrance to the nearest alley.
We stepped out of the cab, and it pulled away immediately. I never caught a look at the driver. The figure at the entrance to the alley didn’t remove his hood. Instead, he turned and began walking down the narrow passageway.
“I guess we’re supposed to follow,” I said to Max.
He drew in a sharp breath. “Isn’t it a bad sign if they know we’re coming?”
“Won’t stop me.” I glanced at him sideways. “You’ve already come farther than you said you would.”
Max shrugged. “Bored.”
I knew that was a lie, and I loved him for it.
The hooded figure led us to a staircase at the bottom of which stood a set of double doors made of heavy stone, thick enough that I could’ve hollowed out a section and made a guitar if the door were made of wood.
Whoever was behind those doors had a serious desire to keep people out. As the door creaked open, I had another thought. Whoever was behind those doors had a serious desire to keep things in as well.
I raised my fist to knock, but the doors seemed to anticipate my movement and swung open. We stepped inside; and when the doors closed behind us, a giant stone bar slid across the middle, like some medieval castle keep.
Old lightbulbs—the kind in which you could see the individual wires—lit the entryway, which, like the door, was made entirely of stone, from the floor, to the ceiling, to the intricately carved walls.
Tiny holes dotted the floor. I leaned down to get a closer look and could just glimpse the pointed tips of stone spikes in each hole. I did not want to find out what kind of transgression would trigger the expulsion of the spikes.
“What’s with all the rock?” Max whispered, his voice bouncing loudly off the walls.
“Fear of fire,” I said, making the connection to the enchanted fire that drove the Delphinians out of the Everneath. “There’s nothing flammable here.”
We stood still, waiting. After a few minutes a door at the other end of our room opened, and a tall man walked in. As I caught sight of his head, I had to stop myself from flinching.
From his eyes down to his toes, he looked normal. Pale and malnourished, maybe, but normal. But from his eyebrows upward, his head jutted out in every direction, as if it could barely contain what lay beneath. The effect made it look as if he were wearing a head-colored helmet.
A Scholar, I thought. I remembered the rumors that the Delphinians carried scars that best matched their obsessions. This Delphinian’s scars made it look as if his brain was twice as big as a normal one, and on the outside of his head.
Max’s mouth dropped open. I elbowed him gently, and he pulled himself together.
“Gentlemen,” the man said. “You are very welcome.”
I glanced back at the stone spikes embedded in the floor. All evidence to the contrary, I thought.
“One of you has a question,” he said. His voice sounded thin, as if he were only using one of his vocal cords.