“Nothing,” I said, too quickly.
Cole looked at me with narrowed eyes but didn’t say anything. There was a tense, silent moment when Cole’s gaze shifted from me to Ashe and back again. Then Max cleared his throat and nudged Cole with his shoulder. “Time.”
Cole nodded.
Minutes later, Ashe, Cole, and I were huddled around an old parchment map that looked like it had been drawn at the same time as the Declaration of Independence, while Max stood guard at the window. The images on the map looked similar to what Cole had drawn for me, with the High Court and the Feed caverns inside a center bull’s-eye and then three rings surrounding it, expanding in size as they went. The fourth ring showed the Commons.
Ashe placed a round piece of red wood that he used as a marker in one of the Commons that I assumed had to be Ouros. “We’re here. And you’re talking about going through the labyrinth.”
“The labyrinth?” I asked.
“The labyrinth. Like a maze.”
“I know what a labyrinth is,” I said, flashing back to the story I’d read about the Minotaur.
“The inner three rings—Water, Wind, and Fire—make up a labyrinth whose sole purpose is to keep people out. The place is filled with physical obstacles, and those are tough enough; but it’s the psychological obstacles that eat people alive.”
My pulse increased. “What do you mean ‘psychological obstacles’?”
“The first ring, the Ring of Water, messes with your emotions. The second ring, Wind, attacks your mind. And the third ring, Fire, brings out your despair. You can fight the physical threats. But you can’t protect your mind. That’s why nobody makes it very far. I never made it beyond the Ring of Water.” He looked up, his face grim. “I’ve never heard of anyone who has.”
I wanted to ask Ashe why he’d tried going through the maze in the first place, but a look from Cole made me hesitate. “Is it even possible to get to the center?”
“The queen holds the blueprint to the maze for the people she invites to the High Court,” Ashe said. “We just don’t have the map.”
“We do, though,” Cole said, looking at me pointedly. They both stared at my tether, and I realized they intended to use it as a makeshift map.
Ashe frowned. “Let’s hope she doesn’t lose it.”
Max, who had been quiet until now, spoke up from his position at the window. “What are we going to do about the time discrepancy?”
At my questioning expression, Cole said, “Time in the labyrinth runs parallel to time on the Surface. Ancient Egyptians believed their sun god stored all of the hours of the day and night in the Underworld. Specifically, they’re kept in the maze.”
I gave him what I was sure was a blank expression.
Cole sighed. “It means that when we are in the labyrinth, time will pass just as quickly as it does in Park City. Which means you’ll be gone for longer than you realized.”
I thought about the repercussions of this revelation. Every minute I was in the maze would be another minute I was away from my family. It would be impossible to get back without anyone knowing I’d been gone. Then another realization hit me, a worse one, and I saw in the faces of the others that they were one step ahead of me.
“I can’t miss even one night of dreaming,” I said. “Jack’s already out of time. If I miss a night of giving him energy … he’ll die, won’t he?”
Cole lowered his head and scratched the back of it like he always did when he was trying to work out a problem. When he raised it again, he said, “We’ll kick her out. Every night, we’ll kick her to the Surface so she can sleep. We’ll stay in the maze, holding our place. Then in the morning, we’ll reach up and bring her back.”
I was sure my face looked like Cole had just spoken in ancient Latin. “I thought you said you couldn’t land in the maze.”
“We can’t do a blind landing, which is what we’d have to do if we all went to the Surface. But if the rest of us stayed here and simply reached to the Surface to bring you under, that might work.”
Ashe seemed to be working the scenario through his head. But I couldn’t get over one specific word Cole had said.
“What did you mean by ‘kicking’ me out?”
Cole grinned. “Actually, it’s exactly how it sounds.”
Before I could ask him to elaborate, Max stood up. “Whatever we’re going to do, we can’t stay here long.”
“Why?” I asked.
He slowly pulled the shutter a little tighter. “Four men. They’ve been standing at the corner for too long.”
Cole looked to Ashe, who glanced at a pocket watch. “There’s a scheduled blackout coming. We’ll sneak out the back, but I don’t think we can make it to the labyrinth entrance before it gets dark. I know a hideout not far from here. I think we can make it.”
Everyone went into action. They each grabbed a weapon. Ashe strapped a small sword to his back. Max put on an iron contraption that slipped over four of his fingers; and when he made a fist, it became a weapon, like brass knuckles. Cole slung a knife sheath around his leg and tugged his jeans down over it.
Then Ashe drew the iron lock across the front door as Max cleared the table of the maps and markers we had been studying.
“What do you mean, blackout?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” Cole said. He grabbed my hand, and we ducked out the back door and into the courtyard.
The whole thing had taken maybe thirty seconds.
Ashe rushed us down dark alleys that were even narrower than the ones Cole had used to get us to Ashe’s. As we ran, the daylight seemed to dim, throwing our path into dusk. Halfway down one of the passageways, Ashe stopped by a small, heavy, wooden door in the ground. It looked like a square lumber sewer lid. He heaved it open, and Cole dropped down it, then Max.
Ashe looked at me expectantly.
“Here goes,” I said under my breath. I jumped in after Max and landed in a small cellar about the size of a living room. Ashe fell in beside me and used a rope on the door to shut it tight, but not before I realized that it was suddenly pitch-black outside.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” he said. “When the blackout lifts, we’ll run for the labyrinth before anyone realizes where we went.”
Using Max’s lighter to see by, Cole and I settled into one corner of the room and the others spread out on the opposite side. There were a few blankets that had been left in there that we used as cushions against the cold cement floor.
Once everyone had stopped moving, Max flicked his lighter shut and we were thrown into darkness.
I could hear hushed voices talking, and from the direction in which they were coming, I assumed it was Max and Ashe. I was relieved that Cole sat next to me. In this sea of unfamiliar and scary things, Cole was definitely one thing: familiar. Comforting.
He draped a blanket over me. “It’s only three hours,” he whispered. “Try to relax.”
“What is a blackout?” I whispered to Cole.
“It’s just like it sounds. To conserve energy, the Shades periodically shut everything down. Everybody stays inside. It’s better that it happens now than when we’re in the maze.”
He was quiet. I could still hear the murmurs from across the room, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying.
“Cole?” I whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Will there be Shades in the maze?”
I heard him let out a breath. “I don’t think so. They’re focused on energy. It’s all they care about, so they stick to the bull’s-eye and the Commons, where they can manipulate the energy. They have no reason to be in the maze.”
“Why do they do what they do?”
“It’s like they’re the embodiment of a devotion to the Everneath world. Some say that’s all they are anymore. The last shade of an attachment. The last shadow of … love, without any of the reasons to back it up. All they know is to protect this world, and the energy inside of it.”
“Where’d they come from?”
“I don’t know.”
There was so much Cole still didn’t know about his own world. So much kept secret, even from the inhabitants. I turned toward him. “Do they die?”
“I don’t know.”
We were quiet for a few moments, and I could hear Cole settle further into the blankets.
“Are you going to sleep?” I asked.
Cole chuckled. “No. Sleep is purely a Surface thing, along with eating food. It’s not something we need to do down here. That goes for you too while you’re here.”
Mrs. Jenkins had warned me not to eat down here. It sounded as if this was something I didn’t need to worry about. It suddenly made sense why I hadn’t seen a kitchen in Ashe’s home.
I thought back to how Ashe was coming with us, no questions asked. “Is Ashe a regular Everliving?”
“A regular Everliving,” Cole said with a smile in his voice.
“I mean, why does he look like … smoke?”
Cole sighed. “I don’t know. His appearance is new to me. He didn’t use to look like that. He said he missed the last Feed. Maybe that’s why.”
“What did you ever do for him that would make him agree to come with us?”
Cole paused. “He has an old debt to me. I once found something he had lost. Now he’s paying me back.”
“What did you find?”
He paused. “It’s not important.”
He didn’t offer any more information. The other side of the room went quiet, and I felt as if they were listening, so I didn’t press him.
Ashe was only coming because he owed Cole. But why was Cole here? In his view, he owed me nothing.
“Cole?”
“Yes, Nik?”
I let out a breath of air. I couldn’t ask him why he’d finally decided to help me. I didn’t want to give him an opportunity to reconsider what he’d gotten himself into. “Are you scared of getting killed?”
“No. I’m scared of something worse than death.”
Worse than death? “Like what?”
“Everlivings can get trapped in a hell of their own minds.” I felt him pick at a loose string on the sleeve of his jacket. “Do you ever notice how the punishments in mythology are always repetitive and continuous? Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the mountain, only to have it roll back at the end of the day? Souls being trapped in quicksand while carnivorous birds nip away at their intestines? The Everliving are afraid of eternal punishments, like the sentence of the Wanderers, who are always starving but will never die from it. We can fall prey to such destruction in our minds that death would actually be a release.”
I remembered seeing pictures of these punishments and curses in the D’Aulaires’ book. “Have you ever known someone who got trapped in something like that?” I asked.
“Yeah. Me.” I turned toward him, and he felt the movement. “With you. Always trying, but never getting you. I have ninety-nine years of that to look forward to.”
My cheeks grew hot. “You can’t still be trying.”
“I’ll never stop.”
“But … all this.” I gestured around, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “You’re doing all this when you know it’s to save Jack.”
“I know. And won’t you owe me so bad when we succeed.” There was a smile in his voice, but also something dead serious. I thought about what Ashe had said about his tether to me.
I shook my head. “Just what do you think I’ll owe you?”
He leaned closer to me. “For saving the love of your life? Everything.”
There was this incredibly tense moment, and I wished I could see Cole’s face. But then I felt him relax against me. “And then you’ll just run away again, and I’ll have to find another way to impress you; and that, Nikki Beckett, is the eternal loop.”
I released a breath and at the same time tried to release the panic his words had brought on. He acted as if it were a joke, but did some part of him really believe it?
“I told you what I was afraid of, Nik. Now tell me what you’re afraid of.”
I answered as honestly as I could. “I’m afraid of how much I don’t know about this world, and how I have to rely on everything you tell me.”
“That is scary.”
I couldn’t hear a smile behind his voice.
SIXTEEN
NOW
The Everneath. Ouros.
As soon as the blackout lifted we hoisted ourselves out of the cellar and into the alley. Cole faced Ashe. “You know what we’re up against. You owe me a debt, but it isn’t fair for me to ask this as payment. If you want out, you can repay me another way.”
There was a long moment of silence. I didn’t say anything, no begging or pleading, because I was pretty sure Ashe’s answer would have nothing to do with me and everything to do with his previous relationship with Cole.