Cole leaned his head back, and I felt him shiver against me.
Oh no. I followed his gaze to the ceiling. It was full of hands. Reaching down toward us. These hands seemed livelier, as if the pull of gravity to the ground gave them extra energy. I ducked down. The nearest fingertips were at least a couple of feet out of reach, but I couldn’t help it.
Cole held my arm. “It’s okay, Nik. They’re just hands.” It sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.
“Yeah. Thousands of them. Sticking out of walls. Moving. Sure, everything’s okay. For the Tunnels of hell.” I gave a nervous laugh. I’d cracked. My brain was officially on its side. My tiny candle flame crumbled and seemed to turn to dust. The Tunnels were quick to eat my energy.
“Nothing’s changed, Nik. You still have your tether to Jack, right? You can still feel it?”
I closed my eyes and focused on the pull in my chest. I nodded.
“Okay. You’re going to lead us to Jack. I’ll be right behind you.”
I didn’t know what was worse: seeing the hands all around us or wandering in the dark and knowing they were all around us.
And I couldn’t ignore the shushing sound that I now knew was flesh rubbing against flesh a thousand times over.
Focus on the tether. Focus on the connection. Find Jack.
I really wanted that connection to point me in the direction from which we’d come, but instead it led me deeper into the blackness.
We started walking. Slowly. Heel to toe. The constant thrum of skin rubbing against skin—thousands of fingers chafing against one another—made my skin prickle. Cole seemed to sense this, because he kept talking.
“What’s the first thing you’re going to say to Jack?” Cole asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve only ever thought about getting to him. I haven’t even thought of the after.”
“What if he’s changed?”
“I don’t care,” I said resolutely. “But how do you mean?”
“Well, what if he’s … old? He’s been down here for years. What if he’s ninety?” Cole’s voice sounded very pleased at the notion.
“I wouldn’t care,” I said.
“Oh, you wouldn’t care if you brought Jack all the way home from the Tunnels only to end up sending him off to a rest home? You’d be fine spoon-feeding him mashed peas as long as the two of you were together?”
I grimaced. “Believe it or not, I would. As long as I had him back.”
“Kinky.” Cole smirked.
But his words were getting lost in my head. Everything felt heavy. I tripped and fell to the ground, and it took me a very long moment to get back up.
“You okay, Nik?”
“I’m tired,” I said, and I could hear just how true it was in my voice.
“It’s the Tunnels. Try to focus on something else.” His voice was full of concern, even though he tried to mask it.
“Like what?”
“Did I ever tell you what it was like to be aboard a Viking ship?”
I grimaced. “No.”
“Did you know that the Vikings used birds—ravens, specifically—to navigate the waters? They would release the ravens, who always started out flying back toward the way they had come. But eventually the ravens would fly a different way, and the Vikings would change course to follow.”
“Huh. Fascinating,” I mumbled, trying not to slow down my gait even though my first instinct was to stop entirely, sit on the ground, and curl up into a ball.
“Isn’t it, though?”
I knew Cole was trying to distract me, and I was grateful. It surprised me how much I liked him at this moment, until I realized that in every aspect of this seemingly hopeless trip, Cole had surprised me. I wondered for a moment how all this would change him, how he could continue feeding on humans after all of the noble things he’d done for me.
“Cole, what’s going to happen to you when we get through this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean …” What did I mean? “Will things change? For you? Jack will be back. I’ll be home, with my family. Life will sort of go on.”
“Are you worried about me, Nik?”
I smiled in the dark. “Of course. Won’t the queen come after you?”
“Possibly,” he said. “But in the last few centuries, I’ve become very good at staying hidden and changing identities. She’s not as powerful on the Surface anyway.”
“But what will you do?”
Cole didn’t say anything for a moment. I wished I could see his expression, but I felt as if the only energy left inside of me was my tether. There was nothing more. No way to make light.
When he spoke again, his voice was sad. “Don’t worry about me. I have plans.”
“What plans? What do you want to do with your life?”
“Same thing I’ve always wanted. Find that special someone …” I could hear the smirk behind his voice. “Take over the world.”
Before I could ask him how he planned to do this, he said, “Did you know that Viking helmets never had horns?”
He was obviously uncomfortable with the conversation, so I let him off the hook for now, mostly because talking took up so much energy. “Nuh-uh,” I said.
“It’s true. It was just a myth.”
“Well, you know how I feel about myths—” My voice stopped right there.
“Nik?”
“Shhhh!” I felt pressure inside my chest. More than ever before. It took my breath away. My connection to Jack. He was close. So close. “I feel him, Cole.”
And then a tiny miracle happened. When we turned the next corner, we could see. A crack in the ceiling of the tunnel reached all the way to the surface, and a small, dull light illuminated the walls.
“He’s here,” I said.
Cole moved to my side. “Which hand?”
“I don’t know.” I started grabbing hands. The same hands that had grossed me out only minutes ago. I grabbed one, turned it over, discarded it as soon as I could eliminate it. Hand after hand I wrenched toward my face, picking the largest ones. Jack’s hands were large. One hand didn’t have the right calluses. Another, the knuckles were all wrong.
I moved down the wall. Cole grunted. “It’ll take forever this way. Think of your tether!”
I closed my eyes and willed it to guide my hand. I took another breath, and grabbed the nearest hand.
The hand squeezed me back.
I opened my eyes. The knuckles were big and … boy. The grip was wide. I spread out the fingers, opening the hand, and placed mine on top, palm to palm.
His fingers curled over the tops of mine.
Jack’s fingers.
I’d know them anywhere.
“Jack,” I said. I kissed his fingers and put the Ever Yours note in his palm, wrapping his fingers around it. I kissed his fingers again and put the tip of his thumb on my lips while I spoke. “I’m here. I’ll guide you home. And then I’ll never let you go again.”
I held his hand to my cheek for a moment.
“Um … Nik?” Cole’s voice sounded different than usual. Lower. Gravelly. Broken. He’d only uttered two words, but that was all it took for me to feel his uncertainty right now. He was happy for me, but his heart was breaking.
I wouldn’t have been there without him. I wouldn’t have Jack’s hand in mine. I turned to him. “Cole. Know this now. I will never forget what you’ve done for me. Never. Do you hear me?”
He nodded, but I could see he was crumbling, as if finding Jack would put an end to everything he wanted. Because it would. I placed my hands on either side of his face and brought his lips to mine in a light kiss.
It was fast. The power rush as quick as a gasp. The transferred memory was only a still picture. Me and Jack, standing on Cole’s balcony. The Tunnels behind me. It was a frozen moment in time, but I still felt the pain he had felt on that night—the night we’d tried to kill him.
I pulled back. His face showed me what that kiss meant to him. It was everything. Even though the kiss was no longer than a second, he had to sit down. I couldn’t help the wave of sympathy I felt for him then.
“You rest. I’m going to start digging.” I reached for Jack’s hand again. There was no time to find something resembling a shovel. I used my fingers, scraping away the dirt from around his hand. As I tore at the dirt, the hands around Jack’s seemed to move away, almost as if they were giving me space. It was working.
His hand was in mine. I was giving him a ball of twine, just as Ariadne had done for Theseus. I would be his guide. His lamppost in this dark world. His candlelight. Just as he’d always been for me.
I dug harder. My fingernails felt as if they were tearing off.
“It’s working!” I said to Cole over my shoulder.
“Let me take over.”
“Do you feel well enough?”
“I’m much better now.”
I kept my eyes on Jack’s hand as I stepped away, which is why I didn’t see it coming until it was too late. Cole’s foot, swinging back, hard and unmoving. His eyes were set with a steadfast determination until his gaze met mine.
And there was a moment. A fleeting second when everything seemed to stand still. His foot frozen in midair. His eyes wide. Did I see a flicker of hesitation?
Maybe. But it didn’t matter. The frozen moment ended. Cole’s foot crashed into me, and I was in the air. I reached out for Jack’s hand, and my fingertips grazed his just as the wall of hands disappeared behind me in a swirl of haze.
It wasn’t until my fate was sealed and my course for the Surface was set that I finally found my voice.
“Cole. Please.”
But there was no one to hear me. I repeated it over and over, begging Cole to undo what he’d done. Soon the words became as much a part of me as breathing; and when the darkness dissipated, I was lying on the Shop-n-Go floor, Ezra standing over me.
“Cole. Please.”
He crouched down. “Cole’s not here.”
I rolled over onto my side and crumpled into myself. “I lost him.”
“Cole?”
I shook my head. “Jack.”
THIRTY-ONE
NOW
The Surface. At the Shop-n-Go.
What happened? What happened?
Ezra stood still above me. He’d given up trying to get me to talk.
“Will should be here soon,” he said.
“Thanks for calling him,” I said. I wasn’t really surprised that Ezra had called Will for me. Ezra had never acted as if he had something against me. I looked up at him from my position on the floor. “Why did he kick me out?”
“Who?”
“Cole,” I said. “Why did he kick me out when we were so close?”
Ezra shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s above my pay grade.” He grabbed a bag of Cheetos and ripped it open, offering me some.
I took one and bit off the end. It was the first taste of food I’d had in what felt like weeks. Mrs. Jenkins’s warning came back to me. Don’t eat while you’re there. I hadn’t broken her rule, and yet I had failed.
“Why do you help them?” I said to Ezra. “You’re human. Are you hoping they’ll bring you over or something?”
Ezra gave me a wry smile. “I do it for the money. It’s a job. A job where I get paid a little bit better than other clerks. And all I have to do is keep quiet.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. It was nice for a moment to hear about someone doing something for a boring reason like money. Not eternal life.
When I opened my eyes, Ezra put a hand on my shoulder. I stared at the hard floor. That floor that I’d slipped through so many times. If worse came to worst, maybe I could go again. “Do you have … any part of Cole? Or any of them?”
“No. They’re careful. And they’d kill me.”
The bells jangled, and footsteps made their way to the back.
“Nikki!” Will rounded the corner and scooped me up in his arms.
I buried my head in his chest. “I had him, Will. I had him in my hand. And I lost him.”
As Will helped me out of the store and into his car, the tears came. Fast and hard. I wondered how many more times I could fail Jack before it was too late.
Will offered to drive me home, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to face my father yet. I’d been missing for twenty-four hours since I’d disappeared from Dr. Hill’s bathroom. I hoped it just looked as if I’d slipped out through the window or something.
As we drove to the city park, I told the whole story to Will. How we had made it so far … How we were so close …
And how, then, Cole had kicked me.
Will leaned back into his seat. “Maybe Cole sensed some sort of danger.”
“But he would’ve said something to me first.” I shook my head. “And we were alone. I would’ve seen Shades. Or at least felt them.”
“Maybe it was something other than Shades. I mean, he’s come with you so far. There’d be no reason for him to risk so much only to kick you at the end. It wouldn’t make sense. Why would he have gone with you in the first place?”