It sounded like the way everyone thought Adonia had died: all of the energy sucked out of her so fast that there was nothing but a shell left. Had the same thing happened to Mrs. Jenkins? But who could do something like that?
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said again. But I couldn’t help feeling responsible. “Cole,” I said out loud. “What’s happening?”
Nobody answered.
Detective Jackson came out of the house and sat down next to me.
“Did you call 911?” I asked.
He sighed. “I called the police. There’s really nothing an ambulance can do at this point.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“What have you got there?” he asked, noting the papers and book in my arms.
Everything that I had taken had an old look to it. The parchment was dyed and rough around the edges. The book’s spine was cracked in a hundred places, and the title had long ago been worn away.
I thought quickly. “Just some stuff I was bringing to show her. She was into antiques.”
The wail of sirens sounded in the distance. Maybe that’s why he didn’t ask me anything more about it. The police station was nearby down the canyon, so the mountain walls carried the sound.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked.
“Did you kill her?”
I jerked my head up. “No!”
He put a hand on my shoulder, and I realized he was smiling. “I know. I followed you from your house. Besides the fact that I don’t think you have it in you to take a life, you also didn’t have the time. She’s been gone for a while, it looks like. I don’t think you had anything to do with … what happened here.”
“What did happen?”
“I don’t know.”
The sirens got louder, and a few moments later the first patrol car came into view. Detective Jackson looked at me. “We’ll face them together.”
“I thought you hated me.”
“Nikki, I’m investigating the disappearance of a boy, and you were the last one to see him. But it’s an investigation. Not a vendetta.”
I answered their questions. Explained how I found her. How the door was open. Detective Jackson backed up my story, especially the timeline, which wouldn’t have allowed for any involvement in possible foul play. For once it was lucky the detective had been following me.
I heard the police officers giving their theories. Mrs. Jenkins was a quiet woman. Private. She’d probably been dead for weeks, considering how decomposed her body was.
I knew she hadn’t even been dead for days. I’d only seen her two days ago.
But nobody knew that. Not even the detective.
I didn’t tell my dad about what had happened. If the police had any more questions, he’d find out then. But I didn’t think they would. They had already explained away what had happened.
Now I was left with only my own thoughts as to the truth about what happened. But what was the truth?
Someone had drained Mrs. Jenkins, to the point where her body looked like a centuries-old mummy. But who was powerful enough to do it? The queen, probably. But could other Everlivings do it? Destroy somebody so completely?
Could Shades do it?
Did she die with the false hope that one day she would be granted eternal life by a future queen?
I couldn’t think about it anymore. My body was shutting down. I put the book and papers that I’d taken from Mrs. Jenkins’s house on my desk and then collapsed on my bed, curling up and tucking the quilt underneath my chin. My brain couldn’t take any more. Just when my father and Dr. Hill were giving me space, for the first time in my life, I felt as if I were snapping.
I folded my knees to my chest, pressed my head farther into my pillow, and closed my eyes. I must’ve fallen asleep, because Jack’s voice came to me.
NOW
In my dream.
I can hear him, but I can’t see him.
“Hi.” The voice sounds as if it comes from right next to me, from his usual place beside me on my bed.
I hold my breath. He sounds so real. I don’t know why I can’t see him. Is he still alive? Am I dreaming of being in the Tunnels with him?
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he says.
How can I tell him how close I was, only to have failed? Better not to say anything. If this is really him and not just a regular dream about him, I don’t want him to lose hope. Even though my own hope was obliterated.
“I’ve missed you,” Jack says. “So much. I don’t know how I got here.”
“I know,” I say. Has he forgotten how he took my place? “You’re there because of me.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
I grimace. “Surprised at what?”
“That I’m here.”
“You’re always here.”
“I am?”
“Of course.”
“What do I say?” He sounds curious.
“Stuff.”
“Like what?”
“You always say you miss me.”
He gives a soft laugh. “That’s obvious. What else?”
“You talk about the time Jules told you I liked you.”
“And?”
My words flow out. “You tell me that you love me. You tell me that you’ll never leave.”
“Can you at least face me, Becks?” he says.
I open my eyes to discover I am facing the wall next to my bed. Which is weird, because in my dreams I am always automatically facing the center, to see Jack.
That’s why it’s dark.
What the …?
NOW
The Surface. My bedroom.
I turned over and faced him. And gasped.
Jack wasn’t back in my dreams. He was here. He was alive. And he was covered in what looked like a thick layer of soot. Nasty red gashes blanketed his face, and they continued down his arms and legs. His clothes were mere rags, covered in soot and blood.
His eyes were barely open, dark slits on his swollen face. His feet hung off the edge of the bed, and for a brief second I thought he seemed too big to be my Jack.
I moved to touch his face but held my hand just above where I would’ve made contact if he’d been real.
“What happened to you?” My breaths came hard and fast. “Are you hurting? Are you dead?”
He smiled. “Dead? I’ve never felt more alive.” He opened his hand, and inside it was a note. Our note. Ever Yours.
Without thinking, I went to reach for it. And grabbed it.
I froze. The paper was in my hand. I’d taken it. The note was real. It was tangible, and it was in my hand. I dropped it and grabbed Jack’s hand. His real hand.
I looked at his eyes. “What … ?” I saw the window in the corner of my room. It was ajar. As if someone had just come in.
I tried to speak, but the breaths were coming too fast.
“Put your head between your knees.” He urged my head down, and traced his fingers up and down my spine. He was quiet as I slowed my breathing. “There. You okay now?”
I sat up gradually. There was no way I was going to lose consciousness. There was no way I was going to let him out of my sight. “No, I am not okay. Is it really you?”
Jack nodded.
“How?”
“I’m not sure. I was buried alive. Then I felt your hand. You gave me the note. And you kissed my fingertips.”
He smiled because as he was saying those words, I was already kissing his fingertips.
“I held on. Waiting for you to come back. Eventually the note started to pull away, as if it were attached to a string or something; and I thought it meant you were leaving. But I wouldn’t let go. It pulled away, and I followed. It was the digging-out part that felt like it took days. I dug and scratched until I was out of the wall. I couldn’t see anything, but the note was still pulling away. I was so tired. So weak. But I held on to the note, and the next thing I knew, I was in the air. At least it felt that way. I couldn’t see.”
It sounded almost like a kick, but he was being pulled out of the Everneath instead of being pushed.
He blinked a few times and squinted. “I still can’t see very well. I wish I could see your face.”
I took his hand and rested my cheek in the palm. “You can.”
He leaned in close; and when he was only a couple of inches away, I felt the whoosh of my energy going out of me and into him. He must’ve been so empty. I knew, because when I’d returned so drained after the Feed, I’d stolen energy from him in the same way.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. He tried to pull back, but I wouldn’t let him.
“Kiss me.”
“But—”
“No arguing.” He didn’t move, so I basically tackled him. And then our lips were smashed together. We kissed until the initial rush of emotions from me to him had calmed, and then we kissed some more.
Then I was grabbing at him and digging my fingers into his shoulders. His back. Knotting them in his hair. Keeping him here, and keeping him real. He kissed me back with a similar fierceness, and I thought about how no dream could feel this tangible.
And it was a long time before we remembered where we were. We slept with our fingers and legs tangled together.
THIRTY-THREE
NOW
The Surface. My bedroom.
The next morning I watched him sleep. The fluttering of his eyelids. The twitches of his lips, as if he was dreaming of kissing me.
The swelling in his face had gone down some, but many of the cuts on his body still bled. I was so focused on having him back and in my arms, I hadn’t been very good at tending to his wounds.
I inched away from him and tried to creep out of bed, but in a lightning-quick move, his hand wrapped around my wrist.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.
“But your cuts—”
He pulled me to him, interrupting my words with his lips so fast that it literally took my breath away.
The sun had risen high in the sky before we stopped again. Finally, I insisted that he had to eat something and we had to get him cleaned up. There were people who were just as invested in Jack as I was, and they needed to know he was back. Will. Jack’s mom. Jules. Even my family.
My dad was at work, and Tommy was fishing with a friend, so we had the place to ourselves. I let Jack rest while I threw a frozen pepperoni pizza into the microwave.
It had been cooking for thirty seconds when I heard a commotion coming from my bedroom. I raced down the hallway to find Jack leaning against the wall.
“I don’t think I was quite ready for the whole upright thing.”
I put his arm around my shoulders and noticed again how much he’d changed. He wasn’t only taller. He was bigger too. I nearly disappeared under his arm. I shook my head. Maybe I was remembering his dimensions wrong.
He regained his balance; and when the pizza was finished cooking, he ate it. The entire thing. While standing.
I sat on the kitchen counter, watching him. It was so good to see him eat. It was so normal.
But I noticed the size thing again as his hands folded the slices of pizza in half. They seemed bigger. Everything about him seemed large, from the muscles that wrapped his arms like ropes to the broadness of his shoulders.
“You’re bigger,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow, midbite. He’d given me the same face many times when he thought I’d said something funny. The only difference now was that his eyes weren’t focused on my face. He still couldn’t see me clearly.
“You are,” I said. “Look at you.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at me.”
“Well, you should.” I held up my hand. “But not right now. You’re sort of a mess.”
He touched his face. “Are all the features where they’re supposed to be?”
I pursed my lips. “Yes. But it looks like you’ve been swimming in ashes. And it smells like it too.”
He dropped the piece of pizza on the cardboard box, unfinished, and came to stand in front of me. Putting his hands on either side of my legs, he leaned toward me. “You always said you liked that campfire smell.”
I still had to look up to meet his gaze. I wasn’t imagining it. “You’re taller too, I think.”
His eyes fluttered, and he stumbled backward. I jumped off the counter and put his arm over my shoulders. “Whoa. Are you okay?”
He nodded but didn’t answer.
“Let’s get you lying down.”
I took him to my room, where he collapsed on my bed. After only a few moments, his eyes were closed and his breathing even. I stood up, but he grabbed my arm.
“Don’t go.”
I smiled. “I’m not. I’m just going to get a wet cloth. So I can try and clean up the mess that is your face.”
His grip on my arm loosened. “Okay. But come right back.” When he let go, his fingers left white marks on my arm. I couldn’t believe how strong he was. When I’d pictured him in the Tunnels for years, I’d imagined him growing weaker. But right now, except for the almost fainting, he seemed stronger than he’d ever been.