“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “I didn’t know.”
We walk on in silence. I’m unsure what to say now, and that makes me uncomfortable. I’m not usually the sort of girl who’s at a loss for words.
I keep picturing little boy Thane, his chiseled features softened by youth, stormy gray eyes wide and round, fending for himself. Homeless. Hungry and alone.
It’s unconscionable.
Finally, I ask, “How long?”
“How long what?”
“Were you on the street?” I can’t imagine what that’s like. “How old were you?”
The muscle along the bottom of his strong jaw pulses and clenches. He doesn’t like to talk about himself, especially about personal, emotional things. I understand. I keep my emotions close to the vest, too. It’s precisely why I’m known as the ice queen.
I’m about to tell him to forget I asked when he says, “Six months. I was eight.”
“I . . .” Eight years old—a little boy without the strength and self-confidence he has now. He must have been very vulnerable.
I like to think I don’t take my life for granted. I understand that I’m privileged and that many kids—most kids—have nowhere near the advantages I’ve had. But in this moment, as I walk to my destiny side by side with this boy who is so very different from me, but then not so different, I feel like I’ve never appreciated those advantages more.
“Do you—” I begin, then realize I’m about to ask the wrong question. Do you want to talk about it? To which he will reply, No. Instead, I ask, “Have you talked about it with anyone? Do Grace or your parents know?”
That muscle in his jaw clenches again. Tick, tick, tick.
A dull ache throbs at the base of my skull. I lift my hand to rub the spot, trying to relieve the pressure.
“Some.” He shifts the heavy backpack on his shoulders. “Not much. They don’t need to know.”
I twist my head side to side, loosening my tight neck muscles. “They might not need to,” I say gently, “but maybe they want to.”
When he doesn’t reply, I add, “Maybe I want to.”
This gets his attention—but not in a good way.
“No,” he says, his voice gruff and uncompromising, “you don’t.”
I can practically feel his pain. He increases his pace to catch up with the pair in front of us. He says something to them, and seconds later Gretchen’s monkey friend drops back to my side.
“He say switch buddy,” the furry thing says. “Okay?”
Hand on my neck, I study Thane’s back as we keep walking. He wants to be an enigma? All right, he can try. But there is little I can’t accomplish when I set my mind to it. I do love a challenge.
“Yes,” I say to the monkey. “Everything is just fine.”
I march on, thinking, studying . . . plotting. Thane might have been able to keep secrets from his family until now, but he’ll have a more difficult time trying to do the same with me.
CHAPTER 6
GRETCHEN
By late afternoon—what I think is late afternoon, for all I can tell in a world without a sun—everyone is exhausted. Greer is getting snippy—in other words, back to her usual charming self. The oceanid is grumpy. My own feet are starting to feel heavier. Thane and the golden maiden are the only ones who seem like they could go on walking forever. Even little Sillus, with his boundless energy, is too tired to keep walking.
I lift him up onto my shoulders and give my inner whiner a kick in the pants, and we push on. No time to rest. Besides, every time we’ve stopped for more than a minute, monsters have shown up, just like when we came through the portal—like we’re broadcasting our location.
Not that I had doubts left, but this definitely puts Nick in the clear. He’s not even in this realm anymore. He can’t be feeding info to the enemies. Either we have epic bad luck or they’re tracking us somehow. I’ve searched all our gear, twice. No one in the party has left my sight since we started. If something is telling the monsters where we are, I can’t find it.
That just means I have to stay on guard and aware of our surroundings.
Sillus rests his chin on my head and sighs.
“So,” I ask, “ready to tell me how you ended up back here?”
He shifts on my shoulders.
“Sillus minding own business,” he says, his jaw bouncing against my scalp as he talks, “when portal appear. Right there in middle of Miss Greer basement.”
“Greer’s basement?” I echo.
“Yes,” he says, with exaggerated awe. “Open up and suck Sillus in.”
That’s a far cry from the long story he promised, but it is troubling.
A portal opening in Greer’s basement is a huge coincidence. Those things can open up anywhere, but what are the odds that it would happen in the basement of a sister of the Key Generation? What are the odds that one would open up right where my sisters opened the portal that got me out of the abyss last time?
Pretty damn low.
“What else happened?” I ask.
“Sillus get suck in,” he repeats. “Said so.”
“I know that,” I say, my back muscles tensing. “But did you see anything else? Anyone or anything unusual about the portal or your trip back?”
“No, all normal,” he says with another sigh, as if he’s sad to disappoint me. Then he jerks up, nearly knocking himself backward off my shoulders. I wrap my hands around his legs to keep him on. “One thing strange.”