CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

 

 

I slept the entire hour back to the hotel. My sleep was not restful. I knew I was dreaming, but I sat in a dark room, unable to see anything, even myself.

“Turn on your light,” Jumis’ voice said from somewhere in the blackness.

I did, turning my palm up and calling for the ball of flame he had given me. The energy pulled up from my core, coalescing in my hand.

The light illuminated Jumis standing in front of me. Shadows flickered across his face as the fire danced and balanced majestically.

“Where are the souls?” I asked, my throat achy as I spoke past a lump.

“In the underworld, along with Aaron. When will you come for them?”

“Tonight,” I said. I couldn’t wait another day. There would be no more battles with human casualties, not if I could help it.

I sensed him in my head, probing my thoughts, searching for my secrets. I slammed up a wall so hard that he physically reared back.

“Yes,” I said with a smile, “I remember how to do that now.”

His hand came out and stroked my forearm. “And us? Do you remember us?”

I did. I remembered the strength of their love. But it wasn’t mine, it was Dekla’s, and she lost him. My heart belonged to someone else, and I would do whatever it took to free him.

But I wasn’t going to reveal that. Not until Aaron was safe.

“I do,” I said. “I remember.”

His fingers tightened around my arm, and I didn’t need to read minds to feel his immense relief. I felt sorry for him, because I knew he loved me—no, Dekla—and he had done all of this to fulfill his promise to her.

“Tonight, then,” he said. His hand slid off my arm, and I woke as Trey shook my shoulder.

“Come on, Jayne,” he said softly. “We’re at the hotel.”

I blinked and looked around. Beth and Meredith were already gone. I swung my legs out of the truck and planted my feet on the concrete.

Trey came around the truck and placed his hands on my shoulders, forcing me to meet his gaze. “What happened out there?”

I frowned. “What do you mean? I did exactly what I was supposed to do. I got my memories back and figured out how to change the soldiers’ immediate future.”

His grip tightened on my shoulders. “What you did wasn’t natural.” When my frown deepened, he quickly added, “It was amazing. And I’ve got my powers back. But you should never have been able to remember all of that so quickly. You did something.”

It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even an accusation. It was a statement. And as I met his amber-green eyes, I realized it was a loaded statement; he expected an explanation.

How much could I tell him? If I told him I planned on saving Aaron and the other souls and then refusing to marry Jumis, Jumis could read his mind and find out. I couldn’t risk it. I would just have to tell him the plan and let him put his own pieces together.

“I made a deal with Jumis.”

“Jumis. Escort to the underworld. I knew you were still seeing him.”

The way he said it made it seem as if we were dating or something. Which, well, considering the circumstances . . . I ignored the insinuation in his tone. “He gave me back my memories.”

“In exchange for what?” Trey tilted his head, looking at me suspiciously.

“Not just my memories, but all of the souls of Samantha’s army,” I said, anxious to show him how sweet my half of the deal was.

Trey’s suspicious look didn’t go away. If anything, his eyes hardened. He took his hands off my shoulders and stepped back.

“Including Aaron,” I said, now desperate for him to support me in this decision.

“In exchange for what?” he repeated.

I sighed. That was how these things worked, wasn’t it? Never something for nothing. “I have to go down to the underworld to get the souls.”

“And?”

My lip twisted, and I lowered my eyes. “And stay with him.”

The silence between us only lasted ten seconds before Trey blurted out, “And stay with him? That makes no sense.”

I swallowed hard. “Apparently Dekla promised to marry him. He wants me to make good on that promise.” I found the courage to lift my face, and then I wished I hadn’t.

Trey’s eyes widened, his pale skin going from white to pink to purple. “Are you crazy? How could you agree to that? You realize you’re human, right?”

I tugged on his arm, desperate for reassurance. “There’s another way, isn’t there?” I remembered what Trey had said earlier about choices. There was always another way.

Trey turned away from me, shoving his hand through his hair before spinning back. “I’m not sure I can protect you from this one. You promised. Did you swear it?”

Tears pricked my eyes. “I had to! People were dying! Aaron—Aaron could’ve died!”

A flicker of compassion lit his eyes before he extinguished it. “What did you swear on?”

My lip trembled. “My mortal soul.”

He looked at the ground and shook his head, the hopelessness evident in his expression. “I don’t know, Jayne. Maybe there’s not a way out of this one.”

*~*

There was absolutely no part of me that wanted to tell Beth and Meredith about the deal I’d made. But Trey insisted.

“I’ll take you down to the underworld tonight. And I’ll do what I can to bring you back. But if I can’t, they have a right to know why.”

“Trey—” I began, but he wasn’t done.

“Beth will have to come with us. By yourself, you can only free the souls of minors, children and teenagers. We need Karta’s power to free the adults.”

I hadn’t thought of that. My body flushed cold.

“Don’t worry about her,” Trey said. “I’ll keep her safe.”

With Beth’s involvement, I had no choice but to tell them about our descent. Meredith freaked out, begging us not to go before she finally accepted I had no choice.

“There’s more,” he said, giving me a steely glare.

I sighed, wishing I didn’t have to spill this part. “I made a deal with Jumis. Me in exchange for the souls.”

Meredith wrinkled her nose. “What does that mean, you in exchange for the souls?”

When I didn’t immediately respond, Trey did for me. “She has to marry him.”

“What?” Meredith shrieked. “What about Aaron?”

I swallowed hard. “I’m doing this for him.”

“I don’t think he’s going to thank you!”

Probably not. “I had to agree to it,” I whispered. “Jumis gave me the knowledge to fight in the battle today.”

Tears filled Meredith’s eyes, but Beth studied me shrewdly, her calculating gaze very unlike that of my little sister. “Is there a loophole?”

I shrugged. “The original Dekla, she was absolutely in love with him. She wasn’t looking for a loophole. If there is one, I’m not aware of it. And you should know, Jumis can read minds.”

My sister and Meredith exchanged glances.

“I’ll do some research, see what I can find,” Meredith said. “And I’ll avoid talking to him at all costs.”

“Don’t tell me anything you find out either,” Trey said. “I’ll be accompanying them tonight, and he’ll know if he sees it through me.”

Meredith gave him a disdainful look. “I wasn’t planning on telling you anything anyway.”

Beth turned her serious brown eyes to Trey. “Why are you going with us?”

“Because the underworld is a dangerous place, and I’m a protector of the evil and shadows that reside there. You’re still mostly mortal.”

His words struck a chord. I had sworn to Jumis on my mortal soul. If only there were a way out of that.

I looked at Beth. “If you get home before me, tell Mom what happened, okay?” I wasn’t sure I would make it home at all, not if I was stuck with Jumis. But I didn’t tell her that.

She gave me a scornful look. “You’re not getting out of this that easily. You get to come home and tell Mom you married the grim reaper all by yourself.”

I laughed, and then I wrapped my arms around my sister and held her tight.

I spent the afternoon in the business center researching with Meredith until she kicked me out.

“You’re depressing me,” she said. “Go buy a chocolate bar.”

I did. Then I returned to the room and took a hot shower to calm my nerves, but it didn’t work. Meredith ordered Chinese food for dinner, and I picked at my lo-mein with my chopsticks, stomach twisting nervously.

“How does this work?” I asked Trey.

“We’ve been to the stairs before, right?” Trey met my eyes over his chow mein noodles.

I squinted at him. “Only in my dreams.”

Meredith gave him a curious look. “You guys dream together?”

He waved her off. “It’s one of the ways I have of communicating. You were dreaming, Jayne, but your soul was already finding the path. Now we have to find the path with your soul and your body.”

Another thought struck me. “If I was already dreaming about this before I ever met Jumis—does that mean making this journey was part of my destiny?”

“Aaron is in the underworld. If you were ever going to save him, making this journey was part of your destiny. Remember, our destiny is made up of our choices and desires.”

I nodded, latching onto his words and hoping I could remember that in the days of confusion yet to come. “So how do we get there in real life?”

“She’ll have to open the door for us.” He gestured at Meredith. “We’re all a team here, as I’m sure you’ve figured out. I can create the path, but she has to open it.”

“How do I do that?” Meredith asked.

“Ask Jayne. She’ll have to tell you the symbol.”

Even as he said the words, the image came into my mind. The symbol for travel—two lines intersecting, like a cross, but with arrows pointing outward on all four ends. “I’ll help you, Meredith,” I said.

She cast me a sideways look. “Your new-found confidence is kind of sexy.”

“Maybe you should be more confident in your abilities,” Trey said.

Her face turned bright red. “Maybe you traded in your confidence for conceit,” she said, her voice laced with poison.

Trey blinked at her sudden onslaught, and then his own face turned pink behind his freckles. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was just saying, confidence looks good on everyone.”

“I heard you loud and clear,” Meredith snapped. “We all did.”

“I think you better just step out of this one,” Beth said to Trey.

Trey held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Fine. I was just gonna say, ragana’s powers are stronger at night. The witching hour and all that.”

I arched an eyebrow. “That’s a real thing?”

“It’s a real thing.”

“Midnight, then.” I looked back and forth between Trey and Meredith, my stomach tying itself in knots even as I felt better having a plan. “We’ll leave at midnight.”

Trey turned on the television, searching for the news. I wanted to ask him to turn it off, but I also desperately wanted to know what was going on.

He didn’t have to search long. It was all over, reports of a debilitating disease that could seize control of the victim’s mind, making them go crazy before killing them. The string of bodies dropping from New Jersey to Kentucky was blamed on this, as well as the field of death from this afternoon. A video clip showed of our battle, but it was skewed. It showed Meredith’s funnel cloud and the humans and horses, but none of the demons or goblins or kaukas. I knew Beth and I were in that battle somewhere, but I couldn’t make out individuals.

“We have encountered a few people who seem to be surviving the disease, although they can’t tell us anything about it.” The camera flashed away from the newscaster’s face to a reporter walking along the street. The reporter kept trying to talk to a young man. The boy didn’t answer, his gaze steadfast on the road in front of him. I recognized him as the boy I’d ordered to go home; his body, anyway. His mind and soul were still far from him.

“Can you tell me your name?” The microphone stayed ready in front of the mouth of the boy-zombie, but he said nothing.

“Where are you going? Where did you come from?”

He got no response. The boy just kept walking, only one goal in mind: get home.

“Good job there,” Trey said. “Sending them home. Smart thinking. A piece of him is still in there, or he wouldn’t know which way is home.”

I shrugged off his compliment. I hadn’t done much.

“But while we don’t know what’s causing this disease, we do know new victims are being struck every day,” the newscaster said, her pretty face marred by concern. “City officials suspect it may be connected to the string of suicides a few weeks ago. As loved ones and citizens continue to report those who are missing, more than four hundred people have vanished from the Illinois-Kentucky border.” A map appeared on the screen, with the border and the affected area circled in red.

“She’s moving west,” Trey said. “She’s hightailed it out of here and is collecting more people.”

“It’s a moot point,” I said. “By tomorrow, we’ll have freed their souls, and every single one will be heading home to their families.”

“That won’t stop her from getting more,” Trey said.

“I think my fiance will help me out,” I said, trying to be glib, but I nearly choked on the word.

A stark silence fell, before Meredith broke it by saying, “Do you think the New Jersey police saw us fighting today?”

I tilted my head and considered the question. If I knew Lieutenant Bailey . . . “Yes. I’m sure they’ve been watching everything unfold. I’m sure they saw it all.” What did he think of me now? We had a tentative trust between us before, even if my powers had made him weary. Now? He probably wanted to lock me up with all the other mutants in a special jail.

Oh, wait. Wrong comic strip.

I coughed back a laugh. Someone needed to write our story. It would be new, original, groundbreaking.

The news finished up, and Trey put on a sitcom. None of us slept. I kept checking the digital clock on the nightstand. 9:50. 10:20. 11:16.

The witching hour was approaching.

I closed my eyes and fought against the nervousness by dredging up memories of Aaron in my mind. The first time we met, when I refused to meet his eyes because he reeked of lemons, and that meant I would See his death. How he didn’t let that deter him from pursuing me endlessly, how his sense of humor and easy-going attitude won me over. He pulled me out of my heartbroken stupor over Stephen.

Then I thought of how we had drifted apart over the past two months, and how it was mostly me being insecure and immature, demanding more of his time than he was able to give right now. I clung so hard that I pushed him away, so far away that he was willing to go back to England to ease the troubled feelings between us.

But it wasn’t because he didn’t want me. His last words to me, even after he broke up with me, were, “I love you. Whatever happens, remember that.”

My throat closed up at the memory. Had I even said it back? He’d followed me to Maryland, broken up with me, and declared that he loved me, all right on the heels of telling me he was leaving me to go to England. My brain had been so whiplashed I hadn’t been able to think straight.

The bed jostled, and I opened my eyes to see Meredith sitting by my head. “It’s time.”

I sat up, my eyes seeking Trey. He stood by the closet, opening and closing the door that held a handful of hangers and not much else.

“Ready?” I asked, although I had no idea what came next.

He closed the closet door. “Ready.” He took a deep breath and released it slowly. Then he put his hand on the closet door and closed his eyes.

“No way,” Meredith said, disbelief in her voice. “That’s not possible.”

Trey straightened up and released the door. “The path is formed.”

Beth bounced off the bed. “I have to see this.” She stepped over to the closet door and tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge. She shook the handle.

I stood up and wandered over to the closet. I wrapped my hand around the door knob and twisted it in my grip, but it wouldn’t even turn. I let go. “I can’t open it.”

Trey inclined his head and waved his hand toward the other bed, where Meredith still sat. “Ragana?” He kept his head lowered as if the word itself weighed him down.

Meredith pushed off the bed and stepped over, her eyes uncertain as she looked at him, but he just beckoned her forward.

“The symbol, Jayne.”

“Right,” I murmured. I traced the cross on Meredith’s arm and gave her what I hoped was an encouraging smile. Meredith’s fingers copied the tracing.

“Just do what you think will work,” Trey said, also attempting a smile.

Meredith put her hands on the door much as he had, paused a moment, and then whispered a few words.

The door knob glowed red. She took a step back, and I stepped forward.

“It’s all yours, Jayne,” Trey said, his tone weary.

I took a steadying breath and focused on the door. I didn’t make eye contact with Meredith or Beth, just stretched forth my hand and grabbed the knob.

The heat scorched my skin as if it would melt the flesh right off my palm, and my first reaction was to jerk my hand away. But I couldn’t. My skin and the doorknob had become one.