I didn’t want to know what that said about the custodian’s closet full of supplies.
“It’s a popularity contest,” I said, glancing around at where the shelves should have been, and the vending machine. Even the wall-mounted telephone was missing, though the plug thing was in the wall, right next to the door. “Just like school.”
“Huh?” Luca ducked under the vines and into the room, then headed straight for the exterior door, gripping the mop handle like a bat now.
“You know, the most popular wins. Like the Snow Queen pageant. Only here, the popular highway gets paint and signs. The popular rooms get desks and chairs. It’s like this hell was tailor-made for me.”
“How so?” Luca pushed open the exterior door, but it only moved a couple of inches before snagging on vines draped over the outside.
I held the door in place for him with my gloved hand, so he could hack at the vines through the crack. “I always knew popularity was a survival skill in high school, but here, it’s really an issue of life and death.” And with that realization, I suddenly felt a little calmer. A little more in control. Yeah, this place still sucked, but it also made sense, in a weird kind of way.
Here, just like in my own world, popularity was power; survival required the occasional sacrifice of a damaged limb—or a damaged cousin—and alliances were crucial. At home, Laura and I needed each other to overthrow Peyton’s tyranny, a concept I’d recognized in her as soon as we heard about Alexander the Great in world history. Here, Luca and I needed each other to hack our way through the carnivorous landscape and dodge flesh-eating bunnies. Or whatever.
It wasn’t the game that had changed—it was just the venue. Fortunately for us both, as demonstrated by my social triumph in spite of overwhelming odds, I was damn good at the game.
“I guess.” Luca cut through the first vine and both halves of it fell away from the door. “But I doubt that being voted most likely to succeed will save you from a two-headed monster who wants to eat you alive from both ends at once.”
“You’re right.” He severed another vine, and I jumped out of the way of the yellowish spray without letting go of the door. “That sounds more like the homecoming court than the Who’s Who. Especially if you consider the Carter sisters to be a two-headed monster. Which, having been nearly eaten alive by them, I do.”
Luca laughed and glanced at me over his shoulder.
“Seriously. They’re creepy, even with their mouths closed, and that hair would shame Medusa.”
“Okay, I think this is the last one.” He reached overhead to slice through the only vine still visible, and it fell away with another spurt of yellow fluid. But instead of throwing the door open, he closed it and turned to me, his brown-eyed gaze steady and serious. “Sophie, I have no idea what’s on the other side of this door. It could be an empty courtyard, or a death trap full of monsters waiting to devour us slowly while we scream.”
“Like the judges’ panel at regionals. Got it.”
“No.” Luca frowned at me and his hand tightened around the doorknob. “This isn’t some stupid dance competition, Sophie. This is real life, and if you miss a step, you don’t get a bad score. You get dead. Like, bleeding, screaming, eaten-alive dead. Do you understand?”
I nodded slowly as fear rolled over me, triggered more by the look in his eyes than by anything he’d said. He was scared. And if he was scared, I should be too. But survival wasn’t something I’d ever really thought about before. It had never been an issue. “So, what’s the plan?”
He exhaled and looked a little relived that I was taking him seriously. “Cautious steps. Open eyes. Fast feet, if necessary. We stay together, and we stay calm. There are creatures out there that can smell your fear. The best way to survive is to stay out of sight and keep your emotions in check.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, and nearly choked on it. “Are you trying to scare me?”
“Yes. In the interest of keeping us both alive.”
My head spun, and the room seemed to tilt around me, just a little bit. And that’s when the reality sank in. Hard. I’d made it so far without freaking out because the whole thing felt like some kind of bizarre dream that I would wake up from any moment. Maybe I’d be in my bed at home. Maybe I’d be on the floor in the school hallway, where I’d been laid out cold by a classroom door.
Intellectually, I’d known this was real the whole time, but because this place didn’t feel real, the consequences didn’t feel real either. Until I stopped to truly think about the possibility of my own death.
“I don’t want to die. I want to go home,” I said, hating how weak the truth felt. How pathetic it sounded. But Luca didn’t laugh at my fear. How could he, when I could see it reflected in his eyes.
“Me too. You ready?”
“Not even close. Let’s go.” I pulled the glove tighter on my left hand and Luca nodded. Then he pushed the door open, and I followed him into the quad. Which looked almost exactly like it did in our world. The only real differences were the lack of wooden picnic tables and the presence of crimson creeper vines trailing down two walls from the roof of the school.
I exhaled deeply in relief. “You’re right. This is terrifying,” I said, jogging down the three concrete steps to the grass, which was a darker, more olive shade of green here. Maybe school was the scariest part of this Netherworld. Maybe the hard part was over.
Luca frowned over my sarcasm. “Just because you can’t see a threat doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
“Same thing goes for eavesdroppers in the bathroom. This place is just like high school.”
“If that’s true, I’m not sure I want to go to your school after all,” he said, clomping down the steps, glancing around cautiously for any new threat.
“Okay, so, now what?” I asked as I followed him across the quad, picturing the missing tables in my head. And suddenly the hush felt fragile. False. There were no birds chirping and no traffic sounds. No hum of overlapping conversations. No cell phones buzzing on silent because they weren’t technically allowed in school. It was like someone had pressed the mute button on the soundtrack of my life, and my ears were ringing with the silence.
“Now we find someplace safe to hide while we figure out how to get back home,” Luca said.
“Safer than an empty quad?”
“Yeah.” We reached the corner of the building and to the left, stretching out behind the school, were what should have been the baseball diamond and the football practice field. But the Netherworld version only had the football goalposts. “At least, somewhere less exposed.”
“So, any idea how to do that? Go home?” I turned away from the missing sports complex, unnerved by the inconsistencies between my school and this one. Creeped out by the humanish figures hanging from one goalpost. Upside down. I wasn’t sure if they could see us, but I was sure I didn’t want them to.
“There are several ways to cross over,” Luca said, tugging me steadily away from both the quad and the athletic fields. When we rounded the next corner, we’d see the street, and the front of the school, but suddenly that didn’t seem like a very good idea either. If there were creatures hanging from the football goalposts, what would be driving the streets in this Nether hell?
“But none of them work for me,” Luca continued, and I began to drag my feet. “I can’t cross over on my own. I don’t have…what it takes. But maybe I could get us back, if I could figure out how we got here in the first place.”
“I’m a bit curious about that myself,” a strange voice said from behind us, and I froze. Luca’s hand went stiff in my grip. We turned slowly, and I had to let go of him. But then his gloved hand wrapped around my gloved hand and I felt a little better because of the connection, even if my skin was no longer touching his.
However, that comfort evaporated when I got a good look at the man standing where we’d been a few steps earlier. My heart jumped into my throat and threatened to choke me. Where had he come from? What the hell
was he?”
He wore a suit, like he’d just come from the office, and his voice was educated. Cultured, like the men who worked with my father. His face wasn’t young or old, or anything in between, but somehow he felt…ageless. Not ancient, but eternal. I couldn’t have explained what gave me that impression, after just seconds of staring at him, but I couldn’t shake the certainty that that was true. He was timeless. Infinite.
But the worst part was his eyes. Not white and empty like the dead guy in the hall, but solid black and featureless. The dead guy’s white eyes were creepy because they looked like the iris and pupil had been sucked out of them. This man’s eyes were creepy because they’d never had irises or pupils in the first place. Somehow, I knew that at a glance.
“Sophia Cavanaugh,” the man said, and my hand tightened around Luca’s.
“Sophie. How the hell do you know my name?” I demanded, and Luca stepped back, pulling me with him. I didn’t dare look away from the man with the black eyes, but on the edge of my vision, Luca looked tense. Ready for either flight or fight.
“He’s a hellion,” Luca said, his voice steady but thick with caution. I had no idea what a hellion was.
“And you are…” The hellion’s black eyes narrowed, and though I couldn’t follow his gaze since his eyes had no features, I was sure he was staring at Luca. Studying him. “Necromancer. You are special,” the hellion finished finally, his dark eyebrows bunched, his forehead wrinkled, like he was thinking. “Useful.”
The hellion’s head moved almost imperceptibly, and I felt the weight of his gaze, even with no obvious sign that he was looking at me. “You are something ordinary, with useful connections.”
“Sophie, I’m so sorry,” Luca whispered, and the hairs on the backs of my arm stood up.
“Why?” I whispered back, though this hellion could clearly hear us.
“Because I can’t get us out of here. We’re not going home.”
“Oh, you are going home, as soon as I can arrange for your transport,” the hellion said to him, and goose bumps rose on my arms, making those tiny hairs stand up even taller. “Because you are more use to me in your own world. But she is not.”
“Okay, this is ridiculous.” I dropped Luca’s hand and ignored him when he hissed my name. I wasn’t sure what a hellion was, but he didn’t have claws, or sharp teeth. He didn’t even have poisonous thorns, like those damn vines. How dangerous could he be?
“Who the hell are you to tell me where I’m not going?” I demanded. “For your information, I’m only in this festering hellhole of an alternate dimension because I don’t know how to get out of it, not because you want me here. Once I figure out how to get home, there’s not a damn thing you or any of the other assorted creepy-crawlies out there squirming through poisonous underbrush can do to keep me here against my will.”
The hellion stared at me for a moment. Then he burst into deep, creepy laughter that sounded nothing like the ominous “mwa ha ha” I would have expected, if I’d known monsters could laugh in the first place.
“Miss Cavanaugh, your indomitable spirit and foolish bravado are both highly entertaining and deliciously familiar. I believe we’re going to have a lot of fun together, at least until your usefulness has passed.”
“What the hell does that—”
Before I could even finish my question, the hellion waved one smooth, pale hand in my direction, and the Netherworld swam around me. Luca shouted my name as I crashed to the ground on the olive-colored grass. I had less than a second to blink up at the sky—a sickly yellowish color instead of blue—before Luca’s face appeared, staring down at me in concern.
Then everything began to go gray, and an instant before my eyes closed, he fell to the earth at my side. The last thing I saw was Luca, his beautiful eyes half-closed, staring at me from a foot away while his hand crawled slowly toward mine.
I tried to reach for him, but moving felt impossible. I strained, and our fingers touched.
Then everything went dark.
A scratchy, slithery sound snaked its way into my head, pulling me from sleep, and dimly I realized I’d been hearing it for a while. But I couldn’t place the sound. Maybe it was left over from my subconscious, a relic from my dream about a beautiful boy and the hellish world we’d been trapped in.
I groaned and waited for the nightmare to fade, like dreams always seem to. But this one was sticking. I could still smell the heavy outdoorsy scent of that awful vine and the rotten stench of the yellowish fluid it had leaked.
I rolled over to pull my pillow over my head, but my hand landed not on my pillow, or my comforter, or even my foam mattress topper, but on something spiky and stiff. Something that scratched my palm and sent chills up my arm. Something like…grass.
My eyes flew open, but I couldn’t make sense of the lattice four feet overhead, threaded through with that damn green vine. Only it didn’t look very green in what little light filtered through, and the lattice wasn’t actually a lattice. It was some kind of metal dome covered in crimson creeper from the ground all the way up, leaving no gap more than a few inches wide.
“No, no no…!” I pushed myself upright and squeezed my eyes shut, then rubbed them for good measure. When I open my eyes, it will all be gone. I’ll be at home. In my room.
But when I opened my eyes, nothing had changed.
“What the hell is this?” I demanded, though there was no one there to answer as I crawled closer to the side of the dome, trying to ignore the fact that I was getting Netherworld grass stains on a pair of designer jeans. Through one of the larger gaps between the vines, I could make out an ancient-looking swing set and an old-fashioned metal slide shaped like a rocket ship. A very familiar rocket ship.
Recognition clicked into place in my head, and I groaned. “Seriously?” I said, inching away from the thin end of a vine reaching for me. I was on the elementary school playground. Inside the damn jungle gym. Caged by playground equipment and malevolent plant life.
What could be worse? The fact that the sky had changed since I’d passed out on command in front of the hellion. The yellow was darker now—more of a burnt umber—and the anemic sun was nowhere to be seen.
Also, Luca was gone. I was alone, in hell, and both the gloves and the box cutter were missing.
Okay, think, Sophie!
I could get out of this. I had to get out of this. I hadn’t spent the past ten years of my life dancing my tail off alongside girls with half my natural talent and a third of my dedication just to die in some scary-ass alternate dimension before I had a chance to truly shine in my own world.
On my knees, I eyed the vines critically, trying not to see how they slithered over one another. Trying not to hear how the thorns scraped the metal bars. They were constantly moving, but they seemed to be moving evenly, so even the occasional gap that opened in my living cage was too small for me to fit through without scraping myself on a poisonous thorn.
“You should have kissed him,” a voice said from my left, and my head swiveled in that direction so fast I swear I heard my own neck pop. A girl sat yoga-style on the ground in a dirty pair of jeans and a tee so faded I couldn’t tell the original color. Her tangled blondish hair was inches from the arced side of the jungle gym, but she didn’t even appear to notice the vines at her back, and though she watched me, her eyes never seemed to truly focus.
She hadn’t been there a second ago.
“Okay, I’ve had enough of people appearing out of nowhere. I don’t know about the Netherworld, but in my world, that’s considered rude.” And impossible, thanks to the laws of physics. Or maybe gravity. I was fuzzy on the scientific details. “Who the hell are you?”
Her eyes were normal, so I’d ruled out “hellion” and “creepy dead guy from the hall,” but I was no longer prepared to assume anyone was harmless based on appearance alone.
“Doesn’t matter anymore.” The girl swiped one arm across her forehead and left a smear of dirt in its place. There was something
familiar about her blue eyes. I felt like I should know her, but I couldn’t quite remember where I’d seen her. “You matter. Until he’s done with you.”
Her voice was familiar too. “Are you real?” Or was I hallucinating, on top of everything else? “Do I know you?”
She laughed, but I didn’t see what was funny. “I don’t even know me most days, so how can I know if you do?” She blinked, then frowned at the ground. “That’s pretty good,” she mumbled, running one hand through her nest of pale hair. “Maybe for the third verse…”
Her eyes completely lost focus then, and she sang beneath her breath, a clear, frail melody questioning her own existence. I didn’t know the tune and I wasn’t even sure all the words were real, but I knew that voice. She closed her eyes, and I studied her, and I probably would have drawn the obvious conclusion earlier, if not for the sheer impossibility of it.
That, and her complete lack of makeup.
“Addison Page,” I said, and her eyes flew open, her focus crisp at last. “You’re Addison Page.”
She nodded slowly. “I’d almost forgotten….”
In middle school, I’d watched her show obsessively, convinced I looked enough like her to play her younger sister on television. But then I’d focused my ambition on dance, and she’d left TV to release an album, and earlier this year she’d…
“You’re dead.” I shook my head, trying to wrap my brain around facts that made no sense. “I saw it on the news. How can you be here if you died?”
“I don’t know.” Addison scowled at me, like I’d hurt her feelings. “How are you here, if you died?”
“I’m not… I didn’t…” I didn’t know how to respond to nonsense.
Addison wasn’t really dead, obviously, and neither was I. Had she gotten stuck here, just like me and Luca? Had her family just assumed she was dead, when she went missing? Would my dad assume I was dead if I never made it home?
“I don’t know. That’s the problem,” I said finally. “I don’t know how we got here, and I don’t know how to get back.”