“What?” Fisher, Kevin, and I said as one.
Krista cleared her throat and spoke up. “There’s no way I’m going to stay back here and explain to Tristan how I let her go alone,” she said. “Dealing with the fallout from that would be way worse than anything the Shadowlands has to offer.”
“Wow, Krista. I’m impressed,” Fisher said, looking her up and down.
Krista lifted her shoulders. “She’s my best friend. Like my sister. If she goes, I guess I have to go.”
Kevin turned his back to us and murmured something in Fisher’s ear. Then Fisher turned his back on us, and the two of them got into it, whisper-fighting something fierce until Fisher finally shouted, “Fine!”
I felt Krista tense up. “Fine what?” I asked.
“Fine, you guys can go. But I’m coming with you. Safety in numbers, right?”
He stepped aside, forming a hole in the line between him and Kevin. The bridge loomed before us, the steel girders seeming huge at the foot of the bridge before they tapered up and disappeared inside the swirling gray mist. My throat went dry, and the mixture of fear and adrenaline coursing through me made my head swim. But I forced myself to walk toward the seam where the muddy road met the steel ramp, and I didn’t look back, though I could hear Krista and Fisher behind me.
I stopped in front of the wall of mist. Eighteen paces and I’d see Darcy again. Eighteen paces and I’d have my dad back. And Aaron and Jennifer and everyone else who was needlessly suffering. Fisher stepped up to my left, Krista to my right.
“I should warn you guys, it’s not pleasant in there,” I said. “There are voices. Whispers. And something kept trying to grab me. I don’t know who or what, but…it wasn’t fun.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Krista said.
“Don’t worry,” Fisher told her, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “I got your back.”
I took a deep breath. “Ready?”
Fisher looked over his shoulder and gave Kevin a nod. Kevin lifted his walkie to his lips and spoke. “Joaquin. Come in, Joaquin. Rory, Krista, and Fish are going over the bridge. They say they know how to open the portal to the Shadowlands. You might want to get your ass up here.”
“Fisher!” Krista and I scolded.
Fisher shrugged. “You don’t go into battle without backup. Now, let’s go rescue my girlfriend.”
And then he took the first step into the mist. I clenched my teeth and followed him, knowing that Joaquin and possibly Tristan—if he could get away—were already on their way here, but it didn’t matter anymore. This wasn’t going to take long. By the time he got here, it would all be over.
The second the fog enveloped me, I was alone. Fisher should have been dead ahead, Krista to my right, but I couldn’t see either one of them. Then, suddenly, a hand closed around mine and Krista reappeared. She smiled wanly and I smiled back.
“Here goes.”
Together, we began to count our steps.
“One…two…three…”
The whispers began.
“…she’s brought a friend…”
“…pretty, pretty…”
“…bite the toes off one by one…”
Krista’s grip on my hand tightened. Fear coursed through me, pulsating through my veins, my temples, my wrists, my heart, but I knew I couldn’t stop. Darcy was depending on me. My dad and Aaron needed me. I imagined their faces, their smiles, their eyes, and kept walking. I’d survived this once before. I could survive it again. For them.
“Four…five…”
A cold finger swept along my cheek. Krista yelped and swatted at the back of her neck.
“What was that?” she whined.
“It’s nothing. It’s just messing with us,” I told her, willing the terror out of my voice.
“What’s messing with us?” Her grip on my hand was like a vice.
“The bridge,” I said through my teeth. “Just keep going. We’re almost there.”
“Six…seven…eight…” I counted on my own this time.
“…still so clueless…”
“…doesn’t know what she’s…”
“…dark as pitch, that one…”
“Rory?” Krista mewled, looking over her shoulder at nothing. “This was a bad idea. I wanna go. Let’s go, okay? Please?”
Then she screeched again, and I saw her hair rise up behind her, some invisible thing in the mist pulling at its matted strands.
“Oh my god,” she whined, her breath broken. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my—”
“There’s nothing there,” I promised her. “Keep moving.”
“Nine…ten…”
The mist to my left swirled, then started to pulse. In and out. In and out. As if someone was standing just inches away, breathing. Watching. Krista held my hand with both of hers now, pulling me awkwardly against her side.
“Fisher?” I whispered.
The response was a laugh so dark and evil it couldn’t have belonged to a human being. At least not a living one. My brain went momentarily fuzzy, and I was sure I was about to pass out from the fear. But Krista clung to my side, steadying me with her terror and forcing me to be the brave one. I knew I couldn’t go down. If I went down, all was lost.
“You don’t need them. Your family. You don’t,” Krista whispered furtively, staring at the pulsating mist. “You’ve got me now. And Tristan, Joaquin. Darcy and your dad were going to move on anyway, right? Why don’t you just let it go? Just let it go so we can get the hell out of here?”
I clenched my teeth and ignored her. I had to. If I listened to what she was saying I was going to punch her in the face. I turned and kept walking, now dragging Krista with me.
“Thirteen…fourteen…fifteen…sixteen.”
“Nonononononono,” Krista babbled, shaking her head. “No, please. No.”
“…come out, come out, wherever you are!”
“…never ever thought it would end this way…”
“…closer, dearie, just a little closer…”
A bony finger swiped my ear from top to bottom, tucking stray hairs behind it. I felt a chill down my back and almost squealed. Krista planted her feet and leaned backward, doing her best to root me to the spot. Luckily, I was stronger. I closed my eyes and took the last two steps, yanking on her arm.
“Seventeen,” I said. “Eighteen.”
We stopped. Krista shook from head to foot. I could hear her teeth chattering. I gathered every bit of courage I had left within me, my heart pounding so hard I could feel little else, and turned to the left. There was no sign of Fisher. Whatever he thought he might save us from, it wasn’t going to happen. We were on our own. Hopefully he’d just keep walking and find himself right back where he’d started, as I had two days ago.
“Roreeeee…” Krista called out. Sweat had pooled between our palms and turned to ice.
“Don’t worry. Everything is gonna be fine.”
This was for my family. This was for my dad and Darcy and Aaron. As much as I hated to think of him at that moment, I closed my eyes and conjured up a picture of Steven Nell, gasping and sputtering as he took his very last breaths. I held my own breath and whispered, “I took another person’s life.”
There was a loud bang, like the sound of a dump truck lowering its metal lift to the ground without care. The bridge beneath us shook. Krista somehow tightened her grip on me, squeezing my fingers until I thought my hand would shatter. The mist in front of us started to move, haphazardly at first, like smoke being waved off a fire, but it quickly organized itself into a vortex, swirling before us like a sideways tornado opening its mouth. We stood there, but we felt no wind.
I was staring at an endless depth of blackness, darker than anything I’d seen on Earth, and I was sure that I had been duped. I was certain that at any second, something cold and gray and slim
y was going to reach out and grab me and Krista and drag us into hell.
She was going to spend eternity suffering in the Shadowlands, and it was my fault.
“Krista,” I said through my teeth. “Run.”
“What?” she whined.
I was about to turn and push her as hard as I could back into the mist, but then—right then—I heard her. Her voice was so close she couldn’t have been more than two feet away.
“Rory! You came!”
“Darcy!”
I reached into the darkness—reached toward the voice—and my fingers found cloth. A sleeve. I dug my fingernails into it as hard as I could and pulled. I had her. I had Darcy. Then the person I was clinging to appeared, and it wasn’t Darcy.
It was Steven Nell.
He looked exactly the same as he had the last time I’d seen him. The stringy dark hair falling over his forehead. The thick glasses perched on his nose. The cruel smile on his thin, pale lips.
Suddenly time stopped. I felt the blade of his knife in my stomach as if it had just happened. Saw the blood in my sister’s hair. My father’s body crumbling to the ground. It was as if every nightmare I’d had for the past month was suddenly coming to life in vivid, horrifying, excruciating detail.
“Rory Miller,” he said gleefully. “You’ve come home.”
Suddenly I knew. He wanted to do it again. He was going to do it again. He was going to murder us, slaughter us, over and over and over again for as long as the universe existed. Until the end of time. He was looking forward to it.
I let go of him and ran. Right into Krista.
She looked up at me, her blue eyes dark with rage.
“Krista?” I whispered.
“Welcome to the Shadowlands, Rory.”
Then she shoved me with a strength I never would have imagined she had in her, right into Steven Nell’s waiting arms.
I stared at Krista, feeling Steven Nell’s awful breath warming the back of my neck. She was the accomplice? It wasn’t possible. She was my friend. My best friend. I’d treated her like a sister, and she had done the same for me. How could she have done this? How could she have tried to pin everything on me, dragged my family to the Shadowlands, plotted behind our backs, and lied to our faces?
Krista smoothed her wet hair back from her face and lifted her chin as she stared me down. But she was still Krista. Still a sweet, pretty girl who wanted nothing more than to be everyone’s friend.
Wasn’t she?
“I can’t just take her. You know that,” Steven Nell said, his watery eyes flicking over Krista like she was beneath his notice. “Rory Miller must come willingly.”
He held his right arm around my middle like a vise, my back against his torso, and reached up to run his frigid, dry knuckles down my cheek. I could feel the random stubble on his chin pinching my skull through my hair as my head rubbed up against it. Bile rose up in the back of my throat. I squirmed, trying to wrench away from him, but he was strong. So much stronger than he’d been in life.
“Krista?” I said, pulse pounding furiously in my veins. Every inch of my body trembled, which pissed me off. I hated showing fear in front of Nell. “What the hell is going on?”
From the corner of my eye, I saw something shift in the darkness. A whisper of a figure. My father? Darcy? Could I still save them?
“I just want to go home,” Krista said simply. “I don’t belong here.”
“That’s what this is about?” I demanded. “You getting to go to your damn prom?”
“Don’t you get it, Rory? I wasn’t supposed to die,” Krista snapped, bending at the waist. “You know it. I know it. And that night I brought Steven Nell up here, he told me the universe knew it, too. That it upsets the balance when someone takes their life by mistake. So he made me an offer. He wanted you for his eternal pet, but the Shadowlands won’t just take a goody-goody Lifer like you unless you come willingly. And he knew how to make that happen.”
“What about Darcy? She didn’t come willingly,” I said.
Krista smirked. “You forget: She wasn’t a Lifer yet. Not officially.”
“You’re insane,” I said, shaking my head, trying to pull away as Nell stroked my hair. “There’s nothing that could make me sign up for an eternity with him.”
“Oh, I think you will,” Nell said lightly.
He lifted a lock of my hair and slowly drew it under his nose, sniffing it. A disgusting shudder of sheer pleasure rocked his entire body before he reverently touched it to his lips. My bottom lip wobbled and I closed my eyes, trying not to give Nell the satisfaction of hearing me sob.
“He gave me the tainted coins. He told me that if I ushered eighteen souls to the Shadowlands, including your little family”—Krista spat the word as if it had singed her tongue—“I could have what I wanted. I could have my life back. I got Pete to help me because I knew I couldn’t overpower those people alone. Told him the Shadowlands would repay him for his hard work, too.”
“What did you promise him?” I bit out.
“He wanted to see his brother again. Kid died when Pete was only eight years old. So I told him he could go to the Light and see him.” Krista shrugged.
“And I’m guessing you never intended to deliver on that promise.”
Krista smirked. “How could I? I’m just little old me. Little old persuasive me. It was just too bad Cori followed me, when I went to meet up with Pete that night after he ‘disappeared,’ and overheard us together. It really sucked, having to push her off that cliff.”
My throat burned, and tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Couldn’t believe it was coming from Krista Parrish’s mouth.
“Why eighteen souls?” I asked. “Why take my family?”
“Because he knew if I did that, he’d be able to cut another deal. With you.”
I swallowed hard. My scalp tingled every time Nell’s fingernails brushed my hair. “What?” I asked. “What deal?”
Krista took a step forward. Her eyes looked dead as she tilted her chin and got right in my face. “Your eternal soul for theirs.”
My heart free-fell into my stomach. Nell started to laugh. I felt the breath of it against my ear. His scrawny body shook from the force of it, jarring against mine in fits and starts. I turned my head to gaze into the endless black. My family was in there somewhere, and I was the only one who could save them.
As long as I sacrificed myself.
Not that it was even a choice. Was there any way I could ever choose myself over them? They wouldn’t even be dead if it weren’t for me. If I hadn’t gotten away from Nell that day in the woods, Darcy and Dad would still be alive. They’d be sad without me, sure, but they’d be alive and they’d move on. Instead, their lives were over and they’d just logged a few days in hell to boot, thanks to little old me.
The choice was clear. If it was either me suffering forever in the Shadowlands, or them, I picked me.
I looked down at my feet, a steely cold resolve coming over me. I knew they didn’t deserve to be here, but in the end, in truth, didn’t I? Nell might have been an evil bringer of death, but he was still a living human being, and I had killed him. I had done it on purpose. I had done it with malice in my heart. I had relished the act of it. In that moment, murdering him had felt good. It had felt right.
My dad and Darcy didn’t belong in the Shadowlands. But maybe I did.
I closed my eyes and pictured my father, Darcy, my mom. In my mind’s eye, I looked at each of them, solidifying their images in my mind, and said good-bye.
“No, Rory!” I heard Darcy scream, though whether it was real or imagined, I had no idea. “No! Don’t do it! Please!”
I blocked out her appeals, which made what I was about to do that much easier.
I opened my mouth to say it. To say yes, I would willingly go to the Shadowlands if th
e innocents would be set free. I looked up at Nell. His awful grin widened, deepening the lines on his face.
“I—”
“Rory, no!” Tristan’s voice shouted. “Don’t do it! It’s a trap!”
Tristan and Joaquin appeared out of the mist. Krista reeled around, yelling, and struck out at Joaquin. His eyes widened in surprise, but he reacted quickly. He grabbed her arm, pinned it to her side, and kicked her legs out from under her, shoving her face-first to the ground.
“What the hell is going on?” Joaquin asked me.
“She’s the one who’s been sending people to the Shadowlands,” I said. “It was Krista the whole time.”
Tristan and Joaquin exchanged a look, as if this didn’t entirely surprise them.
“So Liam was telling the truth,” Tristan said.
Joaquin knelt beside Krista, his lips a millimeter from her ear. “If I were you, I’d stay the hell down.”
Then he shoved himself up and placed his foot on the small of her back.
“Rory.” Tristan reached for me, but Nell pulled me back, a few steps farther into the abyss. I eyed Tristan desperately, wishing there was some way he could save me from this, like he’d saved me from so many other awful moments. But not even Tristan could fix this.
“Rory, listen to me. It was a setup,” he said quickly. “Bea found Liam. It turns out he and Pete knew each other in the other world, and that was why they always acted so weird around each other. Liam didn’t tell us, because he thought his connection to Pete might make us suspect him, and Pete didn’t want to get Liam involved. But last night Krista let him go, hoping to distract us with another manhunt. He was with Lalani in her room by the docks, and he’s fine.”
“Okay. Okay, that’s good,” I said, trying as hard as I could to cling to something positive. At least Liam would be okay. Eventually. At least my first instincts about him had been correct.
“Pete’s so-called confession was a setup,” Tristan continued. “They wanted you to be alone—or sort of alone—when you heard it. Pete said Krista helped the Tse twins escape the mayor earlier and got them riled up again. The mob was just a distraction for the rest of us to deal with so she could get you to go into the jail alone and he could blurt it out to you—make you come up here. None of this is real.”