She began to cry, sort of. It didn’t feel like crying. More like convulsing, her muscles locking and unlocking in a weird seizure that probably looked every bit as ugly as their last kiss had. It was fitting, in a way.
Every atom in Lex’s body ached in protest, but she knew what she had to do. Without a word she closed her eyes and kissed his bloodless, frozen lips, the deathflash blazing as his soul burst from his body. The usual shock exploded through Lex’s face, down her neck, and into her torso, ricocheting through her body like a spray of bullets. The pain roiled and seethed until finally coming to a slow, trembling stop, her lips tingling just as they had when he’d first kissed her that night on the roof.
“I’m sorry about this, Lex,” Zara said.
At that, Lex immediately stopped crying. She stood up and pulled her hood over her head.
Zara squatted down and started to guide Driggs’s blue, wispy soul into her hands. “But you just didn’t seem to be grasping the urgency of my situation,” she continued. “I made it perfectly clear what it was I wanted from you, and yet you wouldn’t give in. So I had to resort to something drastic.”
She rocked her head from side to side, cracking the bones in her impossibly skinny neck. “You understand why Driggs, of course. He could reverse the effects of Damning. He would have ruined everything.”
In that moment Lex could see just how far gone Zara really was. Whether she was controlling her Damnings or her Damnings were controlling her, it made no difference. That line had blurred into nonexistence.
“He was an obstacle,” Zara went on, still collecting the soul, taking her sweet time with it. “He was dangerous. And most of all, he was expendable. You should be thankful I let him die so peacefully. The prospect of stabbing his guts out sure had its charms, but I decided to be merciful and go with hypothermia. So you kind of owe me.”
Lex’s voice was barely audible. “I owe you nothing.”
“Oh, but you do.” Zara stood up mid-Cull, causing some of the blue mist to drift back into Driggs’s body. The whites of her eyes were nearly gone, they were so red. “You owe me that book. It was never supposed to be yours, Lex. I was meant to find it. All those notes, those instructions written in code—they were left for me.” Her voice was growing louder. “He picked me from the start, when I first came to Croak. He showed me how to find the Loophole, taught me how to Crash with direction, told me how to steal your power to Damn. I put in all the work! That book is mine!”
Lex narrowed her eyes. “And Driggs was mine.”
With that, she tackled Zara to the ground and wrapped her hands around her throat.
Zara’s eyes bulged. She clutched at Lex’s hands, trying to tear them from her neck, but that only made Lex squeeze harder.
Lex could feel Zara’s windpipe moving beneath her skin, the veins in her emaciated neck throbbing against her fingers. Zara’s eyes were at once both wonderful and terrible to behold, all confusion and popping blood vessels. Her legs kicked spastically, her tangled silver hair creeping across the snow like a spider web.
And then something odd happened.
Zara’s face crumpled.
She was crying. Her eyes swam with tears, panic, and regret. The years of chronic rage melted away, right in front of Lex’s eyes. It was as if a younger, more innocent version of Zara had fluttered up to the surface after being shoved down for too long, one that had never meant for any of this to happen.
But Lex didn’t stop squeezing.
Not when a new emotion started to register in Zara’s gaze, a frenzied horror that heightened as the swirling blue light flowed out from her fingertips, danced through the dots of stationary snow, and rose up into the sky. Not when Zara stared straight at Lex, her fingernails digging into her hands, trying to warn her. Not even when her lips silently mouthed, “Ghost.”
Only once Zara was dead did Lex relax her grip.
And that’s when the panic set in.
Lex yanked her hands from Zara’s neck and looked up. The bluish mist floated away over the town, its light reflecting off the white specks like a glowing wintery aurora.
Driggs.
What had she done?
She took a deep, shuddering breath as the mist faded and the bitter cold finally caught up to her, making her feel more than ever like an insignificant molecule on some forgotten, dead planet.
She had to get out of there. And she’d have to take Zara’s body; if she could prove to the townspeople that she’d killed her, maybe a small part of this nightmare would finally be over.
Picking through Zara’s pocket, she grabbed her scythe and the bone key, shouldered Uncle Mort’s bag, and looked back to steal one last glimpse at Driggs.
But when she turned around, her heart clenched.
His body had disappeared.
25
Lex dropped Zara’s body under the Ghost Gum with a thump, next to the sizzling remains of Heloise.
She could barely breathe. Driggs’s face swam across her memory, making her retch. It felt as if her bones were shredding themselves into tiny pieces and poking up out of her skin like jagged little splinters.
“Lex?” Uncle Mort stepped out from behind the tree. “Wicket saw the fire and called me—the Juniors are at a hotel—what happened?”
She shook her head but couldn’t speak. She started crying again as he took her into his arms.
“Lex? What’s wrong?”
She took a few breaths and tried to form the words. It hurt even more to say it out loud. “Zara killed Driggs.”
Every muscle in Uncle Mort’s body tensed, just as Lex’s had. A shuddering breath escaped his lips, as if he’d been punched in the gut. He said nothing, only swallowed a few times and kept stroking her head with trembling hands. “How?” His voice was heavy, as if he were trying not to cry.
“She must have scythed into his cell long before she came for me,” she said in a halting voice. “Tied him up, brought him to Greycliff, and just—just left him there in the cold. For I don’t know how long.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Then she came back to check me in for a shift—”
“What? How?”
“Sofi. She’s the one who’s been hacking into our defenses. And then Zara made me scythe, and Driggs was there, and I had to—to Kill—”
Uncle Mort broke away from her, furious. Lex glanced across the Field. A sea of dark shadows was moving across the snow from the direction of the Bank. The townspeople.
Uncle Mort stared at the tree for a long time, then looked down. “And this?” he asked, kicking Zara’s body.
Lex stared out from beneath her hood. “I strangled her,” she said in an oddly detached voice.
Uncle Mort stared back, breathing heavily. “Good job, kiddo.”
A loud hacking noise interrupted them. Lex and Uncle Mort squinted into the darkness, where a figure stumbled toward them through the snow, tripping every couple of feet before falling to the ground.
“No,” Lex said, her voice shaking in horror. “No! I Damned you!”
Norwood stared at his hand, dazed. “I felt it at first . . .” He cautiously wiggled his fingers. “But I caught your hand, and I . . .”
An all-too-familiar feeling of dread landed hard in Lex’s gut. The same one she had felt a few months earlier, when Zara had Culled Lex’s power to Damn.
Norwood looked up at her, pure terror in his eyes. “What did you do to me?”
Lex shook her head. She didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility, didn’t even want to think that something as insane as that could happen on top of everything else that had gone wrong that night . . .
Norwood finally spotted his wife’s grisly remains and began to moan over them, gently stroking her charred form. Uncle Mort reclaimed his bag and dug through it until he found his scythe, just in time to face the townspeople.
They materialized out of the murky snow like an army of ghosts. Some had flashlights. Others had weapons.
All gaped at the bodies of Heloise and Zara
yet kept their distance. Norwood staggered to his feet and smoothed his clothes, still staring mournfully at his wife. He looked lost.
“People of Croak,” he started, his voice uneven. He cleared his throat and gestured weakly at the bodies. “As you can see, Zara’s dead. Lex—”
He broke off and turned around to face Lex, clearly dreading the announcement of her victory. His eyes were desperate, wrecked, as if he had nothing left to live for.
And then—they changed. All at once they blazed with the same wild, crazed hunger that had overtaken Zara.
“Oh, no,” Lex whispered.
Norwood turned back to the people. “I killed Zara.”
The resulting roar of the crowd was terrifying. Riley and Trumbull looked particularly rabid in their approval; Trumbull even waved his butcher’s knife.
Lex grabbed Uncle Mort. “He can Damn,” she said in a croaking voice. That corrupted look in his eye had confirmed it.
“What?” Uncle Mort hissed. “How?”
“I tried to Damn them both, but he must have Culled my—”
“Lex Damned my wife!” Norwood went on, his voice now strong and loud, cutting through the snow like a blade. “She, Mort, and the other Juniors have been working with Zara all along! They’re trying to destroy the Grimsphere, to eradicate our way of life! Are we going to let them?”
“No!” they cried.
“No,” Norwood said in a quieter voice, turning back to Lex and Uncle Mort with a wicked smile. “No, we’re not.”
Uncle Mort took a step back, pulling Lex with him. “We have to run,” he whispered, his face ashen. “Crash to the cabin, as close as you can get.”
Lex watched the townspeople, who stood in stunned silence for a moment before exploding across the Field toward them, Norwood at the head. “But what about the others?” she panted, kicking up snow as she staggered backwards. “Pandora, Wicket, Lazlo, everyone on our side—we don’t know if they’re safe!”
“We have to leave them,” Uncle Mort said breathlessly, gripping his scythe. “We have to grab the Juniors and get the hell out of here.”
Lex reluctantly raised her scythe, a sob shoving its way up out of her throat. “Why?”
Uncle Mort shot her one last glance before the two of them disappeared into the ether, his eyes more panicked and alive than she’d ever seen them.
“Because I think you just started a war.”
***
They landed on the Sticks River bridge.
The world soon reduced itself to a white, fuzzy blur. Lex could hear nothing but the pounding of her feet on the ground and the beating of her own heart as they ran into the forest.
She closed her eyes. Each pulse throbbed through her head like the ticking of a clock. Her whole body ached, a massive bruise. And the panic that had risen in her chest was becoming unbearable.
Not to mention the grief.
“Lex.”
She opened her eyes.
Uncle Mort had stopped running. His forehead was shiny with sweat, his normally spiky hair matted down and wet. “You all right, kiddo?” he asked, his eyes crinkling in exhaustion.
Lex said nothing as she tried to catch her breath, worlds and galaxies and universes away from all right. She swept a frozen hand across her face, smearing tears, snot, and snow into a slushy goo on her sleeve.
“He’ll be fine, you know,” Uncle Mort said.
Lex squinted at him. In the faint light of the moon he looked just as wrecked as she did. Driggs had been like a son to him—they’d lived together, worked together, teamed up to relentlessly mock Lex together. No doubt he’d envisioned great things for his adopted kid, wanted to see him grow up and become the man that he was already so well on his way to becoming.
His grief would be just as strong, and Lex could already see it in his face. Something had gone out in his eyes, something not even she could replace.
“No, he won’t,” she said.
“You said she killed him, right? Not Damned him?”
“Right, but I—” Her voice was hardly above a whisper. “I think I ghosted him.”
Lex could almost hear the blood draining from his face. “What?”
“Zara was Culling his soul when I jumped her, and she let it go. I saw it float away over the town. It never got into the Vessel.”
Uncle Mort swallowed, then rubbed the stubble on his chin, then engaged in the usual other tics that happen to people when they’re trying not to cry. “Are you sure?”
“Well, his body disappeared . . .”
“What?” He blinked. “Ghosted bodies don’t disappear. They decompose just like any other—”
A shout rang out in the distance. Lex, glad to escape any discussion involving the decomposition of Driggs’s body, broke into a sprint alongside Uncle Mort. “They found us already?”
“They know we haven’t left the town limits,” he panted, “and Norwood probably had them scour every inch of the place. It was only a matter of time before they found our tracks in the snow.”
They pressed on through the trees, finally arriving at the path to the cabin. “We’re going to have to push past the shield,” Uncle Mort said between breaths. “It’ll hurt, but—”
“No,” Lex said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out some leaves. “Eat this. It’ll let you through.”
Lex truly did feel like shit, but the way her uncle’s eyes bulged in shock almost made her feel a little better.
“You got in?” he said. “When did you figure that out?”
“The day we all scythed back to Croak, when I split from the rest of you. But—wait, why are we going to the cabin?” The word alone made her squeeze her scythe even tighter, her hands instantly beginning to sweat. “To get the Wrong Book?”
He gave her a guilty look, the kind he always flashed when owning up to something he’d known about all along.
“To get Grotton.”
***
Lex did her best to stifle the scream rising in her throat as she followed Uncle Mort through the narrow opening. The last time she’d been in this cabin, she’d never felt so scared in her life. She’d panicked and run, forgetting to take the Wrong Book, forgetting everything but the fear pounding through her head, a terror that had lasted long after she escaped into the snow.
The interior of the cabin glowed a sickly yellow color, the candle on the dusty wooden table throwing strange shadows across the bones that made up the walls. The Wrong Book sat beside it. And behind that, sitting in a chair, was Grotton.
“Hello,” he said.
Lex studied the strange man, really got a good look at him this time. He had gray hair but didn’t appear to be too ancient—in his sixties, maybe. He no longer wore a white tuxedo, but rather a drab, shapeless ensemble of rags. A knowing grin played on his lips and stood out against his long, sunken face, which was the color of eggshells. His eyes were also gray, but incredibly penetrating, as if he could see right through to the deepest, most humiliating pieces of one’s soul.
“Long time no see, Mort,” he said, his voice like rustling paper. “Twenty years now?”
“Just about.” Uncle Mort practically growled, never breaking eye contact. Lex could see the disgust rippling through his face. These two clearly had a history together.
At least it seemed that way, judging by the way Uncle Mort was rubbing his scar.
“I suppose you’re here to kidnap me,” said Grotton.
“You going to put up a fight?”
“And ruin the fun before it begins? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
They were interrupted by a faint rustle coming from the corner of the cabin. Both Lex and Uncle Mort whipped their heads around to face its source, but nothing was there.
Lex looked back at Grotton and grabbed her uncle’s arm. Her mind felt like a jigsaw puzzle that had been dumped on the floor. “You told me he was dead,” she whispered to Uncle Mort.
“To be fair, he is dead.”
“Please,” Grotton said. “Bio
logically challenged.”
“You told me he was in the Afterlife,” Lex said. “Not that he was an undead demon living right in our own backyard!”
“Again with the slander,” Grotton said. “A simple ‘ghost’ would suffice.”
That same rustling noise sounded from behind them again, growing louder. This time Lex felt an odd tickle along the base of her neck.
Something was off. True, she’d spent only about thirty seconds with Grotton the last time she’d been here, but in that short time she hadn’t felt anything approaching this sensation: a feather running up and down the inside of her spine, sending each of her nerve endings into a blast of chilly prickles.
She turned around once more, expecting to face a blank wall. But this time a figure stood there, flustered and confused and whipping his gaze around the room. His eyes were wide with shock—so wide, in fact, that it was easy to see their color.
One brown, one blue.
Lex stood absolutely still, as if the mere act of breathing would cause him to disappear. She didn’t know what her body was doing, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t anatomically possible. Her insides were melting, seeping out of her feet.
Finally Driggs’s eyes landed on Lex.
He broke into a grin.
And in the space of a yoctosecond, their bodies melded so tightly together they practically threw off sparks. Lex ran her hands through his hair, ignoring the fact that it was still half wet, half frozen.
“You’re here,” she said, holding his face in her hands, her voice a gooselike mix of confused gasps and joyous screeches. “You’re—”
She almost stumbled to the floor, her hands groping at empty space.
“Driggs?”
He popped back into existence on the other side of the cabin. This time, however, he was nothing more than a shimmering outline.
Uncle Mort tentatively reached out to touch Driggs’s chest, but his hand passed right through. Driggs showed no indication that he had felt anything. Neither did Uncle Mort, except for the look of horror on his face.