Boulder gripped his weapon, but didn’t answer.
“Lex, your Lifeglass,” Uncle Mort whispered in her ear, urgent. “Give it to me.”
Confused, Lex pulled it out and handed it to him. Images started to flash through the glass as he shook it, trying to look for something.
“What’s the matter with you?” Norwood was yelling at Boulder, gasping for air. “Shoot her!”
“Do it, and we’re both dead,” Skyla warned.
The guards looked highly uncomfortable with this situation, Boulder in particular. Until today Skyla had been their superior, their mayor. He obviously trusted her in some capacity or had a history with her, but the president had given Norwood a fair amount of authority since he arrived. Plus he was still the mayor of Croak—Boulder was obligated to protect him. “Hold your fire,” he instructed the other guards, his mind churning.
“You idiot!” Norwood was trying to tear Skyla’s arm away from his neck, but the woman was stronger than she looked. It barely seemed to take any effort to restrain him. “SHOOT HER!” His face was getting redder and redder. His hands opened and closed.
Lex tensed. She knew that look.
She knew that feeling.
“Hurry up!” she told Uncle Mort, who was still peering into the Lifeglass. “He’s going to Damn her too!”
The Lifeglass flickered once more, and Uncle Mort smiled.
“I’m gonna go ahead and call a time-out,” he announced, standing up from behind the desk, “while we go to the instant replay.”
He held up the Lifeglass, and there it was, plain for all to see: President Knell being Damned—by Norwood.
The guards shifted their aim as Skyla dropped Norwood to the floor. He looked stunned; even he realized how much he had just doomed himself.
Mayor or not, he’d assassinated the president.
He looked up at the sloped ceiling as if hoping to receive further instructions from on high, but found only a pair of guards closing in on him. “I—I just came here to transport a prisoner, and—the president asked me to stay on as an advisor,” he rambled. “I had nothing to do with this, I swear! They’re tricking you!”
But just as they were about to grab him, his expression went hard again. “I’ll Damn you too!” He stood up and held his hands out in front of him. The guards froze.
“Why aren’t they shooting?” Lex said to Uncle Mort. “He can’t Damn them from a distance; he has to touch them!”
“Yeah, but they don’t know that,” Uncle Mort said.
Lex opened her mouth to enlighten them, but Uncle Mort hissed “No!” and pulled her closer to him. “He’s doing a marvelous job of distracting them.” Skyla appeared over the top of the desk and dropped down beside them. “Now we can seal the portal.”
“With what?” Lex asked. She eyed Uncle Mort’s bag, dying to find out what was the one thing in the world that could destroy a portal.
But instead of going for his bag, Uncle Mort reached over the top of the desk and grabbed the computer keyboard. “Here,” he said, giving it to Skyla. “Do your thing.”
Handing off her scythe to Elysia, Skyla took the keyboard from him and started to type. Lex noticed that her hands were shaking. Uncle Mort noticed too, because he put his hand on her knee.
Skyla hit enter, then looked at the vault door. When nothing happened, she frowned. “That was the code!”
“Shhh,” Uncle Mort said. He took her face in his hands and spoke in a calm voice. “Try it again.”
Skyla took a deep breath and slowly retyped. This time when she hit enter, the vault door swung out into the open sky.
Lex grinned. The tricked-out windows of the office may have blocked the souls, but a door was still a door. She looked back at Uncle Mort. He was still trying to calm Skyla down, so Lex stepped inside the Afterlife—just for a minute, for one last look.
Unlike in Croak, there were no wrestling presidents to greet her. In fact, the space was deserted, which wasn’t surprising; with the entire structure of Necropolis acting as its atrium, there was no need for souls to hang around the main entrance.
“Hey, douchenozzle.”
“Gah!” The Afterlife wasn’t as deserted as Lex thought. “Stop doing that!”
Cordy peered into the office. “Are we winning?”
“I think we’re currently at a standoff,” Lex whispered. “What are you doing here?” She spotted Kloo approaching in the distance, followed by Tut. What was this, a party in her honor?
And then it hit her. The portals were closing. Forever.
They were coming to say goodbye.
Lex gripped the bottom of her hoodie. She needed something to hold on to. “No,” she whispered to Cordy. “I’m not ready yet. When we go back to Croak to deal with the vault there, I’ll meet up with you then!”
Cordy shook her head. “You heard Uncle Mort. Once this portal-closing party gets started, we’re all going to be running around like undead chickens with our undead heads cut off, trying to keep the Afterlife together.”
“But—”
“Lex,” Cordy said in a firm voice. “Do what you have to do. Stop whining, find Mom and Dad, and fix up this increasingly crappy craphole of an Afterlife. You feel me, bro?”
“No, bro, I don’t—”
“Hi, Lex!” Kloo jumped in. “They’re closing up the Afterlife, huh?”
Lex bit back the rest of her argument with Cordy. “Yeah. Looks that way.”
“Hope it works.”
“Me too.” Lex paused. Kloo was one of the souls who’d suffered from memory loss, and they’d always been cautious about upsetting her. But if this really was the last time Lex would ever see her . . .
“Hey, Kloo? His name was Ayjay.”
Cordy shot her a displeased look, but Lex was defiant. Kloo, meanwhile, frowned. “Ayjay?” She thought about it harder, and Lex kept watching her face until the tiniest hint of something sparked in her eye. Kloo shook her head, and it was gone—
But hopefully it would be enough.
Tut arrived seconds later, buffing his fingernails, along with Lumpy and Poe. “I will miss the peasants, I suppose,” Tut said with a melodramatic sigh, patting Lumpy’s hump. “Though I will not miss their infernal interruptions.” He looked pointedly at Lex.
“I can’t believe you’re abandoning me to these numbskulls,” Poe moaned, nervously picking at Quoth’s feathers. “The other day Thomas Edison stole my shoe and turned it into a battery! I can’t take it anymore!”
“You’ll be okay, Ed,” Lex said. “And remember, someday I’ll come back.”
“See that you do.”
Lex twisted her hoodie harder, trying not to cry at the thought of parting from her beloved Edgar Allan. “Oh, scarecrow,” she said. “I think I’ll miss you most of all.”
“And I, you.” He took off his hat, sank into a deep bow, and turned up the corners of his mouth into what might have been the closest thing he’d ever gotten to a smile. “You are the least detestable person I have ever met.”
Lex squeezed her hoodie even tighter, her throat burning.
“No!” Skyla shouted from the office, snapping Lex back to the moment. Through the crack of the vault she could see that Skyla and Uncle Mort were arguing about something. “This is my city!”
“But this whole thing was my idea,” he countered. “I should be the first, to make sure it actually works—”
“Hey.” Lex turned back around. Cordy was looking at her, smiling sadly. “Let’s just do this,” she said. “Before we’re out of time.”
A rock formed in Lex’s gut.
Cordy scrunched up her mouth. “Do I really have to say all the mushy stuff? That I love you and I know you’re going to win and you’re my favorite person out of everyone in the world, both living and dead?”
“No,” said Lex, her voice hoarse. “You don’t have to. I don’t have to either, do I?”
Cordy grinned. “Nah. I always know what you’re thinking anyway.”
&
nbsp; “Twin perk,” they said at the same time.
Lex rubbed her eyes. She wanted to scream and cry and run all at the same time. This was too hard.
But she put on a brave face and looked for one last time at her dear departed sister. “Well,” she said, hoping to sound light, “see you in fifty years.”
Cordy smirked back. “You’re a tough kid, Lex. I’d give it a hundred.”
That did it. Tears, sobs, and a glob of snot all rocketed out of her face at the same time. She blew her nose into her hoodie, not even caring about how gross that was. It was waterproof; it would survive.
Without turning back—if she did, she’d never leave—Lex tore out of the vault. Skyla was still yelling at Uncle Mort and was near tears as well. “I’m the mayor!” she yelled, smacking him on the shoulder. “Don’t you dare take this away from me, Mort.”
He gave her a look that held a million unsaid things, but a gunshot snapped him out of it. The guards had finally realized that Norwood was bluffing, and they were firing away.
Uncle Mort nodded at Skyla, giving in. “Okay,” he said, digging into his bag.
Lex stared intently at his hands, but she still couldn’t see what he handed her.
Skyla smiled and took it from him. “Thanks.”
“I’ll see you soon. Good luck.”
“You too.”
Uncle Mort turned away from her and started to gather up the Juniors. “What was that?” Lex asked him. “What did you give her?”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said gruffly. “This room is about to become a very dangerous place for living people to be.”
“Why?”
“Because a portal is going to be put out of commission forever, and I don’t think it’s going to go quietly, do you?”
Lex glanced back at Skyla. She was looking up and down the height of the vault door. “Is she going to be okay?”
“Yeah, she’ll be fine. Once the portal’s closed—”
“No!” Norwood shouted, overhearing them. He was ducking behind a chair, hiding from the hail of gunfire. At this point there wasn’t anything he could do without getting pumped full of lead, and he knew it. He’d lost. “You need to stop this. You have no idea what you’re doing—you’re going to destroy the Grimsphere!”
Uncle Mort shrugged. “Maybe.”
Norwood narrowed his eyes. “Well, if you think I’m going to let you do the same thing to Croak, you’re out of your minds. I’ll be waiting for you.” He waved the Wrong Book at them and tucked it under his arm. “Oh, and one more thing, Lex: Consider your parents Damned.”
With that, he jumped out from behind the sofa. Quickly snatching up his scythe from where it had fallen on the floor, he whipped it through the air and Crashed away.
The shooting stopped for a brief moment while the guards tried to figure out what had just happened, where the culprit had disappeared to, and what, exactly, they should do next. “Find him!” Boulder shouted at them. “Norwood’s our new priority. Search the building!”
They hesitated, looking at the desk. “But what about—”
“I’ll take care of these guys. Go!”
Lex was staring at the spot where Norwood had been standing, but Uncle Mort grabbed her by the hoodie and gave it a good yank. “Elevator, all of you. Run!”
He bolted for the elevator, leaving the Juniors with no choice but to follow him. They all piled into the glass tube, Bang not even flinching as they crowded in around her. She probably hadn’t registered a thing that just happened. Skyla looked fairly out of it, too, Lex noticed when she looked back at her. She was watching the Juniors flee, as if waiting for them to leave.
Ferbus was the last one to stagger in. Uncle Mort removed the crowbar and pushed the down button, but not fast enough; Boulder reached a hand the size of a dinner plate through the glass doors, opening them up again. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Dammit, let us go!” Uncle Mort yelled. “You think we’d do something like this if it weren’t important, Boulder? You know we’re right!”
Boulder worked his jaw. “I don’t know that for sure.”
“Well, you’re about to find out in two seconds.”
Just then a small, withered hand appeared from behind and settled on Boulder’s shoulder. “Let go, kid,” Pandora said, fixing her vulturelike stare on him.
“DORA!” the overjoyed Juniors yelled.
She winked at them, then addressed Boulder again. “Come on. Hop to it, Tiny.”
Perhaps it was the fact that she’d just risen from the dead, or maybe her shriveled little claw was preposterously strong, but for whatever reason, Pandora’s words seemed to suddenly carry an inordinate amount of weight. The look on Boulder’s face was one of such intense concentration, Lex thought she could hear gears turning. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, removing his hand from the door.
And then Elysia yelled something even more surprising. “Boulder, come with us!”
“Whoa, what?” Lex said.
Elysia grabbed his hand and pulled him into the elevator. “I promise we’re right,” she told him. “You’ll see.”
Lex gave Elysia her very best what-the-hell look. Elysia shrugged. “He and I sort of . . . chatted. While I was in custody.”
“Elysia, chatting?” Ferbus said into the glass. “Get outta town.”
The door closed, and the elevator started to descend. Skyla had opened the vault door wide and was staring into it, her hands balled into fists. Lex tried to wave at the souls inside—at Kloo, who’d looked distracted ever since Lex’s cryptic name-dropping; at Tut, who was trying to give Edgar a wedgie; at Edgar, who was futilely trying to escape said wedgie; at Cordy, grinning and waving back as if she were on a parade float—
But someone else had appeared in the Afterlife—and the closer she got, the more recognizable she became. Especially with the light glinting off her silver hair.
“Zara!” Lex shouted, pointing.
In an instant Zara caught Lex’s eye and erupted in a flurry of animated gestures. She pointed at herself, then started rotating both hands, as if she were miming using a steering wheel. She was yelling, too, but Lex couldn’t hear anything through the glass of the elevator.
“What?” Lex shouted.
But it was too late. The elevator sank below the floor of the office, and Zara and Skyla and the Afterlife disappeared from view.
16
The Croakers plummeted back to earth in a narrow tube that didn’t stop for five whole minutes.
“It’s in express mode,” Boulder explained. “No stops.”
Lex turned to Uncle Mort. “What was that all about?” she asked him. “What could be important enough for Zara to dare to show her face again?”
He shook his head, looking up. “I have no idea.”
Everyone’s nerves were jumpy as they descended; they were obviously waiting for something to happen, but none of them really knew what they were waiting for. Most of them slumped down to the floor, but Lex paced around the small space, wanting to smash the glass with her hands. Forget about Zara—Norwood had the Wrong Book. And her parents. What was he going to do to them?
“So we’re going back to Croak, right?” she asked Uncle Mort.
“That’s the plan.” He turned to Pandora. “Are you all right?”
“Right as rain,” she said, taking off her shirt to reveal a bunch of metal spatulas situated around her chest. She put a finger through a newly formed dent. “Though I can’t say the same for the old chain mail.”
Driggs snickered. “Homemade bulletproof vest, Dora?”
“I’m a very important lady!”
Elysia, meanwhile, was in full-on crisis-relief mode, one arm around a half-conscious Ferbus, the other around the still-sobbing ball that was Bang.
“She’s a good kid,” Boulder said out of nowhere. Lex and Driggs looked at him, eyebrows raised. “She told me what you guys were fighting for, why you did all that bad stuff you did. And if Skyla’s pa
rt of it too—” He shrugged, creating more ripples in his neck muscle. “I trust her. If what she’s doing makes the Afterlife safer, then I’m okay with it. Otherwise, what’s the point? If we don’t have anywhere nice to go after we’re dead?”
Driggs let out a puff of a laugh. “Well put.”
Lex was still wary. “You can vouch for this guy?”
Driggs nodded. “He’s cool. A perfect gentleman, which is more than I can say for the other guards.”
Elysia shot him a look, then pulled her sleeve down over a few conspicuous bruises on her arm. She looked at Ferbus. He hadn’t heard.
Lex inspected Driggs’s knuckles, which were bloodied. “Wait a minute. Are you saying that you did, in fact, get solid and kick some ass?”
“They were roughing her up a little, so I returned the favor. Luckily, we got interrupted by the call up to the office, so it didn’t get as bad as it could have.” He looked at Ferbus’s hand, then at Bang. His face tightened at the reminder of Pip’s absence. “And not as bad as you guys had it.”
Lex swallowed. “Yeah.”
Driggs frowned, but then his eyes lit up. “Hey, wait a sec. I can do the same thing for your parents!”
“Huh?”
“I can go back to Croak and bust them out!”
“But what if you can’t . . .” She stopped, not wanting to hurt his feelings.
Too late—that miserable expression of frustration and helplessness was back on his face. “I’ll do what I can,” he said quietly.
Lex grabbed at his arm, even though her hand went right through. She didn’t want him to leave, but she didn’t want her parents to be left alone, either. She didn’t know what she wanted.
“Let me do this,” he said. “I can’t do anything for you here, I can’t—” He snorted sharply. “Just let me do it.”
Lex closed her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Go. Get them out if you can.”
He brought his lips to her forehead and kissed it, though she felt nothing. “I’ll see you there.”
Uncle Mort nodded his approval and told them, “We’ll be there as soon as we can. We need to make a little”—he looked at Ferbus—“pit stop.”