“Help!” I yelled as loudly as I could as hot tears streamed down my face. “Somebody help!”
CHAPTER 4
THE STRANGER
Sobbing, I thrust my hands against Ava’s abdomen. She couldn’t be dead. Two minutes ago, she’d been telling me off for…for what? It didn’t matter. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, taking a deep, shuddering breath. No. Not possible. This wasn’t happening.
“Help!” I cried, looking around wildly, hoping for some sign of life. But all I saw on either side of us were trees, and the only sound I heard was the flowing river. If anyone lived on the property, they could’ve been miles away.
I looked back at Ava, her face swimming as my eyes filled with tears again. What was I supposed to do?
My shoulders shook, and my body was useless. I stumbled backward, falling into a sitting position as I stared at Ava. Her eyes were wide open, unblinking and lifeless, and she was still as blood trickled from her head. It was useless.
I drew my knees to my chest, unable to tear my eyes away. What would happen now? Who would find us? I couldn’t leave her. I had to stay here until someone found us. Oh, God, my poor mother—what would everyone say? Would they think I killed Ava? Hadn’t I, in a way? If I hadn’t agreed to go with her, then she would’ve never jumped headfirst into a river.
“May I help you?”
My heart skipped a beat. Standing beside me was a man—a boy? I couldn’t tell, as his face was partially obscured by the darkness. But what I could see of him made my breath hitch in my throat. His hair was dark, and the jacket he wore was long and black, flapping in the cold breeze.
I hadn’t imagined him after all.
“She’s—” I couldn’t finish.
He knelt next to Ava and examined her. He had to see the same things I saw—the bloody head, the too-still body, the angle of her neck. But instead of panicking, he looked up at me, and a jolt ran down my spine. His eyes were the color of moonlight.
I heard rustling a few feet away. Startled, I twisted around, only to see a black Great Dane approach us, tail wagging. The dog sat next to him, and he scratched the dog behind his ears.
“What’s your name?” he said evenly.
With trembling hands, I tucked my wet hair behind my ears. “K-Kate.”
“Hello, Kate.” There was a calming quality to his voice, almost melodic. “I’m Henry, and this is Cerberus.”
I could see his face clearly now that he was closer, and something about it looked off. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than me, twenty-two at the most, but even that was pushing it. And he was too beautiful to be out in the middle of the woods like this. He should’ve been on magazine covers, not spending his time hidden away in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
But his eyes drew my attention. Even in the darkness, they shone brightly, and I had a hard time tearing myself away from his gaze.
“M-my friend,” I said, my voice trembling. “She’s—”
“She’s dead.”
He spoke with such a matter-of-fact tone that my stomach turned inside out. I threw up what little dinner I’d eaten, the horror of the evening hitting me so hard I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me.
Finally, once I’d finished, I turned back into a sitting position and wiped my mouth. Henry had arranged Ava so she looked as if she were sleeping, and now he was staring at me like I was some strange animal he didn’t want to scare off. I looked away.
“So she is your friend?”
I coughed weakly, struggling to keep the sob bubbling up inside of me from bursting. Was she? Of course not. “Y-yes,” I managed to say. “Why?”
I heard the rustle of fabric and opened my eyes to see Henry placing his jacket over Ava, the way people covered dead bodies. “I didn’t realize friends treated each other the way she treated you.”
“She—it was a joke.”
“You didn’t think it was very funny.”
No, I hadn’t. But it didn’t matter anymore.
“You’re afraid of the water, yet you jumped in after her, even though she was going to leave you behind.”
I stared at him. How did he know that?
“Why?” he said, and I shrugged pathetically. What did he expect me to say?
“Because,” I said. “She—she didn’t deserve to…” She didn’t deserve to die.
Henry was quiet for a long moment, and he looked at Ava’s covered body. “What would you do to have her back?”
I struggled to understand what he was saying. “Back?”
“Back in the condition she was in before she jumped in the water. Alive.”
In my panic, I already knew my answer. What would I do to have Ava back? What would I do to stop death from tightening its chokehold over the remaining shreds of my life that it hadn’t already stolen? It had marked my mother and was waiting in the wings to take her from me, inching closer every day. She might’ve been ready to give up, but I would never stop fighting for her. And like hell I was going to let it claim another victim right in front of me, especially when it was my fault Ava was here in the first place. “Anything.”
“Anything?”
“Yes. Can you help her?” An irrational hope flared up inside of me. Maybe he was a doctor. Maybe he knew how to fix her.
“Kate…have you ever heard the story of Persephone?”
My mother loved Greek mythology, and she used to read the stories to me as a child. But what did that have to do with anything? “What? I—yes, a long time ago,” I said, bewildered. “Can you fix her? Is she—can you? Please?”
Henry stood. “Yes, if you promise me one thing.”
“Whatever you want.” I stood, too, daring to hope.
“Read the myth of Persephone again, and you will figure it out.” He took a step toward me and brushed his fingertips against my cheek. I jerked away, but my skin felt as if it were on fire where he’d touched me. He placed his hands in his pockets, untroubled by my rejection. “The autumn equinox is in two weeks. Read it, and you’ll understand.”
He stepped back, and I stood there, confused. Turning to look at Ava, I said, “But what about—”
I glanced up, and he was gone. Stumbling forward, my feet numb, I looked around wildly. “Henry? What about—”
“Kate?”
My heart leaped into my throat. Ava. I fell to my knees next to her, too afraid to touch her, but her eyes were open and she wasn’t bleeding anymore and she was alive.
“Ava?” I gasped.
“What happened?” she said, struggling to sit up and wipe the blood from her eyes.
“You—you hit your head and…” I trailed off. And what?
Ava stumbled to her feet and swayed, but I reached out to steady her with trembling hands. “All right?” I said, dazed, and Ava nodded. I wrapped my arm around her bare waist to help keep her upright. Henry’s jacket was gone. “Let’s get you home.”
By the time I crawled into bed that night after scrubbing the blood out from underneath my fingernails, I’d almost convinced myself he wasn’t real. That seeing him today and from the car earlier that week—it’d all been my imagination. It was the only logical explanation. I’d hit my head when I jumped into the river, and in the car I’d been exhausted. Ava had been fine all along, and Henry…
Henry was just a dream.
That weekend the phone rang on the hour, nearly every hour before I unplugged it. My mother needed her rest, and after what had happened, all I wanted to do was cut myself off from the world and keep her company. I didn’t know who it was, and I didn’t care.
The freezing river hadn’t done me any favors, and I slept most of the weekend away in the rocking chair beside my mother’s bed. It was a restless sleep, littered with the same nightmares I’d been having nearly every night since coming to Eden, but now there was a new one. It went exactly as the night had gone, with Ava diving into the river and hitting her head, and me jumping into the water to save her. But when I pulled he
r body out of the river, it wasn’t her face I saw, pale and lifeless as blood pooled on the ground. It was mine.
I had to wear a surgical mask around my mother. I felt feverish and achy, and there was a deep cough in my chest that I couldn’t shake, but someone had to take care of her. I poured medicine down my throat hoping it’d make me feel better, and by the time Monday rolled around, I felt well enough to brave school once more.
The moment I entered the cafeteria at lunchtime, James attached himself to my side, already holding his tray full of french fries. He babbled on happily about a new CD he’d picked up over the weekend and even offered to let me listen, but I shook my head. I wasn’t in the mood for music.
“Kate?” We’d taken our seats, and he had already drenched his fries in ketchup. “You’re really quiet today. Is your mom okay?”
I glanced up from my uneaten sandwich. “She’s hanging in there.”
“Then what’s wrong?” The look on his face made it clear he wasn’t going to let it go.
“Nothing. I was just sick all weekend, that’s all.”
“Oh, right.” He popped a fry into his mouth. “You missed Friday. I got your homework for you.”
“Thanks.” At least he wasn’t pressing the issue.
“Did you go to that party with Ava?”
I froze. Was it that obvious? Was there something in my expression that told him? No, it was only idle conversation.
“Kate?”
Terrific. Now he knew something was wrong. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, slouching.
“Did something happen at the party?”
“There wasn’t any party.” No point in lying to him about that. He’d be able to ask around and find out anyhow, if he ever bothered to talk to other people. “It was just Ava and a stupid prank.”
“What sort of stupid prank?” The way his voice dropped and his eyes hardened should have set off alarm bells in my mind, but I was too busy trying to come up with some sort of feasible reply. How was I supposed to describe the impossibility that had happened beside the river? There was no way he’d believe me. I didn’t even believe me. And Ava—
I mentally smacked myself. The whole thing had been a prank, hadn’t it? Not only leaving me there, but her smashing her head against a rock, and Henry showing up and pretending to do…to do whatever it was that he’d done. He was probably someone’s older brother. Maybe even Ava’s.
But what about her skull? The way she’d stopped breathing? The angle of her neck? Could that really be faked?
“Speak of the devil,” said James, eyebrows raised as he looked over my shoulder. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.
“Kate!” squealed Ava, and she sat down beside me without waiting for an invitation. I tensed, gripping my apple so hard I could feel the fruit bruise beneath the skin.
“Er, hi.” What was I supposed to say to her? “How—how was your weekend?”
She swung her legs underneath the table and set down her tray of food. Unlike James, she had a chicken sandwich and a pile of Tater Tots. There was no possible way she ate that every day for lunch and managed to stay so skinny.
“It was good. You know, rested and swam and stuff.” She took a bite of her sandwich and didn’t bother swallowing before continuing. “I tried calling you, but you never picked up. Did my dad give me the wrong number?”
I nearly choked. That had been Ava? “N-no, that was my house.” I looked at James, silently willing him to say something, but he seemed to be making a very real effort not to look at us. “I was sick, so I didn’t pick up.”
“You’re feeling better now though, right?”
I hesitated. “Yeah, I feel better.”
“Oh, that’s perfect then! I was hoping you’d come over this week sometime. We’ve got a swimming pool, and I was thinking maybe I could teach you how to swim.”
I gaped at her. After everything that had happened, she wanted me to go swimming with her? “I don’t—I don’t swim.” And after what had happened on Friday, I didn’t want to go anywhere near a body of water ever again. It seemed unusually cruel to keep dragging a stupid prank out like this, and I silently wished she would drop it already.
Ava pursed her lips, and it was clear that something in my voice or expression must’ve clued her in. “No hard feelings about what happened, right?” Maybe I was imagining it, but she seemed almost nervous. “I mean…that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you ab—”
“Ava,” I interrupted. “Why are you sitting with me?”
Her face fell, and she put down her sandwich. “I broke up with Dylan.”
“What? Why?” I glanced at James again, but he was now engrossed in making a fry fort. “I thought you said you loved him.”
“I do! I did.”
“Then why?”
“Because.” She glanced over her shoulder at the jock table. At least half a dozen pairs of eyes were watching us, and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “You saw me, right? I dove into the river and hit my head, and the next thing I know I’m on the ground with a throbbing headache.”
I forced a nonchalant shrug. “So you hit your head and I dragged you out before you drowned. No big deal.”
“Yes, it is.” Her voice dropped. “There was blood everywhere. My mother saw me when I got home, and she had a fit. I had to tell her it was yours.”
“But it wasn’t mine.”
Our eyes locked. Hers were red and shining with tears. “I know,” she whispered. “Kate, what happened to me?”
Across the table, James stilled, and I noticed he was no longer wearing his headphones. On top of telling Ava what had happened, now I’d have to explain it to him once she was gone. He wouldn’t believe me—no one in their right mind would. I wasn’t even sure I believed me, and I still wasn’t convinced it wasn’t all some elaborate hoax.
Ava watched me closely, waiting for me to speak, and I knew there was no way I could lie my way out of this. Even if they did think I was crazy, the need to tell someone, to understand what had happened was overwhelming. I took a deep breath, kissed my sanity goodbye, and I told them everything.
Once I was done, Ava stared at me, her eyes shining. “Oh, Kate—you really jumped into the river to save me?”
I shrugged, and before I knew it, she wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my neck. The hug lasted for nearly half a minute, things growing more awkward with each second that passed. Finally she let me go, although her hands were still on my shoulders.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. When I tried to tell Dylan…” She bit her lip. “He laughed at me and told me to stop making stuff up.”
At the jock table, Dylan sat surrounded by his friends, laughing loudly. Next to me, Ava looked crushed. “So you broke up with him?” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, picking at her sandwich. “He’ll be begging to get back together with me in a week. What about Henry? You really promised him anything? What did he want?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw James look up.
“I’m not really sure,” I said. “He asked if I knew about the myth of Persephone, and he told me the autumn equinox was in two weeks. He said once I read about her, I’d know what he wanted me to do. I’ve heard it before, but I don’t get what that has to do with anything—”
Across the table, James dug through his backpack, tossing heavy books and binders onto the table. They landed with a thud, and half the cafeteria looked at us. I ducked my head, amazed as I tried to figure out how all of it fit into his bag, but finally he yanked out a thick book I recognized as our English text. He flipped it open seemingly at random, but when I craned my neck to see what he’d turned to, I saw it wasn’t random at all.
“This is the story of Persephone,” he said, pointing to a picture of a girl emerging from a cave. A woman stood on the grass, her arms open wide in greeting. “Queen of the Underworld.”
“The Underworld?” said Ava, leaning over to get
a better look. “Which one?”
James gave her a look that could’ve withered a plant. “The one where the dead go. Tartarus? The Elysian Fields?”
“Greek mythology,” I said, turning the page. “See this guy?” I pointed to a dark-haired man half covered in shadow. “He’s Hades, God of the Underworld. Ruler of the dead.”
“Like Satan,” said James.
“No, not like Satan,” said Ava. There was a hint of anger in her voice, but James either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Satan’s Christian, and the Underworld isn’t hell. Hades isn’t a demon. He’s just…some guy who was put in charge of dealing with the souls of the dead. He sorts them out and stuff.”
I stared at her. “I thought you didn’t know anything about this?”
She shrugged and looked down at the book. “Might’ve heard a few things before.”
“He kidnapped her,” said James in a voice so low it sent a shiver down my spine. “She was playing in a field, and he dragged her down to the Underworld with him to be his wife. She refused to eat, and while her mother, Demeter, appealed to Zeus—king of the gods—the world grew cold. Eventually Zeus made Hades give Persephone back, but by then she’d eaten a few seeds, and he insisted that it meant she had to spend part of the year with him. So whenever she’s with him as his wife, winter comes. It’s the myth that explained the seasons to the Greeks.”
The temperature felt as if it’d dropped twenty degrees. A horrible thought crossed my mind, and I stared at James, trying to figure out if the implications of the deal I’d made with Henry were even remotely possible.
Ava, on the other hand, snorted. Loudly. “So he was lonely. It doesn’t make him a bad guy—you don’t know if she wanted to go down there with him. She might have, y’know.”
I ignored her and looked at James. “Do you think Henry’s going to try the same thing on me?”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Ava, rolling her eyes. “If he was going to kidnap you, he’d have already done it, right? It’s not like he didn’t have the chance when we were in the woods.”