creepy hollow 05 - a faerie's revenge (35 page)

“Can we just bet that we all make it to the bottom alive?” Ana’s answering shout comes.

“So that’s a no?” Chase asks.

“Nooooononono!” Ana squeals, which most likely means another whirlpool has begun. I don’t feel any pull in the water yet, though. I lower my legs and body below the surface so I can look ahead.

“Come on,” Chase says to me, pulling at the water with strong strokes. “Don’t want to miss the ride down, do you?”

Ana and Kobe vanish into the vortex as Chase and I swim toward it. The swirling current catches us—and then the water slows and the hole closes up and within seconds, the sloshing water becomes a gentle current once more. “Shoot,” I murmur. “That didn’t just happen.”

“It’s okay. There’ll be another one,” Chase says. “We’ll just keep going.”

We continue floating downstream, the current a little faster now than it was before. Chase is watching the ceiling pass by again, but I’ve got my eyes fixed firmly ahead this time. It looks to me as though the cave ends abruptly up ahead, but that can’t be right. I squint through the green glow and realize the cave doesn’t end—but it does become extremely narrow, forcing the river to flow through three gaps that are little more than cracks in the stone wall.

“Oh no.” I start pushing against the current. “No no no. I’m not going through there.” I can handle the whirlpools because they’re over so quickly that I barely have time to panic, but not this. Not these dark slits in the wall.

Chase floats past me as I turn myself around. “Hey, it’s fine,” he says. “Gaius checked the entire route. He said there’s no part of any river that’s too narrow to get through.”

“Not happening.” I begin swimming in the other direction, pulling at the water with as much strength as I have.

“Calla, there’s nowhere else for you to go,” Chase says from somewhere behind me.

“I don’t care. I can’t do that.” My voice sounds just the tiniest bit panicked as I struggle against the current.

“What do you mean you can’t …” He trails off as I continue pawing at the water and getting nowhere. “Are you kidding?” he asks. “Claustrophobia? That’s your issue?”

“Yes! And I’m not going—”

“Just relax and float.”

“I can’t relax!” Wait, I can use magic. Add strength to my strokes—swim all the back to where we fell in—wait for the next—

“Stop,” Chase says, pulling himself closer to me and catching hold of my arm. “Just float, okay?”

“I can’t just—”

He grips both my hands. “Why don’t you float backwards, and that way you don’t have to see—”

“No!” I don’t know why, but it’ll be even worse if I can’t see where I’m going.

“Okay, okay. I’ll go backwards and you just look at me, not the walls.”

I shake my head furiously as I watch the river narrowing and the three gaps coming closer. We’re heading for the middle and there’s no way we can stop now.

“Hey, you never told me about Vi and Ryn’s baby.”

“What? That’s … so not …” The horrible slit in the wall comes closer and closer.

“Is it a girl or a boy?”

“Um … a girl.”

“Hey, look at me,” Chase instructs. “What’s her name?”

“Victoria.” The name comes out in a rush of air as the water sweeps us into the gap. I force myself to look at Chase, but the shimmering green walls are
right there
. “We’re gonna be squashed, we’re gonna be squashed, we’re gonna be squaaaaashed!” My voice rises into a squeal and I shut my eyes tightly as the current increases. We shoot into the air and lose hold of each other’s hands. I open my eyes in time to see the continuation of the green river before I plunge beneath its surface.

I fight my way through the bubbles until I find air and an enormous cave and space, space, space. “I made it,” I gasp as I pull myself away from the three waterfalls. “I’m not squashed. I’m not crushed. Oh, space is so amazing.” I look around and find Chase nearby.

“So let me get this straight,” he says as I swim toward him, his voice only just audible above the thundering water behind me. “You have the most powerful imagination of anyone I’ve ever met, but you can’t imagine your way out of a small space?”

“It … just … doesn’t work that way.” This part of the river seems to barely be moving, so without a current to carry us, we continue swimming away from the falls.

“But all you have to do is picture it, right?” Chase says. “Then that’s what you’ll see.”

“Not when I’m freaking out! I can’t focus when I’m panicking.”

“Then you have to decide not to panic.”

“It’s not that simple. You don’t know what it’s—”

Water erupts between us, throwing us into the midst of two separate whirlpools. “See you in the next river,” Chase shouts as I feel myself tugged irresistibly into the vortex. This one becomes wider and deeper than the others, flinging me around until I can barely breathe before finally dropping me into the next river. I’m so disoriented I don’t know which way is up. As I run out of air, I try to form a bubble over my nose and mouth. Then I sense myself slowing rising, so I direct my hands behind me instead. With a spurt of power, I shoot up to the surface.

Delicious air fills my lungs as I tread water and look around. I’m in a red cave with a smooth wall on one side and a collection of rocks on the other. Red light seems to come from somewhere beneath me. The riverbed, probably. I turn in the water, looking for Chase, but I don’t see him. I don’t see Kobe or Ana either, which I assume means the next whirlpool has already taken them.

“Chase?” The current wants to pull me away, but I’m not going anywhere without him. I kick against the water until I reach the rocky side of the river so I have something to hang onto. “Chase!” I call again. He should have come up by now. Trying to beat down my panic, I slap the water with my palms and yell, “Where are you?”

“Hey, calm down, I’m over here.” I twist around and see him dripping wet and climbing over one of the rocks beside the water. “Sorry, I got washed under here after I fell through and it took me a while to navigate my way out.” He climbs back into the water and swims toward me. “You weren’t seriously panicking about being all alone down here, were you?”

“No, you idiot.” I splash water at him. “I was scared you were
dead
.”

He splashes water back at me, although not as harshly. “Don’t worry, it’s gonna take a lot more than a subterranean waterfall to end me. Not even a morioraith could finish the job.”

“Yes, well, that might have ended differently if I hadn’t draped my very confused self over you while banging magically lengthened pieces of metal together like someone in a crazed trance.”

He stops treading water and wraps an arm around the rock I’m clinging to. “That’s what happened before Lumethon got there?”

“Yes.” I look away, embarrassed now that I’ve shared the finer details of that experience. “I’ll admit it’s not my most heroic rescue ever, but it did the job.”

“Heroic or not, I’m very grateful. I don’t think I ever thanked you after I woke up.”

“No.” I focus on the red water lapping between us. “I think you just told me you were a monster and that I should leave. Oh, and you apologized. And I apologized. There was a lot of apologizing going on.” I add in a smile as I look up at him, so he knows we don’t need to make this a heavy, serious conversation. I notice then that his eyes are brown instead of the light grey-green of his contact lenses. I’m about to comment on it when a whirlpool swirls into existence not far from us. “Quickly,” I say, diving toward it.

This one is quicker than the last, spitting me out the bottom before I’ve had a chance to become too dizzy. A split second before I hit the next river, my body stops, as if suspended in the air by an invisible rope. Then I drop the final distance. Standing up, I realize why. The water—warmer than any of the rivers so far—is shallow here, lapping just above my waist. Falling into this water from a great height wouldn’t end well.

“This is incredible,” Chase says, looking around as he stands.

I have to agree with him. The water looks like liquid gold or gold paint. But when I scoop it up and let it trickle between my fingers, it leaves my hands clean, so perhaps it’s only a reflection of the gold cave walls. “Beautiful,” I murmur, “and very, very warm.” So warm I can see steam rising. “Does it still count as a river if it isn’t moving?”

“I think it is moving just a tiny bit,” Chase says. “But hey, none of these are normal rivers, so who knows.”

“Yeah.” I smile at him and find myself noticing his eyes again. “What happened to your contact lenses?”

“They don’t do so well in water. I lost them after the first whirlpool.”

“Well, I prefer seeing your real eyes,” I tell him, and then wish I hadn’t because it seems to have led us to a conversation dead end. Awkward, since I can’t seem to pull my eyes away from his. The seconds pass, and something in his gaze changes. Something that makes me feel … “Flip, it’s hot in here. I can’t handle this anymore.” I hastily undo the buttons of my jacket as heat threatens to overwhelm me. How fortunate that I chose to wear a tank top underneath instead of something with longer sleeves.

“Yeah,” Chase says, tugging his jacket off. “Definitely too hot.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about getting a tattoo,” I say as I peel the wet sleeves of my jacket off. I leave it floating in the water beside me.

“Ah, time for the giant dragon across your back.”

“Close,” I say with a chuckle, “but not quite. I saw something on your desk that I really liked. An ink drawing of a phoenix.”

“A phoenix,” Chase says, nodding slowly. “New life, new beginning.”

“I know, it isn’t exactly an original idea, but I want something that symbolizes
my
new life. And your drawing is unique. No one else will have anything like it. I mean, if you let me use it.”

“Of course I will.”

“I was thinking across the top half of my back, reaching up to the base of my neck.” I pull my wet hair aside and reach back to touch the top of my spine. “And then the wings extending up to my shoulders on either side. What do you think?”

Chase nods. He clears his throat and says, “It would be perfect.”

Again, something feels different between us. I know what it is. I know exactly what it is, and I’m expecting fountains of gold water to start spurting up around us at any point. I should say something, but I don’t know how or where to begin, and I don’t know if I’m brave enough. I breathe in deeply—because, seriously, what happened to the air in here?—and look around. Where is this darn whirlpool? Only one more to go, right? “Um, why do they call these the Wishbone Rivers?” I ask, relieved that I’ve come up with something to talk about. “Do people think wishes come true here?”

Chase scoops gold water into his hands and lets it run out between his fingers. “Perhaps they do, but the system was named after the top river, which is shaped like a wishbone. It’s actually two rivers, joined at the mouth where they go into the sea. Only the right side has whirlpools, though, and parallel rivers beneath it.” He looks up and adds, “I checked with Gaius before we left, just in case there was some kind of strange wishing magic we’d have to deal with here.”

“Wishing magic,” I say, pondering the idea as I trail my fingers slowly through the water. “If wishes could come true, what would you wish for?”

“I would wish …” He looks away down the golden river. “I would wish I were someone else. Just a normal faerie guy instead of the person who messed up so badly. I’d wish that I could meet you under completely ordinary circumstances, and I’d wish that you could still see me the way you saw me in those last minutes under the flower canopy before everything fell apart.” He smiles as he returns his eyes to mine. “Is that too many wishes?”

I hold his gaze while considering my words carefully, and I realize that I am, after all, brave enough. “Perhaps some wishes do come true,” I tell him, my words leaving my tongue slowly. I want to make sure he hears every single one. “Or perhaps you simply haven’t realized yet that some things don’t need to be wished for.” I look down and reach for his hand in the water. I slide my fingers between his before adding, “I mean, why would you wish for something you already have?”

Tiny gold beads of water rise out of the river and string themselves around my arm and around his. Gold lights flash in the cave walls around us. My heart thunders, and I’m wondering what happened to the air again. I have no hope of finding it, though, because when I raise my eyes once more, Chase’s burning gaze is enough to steal my breath away and send fiery warmth rushing through my insides.

He raises our clasped hands and lets go. He traces his fingers up my arms, turning the fire on my skin to a shiver. His hands still as they reach my neck. He leans forward, his face stopping inches from mine. “Do you mean that?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

With sprite wings fluttering wildly in my stomach, I press a kiss to his jaw, and then another one higher up. When I reach his ear, I say, “I wouldn’t wish you to be anyone else. Why would I, when it’s
you
that I want?”

His lips find mine, and the world of gold and flashing lights disappears as my eyes close and my fingers spread through his wet hair, pulling him closer. His hands slide around my back, knotting in my hair before tracing down my spine and into the water to press against my lower back. Our bodies fit perfectly together. My arms twine around his neck and sparks skid across our tongues and droplets of magic-infused water rain down on us, mingling with our kisses.

And that’s when the world gives way beneath us and a whirlpool sucks us down.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-THREE