Authors: Rachel Vincent
My heart hurt for him. “Nash, don’t—”
“I wasted them. He paid for my future with his own life, and I
threw it all away, like it was worth nothing, when the truth is that it was
worth everything.”
“You didn’t waste it. You—”
“I wasted it.” Nash shook his head slowly, and his gaze lost
focus. “All this time I wanted him to move on. No, I wanted him to
go away.
I thought he took the job as a reaper because
he wasn’t ready to leave. I thought he was hanging around because he hated me or
was jealous of my life. Or wanted to take away the things I care about.”
Like me.
He didn’t say it, but we
both heard it.
“But the truth is...” Nash stopped and looked at me again, like
he didn’t know how to finish his sentence. “I...I don’t really know what to do
with this information, Kaylee. I don’t know how to process it. I’m not supposed
to be here. I feel like the past two and a half years of my life have been a
lie.”
“No, your life isn’t a lie, and it never has been. Your life is
an opportunity. A gift. Just like mine is. We have that in common, Nash. We got
a second chance.” Okay, technically I was on my third chance, but then,
technically, I was dead.
I took a deep breath I didn’t really need, then prepared to say
what I’d wanted to say to him for more than a month. I’d imagined this moment a
million times, but now that it had come, I was suddenly unsure of the words. And
of my right to say them. But someone had to.
“I don’t want to put any additional pressure on you or
anything, but if you ask me, second chances come with a responsibility.” That’s
what I believed about my own second chance, anyway. “The responsibility to
earn
the extra time you’ve been given. And to enjoy
it. To live with and for everyone you love. To fight harder and longer than
anyone else, because you owe it to your brother and I owe it to my mother to
make sure that their deaths mean something.”
Nash blinked, and when the motion in his irises slowed, I knew
he was thinking. He was truly considering what I was saying and its relevance to
him. “That’s what you’re doing? That’s why you always jump in headfirst whenever
anyone’s in trouble, whether they want your help or not? Whether they
deserve
it or not?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and let my rolling chair rotate
a little. “I don’t do that.”
“That’s all you
ever
do. It’s who
you are. And I think I’m starting to understand why.” The motion in his irises
slowed even more, greens spreading into browns to make that hazel shade I knew
so well. “You think you have to earn your place in the world.”
“I think we should
all
earn our
place in the world. Especially people like me and you, who keep getting our
friends and family hurt, whether we mean to or not.” I was afraid he would take
that the wrong way, but he only nodded, like he might actually eventually agree.
“We owe the world something. We owe the world
everything.
”
Nash stared at me like he hadn’t in a long time. Studying me,
like he might be figuring me out. “You’re something else, Kaylee. I’m not sure
exactly what that means, but I’m sure it’s true.”
“Yeah, you, too. You’re something special, Nash.” And he could
be something
great
if he’d stop looking at life as a
challenge to be conquered rather than an opportunity to be seized.
“So, now what?” He sat up straight and glanced at the room
around us as if he no longer recognized it. As if what he’d learned had changed
the way he saw everything, and a little spark of anticipation shot through me. I
hadn’t seen him look like that—like he was ready for a challenge—in months.
“Now, you take a few minutes to process all this, then come out
and have dinner. No one else knows about any of this, and I need you to keep it
quiet until I’ve had a chance to tell Tod that I told you. But we’re going to
get your mom back. We’re going to get them
all
back,
and that’s going to be much easier if we’re all fighting on the same side. If we
all trust one another. If we can all count on one another. Okay?”
Nash nodded, still kind of dazed, and I stood to give him some
time to himself.
“When you’re ready, there’s food in the kitchen.”
When I got there, Em, Luca, and Sophie were nearly finished
eating, but Tod and Sabine weren’t back yet. I scooped some noodles onto a plate
for myself, but somehow I had even less appetite than usual. I’d just finished
picking all the slivers of carrot from my meal and was about to check on Nash
again when Tod suddenly appeared in the living room with Sabine in his arms.
She was unconscious, her head, arms, and legs hanging limp.
“Someone help me with her!” He kicked the coffee table out of
the way and laid the
mara
on the couch. Chairs
scratched the kitchen floor as we all stood at once. Nash made it into the
living room at the same time I did—he must have
flown
down the hall. He shoved the coffee table over even farther
and knelt on the floor next to the couch, brushing dark hair back from his
girlfriend’s forehead.
“What the hell happened?” he demanded as Sophie and Emma sank
onto the coffee table where they could see and Luca stood behind them, watching.
Waiting to see how he could help.
“Look at her hand!” Em said, and I glanced at Sabine’s right
arm—the one without a cast. Her wrist and hand were swollen to the point that
the skin should have split, and a bright red web of veins traced the surface of
her inflamed flesh, inching up her arm toward her chest. Toward her heart.
But what stood out to me most was a ring of bright red
pinpricks encircling her wrist like a bracelet. Or like a tattoo.
“Oh, shit.” I knew those marks. I had an identical circle of
them around my right ankle—permanent reminders of the day I’d been pricked by a
crimson creeper vine. I’d nearly died.
“Avari got her ankles, too.” Tod carefully lifted Sabine’s leg,
where a severed section of creeper vine dangled from the end of her jeans, its
thorns still piercing the denim. A thick, viscous fluid dripped slowly from the
cut end of the vine to soak into the carpet. “That cast is the only thing that
saved her other arm.”
“Shit!” Nash carefully unwound the vine from her left ankle.
“How did this happen?”
“He must have caught her.” Tod lifted the
mara
’s other leg so he could unwind the single loop of vine, and I
stepped back to give them room. “I found her alone, unconscious, tied to the
ground by all four limbs with creeper vines.”
“Live vines?” Sophie’s voice flowed thick with horror.
“Yeah. Dead ones wouldn’t have held. Fortunately, they were
young. Thin, as you can see, and just now sprouting through cracks in the
concrete.” Tod dropped the severed end of vine on the end table next to the
couch, and a single drop of yellow venom leaked onto the wood while the
inch-long thorns scratched the already-chipped varnish.
Nash’s vine followed a second later, then each brother rolled
up a leg of her jeans and slid her sneakers and socks off so we could get a
better look at the damage.
“Not as bad as her arm but not great,” Nash said through
clenched teeth. His irises swirled with fear, and his voice shook with it. “If
we don’t do something, this’ll kill her.”
Em lifted Sabine’s right arm and examined it, careful not to
touch the puffy flesh. “What
can
we do?” Worry
looked much the same on her as it had on Lydia. But Emma’s eyes were all her
own, and they were so full of sadness I couldn’t help wondering whether she was
syphoning it all from Nash or had actually started to care about Sabine, as I
had.
That damn
mara
was an emotional
ninja, sneaking up on your heart when you least expected it.
“Harmony treated me for this once,” I said. “She had this
stuff—”
“She still has the stuff!” Nash stood so fast
my
head spun. “She has jars of it at home—she started
making it in larger batches after you got pricked that time—she even carries
some in her purse now, just in case.”
“Oh!” Sophie stood and raced into the kitchen. A second later,
she was back with Harmony’s purse, shoving it at me. “She left it here when you
guys crossed over.”
“Thanks.” I opened the bag and pawed through it, then began
laying travel-size plastic bottles on the coffee table. There were three of
them, and each was labeled in permanent marker with Harmony’s neat, all-caps
print.
Water—amnesia.
Obviously, that was
what she’d put in Traci’s tea.
Water—analgesic.
A painkiller, made
from water native to the Netherworld.
XX.
I could only assume that was the one she would have given Traci
to help safely end her pregnancy, if that had been Traci’s decision.
“It’s not here.” I pawed through the purse again, but there
were no more plastic bottles.
“It’s glass.” Nash took the bag from me and dumped its contents
onto the coffee table, and Em stood to get out of the way. “And there should be
a syringe. It has to be injected, remember?”
I did remember, but barely. I’d hardly been conscious when
Harmony had injected me.
Several of us pawed through the collection of keys, makeup,
restaurant ketchup and mayonnaise packets, hand sanitizer, and an assortment of
other personal necessities until Em suddenly squealed in triumph.
“Here’s the bottle!” She held up a small glass bottle sealed
with a rubber stopper.
Nash unzipped a pocket on the inside of his mother’s purse and
scooped out three tampons and a disposable syringe sealed in plastic, as well as
a separate disposable needle in a tiny plastic tube. “Thank goodness.” He ripped
open the plastic around the syringe, then opened the tube and dumped the needle
onto his palm.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Tod watched over his brother’s
shoulder. “How do you know how much to give her?”
“Mom taught me a few months ago, after...Kaylee brought me back
from the Netherworld.” When Avari had taken him to get to me. “She figured that
the chances of someone getting stuck by creeper thorns got better and better
every time we crossed over, and she said someone should know how to treat the
venom, in case she couldn’t get there in time.”
Nash screwed the needle onto the end of the syringe, then held
the glass bottle upside down. We all watched, breath held, while he drew liquid
into the syringe, then withdrew the needle from the bottle. He held the syringe
up to the light to double-check the dose, then turned back to Sabine.
“Here, can you hold her arm?”
I sank to my knees next to Sabine and held her arm out straight
while he stared at it for what felt like forever. Then, finally, Nash sucked in
a deep breath and held it while he slid the needle into her skin and carefully
depressed the plunger.
Once he’d withdrawn the needle and a drop of blood had welled
out of her arm, he frowned and sat on the edge of the coffee table. “I was
supposed to clean the injection site first. Damn it!”
“Better late than never,” Tod said. “What do you need?”
“Cotton swabs and alcohol should do it. And a Band-Aid.”
“I’ll get them!” Em stood and raced for the bathroom.
“But that won’t kill any germs I just injected her with,” Nash
continued.
Tod put one hand on his shoulder. “Any human doctor can treat
an infection. The same cannot be said for crimson creeper venom.”
I gathered the used syringe and wrappers and threw them in the
trash while Sophie put Harmony’s stuff back in her purse. Luca slid the coffee
table into place, and Nash cleaned the site of Sabine’s injection with a belated
dose of alcohol, then covered it with a bandage from the box Emma gave him. Then
he sat on the coffee table and stared at her while she slept, periodically
checking on her swollen wrist and ankles.
The rest of us gathered around the peninsula in the kitchen,
speaking in hushed voices.
“So, how did you find her?” I poured myself a mug of coffee,
which had already gone cold. “She was just...lying there?”
Tod nodded. “On the ground, out in the open, about three
hundred feet from the hospital. In our world, that would have been the hospital
parking lot. Avari must have told everyone not to touch her, because she was all
alone, completely unscathed, except for the creeper vines.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Sophie demanded in a fierce
whisper, with a glance back at Nash, like she didn’t want to further upset him.
I was impressed. “Why take Sabine, then let us have her back? Why poison her,
but not kill her?”
“It’s a warning,” I said. “It has to be.”
“Warning us of what?” Luca said in a whisper of his own. “That
he wants to mess with us? That he can kill us anytime he wants? If that’s the
message, wouldn’t actually killing Sabine have said it more clearly?”
I could only shrug. “I don’t know.”
“And didn’t you say he could have killed you and Tod right
before you crossed over?” Em said. “But he didn’t?”
“Because he doesn’t want me dead,” I tried to explain. “Well,
no deader than I already am. He wants to...” I didn’t know how to say the rest
of it, and I didn’t really want to hear it, even from my own mouth.
“He wants to take his time with her,” Tod said, and hearing it
in his voice wasn’t much better. “He wants to take her apart at his leisure
before eventually discarding her body and continuing with just her soul. He has
eternity, remember? That’s a lot of time to kill, which means he has more
patience than we do. And he knows how to make his toys last.”
“That may be the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard,” Luca
whispered. “And that’s coming from someone who sees dead people on a daily
basis.”
“Agreed,” I said, and Tod gave my hand a sympathetic
squeeze.