Everbound: An Everneath Novel (16 page)

I took it, because I knew that if I didn’t, I’d be stuck in the corridor for a long time. A light mist of water hit me in the face as I stepped out into the ring. It made sense, because the entire wall in front of me was made up of water, like a giant waterfall, only it didn’t pool at the bottom and it seemed to come from nowhere.

It was a wall of running water, and it was forcing me to choose to go either right or left. The wall behind me looked exactly the same except for the small, dark opening of the corridor we’d just come through.

“Welcome to the maze,” Ashe said. He was standing off to the side with Max. They’d beat us. “Try not to get too wet. The water here has certain … properties.”

I remembered Ashe said that the water messed with emotions. “Like what?” I asked.

Cole pulled me toward the exact center of the pathway, I assumed so the least amount of water would splash me. “It can draw out your worst emotions. Get too wet, and you could drown in your own despair.”

I looked at the giant wall in front of me, and the one behind me now, and wondered how in the world I was supposed to stay dry.

The others didn’t look worried about the water, though. Right now they were all staring at my feet. I dropped my head and saw the problem. The tether was pointing straight toward the wall in front of me, still indicating the center of the maze.

“The tether’s going to be no use if it’s always pointing
through
the walls,” I said.

Everyone looked to Cole, who was focused on the tether. “You were able to control your projection enough to focus it on this tether. Now we need you to tap into your connection with Jack even more so that your tether will tell us whether to go right or left.”

“How?”

“Tell me a story.”

Max rolled his eyes dramatically in the background.

Cole ignored him. “We know your focused memories are the best way to control your connection with Jack. Think of a decisive moment in your relationship with him.”

I looked at the tether and the wall of water, and the sets of eyes on me waiting, and I couldn’t think.

“Tell me when you first knew you loved him,” Cole said. His voice suddenly sounded tense, but his face remained a calm mask.

I glanced nervously around at our small group.

“Don’t worry about them,” Cole said. “Just tell me. Talk to me. When did you know?”

I knew exactly when it happened.

The Surface. My house
.

A funeral is easy compared to the day after the funeral. The week after. The first Sunday morning after, when the silence in the kitchen—the sound of my mother not cooking French toast—hurts my ears. Getting dressed for school, when the fact that she isn’t there to comment on my choice of shirts is like a palpable vacuum in my room.

It’s the week after the funeral when the loneliness sucks the air out of my lungs.

I put my books in my schoolbag and checked my watch.

“Leaving early again?” my dad asked. He’d appeared in the doorway of my bedroom, wearing a gray suit with a red vest, the only reminder of last week’s funeral in the dark circles under his eyes.

I tried my best to smile. “I wanted to pick up some coffee on the way.”

He nodded, but I wasn’t sure he believed me. He hesitated for a moment, then walked away. “Love you, Nikki.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

I slung the bag over my shoulder and headed out to my car, careful not to wake Tommy, whose school wouldn’t start for another hour. The sunlight painted the tops of the evergreen trees, and I knew it would soon hit my mother’s burial site too.

I didn’t tell my dad the truth about where I was going because I didn’t want him to worry about me. He had his own heartbreak to handle without having to deal with a daughter who had been spending most mornings sneaking off to the cemetery to talk to her dead mother.

It wasn’t that I really thought I was talking to her or that I believed she was somewhere in the clouds listening to me. It was an outlet. A release. If I didn’t let out some of the pain little by little, I would burst like an overfilled balloon.

It sounded crazy. I knew it. But I couldn’t help it. My mom was gone. And any more mornings I spent in an empty house without her to mull over my choice in outfit, or to talk about my upcoming day while the coffee brewed, or to help twist my hair into a loose braid would just push her further away from me.

I pulled into the parking lot and let the car idle for a moment.
Was
I losing it? Did I really think I could keep her close by avoiding my morning routine? I didn’t have any friends who’d lost a close relative, let alone one of their parents. Maybe if I had I’d know what a grieving daughter was supposed to look like, and then I could try to look like her.

I cut the ignition and got out of the car. Even though it was well into spring, the morning air seemed confused, as if the memory of winter was still fresh in its mind.

I made my way over to my mother’s grave. The rectangular patch of grass was annoyingly fresh, and dark against the rest of the lawn, screaming to anyone who would listen about the newness of the tragedy in the Beckett family.

The
tragedy
. The casual word everyone else used to describe something remote from their own lives. But for me the loss went deep inside. And it was sharp, with serrated edges. It tore through me and settled into the darkest corners of my soul, dormant until the tiniest signs of healing spurred it into action again.

Was there a word for that? Tragedy didn’t fit. It wasn’t big enough.

I sank to the ground and as was often the case, couldn’t think of a thing to say. We used to fly through the hours, talking without pausing. My dad would have to remind us of school, work, whatever we were missing.

And now I had no words. So I sat there silently.

A snap nearby startled me, and I turned toward the sound. Under the oak tree adjacent to the iron fence that provided the boundary for the cemetery, a figure sat down on the ground and opened a book.

Jack. Our eyes met. He didn’t wave or say anything. He just smiled and nodded his head to let me know he saw me, then bent his head over his novel.

I don’t know how he knew where to find me. Maybe he saw my car in the parking lot. Maybe my dad had called him. Maybe he just knew me.

However he’d found his way here, it didn’t matter. I knew then that the boy under the tree had to be mine. That floppy hair should be mine to touch. That big, knuckly boy hand should be mine to hold. That gruff voice should be mine to hear, and those ears should be mine to tell all of my secrets to. Except for the biggest secret. That I loved him. More than the crush I’d been dealing with for years. More than I should’ve loved a best friend. More than he would ever love me back. I was gone for him.

I turned back to the grave, to where the marker would be once it arrived, and whispered, “Help me, Mom. What am I going to do about Jack?”

The Everneath. The Ring of Water
.

S
o he earns your undying love by reading a book under a tree?” Cole said dryly. “Why didn’t I ever try that approach? I like books
and
trees.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m not telling you these stories if you’re going to make fun.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Hey. It’s working. Look.”

The tether had shifted position and was now pointing to the left.

“Let’s move,” Ashe said. “I’ll take the lead; Max, you take the back; and, Cole, you stick with Nikki. Max, keep your eye out for Wanderers. They like to send single scouts. We can’t afford to let even one of them know we’re here.” He looked at his watch. “It’s midday. We’ve gotta make as much distance as we can before we kick Nikki out. Let’s go.”

“Wait a second. Midday?” My voice rose. “I left at nighttime. Is it midday the next day?”

Ashe shrugged. “I only know the time of day. Not the date. Why?”

“The blackout may have sped up the time,” Cole said. He turned toward me. “The time discrepancies in the Everneath aren’t always consistent.”

My shoulders sagged. “If it’s the next day, then I’ve been missing overnight. That would mean I missed a dream with Jack.” My breathing became accelerated. I was about to hyperventilate. “He’s barely alive as it is. If I missed a night …”

Cole put a hand on my shoulder. “We can’t do anything about it now, Nik,” he said. “Except to get moving.”

I nodded, hoping by some miracle that time had gone backward, and it was midday on the day I left.

I started speed-walking down the pathway. “Slow down,” Cole said. “Make a mistake, and you’ll get drenched.”

I slowed down by a millisecond.

Ashe took the lead and scouted ahead, Cole walked beside me, and Max stayed far behind. Every time Ashe came to a decision point, where there were two or more possible routes, he would wait for us to catch up and see where my tether was pointing. He never got very far, because there were a lot of twists and turns, and forks in the road, and archways that seemed to be shortcuts to the next corridor over.

The sounds of the waterfalls adjusted in my ears so they became simply background noises.

No matter how centered we were on the pathway, the fine mist still covered my face. I tried to focus on not licking my lips or breathing in any of it, but it was difficult; and any time my mind wandered, I didn’t know if it was normal or if it was the water seeping inside of me.

I thought back to the poster of my face. I turned to Cole. “Why is the queen so curious about me? Is it so weird that a human would come here?”

He kicked the dirt. “Humans only come to the Everneath for three reasons. To Feed an Everliving, to go to the Tunnels …” His voice trailed off.

“What’s the third reason?”

“To
become
an Everliving. And you weren’t doing any of those things.”

I looked at Cole. “How does one become an Everliving?”

Cole hesitated for a moment. “It involves a series of rituals. It used to be between an Everliving and his human, but now the Shades like to oversee it. It’s very rare.”

“Why?”

“Because of our energy quota. If one of us decides to bring a human over, that Everliving host is then responsible for his own quota, plus the quota of the person brought over. So it’s a big deal when we make the decision. And it doesn’t involve—”

Cole’s voice cut off as shouts from behind us sounded. We turned around just as Max ran into sight.

“Wanderers. Behind us,” Max said.

“How many?” Cole asked.

“Ten, maybe. I only caught a glimpse because they were in another branch of the maze; but if they catch Nikki’s scent—”

“My scent?” I said indignantly.

“He means, if they get a whiff of your energy, they can track you,” Cole explained. “Which means we need to pick up the pace.”

We resumed our original formation, except this time Max didn’t fall as far behind and we walked quicker.

I started to pant a bit at our new pace. “They sound more like zombies than Everlivings,” I said.

“That’s how you should think of them. But zombies with brains,” Cole replied. “Which means they’re starving
and
cunning.”

“Why are they even in the maze?”

“The queen sentences them to wander here. Another menace to intruders in the labyrinth.”

I’d feel almost sorry for them if I wasn’t so scared of them.

Ashe was waiting for us up ahead, which meant we were facing another fork in the road. By now I had completely lost my bearings in the maze, and I had no idea which way was inward and which way was out. The walls should’ve been convex or concave since the maze was circular; but the running water made it difficult to tell, and they didn’t always curve the right way. Sometimes my tether seemed to lead us in one direction with one turn only to go in the opposite direction with the following three.

When we reached Ashe, I looked down at my tether and for the first time noticed it had faded a little bit.

Cole noticed too. “Keep your token in your hand and try not to worry about the Wanderers.”

“Does my stress level affect it?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“Everything inside you affects it,” Cole said.

I pressed Jack’s note into the palm of my hand, and the tether darkened a little bit. But we only made two more turns before we ran into our first Wanderer.

I knew something was wrong because Cole and I caught up with Ashe, who was backing up slowly. A few yards in front of him was a man whose clothes hung off of his stick-like limbs as if they were three sizes too big. His face glistened with sweat. He seemed just as surprised to see us as we were to see him.

“Hello, travelers,” he said, his eyes suddenly alert.

“Stay calm,” Cole whispered to me.

The man looked at Ashe, then at Cole, and finally at me. Cole pulled me tight against him; but the Wanderer had obviously caught a peek at my tether, because he was staring at where it had just been.

He didn’t take his eyes off me, but he addressed Cole.

“Who are you hiding?”

With his arm across me, Cole gently urged me behind him so he was shielding me completely. “No one,” he said. “We’re just passing through.”

“‘Passing through’? In the labyrinth?” He smiled, giving his sunken face a crazy look. “Like for a summer stroll?” He spoke fast.

Cole took a step forward, and the move seemed offensive to me rather than defensive. “What about you, friend? Are you out here all alone?”

The Wanderer finally looked directly at Cole. “I’m never alone in the maze. And I always have stories in my head to keep me company. Like the one I heard recently about a human girl who showed up at the weekly slaughter in the Ouros square. Have you heard this one?”

Cole tensed. “Rumors.”

I glanced down at his hands. He kept making fists.

The man eyed me carefully. “Whatever you say. I’d be willing to keep my mouth shut. In exchange for something.”

Cole raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Your Surface heart.”

Surface heart?
Did he mean Cole’s pick?

I expected Cole to scoff, but he didn’t. He shifted his stance, as if he were considering the offer. He wouldn’t ever give up his heart, would he? And I didn’t even know what this man could do with someone else’s heart.