It felt as if I were kissing a black hole.
I pulled away. “Wait,” I said. “I have to catch my breath.”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s been way too long.”
He leaned in to kiss me again, and I turned my head. He placed his hands on either side of my face and turned it back. “Wait—”
But his lips on my lips cut off any other words. I pushed against his chest as hard as I could, and he released me as I fell to the ground.
“I’m so sorry, Becks!” he said, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just done. “My mind … it’s not right here.”
I pushed myself off the ground and brushed my jeans, and that’s when I noticed my tether. It was pointing behind me. But I was facing Jack.
I jerked my head up and stared at his face. There was something in his eyes, something that made them blacker than they were before. His pupils looked too big. They took over his entire irises.
Jack … my Jack … was supposed to be in the Tunnels.
This wasn’t Jack.
He held out his hand. “C’mon, Becks. I figured a way out of here.” At my hesitation, he raised his hands. “I promise no more kissing until after we get back home.”
This wasn’t Jack.
But it looked like him. Every inch of his skin, every expression on his face, every callus on his hand. The way his eyes twinkled when he smiled. His devious dimples. The little divot in his forehead. It could’ve been him. I could make myself believe it was him. I didn’t even have to try. My brain was telling me to go with him, even though my instincts were fighting it.
I stayed where I was. “You go first,” I said. “I’ll follow you.”
His eyes narrowed the slightest bit, but he turned around. “Stay close, Becks.”
He took a step forward. For just one moment a voice in my head said, You had him in your hands, and you threw him away. Did that mean the boy in front of me now? Or the one I couldn’t hold on to when the Tunnels came for me?
This is a trap, I thought. This isn’t Jack. I turned and ran. Through the archway shortcut, around corners. I took every turn that was available, sometimes backtracking in the direction from which I’d come.
All the time, I could hear faux-Jack’s screams. Calling out my name. Begging me not to abandon him again. Even though I knew it wasn’t him, his frantic voice grabbed at my heart as if it had fingers. I couldn’t help feeling as if I was failing him again.
I ran for a long time, and finally around one corner I smacked right into someone. It was Max.
“Nikki!” he said, looking the happiest he ever had to see me. He didn’t embrace me or anything, but he let out a huge sigh of relief.
“Where’s Cole? And Ashe?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just saw the weirdest thing.… It wasn’t real.”
“Did you see Jack?” I asked.
He gave me a confused look. “No. It was my baby sister. But she’s …” His face crumpled, and he looked as if he was about to cry. “She wanted me to follow her.”
“They weren’t real,” I said.
“I felt her hand in mine!”
False images of people we loved. Enticing us to go with them. “They’re like Sirens,” I said.
“Sirens?” Max said.
I nodded. “Like from The Odyssey. Only in the story, they’d used music to lure sailors and trap them. But there’s no music allowed here, so they used something else to entice us.”
“Who did you see?”
“Jack,” I said. “And if you saw your sister, that means the images are specific to each person.” My pulse quickened. “We have to find the others. Let’s split up.”
“What?! No, that’s an awful idea,” Max said.
“Cole and Ashe are probably trapped right now. We have to get to them before they leave with their Sirens. We have the best chance of finding at least one of them if we split up. Now!” I turned him in the direction of my tether. “You go this way, I’ll go backward. Try to cover as much ground as you can.”
I shoved him forward, and he was gone.
Then I turned around and ran as fast as my legs would allow, trying not to think about my encounter with the Siren. It had felt so real. His skin, his big hands, his lips.
Actually, it was his lips that had given him away. They didn’t feel right. In fact, they felt as if they were sucking life out of me, taking away my reasoning capabilities. But if the Siren hadn’t kissed me, how long would it have taken me to figure out that it wasn’t Jack?
I was talking myself in circles. Cole was out there, with a Siren that looked like who knew what, and what if he followed it? Ashe was missing too, but at this moment the only person I wanted to find was Cole.
I followed my tether. Maybe I had backtracked enough from my original position that the tether would take me past the last place I’d seen Cole.
If I didn’t find him, hopefully Max would.
I rounded a corner and found a dead end. But standing right in front of the barrier was Cole. He wasn’t alone.
There was someone in his arms, but because his back was to me, I could only catch a glimpse of dark hair. Who was it?
I opened my mouth to call to him, but then I heard him speak.
“It’s okay. You’re okay now.” He stroked the girl’s hair. “I found you, Nik. You’re safe.”
Nik? The girl pulled away from him to smile, and I saw my face. My face!
“Cole!” I screamed his name, and it sounded like a screech. They both turned toward the sound.
The girl’s face crumpled. “There she is again!” she said. “She’s following me.”
“Cole, that’s not me,” I said.
The Siren grabbed on to Cole even tighter. “She even sounds like me!”
“Don’t worry,” Cole said. “She can’t hurt you.”
Oh brother. I took a step forward, and they both flinched. I held out my hands, palms down. “The girl in your arms isn’t me,” I said.
Cole frowned. “I’ve been with her the entire time. Whereas you just showed up.”
“You haven’t been with her the whole time. Think back over the last hour. I was telling you the story about Jack and the marshmallow—”
“The one where I twisted my ankle?” the Siren said, her tone accusatory. “That was my story.”
Cole held her even tighter, and he narrowed his eyes at me.
“Please, Cole,” I said. “They make us see what we want to see. I just saw Jack.”
“Jack’s in the Tunnels!” the Siren screamed. Then she turned to Cole. “We have to get out of here. All you have to do is know right here in your heart”—she put her finger on Cole’s chest—“that I’m me.”
Crap. That was something I would totally do. Cole seemed mesmerized, and he stared at her as if I wasn’t even there. He put his fingers on her chin and brought her face closer. “I know you’re you, Nik.”
She leaned her body even closer to his, and it occurred to me that he would want this version of me more. This Nik clung to him and told him that she needed him. This Nik trusted him. This Nik acted as if all she needed was Cole by her side. Her tether pointed to him, and only him.
Her tether! It was pointing directly toward him.
“Cole! Look,” I said, pointing at her feet. “It’s not me.”
He followed my gaze and looked at the tether. I saw his shoulders sink infinitesimally. Then he faced me and dropped his gaze to my own tether, which was now pointed away from him and out of the dead end.
His eyes met mine. “You’re the fake,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
I shook my head, but he turned away and started walking toward the dead end with the fake me. A small archway opened up in the wall of wind.
“Cole!”
He didn’t turn.
What to do? With my own Siren, I couldn’t see the truth until I kissed him.
I didn’t give myself a second to think. Cole was about to duck under the archway. I sprinted toward him, and when I was a couple yards away, I leaped into the air and tackled him. He must have been shocked, because he didn’t react fast enough to throw me to the side. We fell to the ground.
I turned him over and leaned down.
And I put my lips on his.
It only lasted for a split second, because he reflexively pushed me back, but not completely. Instead of throwing me off him, he held my face directly above his and searched everywhere, from my forehead to my chin. I let him turn my head right and left. I needed him to know it was me.
Then he brought my lips to his and kissed me.
And something strange happened. Whereas when I’d kissed the Siren, my body had weakened, now it was as if a power surge of energy was coursing through my veins and the fibers of my muscles. And it was all emanating from the kiss with Cole.
He ran his fingers through my hair and to the back of my head and pulled me in closer, and I let him, because the power surge reached the tips of my fingers and my toes and I was sure I would be able to do anything—face anything—if I just had more of his power.
His hands moved down my back, pulling, always pulling me closer. I was lost in Cole’s underworld, transported to another place and time where anything was possible. All of my memories, the ones I’d been struggling to hold on to, came rushing back.
And a new memory. Of a girl, sitting quietly at a table in a club, hunched over a soda. She had long, dark hair and pale skin. I squeezed my eyes shut to focus on the memory, and that’s when I realized that it wasn’t my memory.
The girl at the table was me.
I was seeing myself through someone else’s eyes.
Cole’s eyes. For the first time ever, I realized the tenderness with which he had viewed me. He noticed every glance of my eyes. Every hint of a smile. Every prelude to a frown. He paid particular attention to the curve of my fingers around my drink. The well-bitten fingernails. The nervous tapping.
I had no idea I tapped my fingers like that.
I felt what he felt. If he’d had wings, he would’ve wrapped them around me protectively. He was surprised at how quickly he’d become attached to a human.
“I would never kiss you!” The Siren’s screech brought me back to the Everneath, and I drew away from Cole.
He had a devilish grin on his face, and he turned toward the Siren. “I know. But the real Nik would—if it was to save my life.” He looked back at me. “Hey, Nik.”
“Thank goodness,” I said. I rolled off of him and sighed.
The Siren opened her mouth wide and wailed. The sound was so strong I thought it would burst my eardrums. I covered my ears. Cole did the same.
She started flickering, oscillating between the image of me and that of a black, scaly creature. She finally settled on the creature. And in a flash she leaped toward Cole, crashing into his body. She opened her mouth wide, unhinging her jaw like a snake, revealing rows of sharp black teeth. She dipped her head and clamped down on Cole’s neck.
Cole screamed.
“Cole!” I scrambled to my feet and looked around us, but there was nothing I could use for a weapon. Then I remembered the knife in the sheath at Cole’s ankle.
I reached for his leg, trying to avoid contact with the creature, and shoved my hand up his jeans leg. The hem got caught on the knife sheath, but with a little extra force I tore it past. Maybe it was the adrenaline. I grabbed the handle of the knife and ripped it out, brought it high above the middle of the creature’s back, aimed for a crack between the scales on her skin, and plunged downward.
The knife sank deep into her back and she let out a shriek. A stream of dark blood spurted from the wound. Her body seized, went still, then seized again and twitched. Her blood sprayed my face and I recoiled.
She made a wailing sound that faded into a sob, and then she went still.
“Cole!” I grabbed what looked like her shoulder and shoved her off of Cole.
He was covered in blood. I had no idea how much was his and how much was the Siren’s.
I tore off the sleeve of my shirt at the seam and held it against his neck. “Cole! Can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes and nodded. The move was barely perceptible. “Is it bad?”
I pulled the cloth away, but he was still bleeding, so I put it back and applied even more pressure.
“No,” I said. “Not bad at all. You’re going to be fine.”
He smiled and reached up to my cheek and ran a thumb across it. “You can’t lie with blood on your face.”
I took his hand from my cheek and placed it on his chest. He closed his eyes and stopped moving. I put my hand an inch away from his mouth to feel for breath. He was pushing out air at least.
I sighed and shifted my position so that I was sitting by his head. I patted his chest softly. “You’re going to be fine,” I said.
I was talking to myself.
I don’t know how long we sat like that before his eyes fluttered open. He sat up and immediately got woozy.