Jack frowned and closed his eyes. I couldn’t believe it. Cole was making perfect sense, and he had said probably the one thing that would make Jack move.
Jack hesitated for just a moment and then helped me over to the bed. I collapsed next to Cole, unable to keep my eyes open.
“Just sleep, Becks,” Jack said, running his fingers over my closed eyelids and down my cheeks “Sleep through the whole thing. I’ll be here the entire time.”
I couldn’t have stayed awake if I’d tried.
SOPHOMORE YEAR
The Surface. Rock Garden Climbing Gym.
One blink. That was all it took, and suddenly I was somewhere else. A place I recognized. It was the cavernous inside of the Rock Garden Climbing Gym. The cement floors matched the cement ceiling, and rock-climbing walls stood at different angles for all levels of climbers.
I’d been here once before, for a PE field trip sophomore year. I remembered it vividly because I had been dreading it. I’d always had a slight fear of heights, but the fresh loss of my mother had somehow increased the terror for me.
I remembered standing at the base of the beginner’s wall, staring up the shallow slope as if it were the face of Mount Everest.
I turned toward the beginner’s wall and saw a girl in black yoga pants and a green tank top with a negative photograph of the Beatles walking across Abbey Road on the front.
I knew that tank top. My dad had given it to me for my birthday. I was looking at . . . myself. But if that was me, then . . . I glanced down at the hands by my sides and saw black tattoos encircling each finger. These were Cole’s hands. This was Cole’s memory. I’d had no idea he’d been there that day, probably because I was so consumed by my fear.
He watched the memory-Nikki staring up at the top of the wall. The harness was attached to her waist, the rope strung through the pulley. Nate Pinnock, a junior, held the other end of the rope, ready to belay. He watched the frozen girl in the green tank top and rolled his eyes impatiently.
I could feel what Cole was feeling as he watched it all unfold. He couldn’t tear his eyes away. He had to find out if the frozen girl would ever gather the courage to try.
Suddenly Jack appeared behind the memory-Nikki. Cole took a few steps toward them so he could hear what they were saying.
Jack placed his hands on her waist and put his lips to her ear.
“Don’t look at the top, Becks. You don’t have to figure out how to get way up there. You only have to figure out how to get here.” He placed his hand on the foothold nearest her right foot. “Never focus on the end. Only focus on your first step.”
She took a deep breath, unable to tear her eyes off the highest platform. “And then what?” the memory-Nikki whispered.
From Cole’s perspective, I could see Jack’s face. The way he closed his eyes as if my fears were his fears. The way he held memory-Nikki’s waist as if he were holding something more precious than his own life.
He leaned closer to her. “Then you take the next step.”
Nate waved the rope back and forth. “Please, give me something to do.”
Jack turned and glared at Nate. Nate stopped moving the rope and sank a little lower against the floor.
Memory-Nikki hadn’t even noticed Nate’s impatience. She closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and whispered, “Just one step.”
She stepped closer to the wall and placed her hands on the two nearest rocks; but when she went to lift her foot, Jack’s hands at her waist got in her way. “Um, Jack?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Do your little bits of wisdom include a part about you actually having to let me go?”
He gave a wide smile and kissed her shoulder. “You take the first step, and I’ll let go.”
She turned her head slightly toward him. “You let go, and I’ll take the first step.”
He sighed, and with a reluctant expression that he kept hidden from her, he dropped his hands. She climbed.
Cole backed away, carrying a heaviness in his chest that I couldn’t quite understand, but the only word that came to mind was wistfulness.
NOW
The Surface. Cole’s bedroom.
I woke the next morning to hushed voices and the lingering images from the memory Cole had shared with me. I wondered if he could control what he did and didn’t share; the more I thought about it, the more I believed Cole couldn’t control them. He’d shared memories purposely before, such as his perspective on our first meeting at Harry O’s club. But last night’s memory . . . it showed our love. Mine and Jack’s. I had a feeling he wouldn’t have purposely shared it.
I didn’t get much of a chance to focus on the memory, though. Jack’s and Cole’s voices began to cut through the sleep, and I listened in.
“There could be a place for you,” Cole was saying. “Once she’s queen, we’ll make you an Everliving in the High Court. You two could be together forever.”
Jack scoffed. “You’d stand aside and let us be together. Ruling the Underworld.”
“Not ruling together,” Cole said. “She and I would rule together. But there’s no reason the two of you can’t . . .”
I opened my eyes briefly just in time to see him wave his hands in a finish-the-sentence kind of way. I wasn’t awake enough to actually finish it.
“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. It’s all pointless,” Jack said. “First off, I would never become an Everliving. But more importantly, when it comes down to it, Nikki will never feed on another human being. You may have your band, and whoever else you can recruit to your side, and maybe they’ll feed on innocent girls to bulk up for battle. You might have all the other pieces in place, but Nikki will never do the Century Feed.”
Never do the Century Feed. My eyelids fluttered open again as that phrase triggered a memory. Cole had once told me that one of the reasons he wanted to rule the Everneath was because it would mean he’d never have to do the hundred-year Feed again. His search for Forfeits would be over. His “subjects” would do it for him. The Everneath itself would provide all the sustenance he would need.
An important piece of Cole’s puzzle had just popped into place in my head.
“That’s part of his plan,” I mumbled.
Cole and Jack turned toward me. Jack rushed to my side. “Becks, you’re awake.”
I tried to sit up, but my head felt like a balloon.
“Here,” Jack said, handing me a cup of water. “Cole said it would be like you had an energy hangover.”
He was right. I might be a little lightheaded, but I felt as if I could pummel a few trees myself.
I gulped the water, slammed down the cup, and wiped my lips. “Me refusing to feed is part of his plan.”
Jack crinkled his eyebrows. “What?”
Cole’s face was blank, but he didn’t deny it.
“Because the queen doesn’t have to feed.” I shook my head. “All this time, you and I thought I had two choices. Century Feed on a Forfeit or die. Which would mean there’s only one choice for me. To die. But Cole is giving us a third choice. If I become queen, I won’t have to Century Feed. And I won’t die.”
I kept my eyes on Jack’s face, and I saw it. The tiniest reflection of a smile.
And then I realized what I had just done. I had given Jack motive to make me queen. I frowned. “Don’t even think it, Jack.”
“What?” Jack said.
“I’m not becoming queen.”
“Of course not, Becks.”
But I could see it in his eyes. I could see it on his face.
“But . . . ?” I said, waiting for him to fill in the rest.
He shook his head. “But if it comes down to it, if it comes down to your life, then you becoming queen might buy us some time.”
I closed my eyes, my breath caught in my throat.
Cole clapped.
I opened my eyes and narrowed them at him.
“I’m sorry,” Cole said, obviously not sorry. “I just thought this monumental occasion, when Jack and I both agreed on your future, should be marked with some sort of applause.”
I put my head in my hands. “This can’t be happening.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Jack growled. “I only want to keep her alive.”
“Me too!” Cole said, excited. “I want to keep her alive forever and ever. Just like in the fairy tales. Happily ever after . . . forever!”
“Enough!” I said, standing. I held up a finger. “You two don’t get to decide. I’ve made my decision. Listen closely. I. Won’t. Do. It.” I took a step closer to both of them and enunciated my next word carefully. “Ever.”
With that, I stormed out of the condo.
Jack chased me down the stairs and across the parking lot. When I reached his car, I turned on him, and he nearly ran into me.
I shoved my hand into his chest. “You do not get to decide how I stay alive!”
“I know. I know.” He took my hand off his chest and pulled me close. “I’m with you. You will never be queen. We’ll destroy the Everneath.”
“But . . .” My lower lip trembled against his shirt. “But what you said—”
“Cole doesn’t need to know how I really feel now, does he?”
I tilted my head back to look at him. “You mean . . .”
He shrugged. “I’d say Cole’s feeling pretty confident right now. He thinks that if it came down to it, I’d try my best to force you to become queen rather than see you die. If we’re going to destroy the Underworld, we need him believing he has the upper hand. Don’t you think?”
I let out a giant sigh of relief and leaned my head all the way back, letting the morning sun shine full on my face.
“I thought I’d lost you in there,” I said.
Jack pressed his lips against my forehead. “Never,” he said. I nodded, and we got into the car. Before he started it, though, he opened his phone and checked his email. Once the most recent ones loaded, he smiled.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Professor Spears,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ve been emailing him every day, hoping to convince him it wasn’t all one big joke. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to get your hopes up. But early this morning he said he’d found something that might help us. I asked to meet with him, and he just said yes.”
I threw my arms around Jack’s neck.
“It might not be anything,” Jack said.
“I don’t care. It’s hope.”
NINE
NOW
The Surface. Parley’s Canyon.
On the drive down Parley’s Canyon, I told Jack about the rock-climbing memory that Cole had leaked to me during the Feed.
“I remember that day,” Jack said. “But I can’t believe Cole was there. You’d think we would’ve noticed the Dead Elvises’ lead singer just hanging out in the corner of the gym.”
I shrugged. “Maybe he was there in his Neal form.” I tried to remember if he had the same tattoos on his fingers in his Neal form that he had in his Cole form.
“The question is, why was he there in the first place? Did he follow you there?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. The rock-climbing field trip was right after I’d met him.”
“He was obsessed from the start.”
I stared out the window. Considering how Cole had felt during that memory, I realized that Jack was probably right.
We were mostly quiet for the rest of the drive to the university campus. My dad was going to give me a lecture if he found out I was already missing my Creative Writing class, but it couldn’t be helped. Once we reached his office, Professor Spears ushered us inside.
“Do you have the documents?” he said by way of greeting.
I turned to Jack, my eyebrows raised. He dug into his backpack, pulled out a manila folder, and placed it on the professor’s desk. The professor opened it. Inside was the most ancient-looking page from Mrs. Jenkins’s collection of documents, the page we never could translate. I didn’t know he’d had it with him. He shrugged. “I wanted to encourage him to hurry, so I scanned the page and emailed it to him. Told him he could see the original if he helped us.”
The professor lifted the folder and brought the page closer to his face, careful not to touch it with his fingers. I didn’t bother telling him we’d already left our prints all over it.
“It’s incredible,” he said, holding it under the light on his desk.
Jack stepped forward. “You said you had something for us?”
The professor kept his eyes on the page when he answered. “After you left my office last time, I decided to contact my colleague, Professor Frank Sheldon. He’s sort of an Akh ghost aficionado.”
I remembered that “Akh ghost” was the term the professor had used before to refer to an Everliving.
“Frank said he had gathered numerous articles and documents. Made notes on the world of the Akh ghosts. He gave me this.” The professor opened the bottom right drawer of his desk and pulled out a large, leather-bound journal of sorts. “All the research Frank’s ever done.” He gingerly flipped through the pages, some of which were completely covered in scratchy writing, others with articles and drawings taped on them. Some showed hastily drawn figures and maps. Some had symbols like the ones on the bracelet Meredith had left me: the five parts of the human soul, as the Egyptians saw it.