Rogue (8 page)

Grotton turned thoughtful. “The way I saw it, there were two options: fix the Afterlife, or put it out of its misery by hastening its destruction. I merely chose the latter. Zara turned out to be quite the violation factory, if I do say so myself.
”

Lex’s pulse was still raging, but she kept her cool. She needed Grotton. She hated that she needed him, but as long as she still got him in the end, that was all that mattered. ll thatˀered. “I cannot wait to kill you.”

“
Try
to kill me,” he corrected her. “And I’m looking forward to it as well. Should be quite a laugh.”

“I don’t understand,” Lex said, ignoring that last bit. “Why
not
fix the Afterlife?”

He shrugged. “Petty jealousy, I suppose.”

Lex remembered something her uncle had said back in the cabin in Croak—Grotton thought that if
he
couldn’t have an afterlife, then no one should. Her hands clenched. “Again, really can’t wait for the killing.”

“Oh, but you’re not going to merely ‘kill’ me.” He smiled again. “What you will do—I’m sorry,
attempt
to do—is much, much worse than killing.”

Lex’s breath caught. “Damning?”

He smiled harder.
“Worse.”

When all she could do was stare, he gave her a mischievous wink. “Flip ahead seven pages.”

Lex did so. His hand danced across the page for a brief moment, allowing her to glimpse the title:
T
HE
R
ESET
.

“A clean slate,” he told her. “For any souls who were altered in some way—ghosted, trapped, Damned.” He raised his eyebrow. “Restores them to their original condition and sends them straight to the Afterlife.”

Lex inhaled so hard, her lungs nearly popped.

All those people I Damned
.
And Driggs would get to go to the Afterlife after all! Or maybe
—the thought briefly flitted through her mind, not wanting to stick and get her hopes up—
maybe since he’s half and half, he’ll become human again!

“This would fix everything!” Lex said, forgetting all about volume control. “This is what we need to do!”

The rest of the Juniors jolted awake at the sharp outburst.

“Yelling?” Ferbus asked, squinting in the orange sunlight. “Yelling is what we need to do?”

Lex pointed at the Wrong Book—though without Grotton’s hand in front of it, all it displayed was a blank page. “There’s a way to restore all souls to the Afterlife—
all
of them. Trapped, Damned—” She turned to Driggs. “Even ghosted!”

He frowned, then smiled, then frowned again, as if he were unable to decide whether it was worth it to believe her.

But his spazzy face only made Lex more antsy. “So how do we do it?” She tried to shove the book back under Grotton’s floating form so she could read more, but Grotton jerked away, snickering.

“How do
you
do it,” Uncle Mort spoke up. “And it’s not time yet.”

Lex was so flabbergasted that Uncle Mort had entered the conversation—and, even more baffling, that he knew what they were talking about—that all she could do for a moment was sputter out a series of demented questions. “Me? Do what? When? Why isn’t it?”

Uncle Mort shot a look at the Wrong Book, then spoke slowly and deliberately. “When you destroy Grotton, a reset will be triggered. That much is true. All souls, however damaged, will be restored and sent directly to the Afterlife. But before you try to chop his head off—”

Lex was well on her way to trying to chop his head off. She grabbed her scythe with one hand and tried to grab Grotton’s floating form with the other—but he wasn’t solid, and he certainly didn’t look as if he planned on becoming so anytime soon.

“You’ll have to do better than that, love,” he said.

“He’s right, Lex,” Uncle Mort said. “Simply killing him won’t work. Damning won’t either.”

Lex thought for a second. “I know!” She dug around in her pocket, pulled out her plastic skull-and-crossbones li Kcroherghter, and held it to the pages of the Wrong Book. “You’re attached at the hip to this thing, right? So if it goes, you go.”

“No, don’t!” Uncle Mort shouted. Lex stopped. Grotton looked disappointed. “His soul is bound to the book,” Uncle Mort explained, “but it’s not a
part
of it. You destroy the book, it’s only going to break the bond and set him free, and then you won’t be able to keep him around long enough to reset anything.”

With an irritated sigh Lex lowered the book and the lighter. “Okay, fine,” she said. “Then how am I supposed to do it?”

Grotton flashed a taunting smile around the car as he floated upward. “You’re the Last,” he said, leaving through the roof. “You figure it out.”

Everyone stared up at the ceiling for a few moments, then back at one another. But Lex was looking only at her uncle. “Really? Fresh out of ideas on the whole Grotton-destroying front?”

Uncle Mort was visibly frustrated. He looked at the Wrong Book. “Last time I got a look at that book—twenty years ago, when LeRoy and I first trapped Grotton in that cabin—we only got a glimpse of the reset page before Grotton realized what we were trying to do. So I know that it
can
be done, and only by an extremely powerful Grim—that’s you, Lex—but I don’t know how.” He looked around at the other Juniors and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Which is where you guys come in. Grotton’s onto my tricks, but he doesn’t know the rest of you very well. You need to figure out a way to get him to reveal the rest of that page.”

Bang’s eyes lit up, her hand automatically snatching the Wrong Book out of Lex’s. She pulled it into her lap and began paging through it. She signed something to Pip, who eagerly nodded and looked up at the top of the car, where Grotton lurked, unaware of their plans.

“We have a little bit of time,” Uncle Mort continued. “I want to make sure the Afterlife is all sealed off and safe before we start sending damaged souls back into it, since a reset will cause more kickback than the effect of all the portals sealing, combined. Once they’re all closed up, though, we have to at least attempt this.”

“But what if it’s dangerous?” said Driggs, shooting Lex a look. “For Lex, I mean?”

“Who cares?” she shot back. “I’ll do whatever it takes. I said I’d fix you, and I will.”

“We’ll reassess once we figure out what it entails,” said Uncle Mort. “All I know is this: Sealing the portals will stop the damage and prevent anything else from happening to the Afterlife. But resetting will reverse the damage completely—something that I’m sure Kloo and anyone else who lost their memory would certainly appreciate.”

Lex thought of Cordy. She hadn’t seen her since DeMyse, a month ago. What if she’d lost her memory since then? What if she didn’t remember Lex anymore?

“I’ll do it,” Lex said. “I promise.”

Yet she couldn’t get Grotton’s smiling face out of her head. He’d willingly shown her the reset page, as if he were trying to help—

But he’d “helped” Zara, too.

And look how many people she’d killed.

***

A few hours later they pulled into a gas station and Pandora got out to fill up the tank. Bang was still flipping through the blank pages of the Wrong Book
, nudging Pip with ideas.

Uncle Mort and Lex headed into the store to load up on more snacks—but when they got to the door, Uncle Mort swerved her away from it, leading her instead around the side of the building.

She frowned. “Um, the Doritos are this way . . .”

“The Doritos can wait.”

“
Excuse
me?”

Her dread increased when she realized where he was shoving her. “Oh no. No no no.”

He dug around in his pocket for quarters and stuffed a couple into the pay phone slot. “It’s been months—they must be worried out of their minds.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what?”

Lex pinched her lips together, unable to come up with a reasonable excuse.

He moved in a little closer. “You think Norwood won’t be able to find them if he needs to, Lex?”

With that, a cold sweat broke out against her skin. Zara had used Lex’s parents for leverage; why
wouldn’t
Norwood do the same thing?

She grabbed the receiver.

“They’re not going to buy the usual excuses that nothing’s wrong,” she said as she dialed. “They’ll know I’m lying.”

Uncle Mort shrugged. “Then don’t lie.”

The tone sounded three times before her mother’s voice came through on the other line. “Hello?” she said, though it came out as more of a sigh.

Lex swallowed. “Mom? It’s me.”

Silence, then: “
Lex!
Where have you
been?
”

Her father picked up on another phone. “Lex? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m—”

She shut her eyes to think. She had to protect them somehow. And there was no way to do that without just coming out with it.

“I’m in a little bit of trouble,” she said. “I mean, I’m safe—I’m with Uncle Mort, but—”

“Put him on!” her father demanded.

She looked at Uncle Mort. He shook his head, and she couldn’t blame him. Better to contain the blast radius of outrage. “He’s . . . not here right now. Listen—”

“No,
you
listen!” her mother shouted. “You go
months
without calling—and then you think you can just give us a ring and tell us what to do? Jesus, we thought you were dead!”

“Calm down, Gail,” her father interrupted.

“I will
not
calm down! What were we supposed to think, Lex? Especially after what happened to your sister—of
course
we’re going to assume the worst!”

“Where are you?” her dad asked. “We’ll come pick you up. I’ll run Mort over with my car if I have to.”

“No, Dad—” Lex grabbed the phone with her other hand to steady it. “I’m not coming home. There are some things I have to do. They’re kind of important.”

“What could possibly be more important than your own safety?”

Saving the goddamn Afterlife!
she wanted to shout.
Saving your dead daughter’s soul!

Instead, she tried to take a calming breath. “Listen to me. There is a slight chance that you guys might be in danger. Go—”

“Us?” her mom shrieked.

YES! Last time Zara almost slit your throat, remember?
But of course, they didn’t remember. Uncle Mort had Amnesia’d them. “Go somewhere else, get out of the house, okay? How about Aunt Veronica’s?”

Her father let out an impatient grunt. Lex could picture him pulling at his goatee. “We’re not going to pick up and move to Oregon just because you say so, Lex.”

“Although—” her mom interrupted. “There have been some strange people about.” Something rustled, as if she were pulling back a window curtain. “That guy over there with all the piercings—I’ve never seen him before.”

Lex looked at Uncle Mort. “Lazlo,” he mouthed.

Security detail. Elsewhere
. Lex made a clawing motion at his face for not telling her sooner. Even though she felt a small stab of relief, Lazlo Keli. Elwas only one person, and she’d seen what Norwood could do—

“Exactly,” Lex said into the phone. “You need to get out.”

“If we really are in danger,” her father said, “why don’t we call the police?”

“No!” Lex said. She couldn’t imagine the heights to which non-Grimsphere law enforcement would complicate things. “No, the police won’t help. Don’t get them involved. Just leave, okay? How about the neighbors—go stay with them!”

“Lex, enough,” her father said in the voice that always meant that, well, he’d had enough. “We’re not going anywhere. We’ll lock the doors and not open up for strangers, but that’s about as much as I’m willing to indulge in this nonsense.”

Lex gritted her teeth. It wouldn’t matter if they locked the doors. Norwood could Crash right into their friggin’ living room. “That won’t
help—
”

“Besides, if the son of a bitch who killed Cordy shows up on my doorstep, you can be damned sure I’m not just going to run away.”

Lex sighed. She wasn’t going to win this, she could tell. “Fine. Just be careful, okay? Be aware of your surroundings, don’t go anywhere alone,” she rattled off, using the same safety speech her mother had delivered a thousand times.

“I’m hanging up,” her father said. “Tell Mort to call me when he’s done running his cult and corrupting my daughter.”

The line clicked off.

“Mom?” Lex asked after a moment. Her mother hadn’t said anything in a while. “Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“Well . . . say something.”

Another pause.

“There’s nothing to say, Lex. We can’t protect you if you don’t want to be protected. We can’t bring you home if you don’t want to be found.” She let out a shaky breath. “And clearly, you don’t.”

Lex was squeezing and unsqueezing the receiver so hard, her knuckles were turning all kinds of colors. “I have to do this, Mom. I know that you and Dad are worried, but trust me—it’s really,
really
important. Worth risking my life for, even. I know you can’t understand that, but . . .”

She waited for a response, but the other end had gone si
lent once again. Lex couldn’t tell if her mom was thinking about what she said, or crying, or what.

Finally, she spoke. And when she did, she sounded so small and weak that Lex couldn’t do anything but hang up without responding.

“Come home, Lex. Please?”

Pandora brought the Stiff to a stop around ten o’clock. The Juniors’ heads bobbed up, still half asleep.

“Where are we?” Pip asked.

“Nowhere,” said Uncle Mort. “Specifically, the middle of.”

It certainly seemed like nowhere. The Stiff’s headlights illuminated a wall of trees, the woods thick and heavy with snow. They were in a small clearing peppered with black mounds of rock. Except for a small lighted candle next to the biggest mound, the area was pitch-dark.

“Grab your stuff,
” Uncle Mort told them. “And flashlights on.”

They piled out of the car, swinging the beams of light around, throwing creepy shadows onto the tree trunks. The big rock with the candle next to it was white, it turned out. And box-shaped.