Everbound: An Everneath Novel (14 page)

We both looked at him.

“We walk to Ouros. When we get there, if the compass is still pointed to the exact center …”

His face was grim.

“Why Ouros?” I asked.

“Because I have a friend there. A friend who owes me. And if it turns out that your tether is really pointing to the center of the maze, we’re going to need help.”

I knew even before we reached Ouros that my tether would still point to the bull’s-eye. Nobody said anything, but I could see the subtle shift in the direction as if I were holding on to one end of a length of twine, the other end of which was secured in place in the middle. I’d asked Cole why he just couldn’t zap us all there, and he said to do more than one trip at a time would be a waste of his energy. He needed to rest in between trips to replenish and refuel.

As we got closer to the great gray wall that surrounded Ouros, my blood started pounding. The last time I’d been here the queen and her Shades had vaporized a man, and now I was going back. I wondered how we would get through the wall, but then I saw a dark archway carved out of the base of the stone. The wall had to be incredibly thick, because I couldn’t see any light coming from the other side.

“Is it guarded?” I asked.

Cole smiled. “In a way. Only those of us who have hearts can get through. That’s how it keeps the Wanderers out. They’ve had their hearts taken away.”

When we were a couple of yards away, Cole pulled an object out of his pocket. It was a black guitar pick. I knew his heart was stored inside of it. It was the first time I’d seen the pick since that night at the condo when we’d failed to guess where Cole’s heart was.

Max pulled a dark strand from his pocket. It was tangled in knots.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s a string from my first guitar.”

“And that’s your heart?”

He looked at me as if the answer should be obvious. As we reached the doorway, I wondered if it would really be able to sense my heart since it was actually in my chest and not in an object I could flash. What kind of defense mechanisms would it have? Spears that shot out of the ceiling? My imagination went wild with each step deeper into the tunneled entrance. I didn’t want to talk for fear of setting off some sort of alarm.

But we emerged from the tunnel unscathed. I let out a sigh of relief, but my reprieve was short-lived. We were on the outskirts of the city. The structures closest to us were smaller than the buildings I remembered in the square. Single levels. Thick, dusty canopies jutted out from the entrances. Underneath the canopies were counters displaying rows and rows of glass jars.

It looked like an Old World marketplace, complete with shops and booths covered by canopies. I stepped closer to the nearest booth to get a look at the goods being exchanged, but what I saw didn’t make sense. The glass jars lining the shelves were empty. Each jar was labeled with numbers and letters—8h, 3d, 24h—but before I could even try to figure out what they meant, a poster hanging over the closest shop caught my eye, and I froze.

Cole saw it too. “Damn.”

It was a black-and-white rendering of a girl with dark hair and pale skin.

Me.

Underneath the picture were the words
DO YOU KNOW THIS HUMAN?

I pulled my hoodie up over my head. Cole and Max flanked me closely on either side. Cole held my elbow, guiding me quickly, but not too quickly, down an adjacent road and then down an alley. With both of the boys so near to me, my tether almost disappeared completely, absorbed by them. I could still feel it, that tug on my heart. It felt as if my projection should’ve come straight from my heart, out of my chest; but it didn’t. I was grateful. It was less noticeable on the ground. But I knew it must have originated from deep inside of me, and only when it reached outside of my body did it get absorbed by Cole and Max.

I wondered what my energy tasted like to them. Was it full of my love for Jack? Or was it made up of the negative emotions—such as guilt or heartache—that Cole said always rose to the top?

I wasn’t about to ask.

Cole and Max were quiet. I got the feeling we were taking back roads, although we did pass several Everlivings, some of them staring for longer than they needed to.

The buildings we passed looked ancient, but I didn’t look hard enough to figure out why. The way Cole was racing, it felt as if we were being chased, even though I was pretty sure I hadn’t been spotted by anyone yet. When we reached a building with two intricate columns at the doorway, Cole turned in. We’d been through enough twists and turns that I was completely lost.

Cole knocked.

“Who lives here?” I whispered.

“Ashe. The oldest Everliving I know. And the only person I know who’s ever seen the maze.”

He knocked again, more urgently. A strange-looking man swung open the door. When I saw him, the first word that came to my mind was
smoke
. His skin was a pale gray color, and it looked spongy, as if it were partly made up of mist. His gray hair stood straight up on his head. Even the irises of his eyes were gray.

Cole looked confused. “Ashe?”

Recognition flickered across the man’s face. “Cole!” He seemed surprised, but Cole didn’t give him a chance to ask questions.

“Can we take this inside?” he asked with a quick glance behind us.

Ashe reacted immediately, ushering us in and shutting the door.

Once we were safely inside, Cole and Ashe embraced in a sort of man hug, with a slap on the back. When they parted, Cole studied Ashe’s face.

“What happened to you?” he said.

So apparently Ashe hadn’t always looked like smoke.

He was about to answer, but he caught sight of something at my feet. My tether. Max and Cole had given me just enough space so that it reappeared fully.

Then his eyes traveled to my face, and he froze. He looked me up and down, and I could feel my cheeks go red under the scrutiny.

“Well, that’s quite the defined energy projection. What have you got here?” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Cole answered his questioning look. “She survived the Feed.”

Ashe backed up a few steps. “You’re making a push for the throne, and you came here?!”

“No, no!” Cole held out his hands, palms down, in a reassuring manner. And then as he seemed to think of how Ashe would interpret his next words, a disbelieving grin appeared on his lips. “We’re going to the Tunnels.”

We sat down at a table in the center of Ashe’s home, and over the next few minutes, Cole told him everything. How I’d been his Forfeit and how I’d survived the Feed. How Jack had taken my place in the Tunnels and how I was keeping him alive in my dreams.

When he’d finished, the room went quiet. Ashe placed his elbows on the tabletop and clasped his hands.

“So you’re going to the Tunnels. To save the boy,” Ashe said incredulously.

Cole nodded.

“You always did enjoy the impossible tasks.” Ashe chuckled.

Cole nodded again, acknowledging some history between them that I didn’t know about.

“Why did you come here?”

Cole pointed to my tether. “Because her projection is directing us to Jack. And if you can tell where it’s pointed …”

The answer dawned on Ashe’s face. He looked from the tether to Cole. “Bullshit.”

Cole leaned forward across the table. “We need your help.”

Ashe mirrored Cole’s position. “That’s not all you’re gonna need. Last I heard that place was full of Wanderers.”

“So, maybe some weapons would be nice too.”

The corner of Ashe’s mouth pulled up as he looked at Cole’s deadpan expression. I got the feeling that these boys liked danger.

The Everneath. Ashe’s house
.

C
ole decided he and Max needed to go to the market and stock up on extra energy—which was the main commodity being sold at the market we’d passed. Since my face was plastered everywhere, they decided to leave me here, under Ashe’s watch. Cole went around the room and closed the wooden shutters over the windows.

“Don’t go outside,” he said.

“I wasn’t about to,” I replied. “But do you really need more energy?”

“It’s just a boost. But we need everything we can get.”

Max came over. “Let’s go,” he said to Cole.

Cole looked pointedly at Ashe. “Nobody gets in here,” he said. Ashe nodded, and then Cole and Max were out the door, leaving me alone with him.

Ashe took a seat on a wooden stool near a small crack in the window and gestured to a similar stool for me. I sat down, and he stared out into the street.

“You don’t think anyone really saw me, do you?” I asked.

Ashe shrugged. “Even without your energy, humans look a little bit different. Not noticeable at first, but after a while, you can see an almost imperceptible … radiance. Maybe it’s the light of mortality.” He said it very matter-of-factly, without any censure. He didn’t take his eyes off the street while he spoke. “You’d have to be looking for it, though.”

“Even if someone did see my …
radiance
, would they really turn me in?”

“The queen’s offered quite the bounty on you.”

“Money?”

Finally he turned. “Even better. The queen is offering time in the Elysian Fields.”

Elysian Fields. Cole had told me about them before. I thought back to the time in my bedroom when he’d placed his hands on either side of my face, and then, like a dream, I was standing in a field with the most incredible feeling of lightness, as if I could float away and never touch the ground again.

I thought about those jars I’d seen in the marketplace, and how the numbers on the labels suddenly made sense. “Was that what they were selling at one of the booths? Those jars marked eight D and twenty-four H. Did those represent time in the Fields?”

Ashe nodded. “The Fields are like a psychedelic coma for us. The best high. If they were more accessible, we’d probably become addicted. But the queen’s the only one who has access to the Fields. She can sell her access. Or offer it up as a bounty.” He looked out the window again.

I glanced around Ashe’s home, finally able to get a feel for it. It consisted of one giant rectangular room, with stone walls at either end that entered into the street and what looked like a back courtyard of some sort, and wooden walls on the sides that I assumed separated this residence from the two adjacent ones. It had a strange mix of the old and the new about it. The structure and the table and chairs seemed ancient, made out of thick oak with intricate designs. But then a bookcase on one wall held not only older books but also more modern books with colorful spines.

One corner of the room was filled with stacks of old blankets and Persian-looking carpets, reminding me of the inside of a Bedouin tent or something. In the opposite corner was a contraption that looked like an old-fashioned telescope.

“What do you use the telescope for?” I said.

Ashe glanced briefly at the corner that held the contraption. “I don’t use it. It has a … sentimental value.”

Tokens and telescopes, guitar picks and hearts. Everlivings had a way of infusing ordinary objects with deeper meaning.

As if the telescope sparked something in Ashe, he said, “This person we’re looking for. What’s his name?”

“Jack,” I said. “Jack Caputo.”

“And you love him.”

“Yes.”

“And Cole’s helping you save him.”

“Yes.”

“Even though he’s in love with you too.”

I frowned. Why did Everlivings talk about love when they had no hearts? “No. He’s not.”

Ashe raised his eyebrows skeptically.

“It’s not love,” I said. “It’s a need. He needs me because he thinks I can become the next queen. He doesn’t love me.”

He tilted his head. “You really can’t see it, can you?”

“See what?”

“He has a tether too. And it points right at you.”

I opened my mouth but couldn’t get any words out. Did he mean a literal tether? Ashe was wrong. Cole wasn’t capable of love.

Right then the door swung open, and Cole and Max stepped in. Cole stopped when he saw my face, then he looked to Ashe with a curious expression. “What were you talking about?”

“Nothing,” I said, too quickly.

Cole looked at me with narrowed eyes but didn’t say anything. There was a tense, silent moment when Cole’s gaze shifted from me to Ashe and back again. Then Max cleared his throat and nudged Cole with his shoulder. “Time.”

Cole nodded.

Minutes later, Ashe, Cole, and I were huddled around an old parchment map that looked like it had been drawn at the same time as the Declaration of Independence, while Max stood guard at the window. The images on the map looked similar to what Cole had drawn for me, with the High Court and the Feed caverns inside a center bull’s-eye and then three rings surrounding it, expanding in size as they went. The fourth ring showed the Commons.

Ashe placed a round piece of red wood that he used as a marker in one of the Commons that I assumed had to be Ouros. “We’re here. And you’re talking about going through the labyrinth.”

“The labyrinth?” I asked.

“The labyrinth. Like a maze.”

“I know what a labyrinth is,” I said, flashing back to the story I’d read about the Minotaur.

“The inner three rings—Water, Wind, and Fire—make up a labyrinth whose sole purpose is to keep people out. The place is filled with physical obstacles, and those are tough enough; but it’s the psychological obstacles that eat people alive.”

My pulse increased. “What do you mean ‘psychological obstacles’?”

“The first ring, the Ring of Water, messes with your emotions. The second ring, Wind, attacks your mind. And the third ring, Fire, brings out your despair. You can fight the physical threats. But you can’t protect your mind. That’s why nobody makes it very far. I never made it beyond the Ring of Water.” He looked up, his face grim. “I’ve never heard of anyone who has.”

I wanted to ask Ashe why he’d tried going through the maze in the first place, but a look from Cole made me hesitate. “Is it even possible to get to the center?”

“The queen holds the blueprint to the maze for the people she invites to the High Court,” Ashe said. “We just don’t have the map.”