Addison shrugged, and her gaze wandered again. “Go back the way you came.”
Something scraped the ground at her side and I glanced down to see that one of the crimson creeper vines had wrapped itself around a plastic bottle of water and was pulling it slowly toward the jungle gym bars. Addison sighed and picked the bottle up, then unwrapped the vine from it with her bare fingers. “Greedy, bloodthirsty little suckers,” she mumbled. Then she handed the bottle to me. “He sent this for you. Can’t have you dying of thirst before he’s done with you.”
“Who?” I asked, untwisting the cap from the bottle. But then I realized that the bottle had no label and that the cap hadn’t cracked when I opened it. The bottle hadn’t been sealed.
“Where did you get this?” I stared through the clear bottle at the contents.
Addison shrugged but didn’t answer.
“Is this from a local source?” I asked, sniffing the opening of the bottle.
“From the fountain in the park. That’s the best water, though it tastes a little sour at first. But I can get some from the pond instead, if you’d rather forget.”
“Forget what?”
She shrugged. “Whatever it is you don’t want to remember.”
“No, thanks.” I handed the bottle back to her, but she refused to take it.
“He wants you to drink this.”
“Who? The hellion? I don’t give a damn what he wants, I’m not drinking any of your creepy-ass hell water. What will it do, anyway?” Would it shrink me, like Alice’s “drink me” bottle in Wonderland? If so, maybe I should drink it, so I’d be small enough to walk right through one of those narrow gaps in the plant life.
“Don’t worry,” Addison said. “This is the good kind. It’ll make you sleepy….” She covered a giant yawn with one hand, and I wondered if she’d already taken a hit.
I shoved the bottle farther away, and it fell over into the dirt. “I don’t want to forget, and I sure as hell don’t want to go to sleep.” Sleeping in the Netherworld was a very bad idea—waking up in a jungle gym prison had taught me that, if little else.
Addison shrugged again. “You’ll change your mind soon. But that’ll be too late. It always is.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
She nodded sagely. “It never does.”
I shook my head, trying to draw my own thoughts into focus, since she clearly couldn’t wrangle hers. Maybe she’d been drinking the local water. “Addison, did you see the guy that was with me?”
“The pretty boy.” Her eyes went baby-doll wide and wistful. “You should have kissed him while you had the chance.”
What did that mean? Had I lost the chance? “His name’s Luca. Do you know where he is?”
“He’s waiting for a ride.”
“A ride to what? Home? He’s going home?”
Addison nodded again, and impatience buzzed beneath my skin. Time felt like it was slipping through my fingers, leaving me grasping for something I couldn’t grab onto. How long had I been unconscious? What time was it? I couldn’t tell from the crazy-colored sky in this Nether hell.
“How do you know? Just because that hellion said he’d send Luca home? How do you know he was telling the truth?”
Addison shrugged. “Hellions can’t lie.”
“Seriously?” What kind of evil monster couldn’t lie?
She frowned, studying my face, her head tilted like she was thinking really hard, but couldn’t quite pull her thoughts into line, and suddenly she reminded me of my ex, when I’d seen him in the psychiatric hospital. “Maybe he’ll let us keep you, when he’s done with you. I used to have a sister.”
Oh, hell no. My chill bumps were the size of igloos. “I have to go with Luca. Where is he? Can you take me to him?”
For one fleeting instant, I understood how bizarre my existence had become. I was talking to a dead pop star beneath a jungle gym cage, in a world that couldn’t possibly exist. Was this my punishment for calling Kaylee crazy? Had karma bitten back to make me as crazy as she was, or was insanity contagious?
Had I lost my mind?
“You don’t need him,” she said. “You don’t need anyone.”
Anger swooped in to overwhelm some of my fear. “You don’t know what I need!”
“No, you don’t know what you need!” she shouted back, and I nearly swallowed my own tongue in surprise. No one ever shouted at me. Ever. “You don’t know who you are, and you don’t know what you have either. And you won’t until you realize you’ve lost everything and can never get any of it back.”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do or have. My dad’s been trying that for years, and it doesn’t work. If Luca’s going home, I’m going with him, and you’re going to take me to him.”
She shook her head, and her eyes were clearer than they’d been a minute earlier. So she probably meant it when she said, “I wasn’t sent here to help you.”
“Then why were you sent?”
“To bring you water. And to make sure you haven’t escaped.”
Escaped? How the hell would I escape from a cage crawling with deadly plants?
“Addison. Please. Can you get me out of here? Will you please take me to Luca? Please. I want to go home.” I’d never been less embarrassed to beg for anything in my life.
“I can’t.”
“I can pay you! I left my purse at school, so this is all I have, but it’s yours.” I pulled a folded twenty-dollar bill from my pocket and shoved it at her, but Addison stared at it like she didn’t even recognize it. “Please get me out of here.”
She studied me through narrowed eyes, and I could see the effort it took her to draw her thoughts back into focus. “You’re a fool and you don’t listen. You only hear your own voice and feel your own pain. You can go home, but I can’t take you. And you can’t take yourself until you start listening. Until you want it, more than anything else.”
“I don’t…” I frowned. “I don’t know what that means. Please help me. I’m scared. I don’t want to die here.”
“No, you don’t,” she said, and a fresh coil of fear wound its way up my spine. “The pretty boy is in your school. In the kitchen, waiting for his ride. The rest, you’ll have to do for yourself.”
“How?” I demanded, panic surging through my veins as she began to fade from sight. “I don’t know what to do!”
“Listen, Sophie,” she said, and the last syllable of my name lingered in the air between us, even after she’d disappeared.
“Listen to what?” I shouted. But there was no one there to answer. “Aagggh!” In my anger and frustration, I forgot the jungle gym was only four feet high and when I stood, my skull crashed into the grid of bars overhead. That fresh pain and my own stupidity only made me madder, and my fist shot out without consulting my brain. My knuckles slammed into one of the bars and a new, sharp pain shot through my hand, resonating in my index finger even once the initial wave had dulled.
I glanced at my hand and found a thin trail of blood rolling down my finger. A single drop lay on the ground, beneath the bar I’d hit, and another one hung from the bar itself. From a jagged point in the metal, where it hadn’t been welded properly.
As I watched, the end of one small vine strained against the metal bar it was wrapped around, stretching toward the drop of my blood on the grass. To my fascination and horror, when the vine couldn’t reach, it began to uncoil itself from the bar, then snake its way through the grid and into my makeshift cage through a more direct route.
And that baby vine wasn’t alone. Several others—mostly the small, thin ones—were straining toward the blood I’d spilled, and the constant slithering sound began to take on both speed and urgency.
Shit! The plants were bloodthirsty, and I was bleeding. Given enough time, could they rearrange themselves enough to actually reach me? According to Luca, one thorn prick was enough to kill me.
Another drop fell from my punctured finger, and the slithery-slidey sound thickened. My pu
lse raced and my heart beat too hard. They were coming inside the jungle gym, because my blood was inside the jungle gym.
If the vines were that desperate for a couple of drops inside the cage, couldn’t they also be drawn to even more blood outside the cage?
I used one finger to catch the drop about to roll off my hand and smeared the blood across a bar at the bottom of the cage, near the drop spilled on the ground. The slithering seemed a little more desperate in response, but that could have been wishful thinking on my part. I’d never wished for anything so hard in my life.
I studied the grid of bars and vines around me, looking for a gap big enough for what I had in mind. And finally I found one. It had opened up a couple of feet from the blood I’d spilled, as the vines strained toward the offering.
Okay, Sophie, you can do this. It’s just a little blood.
I took a deep breath, then stretched my hand out in front of me, fingers spread. Palm flat and defenseless. Then I slammed my hand into the jagged piece of protruding metal that had cut me in the first place. Sharp, hot pain bit into the fleshy part of my palm, at the base of my thumb. I gasped and closed my eyes for one second. But that was all I could afford. The vines could smell—or sense?—the fresh blood, and the slithering all around me grew even more frantic.
Eyes squeezed shut, I pulled my hand down, and hissed when the metal tore through my skin, leaving a jagged, half-inch laceration in my flesh. Then I pulled my hand back and bit my lip to keep the rest of my pain bottled up. No telling what kind of monsters out there would hear me if I screamed, and would want their own taste of the feast the creeper vines thought they were about to enjoy.
Breathing through the pain, I knee-walked several feet over to the gap that had opened even wider in the metal grid. Careful not to touch the vines still slithering slowly over the bars, I stuck my cut hand through the gap and opened and closed my fist several times, to get the blood flowing. I watched, fascinated, as it began to drip on the ground, a foot outside my cage.
When more vines snaked their way toward this new offering, I found another nearby gap—small ones were opening up everywhere—and stuck my hand through that one, to leave another blood sample. One more time, on the same side of the jungle gym, and the one-way flow of vine traffic became obvious.
My pulse racing, I clenched the bottom of my shirt in my cut fist to slow the bleeding, ignoring the fresh pain as I watched the side of the metal dome opposite the blood offerings I’d left. The gaps between the vines were growing wider and wider.
After a couple of minutes of glancing back and forth between the mass of vines behind me and the steadily thinning stream in front of me, I saw my opening. An entire metal-framed square was completely unobstructed. Even better—it was a ground-level square. No climbing required.
I sucked in another deep breath, then let go of my shirt, hoping that the bleeding had slowed enough for me to crawl through the bars without drawing the vines back toward me, the source of their feast. Then I dropped onto my stomach and carefully shimmied my way through the opening in the grid.
Halfway through, something caught on my shirt and tugged the material, and I nearly panicked. It was a thorn. It had to be. I froze, and could only wait—it felt like forever—for the vine to pull itself free from me and move on. After that, I scrambled, caution forgotten in favor of speed. When my hips were through the hole, I pulled myself forward with my hands, then tucked my knees beneath me and pulled my feet out of the cage.
I crawled away from the jungle gym and sat on the ground several feet away, my knees drawn to my chest, my arms wrapped around my legs. For nearly a minute, I could only breathe, staring at the cage I’d thought I’d die in, watching the creeper vines slither and squirm toward the drops of myself I’d left for them.
Then I smiled. I’d done it. I’d freed myself, with no one’s help. My dad always said I was the embodiment of the adolescent sense of entitlement, or some such crap that meant I was determined to have my own way. Who knew that would ever actually come in handy?
But one glance up at the sky and its wrong colors was enough to kill my smile. I’d crawled out of a jungle gym, but I was still far from home and safety. Hell, I was still a block away from Luca, if he was still where Addison had said he was. Assuming he’d ever been there in the first place. I was far from sure I should believe her, considering the cryptic riddles she’d spouted when her eyes lost focus.
Listen. Ha! Listen to what? To the steady ticktock of my life slipping away in this nightmare of a world, where I didn’t belong? I was hearing that loud and clear, but it didn’t help.
Still, I’d listened to the vines slithering toward drops of my blood, and that had sparked the idea that got me out. So listening had helped. But what else was there to hear?
Newly frustrated and still scared, I stood and stared across the elementary school playground, trying not to see and hear everything that shouldn’t have been there. The weird plants. The rustling noises coming from bushes with purplish leaves, like nothing I’d ever seen before.
Eastlake High was a block away. At least, it was in my world. Here, there was no telling what lay in the block between me and Luca, and strolling down the sidewalk in plain sight of every Tom, Dick, and Hairy-monster seemed like an extraordinarily bad idea. But without any good ideas, bad ones were all I had.
The sky darkened with every step I took, like a bruise ripening, and eventually I stopped looking up, because scaring myself felt stupid when there were so many things out there willing to do the job for me. After a quarter of a block, I realized someone—or something—was following me. The steps were soft and punctuated with light scratching sounds, like a dog’s claws on a wooden floor. I didn’t turn, because I didn’t want to see what was there. If it was big or fast enough to eat me, turning to look wouldn’t do me any good, and running would only lead to panic. As long as the steps didn’t speed up or get closer, I would maintain the status quo.
There were other sounds I couldn’t identify, and other things on the edge of my vision, but I didn’t dare turn and look. I just held the course and tried to keep my thoughts occupied so they couldn’t focus on things I was scared to think about.
Addison had called me a fool and said I didn’t listen. Ha! I got myself out of the cage, didn’t I? What kind of fool could do that? And I’d listened when she called the creeper vines greedy and bloodthirsty. In fact, that’s what had given me the idea to…
Ohh. She’d given me a hint. Were there any more of them buried in the nonsense she’d spouted?
Addison had said I could go home. Of course, she’d also said I was dead, but unless my collision with the classroom door had actually killed me, and this really was hell, I wasn’t ready to jump to that conclusion. But her hint had gotten me out of the cage, so clearly some of what she’d said was relevant.
I replayed everything I could remember from my strange conversation with the dead rock star. She’d said I could go home, but she couldn’t take me. She’d told me to go back the way I came. She’d said I didn’t need Luca, or anyone else, and that I didn’t know what I was or what I had.
She was right about that last part. I was starting to think I didn’t know anything.
About halfway to the school, I realized that the scent of my blood might be what was attracting the follower I had yet to actually look at. So I stopped just long enough to squat at the edge of the sidewalk and wipe my bloody palm on the creepy, off-color grass. That got rid of most of the fresh blood, but also reopened the wound—and restarted the pain. But a minute later, the footsteps at my back were replaced with a creepy slurping, crunching sound. My follower was eating the grass I’d bled on.
I shuddered but resisted the urge to look.
By the time I got to the front of the high school, I knew I was being watched by more than just the thing that had stopped to taste my blood. I could feel them all around me, some hidden behind or inside buildings, others in plain sight. I could have seen them, if I’d turned,
but forcing a confrontation would be pointless, as long as they were letting me move around freely. So I decided to walk as long as they let me, and face any obstacles when they actually stepped into my path.
My stomach churned with nerves as I passed the front entrance, trying not to see the cracked glass doors and windows or wonder what had hit them. I didn’t want to see the vines trailing over and around the front steps and scrolled concrete rails, and I didn’t want to hear the dry scratching sound as they slithered over one another.
The sky was darker than ever, and that was a mercy, as well as a curse. With just the reddish light of the scarlet half-moon hanging on the horizon, I wouldn’t be able to clearly see whatever was coming for me until it actually popped out and said boo. If ignorance was bliss, I was prepared to be ecstatic here in the Netherworld until I could escape it entirely.
At the edge of the building, I turned left and stepped off the sidewalk, headed for the quad entrance to the cafeteria. That was exactly where Luca and I had been caught by the hellion earlier, but all the other routes to the cafeteria involved going through the school and picking my way through nests of vines, in near darkness this time.
I crossed the grass quickly, trying to ignore the sounds following me, as well as the fact that they weren’t well defined enough to truly be called footsteps. I didn’t want to think about what that might mean.
As I neared the corner of the building, a new sound set my nerve endings on fire and raised hairs all over my body. More footsteps crunched through the grass, but this set was coming from the quad, ahead and to my left. The hellion? Running from him would do no good, because he could evidently appear wherever he wanted, and if he found out I’d escaped the jungle gym cage, he’d find a better place to keep me this time.
Or maybe he’d just eat me.
I stopped and pressed my back against the brick wall, wondering suddenly if my “ignorance is bliss” philosophy was a mistake from the beginning. Maybe if I knew what was coming for me, I’d be better prepared to fight. Or run, since I’d never actually been in a fight. Or hide, if running wasn’t an option. Or…
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