by Brodi Ashton
PROLOGUE
TWO WEEKS AGO
The Surface. My bedroom.
Jack rubbed his eyes and sat up in my bed. “Wait. What did you just say?”
“The Everneath,” I replied. “I said I want to take the whole thing down. Let’s blow it up. Nuke it or something. ” My hands started to shake.
Jack glanced at the clock, then reached out toward me. “Come back to bed. Everything is fine. The Tunnels aren’t coming for either of us. It’s over. ”
Over. It would never be over. Not anymore. I glanced at the open window, the one Cole had just jumped through after he’d stolen my heart. Jack followed my gaze, saw that the window was open, and looked at me with furrowed brows as if finally sensing that something was very wrong.
“What just happened, Becks?”
“Cole was here. ” My voice sounded shaky. “He said that I fed off him three times in the Everneath. He said I’ve lost my heart now. He saw a compass on my desk, and he took it, and . . . and . . . ” I gasped.
Jack was by my side in a flash, his thick arms around me. “Shhh. It’s okay. Slow down. You’re saying Cole stole a compass?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “It was lying there on my desk. He said it was my heart. ”
Jack held his breath for a moment. “Your heart?”
I nodded and took a deep breath, then did the one thing I’d been scared to do. I grabbed Jack’s hand and placed it over my chest where my heart should’ve been, just as Cole had taken my hand and done the same thing only minutes before.
There was nothing. No heartbeat.
My breathing became frantic. Jack pressed his hand harder onto my skin, held it there for a long moment. His face turned pale. “How . . . ? Why . . . ?”
His voice drifted off as if he weren’t sure what question he wanted to ask.
I flashed back over the past week, to the journey Cole and I had taken through the labyrinth to the center of the Everneath to rescue Jack. The next words spilled out. “When we went through the maze to find you, there were times I had to feed on Cole to keep going. ” I shook my head. “He said that since I fed on him three times, I’m going to become an Everliving. Then he said there were certain perks for the Everliving who held my heart. Then . . . he took off with the compass. ” I stared at Jack. “My heart. ”
Jack looked at the open window. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You were so tired. And I didn’t think there was anything to be afraid of. It was Cole. He . . . he helped me rescue you. He was . . . ” My friend. I squeezed my eyes shut and chastised myself. My friend. How could I have been so stupid? So blind? “He tricked me. He only came to the Everneath to get me to feed on him. He never meant to save you. He was even surprised you were here. I should’ve seen it coming. ”
I felt my knees buckle, but before I sank too low, Jack held me tighter. “Shhh. It will be okay, Becks. ”
“We have to destroy it,” I said. “The Everneath. We have to take the whole thing down. ” How could my blood be pulsing so fast without a heart?
Jack nodded and pulled me over to the bed, where we both sat down. “Let’s think this through. The first thing we have to do is get your heart back. ” At my manic expression, he held his hand out, palm down. “First, your heart,” he repeated. “Then, after we get it back, we’ll talk about blowing stuff up. I promise. ”
“Why?” I sniffed. “What will getting my heart back do?”
“Cole obviously wants it for some advantage. Maybe so he can always have the threat of breaking it. ”
I shook my head. “That’s the thing. We were wrong about his heart. His guitar pick. It wouldn’t have killed him if we had broken it that night. ” I blew out a breath of air. “He told me every Everliving has two hearts. A Surface heart and an Everneath heart. Break them both, and you become mortal again. That’s how the woman who turned him into an Everliving regained her mortality. But breaking just the Surface one?” I racked my brain, trying to remember what it would mean. All I knew for sure was that it wouldn’t kill him.
“Then that’s why he wants it. Breaking that heart is the first step to making you mortal again. You can’t become human if he has your Surface heart. ” He grimaced. “I still can’t believe we’re talking like this. How did he . . . ” His voice trailed off as he shook his head. “That bastard. ”
“It’s my own fault. ”
He gave me a stern look. “Don’t say that, Becks. ”
“It’s true. I trusted him. I begged him to come with me. I gift wrapped myself for him, with a giant red bow. ”
He pressed his lips to my head. “My life was on the line. I would’ve done the same thing. ”
I looked up at him. He dipped his head and kissed me, and in that moment the calmness of his soul washed over me like a warm blanket, quieting my fears. It wasn’t long ago that we couldn’t kiss without me stealing energy from him, but this was just a regular kiss.
Wait. It was just a regular kiss.
If I were a true Everliving, wouldn’t there be a transfer of energy? There was always a whoosh of emotions shifting from one person to the other whenever Cole’s lips had gotten near mine. Wouldn’t it be the same for me now?
I pulled back.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
“I didn’t feel anything. Nothing. I didn’t take anything from you. If I were an Everliving, I would’ve stolen energy from you. ”
Jack breathed out through his nose. “See? You can’t be an Everliving yet. It can’t be too late. It’s not. We’ll find your heart; we’ll break it. It’s not too late. ”
I nodded and then leaned into him and buried my head in his chest. Maybe Jack was right. I didn’t feel any different, except for the fact that I didn’t have a heart; but even without it, I had a pulse. I’d kissed Jack without stealing any energy from him. Relieved, I lifted my face toward his again. Maybe it wasn’t too late.
ONE
NOW
The Surface. The library. Ninety-nine years until the next Feed.
My bitterness toward Cole had reached extreme levels. There had to be a special word for how I felt about him, but I couldn’t figure it out. Hate wasn’t enough. It didn’t convey the eternal aspect of my feelings. It didn’t explain the exponential enormity of its growth every day.
Cole had once told me how some punishments were perpetual: Sisyphus rolling the rock up the mountain only to have it roll back down again; Prometheus getting his liver eaten every day by an eagle only to have it grow back the next day and be eaten again. My hate for him was just as timeless. Just as undying.
I heard Jack shift in his chair.
“You’re doing that spiral-of-hate thing again, right?” Jack said.
I opened my eyes and caught a glimpse of him looking at me from under the lampshade on the desk in the corner of the library. He set down a yellowed piece of paper on a large stack of similar pages, all part of the documents I’d taken from Mrs. Jenkins’s house after she’d been killed.
I shook my head, trying to erase the memory of finding Mrs. Jenkins’s body on her couch, the life drained out of her. Cole had told me Max and the other Dead Elvises had killed her. She’d known too much about me, and Cole didn’t want word getting back to the queen that a Forfeit had survived the Feed. I didn’t know how Cole planned to take over the throne, but I knew he was counting on the element of surprise.
The documents in front of Jack were the only thing left of Mrs. Jenkins. And since Cole had taken my heart two weeks ago and then left town—like he always seemed to do when we needed him—these documents were all we had to focus on.
“How did you know I was doing the spiral-of-hate thing?” I s
aid.
Jack frowned. “Because your eyes were squinty. And your hand was over your heart. And you have that look that says you want someone’s head on a stick. ”
I reached across the table and brushed a clump of brown hair from his cheek. “You hate him too. ”
He shrugged. “That’s an absolute. But I’m trying to focus my hate on finding a cure for your . . . condition. ”
“Is that what we’re calling it? A condition? I’m missing a vital organ. I’m not sure if condition covers it. ”
“We still don’t know if you’re an Everliving. You haven’t been able to feed on me. ”
Jack was right. Since that first night, I’d tried to feed off him, but nothing had happened. Could it be possible that Cole had stolen my heart yet I was still human?
If Cole were here I’d ask him, but he’d taken off with the band. And most likely with my heart. Jack and I had camped out at his condo for three days before we started seeing internet chatter about a Dead Elvises concert in Milwaukee. He’d been gone ever since.
“Can I be truthful?” I asked.
“You mean, can you be pessimistic,” Jack said.
“Truth. Pessimism. They’re sort of one and the same lately. ”
Jack sighed. “Go ahead. ”
“We’ve been through the documents. A thousand times. We’ve found nothing. ”
Jack pointed to one of the papers he’d been looking through. “Actually, this one has instructions on becoming a Shade. Apparently if you’ve been an Everliving long enough and then you miss a Feed, you become a Shade. ”
Miss a Feed. I’d known only one Everliving who’d missed a Feed. I thought back to my trip through the labyrinth. “Cole’s friend Ashe missed a Feed. He looked like he was made of smoke. Maybe he was becoming a Shade. ” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Instructions on how to become a Shade don’t help me. ”
“You never know what will help. We’ll keep looking. ” He leafed through a few more pages, then held up one. “Here’s something about a glowing rock. Maybe that will mean something. Something we could take to Professor Spears. ”
I rolled my eyes and glanced out the window. We’d done that already too. We’d gone to Professor Spears. He was able to help us once before, when he’d deciphered an ancient bracelet and told us that Cole’s heart was an object.
Last week we’d sat in his office and told him the truth about Cole, and me, and my missing heart, and the fact that I was an Everliving now. He’d accused us of playing an elaborate prank on him. Stopped just short of running us out of the building. We’d had Meredith’s bracelet with us, but that wasn’t necessarily proof of anything; and I didn’t think documents about a glowing rock would make any difference. It was frustrating that I couldn’t make him understand.
“Professor Spears can’t be the only person who knows about this stuff,” Jack said.
“He’s not, but the people who do know about it—the Daughters of Persephone, or the Everlivings themselves—don’t exactly have loose lips. ” From the window, I could see across the street to the city park. A mother and father taking turns pushing their toddler on the swing, a man throwing a Frisbee to his golden retriever, a bunch of girls playing some sort of game that involved tagging and freezing, out enjoying the blue sky of the coming summer. But my focus was on the mother and father. Would Jack and I ever grow old together? Would I ever grow old at all?
“Look at me, Becks,” Jack said.
I turned away from the window toward Jack.
“We’ll find a way to save you. ”
I smiled. “Look at me. I don’t need saving. I’m just not going to ever grow old. And then when the next Feed happens, in ninety-nine years, I’ll skip it and die. I’m not ancient, so skipping a Feed won’t make me a Shade. So we have ninety-nine years. ”
There was one part of my diagnosis that I hadn’t told him about yet, though. The day after Cole had stolen my heart, I’d started to feel weak. The feeling had only gotten progressively worse since then. But I didn’t want to scare Jack.
Jack reached across the wide desk and put his hand on my cheek. I was surprised he could reach so far, but then again, he’d come out of the Tunnels so much bigger and taller than he had been before. It affected his wingspan.
“Maybe you’re the one who needs saving,” I said.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Why is that?”
“Because you came out of the Tunnels bigger. And taller. And who gets taller at eighteen years old?”
Jack pressed his lips together and dropped his hand. “Nobody dies from getting taller. And bigger. ”
“Yes, but there was that one boy in Indiana who died from too many abs. ”
Jack’s lips quirked up in a grin. “Now you’re just making stuff up. ”
“Nothing is as it seems in the Everneath. The fact that it made you bigger . . . ”
“We’re not going to worry about maybes right now either. I don’t know why I came back bigger, but at least I have all my vital organs. ” He reached his hand across the table again, only this time he placed it directly beneath my collarbone. “Call me selfish—and really, I’m completely selfish when it comes to you—but I want you. All of you. Your heart included. ”