Even if I could, would I survive such an audience? And if I did, what was I opening myself up to? It seemed like an extraordinarily bad idea to bring myself to a demon's attention. Pretty much the opposite of my dad's lay-low-to-survive philosophy.
At least I wouldn't be alone. I'd have Nash and Tod. Assuming I survived sneaking out of my own house.
What should I take?
Something that would actually function in the Netherworld. Traveling light seemed wise, but did I really want to step into another reality carrying nothing but a useless phone and some pocket lint? I slid my pitifully incomplete key ring into my pocket. Cash would do me no good in the Netherworld—Nash said they spent other, unthinkable currency—but it might come in handy before we crossed over.
A small stone box on my dresser held everything of tangible value I owned: my mother's engagement ring and the forty-eight dollars left over from my last paycheck. I stuffed the bills into my front pocket. Usually a small lump of cash felt reassuring; it represented emergency gas money, or bus fare home, should I need it. But this time I still felt woefully unprepared to face the world with so little going for me.
What I really needed was a weapon. Unfortunately, the most dangerous thing in the entire house was my dad's butcher knife, and something told me that wouldn't be much use against anything I ran into in the Netherworld.
I pulled my hair into a ponytail and shrugged into my jacket, then pronounced myself ready to go. At least, as ready as I was going to be.
My heart beat fiercely, and suddenly my throat felt too thick to breathe through. My father would wake up if I tried to unbolt and unchain the front door, but there was no telling what else I'd wake up if I crossed into the Netherworld. Harmony said there'd just be an empty field, but what if she was wrong? What if things had changed since she'd last crossed over?
I shook off fear, forcing my spine straight and my head up. The best way to enter the lion's den is one step at a time.
With that, I dove into my remembrance of death. It was like tumbling headfirst into a pool of grief and horror, and at first, it seemed I would sink. I would drown in sorrow. Then I forced my heartache into focus, scrambling desperately for a handle on my own emotion. Sophie. Emma. And finally my mother—what little I could remember of her. The memories of their soul songs bubbled up inside me. Darkness enveloped me, and sound leaked from my throat.
I pressed my lips together to keep it from bursting forth in a silence-shattering wail of grief and misery. If my father heard me keening—or singing, from his perspective—it was all over. So I swallowed the sound, like Harmony had taught me. Forced it down and into my heart, where the echo resonated within me, hammering at my fragile self-control, clawing at my insides.
It was easier this time, just like she'd promised. Or rather, like she'd warned. I could see the Netherworld haze blooming before me, a gray filter laid over my room, covering my bed, my dresser, and my desk in various shades of gloom. Now I only had to add intent to my wail.
Whatever that meant…
I intend to cross over, I thought, closing my eyes. When I opened them, my room was still gray, and still just as there as it had been a moment before.
It would be so much easier if there were a secret password, or handshake. Netherworld, open sesame!
Yeah, that didn't work, either.
I closed my eyes again, careful to keep the wail deep in my throat—all but one slim curl of sound that wound its way up and into the room, like a thin ribbon of Netherworld energy being pulled through me and into the human plane. If I could just follow it, like a bread-crumb trail, I was sure it would lead me where I needed to go.
Where I was already going…
The background hum of the refrigerator faded and cool air brushed my face. I opened my eyes and gasped so suddenly I choked on my own keening. I coughed, and the thin stream of sound ended in a wet gurgle.
My room was gone. As was the whole house. The walls, the doors, the furniture. All gone. My father, too.
I stood in the middle of a large field of some kind of grass I didn't recognize. It grew tall enough that the thin seed clusters on top brushed my elbows, and I knew without taking a single step that it would be a pain to walk through.
I ran my fingers over the grains, surprised by the rough, whispering sound they made against my skin. The stalks were stiff and brittle, and oddly cold to the touch, as if they were nourished by a chill wind rather than by the sun. And they weren't green or even fall-brown like the November-hued grass was in my world. The entire field was an earthy olive color, with shades of deep umber near the base of the stalks.
Curious, I bent one seed cluster and nearly jumped out of my own skin when it broke with an audible snap and shattered between my fingers. It didn't crumble. It splintered into hundreds of tiny, cold plant shards. The slivers tinkled like tiny bells as they fell, brushing the other stalks on the way down.
One sharp grass shard got caught with its point through the weave of my jeans. When I tried to brush it off, I accidently pushed the splinter deeper, flinching when the tiny point jabbed my skin. I used my fingernails like tweezers to pull it out carefully, and was surprised to see a little dot of blood staining my jeans.
Stupid sharp grass had cut me! This gives all new meaning to the phrase "blades of grass…."
I looked up slowly, then turned to see as much as I could of the grass surrounding me without breaking any more stalks. I was in the middle of the field, at least a hundred feet from the nearest edge, which was in front of me. I couldn't walk through the grass without getting shredded in the process.
Crap! When Harmony said the Netherworld was dangerous, I'd thought she'd meant the residents!
I glanced around at my foreign surroundings, hoping for inspiration from the scenery. What I could see of the Netherworld was beautiful, in a dark, eerie way. The night sky was a deep, bruised purple streaked with ailing shades of blue and green, as if the earth had beaten its canopy into submission.
The slim crescent of a moon was dark red, like the harvest moon after a slaughter, and its sharp points seemed to pierce the sky, rather than to grace it. It was beautiful-scary, but absolutely no help in getting me out of the field. I could not make it across one hundred feet of fragile glass spires without getting all sliced up.
But maybe I wouldn't need to….
I only had to stay in the Netherworld long enough to get out of my house, to keep from waking my dad.
Would it have killed Harmony to mention that the plant life in the Netherworld was painful?
Okay, Kaylee, focus…. How far was it from my room to the side yard outside my window?
Before I'd crossed over, I was standing in front of my mirror. I closed my eyes and visualized turning, then crossing my narrow room toward the far wall.
Ten steps, give or take. If I could make it eight feet to my right, I'd wind up just outside my bedroom window. Assuming I didn't misjudge and cross over inside the brick wall…
Better go nine feet, to be safe.
I took a deep breath and lifted my arms to keep them from brushing the grass stalks and getting chewed up. Then I slid my right foot to the side, one step.
Four glasslike stalks shattered as my foot went through them. They collapsed to rain sharp chunks of Netherworld vegetation on my leg, and those chunks shattered even further. But the damage to my body was minimal, because I didn't try to brush the shards off.
On my left, something growled softly, and a slithering sound approached from near the ground. Ten feet away, several stalks shook without breaking.
My pulse raced, and I began to sweat in spite of the cold. A stray strand from my ponytail fell over my eyes, and I brushed it back, on alert for more movement or noise from the ground around me. But there was none, at least for the moment.
I moved quickly after that, shuffling sideways through the grass, pausing after each step to let the vegetation settle and to make sure I hadn't been cut very badly. More dry rustling met my ears, and was followed
by a quick, nausea-inducing burst of panic. But I saw no more movement.
Plants crunched beneath my shoes, and I soon learned to angle my right foot so that the stalks fell away from me, rather than on me. The slithering noises continued, like a dark echo from some panicked part of my brain, and I moved in the opposite direction, praying that whatever was making those sounds wouldn't pounce. Or bite. Or whatever.
Ten steps later, I was sure I'd gone far enough. I closed my eyes and stuck my fingers in my ears to block out sights and sounds of the Netherworld, unconcerned with how stupid I must look.
I wanted to look stupid in my own yard.
The wail came even easier this time, and rather than worrying about that, I reveled in it, grateful that I didn't have to fight for concentration with that slither-creature sliding toward me. Intent wasn't hard to come by that time, either. I seriously wanted to go home. Just in time to sneak out.
I kept my eyes open, and was amazed to see the Netherworld simply fade around me, going first gray, then insubstantial. The sharp stalks blurred, then finally disappeared, and I found myself standing in short, dead grass, a mere six inches or so from the brick wall of the house and my bedroom window.
Oops, cut that one kind of close. Though, I'd gone two extra steps, just to be sure. Were distances skewed in the Netherworld?
My brain danced around the possible implications of that thought, but then I shook it off. I had to get to Nash's.
I spared a moment to pluck the obvious shards of Netherworld grass from my jeans, vaguely frightened that they hadn't simply faded from existence with the rest of the Nether. Then I zipped up my jacket and took off toward Nash's house at a jog, hoping the remaining slivers would shake free with the movement.
Any other night, I would have been nervous to be out alone, but after several minutes in the Netherworld, edging my way through a field of deadly grass to get away from something slithering through the stalks after me, nighttime in the human-world seemed downright welcoming.
I was breathing hard by the time I got to Nash's house, where he, Tod, and Emma were piling into her car. "Leaving without me?" I panted, leaning with my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
"Kaylee, jeez, you scared me!" Emma cried, loud enough that if any of the neighbors had been awake, they'd have heard her.
"We weren't leaving without you." Nash greeted me with a tame kiss on the tip of my nose, a greeting that spoke of relief, rather than heat. "We were coming to find you."
I wrapped my arm around his waist, pressing into him to share his warmth. "I'm only a couple of minutes…" My voice trailed off as I glanced at my watch. It was twelve thirty-five. I'd left my room around eleven fifty-five, and it had taken me no more than ten minutes to jog from my house to Nash's. And I'd spent less than five minutes in the Netherworld. I was sure of it.
Which meant I was missing twenty-five minutes….
Fear washed over me like a cold ocean wave, and both Hudson boys saw it on my face.
"How did you get out of your house, Kaylee?" Tod asked, his voice deep with suspicion, and when all heads turned his way, I knew Emma could both see and hear him.
I squeezed Nash and stared at my feet. "My dad fell asleep in the living room. I didn't have any other choice."
"So you crossed over?" Nash's voice was lower and more dangerous than I'd ever heard it, and his words held no hint of calm. He held me at arms' length, both hands on my shoulders. "Don't ever do that again. Do you understand?"
I shrugged out of his grip, my temper flaring to a hot, sharp edge. "It'll be pretty hard to get Addy's soul back without crossing over," I snapped.
"Crossing over?" Emma's brows sank in confusion. "To where?"
"I mean alone," Nash clarified, ignoring her question. "You can't go there alone, Kaylee. You have no idea what…stuff is out there."
"What stuff is where?" Emma demanded, propping both hands on her hips.
"Well, I know a little better now." Turning from Nash, I slid into the passenger seat, then I caught Emma's eye and tossed my head toward the driver's side, urging her silently to get in.
The guys followed our lead reluctantly.
"What happened?" Nash demanded softly, as he clicked his seat belt home in the backseat. "Did you see something?"
I twisted around and smiled to relax him. I didn't like the bossy side of him, but knew it stemmed from concern for me. "Just a field full of weird grass with something slithering through it."
"Lizards," Tod said, and I knew based on Emma's reaction—or lack thereof—that he hadn't let her hear him that time. Which meant we weren't talking about ordinary lizards.
I glanced at Nash with my brows raised in question, but he only shook his head. We'd talk about it later, after we'd dropped Emma at her house. Or rather, after she'd dropped herself off.
Em was still irritated by our refusal to explain what was going on, but she hugged me when she got out of the car and told me to be careful doing…whatever we were doing.
I hugged her back and thanked her sincerely. Then I hugged her again, hoping it wouldn't be the last time I'd see her. I really didn't want to die in the Netherworld. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Not yet, anyway.
I slid into the driver's seat and Nash climbed over the center console to sit next to me. Then I twisted to look out the rear windshield as I backed slowly out of Emma's driveway, while she let herself into her house. "So, time moves slower in the Netherworld? That would have been nice to know."
"If we'd known you were going, we would have told you," Tod said matter-of-factly. "Along with the fact that most species of Netherworld lizards are poisonous to humans."
"And to bean sidhes," Nash clarified, in case I didn't get it.
"Yeah, thanks. And the plant life isn't exactly amber waves of grain."
Tod grinned, and I knew that he, at least, had forgiven me. "It won't be like that closer to the city. The Netherworld is like a reflection of our world, anchored at certain, highly populated spots. Like public buildings. But the farther you go from those meccas, the less the Netherworld resembles our own. Including plant and animal life. And space and time."
So I really had gone farther in the Netherworld than I had on the human plane.
"Space and time?" I took the next corner too fast, distracted by the new information.
"Yeah." Tod shifted onto the center of the back bench seat so I could see him better in the mirror. "The human world is the constant, and time in the Netherworld will never go faster than it does here. And you'll never move farther here than you would have there. But time will move slower in the parts of the Netherworld that are least firmly anchored to the human plane, and it's very easy to think you've traveled far enough, yet when you cross back over, you haven't gone as far here as you thought you had."
Which was exactly what had happened to me.
"So, how are we supposed to get around in the Netherworld, if we never know where or when we'll be when we cross back over?" I shot a worried glance at Nash.
"Very carefully," he said, his voice grim and dark again. But this time he let a thread of calm snake through it to wrap around me, and I settled into that calm, inhaling it just for the taste of Nash. "Because most mistakes made in the Netherworld can't be fixed."
CHAPTER 16
We took I-30 to Highway 12, in Irving, where the Dallas Cowboys were finishing their last season in the old stadium. I drove and Nash navigated. Fortunately, he'd been to Texas Stadium a bunch of times, and except for one missed exit—I hate it when highway signs aren't marked well in advance—we had no problems getting there. Though, I was a little creeped out by the late-night, nearly deserted feel of the area.
We parked in a lot south of the stadium, and the sound of my car door closing echoed across the expanse of bare concrete. The air outside was warmer and more humid than in the car, but goose bumps popped up all over my arms, as if my skin knew better than my head that I ought to be afraid.
The dark chill of anticipation coul
d probably be attributed to my imagination. Or to the fear that I would cross over from the human plane into another field of glass spears, or something even worse.
"You ready?" Tod asked from the other side of Emma's car, one hand on the roof between us. Nash stood next to him, watching me carefully, as if I might melt into a puddle of fear and raw nerves any minute. Or maybe burst into tears.
Did he really think I was that fragile?
No, I was not ready. But neither was I going to delay our mission. Addy's time was running out.
"This is a public place with a very large concentration of human life force most of the time, so this section of the Netherworld should be pretty well anchored to ours," Tod began, stuffing his hands into his jacket pockets. "Which means that, for the most part, you can trust that time and space are running along pretty normal lines."
"But there hasn't been a game here in a couple of weeks, right?" I glanced from one brother to the other. "Shouldn't that lack of human activity cause the anchor to slip a little?"
Nash rounded the hood of the car to take my hand, and his brother shrugged. "It might slip a bit during the off-season, but there's been so much human energy built up here over the years that two weeks isn't enough to make much of a difference." The reaper ran one hand through his blond curls and joined us at the front of the car. "There might be a slight time and space discrepancy because it's the middle of the night and no one's around right now, but it'll be very small. Definitely much less than what you felt at home."
"What about the grass? Are we going to be shredded by vegetation when we cross over?"
Nash rubbed my upper arms through my jacket as I shivered. "I doubt it. There's too much activity here for razor wheat to get a foothold on the land. It takes a while for that shit to establish strong roots, which it can't do with Netherworlders stomping through it all the time. Right?" He glanced at Tod for confirmation, and the reaper nodded. Then Nash lifted my chin until my gaze met his. "And by the way, if you ever have to do that again—which I would not recommend—wear waders. Waist high, at least. Mom says that's the only way to get out of razor wheat without getting sliced to bits."
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