Once we were alone in the kitchen, Kalinda’s grandparents tried to smile through their frowns. “I know the pain is getting worse,” I started. “I’m trying really hard to work out what’s going on. I promise you I’m onto it.”
The woman spoke for both of them, her eyes nothing but kind. “I know, dear. Kalinda read quite a bit of the book, she really did try hard. We managed to keep up with the pages quite well.”
“And what did you find? What did it say?” I held my breath while waiting for the answer, crossing everything I possibly could for good luck.
“Mostly it was just nonsense, describing the market city and all the herbs that could be purchased from different vendors.”
That didn’t sound promising. My hope started to fade away.
“So it wasn’t even about paranormal entities?”
“It was a how-to guide for witches, you could say.” She gave me another smile. I knew what those smiles cost her but they were still not reassuring.
“It was just a waste of time then. Nothing, just like Kalinda said.”
The grandfather cleared his throat to speak. “I wouldn’t say that. There were several pages that referred to a demon of great strength. He walked the earth and fed on souls of the dead. Sound like anyone you know?”
“It sounds like Kostucha.”
He nodded, pointing a finger in the air. “Exactly. They didn’t refer to him by name, but there could only be one demon evil enough for that sort of shenanigans.”
Hope sparked a little flicker of light.
“Did it say how I can kill him?” I asked, too eager. I shouldn’t be so excited. It was the surest way of asking to be kicked in the face with harsh reality.
He sighed, looking at his wife. Sympathy was written into every crease of her face. “It said he was unstoppable.”
Reality wasn’t a kick to the face. It was a crushing of the essence that made up my soul.
“He can’t be unstoppable,” I said, refusing to believe the truth even when it was waving at me right in front of my face. “There had to be something that would tell me what I can do to stop him. This has to end someway.”
Kalinda’s grandmother reached out a hand to comfort me. Her hand went right through my arm before she drew it back again. “Everything will be alright, darling. It has to be. If it’s not, then it means it’s not the end. The living will continue to live. The dead will always be dead. That’s the way things work.”
My hands bunched into fists. Because that wasn’t how things were supposed to be. The dead were supposed to cross over. They were supposed to rest in eternal peace amongst the angels of Heaven.
They weren’t supposed to be consumed by a demon who thrived on their energy.
They weren’t supposed to be damned to hell and obliterated.
They weren’t even supposed to die in the first place. Not like this, not yet and at the hands of a demon.
It took all my resolve to thank the lovely old couple that were suffering with tormented pain. I left them, returned to the living room, knocking over a stack of newspapers along the way. I didn’t stop there, I charged for the door and left.
Jet called after me but I didn’t even register what he said.
There was no oxygen in the air. My lungs burned as I saw red. If Kostucha was standing in front of me now I could kill him with my bare hands. I would wrap them around his neck and squeeze as hard as I could.
If it wasn’t enough, then at least I did something. Not doing anything was killing me. It was drenching my soul with agony at the thought of all those spirits so desperately hurting.
Kids stared at me when I stomped past them. None of them were game enough to say a word. They didn’t even blink my way in case I made them my next target.
That was a good thing. Because I really wanted to kill something, I wanted to-
“Everly. What the hell?” Jet had to yell at me to grab my attention away from my dungeon of thoughts. I kept going, talking to him was just another waste of time.
“Everly! Just stop!”
He caught up with me, needing to grab my arm to halt my forward motion. I tugged away but his grip held fast, too tight to release me.
“What happened back there?” he asked. His eyes scanned every inch of my face, trying to find all the answers he was looking for. “Tell me what happened.”
“Let me go, I need to go.”
“Talk to me first then we’ll go together. Please.” His last word was a plea, threatening to break all my resolve.
But it wasn’t enough. “I don’t have to tell you anything. Let me go. Now!”
I tried wrenching my arm free but his grip only tightened. He couldn’t know what I was planning on doing. He would try to stop me. If Jet knew… if he knew I was planning on going into Hell it would crush him.
Emotions were something we could no longer have the luxury of indulging.
I would not be stopped in my plan. If there was no way to kill Kostucha, then I wasn’t going to sit around following leads that just tied into knots.
I would walk into Hell and prove them all wrong.
The demon was going to die.
And Jet would try to stop me.
He had locked me up before. He had held me hostage, a little girl kidnapped and tied up with no chance of escape. The capacity was there, hidden deep within him. He would do it again, especially when he considered he was doing the right thing.
“Everly, tell me what the hell is going on,” Jet said again. His voice wasn’t angry like I expected. It was desperate. Needy. Tired.
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied, not able to look him in the eyes. “Let me go and you could be done with all this. You can go back to the tunnels with the mole people and forget I ever existed.”
“You really think that’s what I want?”
“It would be easier.”
“No, Everly, it would be harder.” His fingers uncoiled from around my wrist. I took back my arm, not as triumphant as I thought it would feel.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Why won’t you tell me? I’ve been trying to help, I thought we were a team in this.”
“I’m the one who can see the ghosts, Jet. I’m the one who they come to. I’m the one who feels their pain. There has only ever been me in this fight.”
I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to tell him everything I could to make him forget about me. It would be easier that way. He could move on with his life, Perry would be there to comfort him, any number of girls would make him move on.
Because, if there was one thing I was certain of, I wasn’t coming back from Hell.
It was a one way ticket.
“Only you?” Jet asked incredulously. “Everly, I have wanted to be there for you every step of the way. All I’ve wanted was to help you. To be with you. How can you say that?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
He was so quiet that I couldn’t avoid looking at him any longer. He was chewing his bottom lip, his deep brown eyes filled with hurt. To know I did that to him twisted the knife in my gut further.
It sliced me in two.
My heart went with it.
“I need to go,” I said quietly. Oh, so quietly. Like the words were going to be gentle if they were soft. But it was all a lie I told myself. I turned to leave.
Got only two steps away.
His hand rested on my back, making it burn in that one spot.
“Everly, please. Why won’t you let me love you?” The words choked in his throat.
They hurled at me like weapons.
Piercing every part of me.
Chapter Thirteen
Jet had stolen Oliver’s words and thrown them at me like they were swords and we were at a carnival. They nicked my skin, leaving me broken and bruised.
Why won’t you let me love you?
Seven words shouldn’t hurt that much.
Seven words shouldn’t mean that much.
Jet loved me. He had laid his words
out on a platter, serving them up to me when I least wanted to hear them. They might have been the only words that could stop me.
But it was selfish.
Someone had to stop Kostucha and there were no other options than me.
I was going into Hell.
And I was shattering Jet’s heart in the process.
My feet were backing away before my brain caught up. Jet’s eyes pinned me, watching every one of my movements no matter how small and inconsequential. His lips, set in a determined frown like he wouldn’t let himself smile ever again. His hands, hanging by his sides like he already gave up.
The seven words hung in the air like bunting.
In the end, there was only one thing I could say. And it was nothing but complete honesty.
“Because I don’t know how.”
I turned away.
I started walking.
My steps hurried into running as I took myself as far away from Jet as possible.
Kalinda’s neighborhood was hostile but only small. I left it, purposefully avoiding the Crain and anywhere Jet might look for me. Not that I thought he would. I was pretty certain he wouldn’t look for me ever again.
I needed to stop thinking about him. I needed to push all thoughts of Jet and his seven words out of my head. He couldn’t cloud my determination. The spirits’ suffering was greater than either of us, it had to take priority.
Focus.
Focus on the task at hand.
I had to get back to Hell, and to do that, I needed supplies. The last time we had opened the portal, it had been a ritual that created the opportunity. To do the ritual, I needed ingredients.
I was heading for the forest before I even realized what I was doing. The only good thing about ancient rituals was that the ingredients could still be found in nature. Trees, shrubs, and herbs never changed.
It was only people that did.
People like Jet.
I shook my head, trying to erase the thoughts. The dense forest swallowed me up as I gasped for some air. My lungs burned, my legs were little more than jelly. The quiet of the trees was a stark comparison to the screaming in my head.
The list of ingredients needed was still in my apartment. To gather them all, I was going to have to rely on my memory. Which was always dangerous.
One of the ingredients was definitely thyme, I knew that without a doubt. Oliver had helped me find it the first time, but I was pretty certain I would be able to recognize it myself this time.
I started the long search through the trees and shrubs, looking for anything that looked familiar. There were a lot of green things, they all tended to look the same.
Rustling noises in amongst the leaves stopped me dead in my tracks. Wild kids lived in the forest, I’d had the unfortunate luck of meeting them before.
They tried to kill me.
Now they would have to get in line.
The ground was muddy under my feet, slippery in more areas than not. I picked up a long stick, using it to steady myself as much as I could. It also did double duty to hold back the overgrown bushes.
Jet’s words swirled through my head unbidden with each step I took. I wished I could get the look on his face out of my head. He was so hurt, so frustrated, so lonely. Whether he had meant me to see the range of emotions running through him or not, they had been there as plain as day. I had read him like a book.
And what had I given him in return?
Nothing.
I had remained stone-faced, determined not to let him through the barriers I kept around my heart. I had let Oliver in and look what happened. It was far too fragile to let anyone else have a go at holding my heart in the palm of their hands.
My emotions should have an off switch. I should be able to turn them off so I could feel nothing at all. If I was numb it wouldn’t burn so much. Jet’s face wouldn’t be seared into my eyelids and there every time I closed my eyes.
If only.
Instead, I had to feel every single one of them. All the pain of hurting Jet. All the frustration at not being able to tell him what I was feeling. All the grief at missing Oliver.
They all needed to stop.
Not even the cold forest with its rustling noises and wet ground could distract me. Every time I concentrated on the search, my mind would misbehave and drift back to what I didn’t want to think about.
It was like torture.
Still, I kept going. I grabbed anything that looked like it might be what I was looking for. I gathered as much as I could remember, my pockets dripping with sodden herbs and leaves. Hopefully some of it would be useful.
The entire time there were eyes on me. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there. For once, they weren’t the dead. The eyes belonged to the living and they were wary of me. It had to be the only reason why they hadn’t shown themselves to take me down. I doubted Jet’s protection would extend to the wild children of the forest.
My feet suddenly went from under me.
I started falling.
Not even the loose vines and branches I reached for could stop my descent. All they did was cut my skin, leaving searing red scratches on my hands.
My ankle twisted awkwardly, turning in a direction it was not supposed to. My chin met the ground with a painful handshake. My mouth snapped shut, sending a shockwave through my head. Thank goodness my tongue wasn’t in the way, I would have bitten it clean off.
A wave of nausea passed through me as I tried to sit up. The trees spun around me, mocking me for my clumsiness. Water from the puddles of mud soaked into my jean, covering me with the sodden concoction.
I tried to stand but a jolt of pain flashed from my ankle. It was already straining against my sneaker as it swelled. Great. Just what I needed.
Looking around for my stick, I found it snapped in half, no longer able to be used as a walking stick. I couldn’t spend the night out in the forest so I had to do something. I pulled myself along the mud until I hit a tree. Hugging the trunk like a koala, I pulled myself upwards while keeping the weight off my ankle.
It hurt like hell.
The swollen mass throbbed with a pulse all of its own. The thought of walking all the way back to the city was enough to make me reconsider living in the forest forever. At least until it healed.
More rustling.
If the wild kids realized I was injured, they wouldn’t think twice about taking me out while I couldn’t fight back. I stood a little taller, trying not to let the pain influence any part of my face.
Staying in the forest was not an option.
I took a tentative step. Agony made itself at home in my leg. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t cry out. Weakness was not welcome here, it made me a target. I couldn’t be a target, not alone and unarmed. I’d never see another morning again.
Tears stung my eyes as I pushed on through the pain. I shuffled from tree to tree, holding onto anything I could to take the weight from my ankle.
I wished Jet was here. He would know what to do. He would wrap an arm around my waist, help take the weight against him and whisper words of encouragement and reassurance.
He should have been here with me all along.
The notion was shocking when first thought, but more so when I realized how true it was. If I had told him what I was planning, what I needed to do, he would have ventured into the forest with me and wouldn’t have given up until we had the last ingredient for the ritual.
I couldn’t stop the tears rolling down my face as I moved. Not all of them were because of the pain. Oliver made me promise him something in the last moments we shared together.
He made me promise I would let someone else love me.
I told him I promised I would.
But did he really want me to find someone else? Did he really give me permission to love someone new? At the time I never thought I would be able to. I thought I could never feel that way about anyone that wasn’t Oliver.
I thought I was lying with my promise.
N
ow I wasn’t so sure.
What I felt for Jet was something different. It wasn’t the same familiar love that filled my heart for Oliver. I wasn’t certain about anything, I wasn’t comfortable about any of it. Nothing about loving Jet felt comfortable.
It terrified me. It sent little tingles over my skin and through my stomach. It made me excited and warm and it felt special. Like I was special. Like I was lucky to have someone that cared so deeply for me.
And he did.
Every time Jet looked at me I could feel the intensity burning away behind his eyes. I could see the strain it took on him to not reach out and touch me. He measured each word so carefully, like even one wrong syllable would make everything crash to the ground and never get up again.
Memories flooded through my thoughts. The time when Jet had saved me from a certain death by carrying me from a burning building. The moment when he had crouched down in front of me and said ‘you intrigue me, princess’ and blinded me with his smile. When he had declared me his in front of all the mole people and warned them not to lay one finger on me.
Or they would have to answer to him.
The moment when he had wrapped my burned arms so gently and tenderly with bandages and made sure they were healing every single day thereafter. The way he held me against him as we slept, so close I could feel his heartbeat as I drifted off to sleep.
There were so many times when Jet had shown me his feelings that I couldn’t even list them all. Time and time again, he had shown up, helped me, fed me, cared for me, and asked for nothing in return. His feelings were real.
I had known for longer than I would ever admit.
I had been fooling myself for too long.
But there was nothing to do about it now. Jet had cut his heart open for me and I had let it bleed. I had run away instead of giving him even a hint of what was on my mind.
He had given me the opportunity and I had thrown it away like it was nothing but a piece of trash. There was no going back from that. He wouldn’t want me, not when I had been so careless with his feelings.
It was less painful concentrating on the pain in my ankle than the ache in my heart. I continued on through the forest, trying to remember the way I had come in. Every tree, leaf, bush, and rock looked exactly the same. I could only pray I wasn’t going around in circles.
We Are Always Forever Page 13