The Eternity Key

by Bree Despain

  I hum the melody I remember to the grove and then listen for a moment to see if it responds. I hum again, louder, as if I can wake the grove up from its slumber. I want it to know that I’m still here, that I’m still listening if it wants to sing to me again. “Tell me your secrets,” I whisper to the grove.

  After a few minutes, my exhaustion gets the better of me, and I nestle my head on my arms on the railing and think about CeCe’s words from her journal about all the things the grove is hiding. I’d been so sure that we would find the answers we needed there.

  chapter sixteen

  HADEN

  A strange pall of anxiety falls over me after Dax and Tobin leave. Garrick disappears to wherever the Tartarus he wants, and Daphne goes upstairs to find a bedroom. I wake Brim from where she slumbers, curled in a tiny ball, on top of a stack of blue-tabbed papers. She sits up, stretching, and quirks one eye open at me, as if asking, What’s going on?

  “Follow me,” I say, and the two of us go out the front door. I walk the perimeter of the grounds with Brim close at my feet, both of us listening, watching for anything out of the ordinary. Anything that might explain the anxiousness that hangs over my shoulders.

  Nothing strikes me as strange as we round the house back into the front yard, and I resign myself to accepting that the dark cloud that follows me isn’t a warning from an impending threat but from a storm of emotions brewing inside of me.

  I had almost done it. I had almost told Daphne how I feel. It had taken all of my courage to get to that point—like it was an act of bravery—but then my effort had failed.

  And now it left me feeling more raw and vulnerable than ever.

  Weak.

  That’s where the anxiety came from. If I am weak, then how am I supposed to protect her? How am I supposed to save us all?

  Brim gives a little meow, and I follow her upward gaze to find Daphne standing on the balcony of Simon’s old bedroom above us. She leans her arms over the railing, staring out over the lake, and is oblivious to my presence.

  Brim nudges my leg with her head, trying to prod me into action, as if she knows how badly I long to climb the balcony stairs to stand beside Daphne. To get a second chance to tell her.

  Instead, I watch Daphne until she turns away and goes inside.

  “Come on,” I tell Brim. “Let’s go in.”

  There will be no more brave actions from me tonight.

  chapter seventeen

  TOBIN

  Lexie pulls into the debris-strewn lot in front of the mill, gravel crackling under her tires. She parks in front of a NO TRESPASSING, VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW sign on the chained entrance to the fence that surrounds the crumbling stone-and-adobe building.

  “What now?” Lexie whispers, as if she’s afraid we’ll get caught if someone hears her.

  “There’s a hole in the south fence,” I say. “Or at least there was when I was a kid.”

  “Let’s hope it’s still there,” Dax says, getting out of the car. He can see better in the dark than the two of us, so Lexie and I follow his lead as we search for the opening. It doesn’t take long. “Someone’s been here recently,” Dax says, indicating the bent and broken tall grasses that surround the hole in the fence.

  My heart starts to race. There could be any number of other people who would sneak into this spot—little kids from my old neighborhood, so-called ghost hunters looking for a thrill, or even just teens looking for a place to party—but I can’t help but hope that this lead will actually pan out.

  I climb through the fence, not caring as the broken chain link rips my sleeve. Lexie follows behind me. I don’t wait for Dax, who, being much larger than the rest of us, has to take more care to squeeze through the opening. I jog toward the mill and then break into a run when I see that the old wooden door of the south-side entrance is standing partially ajar. That was the entrance we’d always used as kids because the latch on the lock never caught properly.

  Abbie is here. She has to be here.

  I throw the door open and hurtle inside. “Abbie?” I shout, my voice echoing in the dilapidated stone building.

  There’s a flutter of movement in the loft above. But it’s only pigeons, startled into flight by my shout. I use a flashlight app on my phone and shine it in their direction.

  “Abbie!” I shout again, spinning in a circle, swinging my light as I inspect the corners of the large room that had once served as the main production room when this was a paper mill decades ago.

  “Shhh!” Lexie says, coming in behind me. “Do you want to get caught?”

  I ignore her. “Abbie!” I shout again. “It’s me, Tobin. You can come out. You’re safe.”

  “Tobin,” Dax says with a warning voice. He’s about to say more when a heavy creaking noise echoes behind me.

  I turn toward the noise and catch a swaying movement in the dark. I shine my light in its direction and find the old tire swing—strung from the rafters by some kids at least twenty years ago—in the middle of the room, swinging back and forth seemingly on its own accord.

  “What was that you said about this place being haunted?” Lexie asks, sounding like she’s no longer finding any of this amusing.

  “This place used to be a paper mill,” I say, approaching the swing. “It supposedly caught fire on April first back in the 1890s. Because of all the paper and the fact that many of the workers thought the alarms were an April Fool’s joke, a lot of people didn’t make it out. Another owner started rebuilding it a few years later but abandoned the project because weird accidents kept happening.”

  “And you used to play here?” Lexie asks.

  “Mostly Sage and Abbie. She liked the drama of it all.”

  “Sounds like Abbie,” Dax says, reaching his hand out to stop the swing. The swaying motion stops, but it spins slowly a couple of times before coming to rest. “Must be a draft,” he muses, looking up at the rafters.

  “We never believed this place was really haunted. We just liked to tell stories. Made hide-and-go-seek all the more thrilling.”

  Hide-and-go-seek. I picture myself as an eight-year-old boy, standing under the loft and shouting, “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” after a long game of searching—because Abbie had always been too good at hiding. She’d burst out from wherever her latest spot had been and run for the tire swing—our home base—while I tried to tag her. Sometimes, she even let me win.

  I insist on searching the various rooms of the mill but turn up nothing more than old beer bottles and a stained mattress that must have been used by a vagrant at some point in the loft.

  It’s about a half an hour until midnight when Lexie insists that we leave. “It’s getting cold,” she says, rubbing her arms. “And my voice coach is coming in the morning. And since I’m your ride, that means you have to come with me, Tobin.” She gives me a pointed look.

  I knew I shouldn’t have let her come.

  “I’ll stay,” I say. “I can walk.”

  “Don’t be addled,” Dax says.

  “Maybe we should check the storage rooms again—”

  Dax places his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Tobin. There’s nothing here,” he says with resignation.

  I hang my head, knowing he’s right, and let them propel me toward the exit. Before pulling the door shut, I look back at the tire swing, which has begun swinging in the dark on its own once more.

  I may have never believed this place was haunted, but I can’t help feeling like a ghost of Abbie’s memory is watching me leave.

  chapter eighteen

  DAPHNE

  I wake up at least an hour later. A chill breeze swirls through the room. The doors to the balcony are ajar, even though I don’t remember leaving them that way before I went to bed. But it isn’t the breeze that awakens me; it’s the song it carries through the open doors. The lilting, soothing lullaby of the grove, calling to me from the lake, answering my song from earlier. I follow it out to the balcony. A stra
nge light seems to surround the island, dancing to the song that emanates from the trees. It reminds me of the pictures I’ve seen of the aurora borealis—the northern lights. The grove’s beckoning notes surround me, pushing me toward the spiral staircase leading down from the balcony to the stone patio below. I can feel the song telling me to come, its draw getting stronger with every step I take. It pulls at me. Anxiously, I hesitate, wondering if I should go back for Haden. No, there isn’t time. What if the song stops if I turn back?

  I follow the notes to the lakeside paths and then over the footbridge to the grove’s island. I hadn’t stopped for shoes, so I am grateful that I’d fallen asleep in my socks. The song grows stronger and more urgent with every moment that passes, prodding me to move faster. The light that surrounds the island engulfs me as I enter the grove. The light shifts and swirls, creating different shapes that dance in front of me. Not just shapes, but the outlines of people. One of them takes a form that I know instantly is a portrait of CeCe, with her crazy, springy hair. She holds her hand out, almost as if she’s offering it to me, but then something that resembles a small burst of lightning crackles up from her fingertips. She rocks up on her heels in excitement, and another formation of light—looking very much like Dax—embraces her, swirling her around with joy. The light shifts again into another couple, this one I don’t recognize, heading hand in hand toward the two arched trees at the edge of the grove before disappearing. A thought strikes me like the lightning that CeCe had been practicing with—these images are echoes of people who had been in the grove before.

  The grove is showing me its secrets.

  Just as I’d asked.

  The light shifts again, as if confirming my conclusion. It shows me another scene that had played out here not too long ago. I see the echoes of Haden and me the first time we met. I watch as Haden lifts his hand, seemingly to touch the face of the ethereal version of me, and then pulls back when he realizes who she is. I step toward the vision, but the light swirls away toward the tree arch once again. The light grows brighter, swirling pink and yellow and orange until it snaps suddenly into the echo of a man bursting through the archway. He holds a bundle against his chest with one arm and a long, two-pronged staff in the other. It looks like a bident.

  The Key!

  I watch intently as the man places the bundle in a crop of bushes, looking over his shoulder, as if he knows he is being pursued. I step closer to get a better look and realize the bundle is a tiny, sleeping baby, and I know for sure now that I am watching the echoes of Orpheus and his infant son—my ancestors—having just escaped the Underrealm with the Key. I catch my breath as Orpheus holds the staff out in his hands, trying to figure out what to do with it. I can only hope that the image doesn’t shift into a new one before I can witness where he hides it. How he hid it, without anyone being able to find it.

  I watch, completely still, afraid to disrupt anything, as Orpheus stakes the bident into the ground next to a young sapling, driving the staff into the tiny tree’s roots. Then he takes something that had been strapped to his back—a lyre—and strums it as he holds it out toward the tree. Swirls of light flit out of his moving mouth, and I realize that he is singing. The ground vibrates under me, and I watch, astonished, as the branches of the sapling reach up and wrap themselves around the staff of the bident. The tree grows and grows, until the entire bident is encased inside the trunk of it. Light shoots out from the crevices and knots, and the ground feels as though it is quaking under my feet, and then it fades away.

  Orpheus steps away from the tree and moves as though he is about to go for his son but then whirls around in the other direction, taken by surprise. I watch as he seems to be attacked by a barrage of invisible monsters. The Keres. His body contorts and writhes as if they are trying to rip him apart, and even though I know it is all just an echo and not real, I find myself crouching over the sleeping child, protecting it from the monsters, and I cover my own eyes from the terrible scene.

  The light fades away from behind my eyelids, and the urgent notes of the grove’s song lessen into a soft melody again. I open my eyes to find the baby gone, and all the other echoes, too. The aurora is gone also, but the resonating vibration of the trees remains. No, not from the trees, but from one tree. I recognize it not only from the vision the echoes had shown me, but also from my first encounter in the grove when I thought the tree had looked like a giant tuning fork. But it isn’t a tuning fork that gives it shape.

  It is the bident encased inside that caused it to grow that way.

  The grove had answered my plea. It had shown me its biggest secret.

  I’ve found where the Key of Hades is hidden.

  I reach toward the resonating tree, not believing that any of this is real, when I hear the snap of a twig behind me. I whirl around, realizing that I am not alone.

  chapter nineteen

  HADEN

  I lie awake only two bedrooms away from Daphne’s. My phone is next to me, waiting for a call from Dax or Tobin if they find anything at the mill, so I can’t allow myself to sleep. However, it is not as if I can when I know that she is so close.

  I look up at the clock on my wall, easily making out the numbers in the dark. It’s 11:58 p.m. I find myself fantasizing about knocking on her door at exactly midnight and offering to help with a do-over of her New Year’s Eve.

  Ugh. I pull my pillow over my head. I’m an idiot. What kind of addled idea is that?

  I hear what sounds like the creak of a door down the hall, and sit up quickly. My heart beats erratically as I allow myself to think, just for a moment, that maybe Daphne has decided to come to me instead. However, I don’t hear any footsteps in the hallway, and lie back down and smack my fists against my forehead.

  Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

  Of course she isn’t going to come to me.

  That would mean she actually likes—

  A crashing noise makes me bolt right up again. I expect Brim, who always sleeps at my feet, to bristle beside me, ornery at being awoken once again this evening, but she isn’t there. Kopros. How did she get out without me noticing? She probably went looking for Daphne herself. She is almost as smitten with her as I am, but Daphne doesn’t need to be awoken by a hellcat sitting on her face.

  Another crash, followed by a growl.

  Or worse, a grumpy hellcat trying to break down her door.

  I bolt out of bed, realizing that I am only in my pajama bottoms, but don’t stop for a shirt. I stumble into the hall to find Brimstone bristled and growling outside Daphne’s closed door. “Calm yourself, Brimstone,” I hiss at her.

  She spits at the door, ready to ram it again with her head. I make to grab her, but then I hear what’s got her so upset—a rustling and banging behind the door, like things are being shoved around.

  I grab the doorknob, hoping it’s unlocked, and throw open the door. I half expect to see a startled Daphne sitting up and glaring at me, but instead I find her bed empty, the nightstand tipped over with a broken lamp lying beside it, and the balcony doors wide open.

  Oh Hades. What happened here?

  I step into the room, careful not to step on the broken glass from the lamp. All the drawers have been pulled from the dresser, and the closet door is partially open. I catch something shifting in the shadows behind it. It looks like someone dressed in all black, and entirely the wrong build to be Daphne.

  “Who are you? Where is she? What do you want?”

  “You busted into my place this afternoon,” an all-too-familiar voice says. “I thought I’d return the favor.”

  He pushes the door open so I can see him fully now. I first take in the glint of the moonlight cascading in from the balcony on the visor of the motorcycle helmet he holds under his arm, and then look up to meet his mocking smile. I feel as though my stomach has tied itself into the shape of a noose.

  “Hello, little brother,” Rowan says. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  chapter twenty

  DAPHNE />
  A calloused hand closes over my wrist, but all I can see of its owner is a small, bright, smoldering circle seemingly floating in the air in front of his face.

  I shriek and reel back, ready to unleash one of my now-famous right hooks, when the hand lets go and raises in the air. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” someone says, stepping out of the shadows of the aspen trees. “It’s just me.” He pulls the cigarette from his lips and blows a puff of smoke away from my face.

  “Garrick?” I say, not quite completely relieved. “What are you doing here? Did you follow me?”

  He nods, taking a puff on his cigarette. The smell makes me want to gag. “I was out on the porch, having a smoke, and saw you leaving. It looked like you were in some sort of trance, or like you were sleepwalking, so I followed. Looked like you were having full-on hallucinations, so I thought I’d try to wake you up. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Oh.” I realize that he wouldn’t have seen or heard any of the things in the grove that I had and how I must have looked pretty bonkers, crouching over an imaginary baby who was invisible to anyone else. Garrick isn’t exactly my favorite person, but it still surprises me that he cared enough to look out for me.

  I rub my arms for warmth and find streaks of mud on my wrist where he’d grabbed me. I notice his hands look dirty, as if he’d been digging around or something.

  “Fell over a root back there,” he says, seeming to anticipate my question. “Apparently, I can’t smoke and walk at the same time.”