by Kate Brian
Copyright © 2014 by Alloy Entertainment and Kieran Viola
Cover design by Liz Dresner
Cover photo of girl by Roger Moenks
Series design by Elizabeth H. Clark
All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.
Produced by Alloy Entertainment
1700 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
ISBN 978-1-4231-9395-1
Visit www.hyperionteens.com
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Bell Tolls
Destruction
Unexpected
The Clinic
Politicians
Sisters Forever
Evil Lurks
The Vane
Primal
Success
A Note
On the Bridge
The Politician
Into the Wild
Guilt
Escape
The Gray House
Death
Too Late
Here and Now
The Body
The Funeral
Dead and Buried
Disturbing the Peace
Too Long
Rabble-Rousers
The Return
It Matters
The Bad-Guy List
Always Hope
Friend or Foe?
The Universe Knows
A Party It Is
Another Suspect
Hands On
Two Hearts
Malleable
Dark as Pitch
Willingly
A Chance
The Choice
Home Again
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For my family, with endless love
“Rory, stop!”
I tried to freeze, but the muddy, rocky path beneath my left foot began to slip, crumbling into the deep roadside river below. Rain pounded on my useless vinyl hood as I grasped at the air with cold, wet fingers. I was finally able to grab the slippery fabric of Joaquin Marquez’s sleeve, and he hoisted me back up onto solid ground, my heart pounding in my throat at a maddening rate. The muddy pathway we were traversing had been, until recently, wide enough for at least one car, if not two, to navigate safely. But now it was half its former width and eroding by the moment. The rain had been nonstop since Saturday night. Now it was Wednesday, and half the island of Juniper Landing seemed to have turned to mush. The sand on the beaches had taken on the consistency of oatmeal in spots, and the grasses and reeds and flowers had been flattened to the ground, beaten into submission by the relentless weather.
“Are you okay?” Joaquin asked.
I nodded, clutching both his elbows for stability. His brown eyes were shaded by the brim of his own hood, and a few days’ worth of dark stubble covered his sharp cheekbones and chin. This had become a habit of Joaquin’s lately—saving me from serious injury. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact that the boy my sister used to hook up with was now my protector, but I was grateful to have someone by my side. And it clearly wasn’t going to be the boy I used to hook up with. He was no longer around.
Which was why we were out here in the first place—looking for Tristan Parrish. The guy I had been falling in love with, until a few days ago. The guy who had betrayed us all. According to Joaquin, there was a cave beneath the bridge where Tristan used to go to for his “big thinks”—the days he just wanted some space away from the other Lifers. Unfortunately, it was located in a part of the island Joaquin had always avoided unless he was ushering a visitor to the bridge, so we weren’t entirely clear on where we were going. That, plus the relentless rain, didn’t make our mission any easier.
“Is this ever going to stop?” I asked.
As if in answer, a bolt of lightning cracked overhead and the whole world trembled with the accompanying thunder. Over Joaquin’s shoulder I saw a shadow illuminated by the flash—someone standing on a rock ledge not fifty yards away, raincoat billowing in the wind. My fingernails dug into Joaquin’s arm.
“Is that…?”
Joaquin turned, but just like that, there was no one there. One blink, and the shadow had disappeared. The storm was playing tricks on my mind.
“What?” Joaquin asked.
“Nothing. Forget it.” I didn’t want to admit I was seeing things. “I just can’t handle much more of this.”
“Relax. Take a breather,” Joaquin said. “Let me figure out where the hell we are.”
As he moved off to peer into the grayness surrounding us, I tried to shake the jittery feeling that shadow had left behind and looked north toward the bridge. It was so encased in fog that I could see nothing but the pointless warning lights throbbing at the top of its four spires. The bridge had become—to me, anyway—the symbol of everything that was wrong on this island. Juniper Landing was an in-between—a place where souls came to reside between death and the afterlife, a place where they were given a chance to resolve any issues that might have plagued them during their lifetimes before moving on. Joaquin and I were both Lifers, a group of souls charged with helping others find their resolutions and ushering them to their final destinations. The bridge was the means of transport. When a soul was ready to go, we would take the person to the bridge and hand him or her a coin. As soon as he or she touched the coin, it just sort of knew whether that soul was destined for the Light or the Shadowlands, based on how good or evil the person had been in life. We would then usher that person across the bridge, where a portal would open, taking him or her to the proper place. This was a system that had been in place since the dawn of time and had always worked perfectly, maintaining the balance of the universe.
Until now. Recently the whole thing had gone haywire, with devastating consequences. We were pretty sure that the coins were somehow to blame, since Tristan had been hiding a whole bag of them—more than any Lifer had ever seen in one place at one time—and had fled the second the rest of us discovered his stash. We weren’t clear on what exactly was wrong with the coins, how they had been tampered with, or where Tristan had even gotten them. All we knew was that last week, a few souls who were undeniably good had wound up in the Shadowlands. Souls like my friend Aaron and Joaquin’s charge Jennifer. Souls like my father. They were good people, damned to hell, and soon after they had left, we caught Tristan with the coins.
Something lodged in my throat at the mere thought of my dad in the Shadowlands—alone, terrified, possibly tortured—and for a second, I couldn’t breathe.
“I think it’s this way,” Joaquin said, nodding toward the bridge. “Let’s keep moving.”
I let him lead the way, allowing myself one glance back over my shoulder at the spot where the shadow had been. The outcropping was deserted. I breathed in and out deliberately, trying to calm the frantic beating of my heart. As we moved closer to the bridge, I could just make out two figures clad in black
rain gear, their nebulous forms like dark ghosts, moving in and out of my waterlogged vision. Ever since we’d discovered the tainted coins, the Lifers had been taking turns guarding the bridge, to insure no one could cross over. I had no idea who was scheduled to be there now, and from this distance through the rain, I couldn’t make out their faces. For some reason, their dark presence felt ominous instead of comforting.
It’s going to be okay, I told myself. You’re going to fix this. You just have to find Tristan and Nadia and make them tell you how to fix it.
Tristan. The image of him and his smiling, duplicitous face twisted my stomach into knots. I had believed in him. I had trusted him more than anyone. I had loved him. And he’d betrayed me. I had been suspected of ushering good souls to the Shadowlands, and then it was finally revealed that Tristan was the villain. Tristan, who had told me that the rules of this place couldn’t be broken. That I had to trust in the system. That everything would be fine.
He’d said those things to me. He’d kissed me. He’d made me feel safe. And then he’d ushered my father straight to hell.
Joaquin and I turned up an even scrawnier, more circuitous path, leading toward the drop-off into the ocean, toward the very foot of the bridge. As a cold rivulet of water found its way under my collar and down my back, I couldn’t help wondering, for the millionth time, Why? Why had Tristan done this to Aaron, to Jennifer, to my dad…to all of us? What did he stand to gain? And, most selfishly, why had he done this to me? Why suck me in and make me care? Why make me believe in him and everything this place was about, only to turn around and betray me and destroy his home?
Joaquin looked back at me and held out a hand. I grasped his fingers, half expecting them to slip away from me, but his grip was surprisingly solid. A few weeks ago I never would have believed that I would one day willingly hold Joaquin’s hand. When I first met him, I had hated him. He was that guy. That guy who knew how hot he was and used that fact to toy with the heart of any girl who showed an interest in him. In this case, that girl had been my sister, Darcy.
But the more I got to know Joaquin, the more I respected him. He truly cared about his charges, about his friends, and about this place. And when things had started to go sideways, he’d basically become my personal bodyguard. And over the past few days, since we’d found out Tristan was the big bad around here, we bonded even more. No one wanted to find Tristan more than we did. Joaquin had been his best friend. I’d been Tristan’s girlfriend. (Would-be-ex-girlfriend the second I saw him again.) We needed to find him. We needed to ask him that one burning question: Why?
It was what kept us going—the hope that we would one day get the answers we were looking for: why he had done what he’d done, how he could betray everyone he claimed to care about, and, most important, how to free my dad and Aaron and Jennifer and those other poor souls. What I didn’t know was what we were going to do with Tristan and Nadia—another Lifer who’d disappeared with Tristan—once we’d found them. My brain didn’t even want to go there.
“I think it’s down there,” Joaquin said, squinting downward, tiny droplets clinging to the ends of his thick eyelashes. “I noticed the pathway the other day. It’s kind of like a series of steps cut into the rock.”
I didn’t see anything, but I shrugged. “You lead the way.”
Together we started slowly and carefully down the side of the drop-off. My foot slipped on the very first step, and Joaquin’s grip on me tightened. We both froze.
“You good?” Joaquin asked.
I nodded mutely.
“Okay. Stay behind me and be careful.”
He didn’t have to ask me twice.
We descended the steep stairway in silence, and I focused on the sound of my own breathing, the plop of raindrops on my hood, the crashing of the waves far below, and the cautious positioning of my feet. But I couldn’t help thinking of the look on Tristan’s face the day we’d found the bag of tainted coins in his room. The realization in his gorgeous blue eyes that he’d been caught.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew what I’d seen. Tristan was guilty. I just wished my heart would catch up with my brain and start believing it.
After what seemed like a lifetime, Joaquin jumped the last couple of feet to a foot-wide stretch of broken shells and sand that ran along the foot of the rocks. I leaped down after him, lifted my head, and saw it—the wide-open mouth of a cave.
“Score,” Joaquin said.
Every inch of my skin flushed with heat, making me itch beneath my vinyl jacket. Tristan was in there. Maybe with Nadia, maybe not. Either way, we were about to get some answers.
And I was going to see him again.
I narrowed my eyes and clenched my teeth. Stupid heart.
Through the fog and the rain, I noticed a pile of something white and gray near the mouth of the cave. As we edged closer, I saw the blood. The glassy eyes, the twisted necks, the torn and shredded feathers. Dead seagulls. Dozens of them. Broken, deformed, and staring. Flies buzzed around their misshapen heads, and as I watched, one of them landed hungrily on the dome of a wide, glassy eye. Within seconds a swarm of them had engulfed the seagull’s skull.
Then the wind shifted and the stench hit me like a brick in the face. I turned my nose away and covered my mouth with a hand.
“Just keep walking,” Joaquin said, quickening his steps.
We passed by the carcasses and into the coverage of the cave. The sand near the opening was thick and sloppy, and my sneakers let out a sucking sound every time I lifted a foot. I nudged my hood from my head, relieved to be out of the rain even as my breath quickened. I could already smell the pungent scent of a recent fire.
Joaquin and I locked eyes. He tugged his flashlight from his jacket pocket but didn’t turn it on, and he raised one finger to his mouth. I nodded. Moving in sync, we tiptoed forward. Joaquin paused for a moment at a corner and peeked around it. He visibly relaxed and flicked on his light.
“They’re not here.”
Deflated, I stepped out into an open area of the cave, the ceiling only five inches from the crown of my head. It was a wide space, and as Joaquin flashed his light to and fro, something caught my eye against the far wall.
“There!”
I grabbed his shoulder and pointed. Joaquin swung the beam back around, and it caught on something—a blue-and-white blanket. We raced for it. I got there first and dropped to my knees. The sand in this part of the cave was cold but dry. I whipped the blanket aside and stopped breathing. Underneath it was a crowbar, a first aid kit, and a hammer, with a few balled-up, bloody bandages tossed alongside. There were also two small piles of folded clothes—his and hers—several granola bars still in their wrappers, and three full bottles of water.
“So they were here,” I whispered, irritated at the flash of jealousy I felt at the sight of Tristan’s clothes folded next to Nadia’s in such a cozy-couple way. Outside, thunder rumbled, but it was muted by the miles of rock over our heads.
“What were they doing with a crowbar?” Joaquin asked, crouching. He tentatively picked up one of the bandages by the clean end. “And whose blood is this?”
I shivered. “I don’t want to know.”
Joaquin dropped the scrap back into the sand and stood up, dusting off his hands. He was tense. I grabbed the light and flashed it along the floor, finding the remnants of their fire. It was still smoldering. Joaquin cursed under his breath.
“We just missed them,” he said. “They were right here.”
“Well, this is good, right? They can’t have gotten far.” I shoved myself up, the adrenaline pumping. “We can track them.”
“How?” Joaquin demanded, whirling on me. “It’s not like they’re leaving footprints out there! The rain’ll make sure of that!”
“You don’t have to yell at me,” I shot back. “What do you want to do? Just stand here? Let them get away?”
&nbs
p; I turned toward the mouth of the cave, and Joaquin followed, his flashlight beam dancing ahead of us.
“You’re about to go out on a wild-goose chase,” Joaquin muttered. “And it’s going to start getting dark.”
“This whole thing is a wild-goose chase!” I cried, throwing my arms wide. “But this is the best lead we’ve had in three days. We can’t just go home.”
Joaquin grabbed my arm, turning me roughly toward him as I tried to lift my hood.
“But how are you even going to—”
His question was cut off by the distant clanging of a bell. It sounded like one of those old church bells they used to ring at the chapel near my house in Princeton whenever someone got married. Except this wasn’t a merry, celebratory song. It was a frantic, uneven plea. Joaquin went white.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The bell.” He turned away, facing south toward town, which wasn’t visible from the foot of this cliff.
“Yes, I know it’s a bell,” I said. “What does it mean?”
“It means there’s an emergency.” He scrambled back toward the rocky stairway, past the pile of seagull carcasses, and over the broken shells.
“What kind of emergency?” I asked, sliding and slipping after him.
He paused with one foot on the third step, stretching his long legs as far as they would go, and looked back over his shoulder. I’d never seen him so terrified.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That bell hasn’t been rung since Jessica got those innocent people damned to the Shadowlands, Rory. It hasn’t been rung in a hundred years.”
The rain stung my face as we sprinted toward town, my feet slipping on fallen leaves, my lungs burning from the effort. My nostrils prickled with the ominous scent of dank, billowing smoke. Over the constant thrum of the rain and whooshing of the wind, I caught an errant scream, echoed by a dozen more. Joaquin’s eyes were wild as they met mine, and we ran even harder.
When we finally arrived at the point overlooking the town square and the docks below, I was so stunned by what I saw I almost skidded right over the rocky ledge. Somehow I managed to stop myself in time and doubled over next to Joaquin, heaving for breath.