“Let’s just hope none of them go to the Light,” Krista said with a shudder. “That would not be good.”
I looked at Joaquin. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he tore the tiny twigs from a branch. Krista’s words hung in the air between us.
“Is this a party or a funeral?”
“Tristan?”
I scrambled to my feet, spraying sand into the fire and over Bea’s legs. Tristan walked toward us slowly, his shoulders a bit curled, his chin hanging lower than usual with a square white bandage taped to the back of his head. His blond hair was stringy and two shades darker after going unwashed for days. But he was alive. He was awake. And he was here. After a catatonic second of shock, Krista raced forward and threw herself into his arms.
“You’re okay!” she cried.
Tristan hugged her back, first with one arm, then the other. I heard him laugh, and it brought tears to my eyes.
“Apparently I’m gonna live,” he said. Krista still had her arms around him, but his eyes met mine over her shoulder. An intense shock of joy shot through my chest and lifted me onto my toes. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
They were the words we had all been waiting to hear from the person we’d needed to hear say them, and the mood on the beach exploded. Fisher produced an old-school boom box from the depths of his tent and turned on some base-thumping dance music. Krista whipped out a box of doughnuts from her canvas bag, and Kevin spent the next ten minutes trying to convince us that Boston creams paired perfectly with a lukewarm Bud.
But I had no idea what to do with myself. Everyone else had mobbed Tristan, laughing and hugging and cheering, while I stood awkwardly in the sand, waiting. The only thing I knew for absolute certain was that I would not approach Tristan. He would come to me. Or he wouldn’t. Either way, I wasn’t about to make the first move.
Before long, the crowd around Tristan started to break up, and Joaquin was introducing Liam to Tristan. Then, the two of them were alone.
Tristan and Joaquin. Best friends. Brothers. Their conversation shifted from intense to laughing and back again. The sight of the two of them together made me sweat under my dark blue hoodie. Would Joaquin tell him about the kiss? And did it even matter when everything else was so very wrong?
“You gonna be okay there, Killer?” Bea asked me under her breath, handing me a chocolate doughnut.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be fine?”
She tilted her head dubiously, like she wasn’t quite sure I knew the meaning of the word. “Whatever you say.” Then she stutter-stepped over to Krista and Lauren, who were dancing together down by the water, trying to drag Liam into the center of their gyrating circle.
“Hey.”
When he spoke, so close behind me, it was as if I hadn’t heard the sound of his voice in a year. I turned around slowly, and I was looking into Tristan’s deep blue eyes.
“I heard about Darcy,” he said, his face creased with concern. “I’m so sorry, Rory. Are you all right?”
I trained my eyes on the sand, on the toes of his sneakers. There was a bit of seaweed stuck to the rubber upper, twitching in the breeze.
“No,” I said, my voice cracking. “I’m really not.”
He reached for me, and I took an instinctive step back. I didn’t dare look around. I didn’t want to know who might be watching.
“I’m so sorry, Tristan.”
“For what?” he asked.
“For Nadia and Cori,” I said. “And I’m sorry I didn’t believe in you. I’m just so sorry.”
“Hey.” I felt him moving to touch me again, and I flinched. Tristan’s hands fell to his sides.
“But I just can’t…I can’t sit here and pretend that everything’s going to be okay,” I said, fumbling for the words to express how I was feeling. “How if we just start ushering people, everything will go back to normal. Because it won’t. It can’t. Not for me and not for the people trapped in the Shadowlands. We can’t forget about them, Tristan. We can’t pretend like it never happened.”
“We won’t,” he said. “I promise you. We won’t forget about them. We’ll get your dad and Darcy back.”
I glanced around at Fisher and Kevin laughing by the stereo. At Bea, Krista, Lauren, and Liam dancing near the waves. A seagull cawed and dove toward the water. It was the first live bird I’d seen in days. My jaw clenched.
“It feels like we already have,” I said.
A tear slipped down my cheek and I quickly, angrily, swiped it away.
“Rory—”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m glad you’re better, I just…Right now I need to be alone. I need some time to think.”
And then I did something I never would have thought possible as recently as an hour ago. I turned my back on Tristan and walked away.
I was staring at the waves when I saw a flash of color out of the corner of my eye. Joaquin was walking briskly toward the rock wall, snapping up his jacket as he went. I couldn’t let him leave without saying something to him. What that would be, I had no idea, but I couldn’t let him go.
He was already at the foot of the hill, the rocks slick with leftover rain, when I caught up to him. “Joaquin! Wait up!”
He paused with one hand on a protrusion of gray stone and blew out a sigh. I could practically see him bracing himself to talk to me—the tension in his face and across his back.
“We have to talk,” I said, planting my feet in the sand in front of him.
“I don’t see why,” he said, lifting one shoulder. “I saw the way you looked at Tristan when he first walked up. I get it. I’m happy for you.”
Never had those words been said in a less enthusiastic tone. He sounded like he was ordering paper over the phone.
“Joaquin—”
He laughed sarcastically.
“Rory, look. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” Joaquin said. “It’s not like I’m going to stand here and say it doesn’t matter to me. Because it does. Of course it does. If it were anyone else…”
He looked off across the beach at Tristan, who was nodding pensively as Kevin went on about something.
“But it’s Tristan,” I said, my voice full.
When he looked at me again, his brown eyes were full of sadness and longing. “It’s Tristan.”
My eyes filled with tears, and I could feel him straining not to reach for me. Never had my heart felt so confused and sick and at war with itself. I had spent days hating Tristan, and now, even though I knew Tristan hadn’t deserved that hate, even though I knew I loved him, I couldn’t imagine letting Joaquin go. I didn’t want to lose him.
Finally Joaquin turned toward the rock wall, and the spell was broken. One tear slipped from my eye, and I swiped it away. Joaquin reached for a handhold.
“Listen, Tristan says that Pete was the only one in the gray house that night. No one else was with him. If that’s true, then hopefully the mayor is right. With Pete in prison, we’ll be okay.”
“Okay…” I said slowly, confused by his sudden shift to calm, cool, and collected. All business. “But then what was he talking about when he said it wasn’t his idea? When he said he was going to get what he wants?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was just trying to throw you off,” Joaquin theorized. “Either way, I’m going to bring Lancet up to the bridge around nine. If you and any of the others want to meet me there…it might be good to do it together. Moral support and that kinda crap.”
I managed a smile, even though my chest felt bruised. I couldn’t believe Joaquin was just walking away from us after everything that had happened. “Okay. I’ll tell them.”
He nodded and started to climb. His back was to me and he had only one foot planted on firm ground when I spoke again. “Joaquin?”
He turned his face only slightly, so I could see his ear and the corner
of his eye. “Yeah?”
“I just want you to know…it matters to me, too,” I said. “You, I mean. You matter.”
He stood there for a second, just letting that sit, and then he climbed away. I stepped back and held my breath for a good long while, wishing it didn’t hurt so much to watch him go.
“What’re we doing here, blondie?”
“Just keep moving,” I replied.
I glanced past Ray Wagner at Bea, who was busy dragging family-slaughterer Tess Crowe out of her Jeep by the light of half a dozen cars’ headlights. All our friends except for Kevin—who was keeping watch on the weather vane in town—and Tristan—who was resting—were present. We’d decided that Bea should go first, since she claimed she was going to go insane if she had to spend one more minute in Tess’s presence. We stood back and watched as the woman gnashed her teeth and rolled her head around, Bea leading her by the length of rope that tied her wrists together. Jack Lancet slouched near the grille of Joaquin’s truck, his bulbous eyes wide, while Piper Malloy paced back and forth in front of Lauren and Fisher, her patent heels gleaming.
At the foot of the bridge, Bea slapped a coin into Tess’s hand.
“Happy trails!” she said loudly.
Then she shoved Tess into the wall of mist that surrounded the bridge. I felt a chill as she was engulfed, remembering vividly the horrors that had awaited inside that wall of fog. I half expected her to come tearing right back out of there, but as was normally the case with charges being ushered, she went in the correct direction. After a few seconds, we heard the telltale, louder-than-a-bullhorn sucking sound that indicated whoever was on the bridge had been ushered to their final destination. The stillness that followed felt unnatural, like some unseen hand had hit a giant button, pausing us where we stood.
“Here goes nothing,” Joaquin said, lifting his walkie-talkie. “Kevin, the first one’s gone over. What’s the status? Over.”
“Nothing yet. Over.”
The seconds dragged out as the wind whipped and the ceiling of fog overhead undulated and swirled. The current theory was that the cold was now keeping the fog aloft, but even if that was possible, I didn’t like it. I had never thought I would wish for the eerie fog to envelop me in its chilling, hissing embrace, but having it hanging above us was almost worse. Menacing. As if it had been biding its time up there these past few days, plotting its final attack.
“The weather vane is pointing south. Over,” Kevin announced.
I let out a relieved breath. At least the coins were getting this right.
“Rory, wanna go next?” Joaquin suggested.
“With pleasure.”
I just wanted to get this over with so I could get back to the jail and check on Pete’s status. Every second that passed that Darcy and my dad were still in the Shadowlands was a second too long. I took Ray Wagner firmly by the arm.
“Oh, so now you’re getting touchy-feely with me? Is that what this is about? You got a little crush?”
I tasted bile in the back of my throat as I walked him over to the bridge. Then I grabbed his hand and turned the palm up, pressing his coin into the meaty flesh.
“This is where we say good-bye,” I told him.
“Good-bye? What do you mean, good-bye?”
I turned him by the shoulders, gave him a little shove, and sent him on his way. The sucking void swallowed him whole, and we waited for the verdict.
“Pointing south again. Over,” Kevin announced.
Another sigh of relief. Joaquin quickly dealt with Jack, and then Piper was the last to go. Her final words to Fisher, with a big smile, were, “Call me!”
When it was done, and the only sounds left in the world were the whistling wind and the idling noise of our car engines, we stood around, waiting. I hovered somewhere between relieved and desperately scared, because the hard part was yet to come. And from the tense looks on my friends’ faces, everyone agreed on that fact.
“So when do we usher a good soul?” I said finally, voicing what everyone was thinking.
“Be advised,” Chief Grantz’s voice buzzed through the walkie-talkies. “The mayor is sending up one of Krista’s charges with Officer Dorn. ETA two minutes.”
Krista blanched. “She’s what?”
“Which charge?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Krista said, her voice trembling. “I didn’t have anyone on the bad-guy list. What is she—”
Headlights flashed at the crest of the hill, and we turned to watch, instinctively moving into a straight line as the patrol car bumped over the potholed road. The brakes squealed as Dorn turned the car to be parallel with ours, and then he cut the engine. He stepped out, walked around the front of the car, and opened the back door. Out stepped Myra Schwartz, the cut on her head healing nicely. She clutched her purse to her chest and looked around, not exactly scared, but intrigued.
“Where are we?”
Krista broke from the line. “Mrs. Schwartz! What’re you doing here?”
“I have no idea, dear. I was hoping you could tell me,” Myra said, lifting the strap of her bag onto her shoulder. Then she spotted me. “Oh, hello, Rory!”
“Hi, Myra,” I replied, with a faint, strained smile.
“If you could just wait one second, I’ll hopefully have an answer for you,” Krista said. “Rory? Would you come with me to talk to Officer Dorn, please?” Her voice pitched up three octaves with the request.
“Sure.”
We skirted around Myra and pulled Dorn toward his car. “What is going on?” Krista hissed. “She’s not on the bad-guy list.”
“Mayor wants to try ushering one of the good ones,” Dorn said with a sniff, chewing on a piece of gum like a cow.
“What? Already?” I demanded. “Does she really think—”
“What she thinks is, we need to get things back to normal. Get this fog out of here. Clean up the beaches and figure out what the hell to do about the ferry,” Dorn said tersely, looking Krista in the eye with a no-nonsense kind of glare. “If this works, it means Pete was working alone and we can be back to business as usual.”
“Yeah, except my sister and my dad and at least ten other people will still be stuck in the Shadowlands,” I hissed.
“Well, if things get back to normal, we can focus our energy on other things,” he said pointedly. “Like getting them the hell out.”
Krista hugged herself, processing this. She glanced over her shoulder at her charge, a stiff wind blowing her hair back from her face.
“So, what? Mrs. Schwartz is our guinea pig?” Krista demanded. Over by Joaquin’s truck, Myra had taken out her wallet and was showing Bea and Lauren pictures of her grandkids.
“She won the lottery, yep,” Dorn said, hiking up his waistband.
“But what if it doesn’t work? What if she ends up in the Shadowlands?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. No pun intended.” Dorn smirked. Krista and I exchanged a horrified look. “Think of it this way: We’re gonna have to do this sooner or later,” Dorn told us. “And at least if she goes to the Shadowlands, we’ll know we still have someone working against us out here.”
I groaned and shook my head. “I think it’s up to you, Krista. She’s your charge.”
Krista took a deep breath. “If the mayor thinks it’s a good idea, I’m not going to contradict her.” She shook her hair back and squared her shoulders. “I just hope this works.”
“Good luck.”
Krista smiled wanly and walked over to Myra. I saw her take the woman’s hand and slip a coin into it. As I moved closer, I heard Myra thank Krista. I stood next to Joaquin, hoping for that feeling of confidence his presence usually lent me, but he took a slight sidestep away, putting a respectful distance between us. My heart ached and I stared at my toes.
“We’re just
going to go for a little walk, okay?” Krista said politely. “This way.”
Myra smiled as Krista led her slowly toward the bridge but paused just inches from the wall of mist.
“Where am I going?” she asked Krista.
My heart nearly broke. A few weeks ago, the answer to that question would have been clear, but now…Krista’s knees actually wavered, and for a second I thought she’d go down, but she held on somehow.
“Someplace beautiful,” Krista told her with a smile. “I promise.”
Myra’s smile widened. Then she turned toward the mist and was gone. I instinctively reached for Joaquin’s hand but caught air. He stared straight ahead, not noticing—or trying to look like he hadn’t. I pinned my wrists together behind my back, straining to ignore the awful sadness welling inside my throat. In seconds, we heard the sucking sound. The mist undulated and swirled, and then everything was still.
Joaquin lifted his walkie. “Kevin? Whaddaya got? Over.”
He looked me in the eye.
“Nothing yet,” Kevin said. “Over.”
“I can’t take this,” Krista whispered, her hands tepeed over her mouth. “I can’t take it.”
My heart seemed to pound harder with each passing second.
“Kevin?” Joaquin said.
I closed my eyes and dipped my head. My knees shook beneath me. Finally, our walkies let out a shrill peel and a crackle.
“It’s pointing north,” Kevin said gleefully. “The vane is pointing north!”
“This is weird. I’m sorry, it’s just too weird,” Liam said, pacing back and forth in front of me near the foot of the bridge on Saturday morning. I rubbed my eyes and tried my best to focus. I hadn’t been able to sleep in my eerily quiet house, so I’d spent half the night freezing my butt off at Pete’s bedside, waiting for him to wake up. I stifled a yawn. It was Liam’s first ushering, and he needed someone to guide him.
He glanced over his shoulder at his charge, Nick, who was gabbing with Fisher about his latest video-game obsession while Fisher did his best to keep up. Over at the bridge, Kevin waited while his latest charge walked through the mist.