Текст книги "The Underworld"

Автор книги: Jessica Sorensen

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“The Queens slave,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t believe it.”

“Why?” I asked. “Is it…bad?”

He shook his head. “No…well, it’s better than being the Water Faerie’s torture victim…but the Queen usually doesn’t use humans for slaves...”

“But that’s the reason she’s still alive, right?” I asked.

Silence.

“Even if she is alive,” he said, looking at me gravely. “She probably wouldn’t be the same Jocelyn

–being there for that long, it most likely will have changed her.”

I swallowed hard, my voice barely audible as I said,

“Okay...I understand.”

“Do you?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Because just imagine being stuck in a place like that—a place of death, where fear and torture is common—for over fourteen years.” He lowered his voice. “Even if Vladislav was telling the truth—even if she’s still alive, she’s probably not your mother anymore.”

“She’s probably not my mother anymore,” I repeated in outrage as I let go of his arm. “She’ll always be my mother no matter what.”

He shook his head. “”Gemma, you don’t understand. The torture that goes on…the way the Water Faeries instil the fear in people…her mind is probably gone.”

I touched my locket with my hand, thinking of how my mother had given it to me when I was little, even though I couldn’t remember her doing so. “It doesn’t matter what she’s like now because I don’t have anything to compare her to before.”

There was pity in his bright green eyes. “Gemma, still —”

I cut him off. “Do you know a way to get her out of there or not?”

“I don’t,” he said simply.

I held his gaze. “Is that the truth?”

He paused and I felt my heart skip a beat. He knows something. Oh yes he did. I could feel it. I could see it on his face and how he avoided looking at me.

“Please just tell me the truth,” I practically begged.

He sighed, leaning back against the arm of the chair. “Even if I did…know something…I wouldn’t actually do it. It’s way too dangerous.”

“So what if it’s dangerous,” I said. “Everything’s dangerous—I’m dangerous, and yet you’re still here helping me.” I hope. “She’s my mom, Alex. And besides, she might know something. Your dad didn’t just send her there for no reason.”

“Even if she does know something, and she is actually mentally there enough to tell us what she knows, it doesn’t mean I think it’s a good idea to go there. We can get our answers somewhere else.” I told myself to keep my cool– breathe in, breathe out—but it was hard when it came to Alex. Especially when it came to getting answers from him. It was like a freaking mind game of who could outwit who.

“Where else can we get answers?”

He didn’t answer me, and I started to wonder if he wasn’t going to answer me because he really didn’t have an answer to give me. And honestly, at that moment, I questioned whether he knew anything at all.

Maybe he was just as lost as everyone else, and perhaps deep down inside, he wanted to save my mother, if for no other reason, so then maybe he could figure all of this out. Of course, even if this were true, it didn’t mean he was going to help me out.

I got to my feet, giving up on him. I had other people I could go to.

He jumped to his feet as I tried to scoot by him.

“Where are you going?”

“To find Laylen—see if he and I can figure out a way to save my mom.” I started for the doorway.

He caught me by the arm and pulled me back down on the sofa. “Hang on just a sec, before you go freaking out.”

I wiggled my arm free. “I wasn’t freaking out. I just don’t want to hear what you have to say unless it’s going to help me get my mom out of that awful place.” He massaged the sides of his temples with his fingers and let out a stressed breath. “If we were to do this—if we were to go to The Underworld and try to save your mother, you’d have to promise me that you’d do everything I told you to do.” He looked up at me. “If I tell you something’s too dangerous for you, you’d have to listen.”

I considered this. I know I might sound like a brat here, but the idea of doing everything he told me to do was making my insides burn. I’d done that too much already. And besides, what if he was playing me? “I don’t know….”

He shrugged. “Then no deal.”

No deal. His words echoed in my head, and I felt torn. In the end, though, I think I knew that I would make the deal. I just hoped that his side of the deal was genuine—that Alex would finally come through for me. “Okay, it’s a deal. Now how do we do it?” He sighed, got to his feet, and looked down at me with a very unhappy expression. “The first thing we do is bring Nicholas here.”

Chapter 7

“Bring Nicholas here?” I frowned at him. “Like the faerie/Foreseer/likes-to-invade-my-personal-space Nicholas?”

He nodded, trying hard not to smile as he slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “That would be the one.”

I sat there for a second, processing this. “But why do we need him?”

“Because we need a Foreseer.”

I pointed at myself. “You have one right here.” Hello.

He pressed back a grin as if I’d just told him a joke or something. “I understand that, but it’s not just the power of a Foreseer that we need. We also need a special kind of crystal ball called an Ira.”

“Okay, but…Does Nicholas have to be the one to give us this Ira?”

“I think he’ll be our best bet.” When I kept frowning he continued, “None of this is going to be easy, Gemma. Nothing ever is. You should know that by now.”

“I do know that,” I said, thinking about my mom, me, my soul, and my emotions. None of them were easy. “I know that way too well.”

We stared at each other, having this weird moment of understanding, like our thoughts had momentarily connected. Sometimes I really wished our thoughts could connect, that way I’d be able to read his mind and know if he was telling the truth.

“So…what do we have to do, then?” I asked, breaking our weird connection moment. “I mean, how do we get Nicholas here? Or do we have to go get him.” God, I hoped we didn’t have to go get him because I really didn’t want to go back to the City of Crystal again.

“No, we can’t go get him.” He sighed. “We have to bring him here.”

“Okay…well …Are you sure there isn’t another way to get this Ira crystal ball?” I asked. “Maybe Adessa has one.”

“It’s not the kind of a crystal ball she’d have,” Alex explained. “It’s one of a kind—the one Foreseers use to travel to and from places that no one is allowed to travel to.”

“Of course it is,” I said, feeling frustrated. “Because, if it wasn’t, then it would make things easy. And I think we both already agreed that nothing is ever easy.” He gave me a small smile. “Yeah. I think we did.”

“So what do we do then—to get this Ira traveling crystal ball thingy?”

He shifted his weight uneasily. “We get Nicholas here and see if we can persuade him to give it to us.” I thought about the half-faerie, and how being around him had creeped me out. And asking him for a favor…Nicholas was so the last person I ever wanted to persuade for a favor. Well, besides Stephan.

“Are you sure there’s not someone else we can go and get it from?” I asked again just to make sure.

He shook his head. “Only another Foreseer—

they’re the only ones who know of its existence.”

“Well, then how do you know it exists?” I wondered.

He didn’t look at me. He was staring off into space as he answered, “My father told me about it once.”

“Oh.” Was all I could think of to say.

Next to my feet lay a clock that had been knocked on the floor during Laylen and Alex’s fight. The glass had been shattered and it was letting off an unsteady tick tock, which was the only sound filling in the silence. Tick tock. Tick Tock. Just like a ticking time bomb. It was like a warning that we were running out of time. We needed to find answers, before Stephan found us—or should I say found me. The world was depending on it.

“Okay, so we get Nicholas and then what? We just ask him to give us the Ira crystal ball?” I asked, doubting that it would be that easy.

“Something like that,” Alex spoke through gritted teeth.

“Are you okay?” I asked, picking up on some uneasiness flowing off of him.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know…you tell me.” He didn’t answer as he picked up the broken clock and flipped it over to the back, fiddling with the knob.

Tick Tock. Tick tock. The ticking and tocking was slowing down to a gurgle.

“So we get the Ira crystal ball, and we use it to go to The Underworld?” I asked, making sure that was the plan.

still no answer as he twisted the knob on the soon-to-be-dead clock.

I stood up. “Alex…if I use this Ira crystal ball, what does that mean for the promise you made to Dyvinius?”

Tick…tock…tick…The clock stopped.

Times up.

Alex set the clock down on the floor. “That’s not for you to worry about.”

“Just tell me what happens if I use the crystal?” I asked, taking a step back as he walked by me.

“I already told you that was my problem,” he said, his voice tight. “I made the promise. Not you.”

“But that doesn’t—” I started.

“Look,” he turned around to face me, “”I’ll figure something out, okay? Do you want to get your mother out or not?”

I nodded. “I do, but I—”

“Okay, then let’s go summon Nicholas.” Before we set out to bring Nicholas here, we first went to go find Laylen and Aislin and let them in on our little plan. I felt kind of proud of myself that I’d gotten Alex to cooperate, but I also had a ping in my gut when I thought about how he was going to have to fulfil the promise he’d made to Dyvinius. Although I wasn’t sure what that promise was exactly, I figured it had to be bad. The dark look that had passed over Dyvinius’s eyes when he gotten Alex to make the promise had proved that it was bad.

As we searched the downstairs for Laylen and Aislin, I casually mentioned to Alex that maybe he should apologize to Laylen for accusing him of biting me, because I figured it would make things easier if the two of them weren’t fighting. He ignored my casual suggestion, though, so I decided I would drop it….For now, anyway.

We found Laylen and Aislin in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Aislin was sitting cross-legged on the bed, still wearing her plaid pajamas. Laylen was sitting in a corner chair, and I could tell he was still all worked up over the fight. But I also got the impression that Alex and I might have interrupted a very serious conversation going on between the two of them, like we might have shattered a private moment they had been having.

Alex gave both of them a quick rundown of our plan.

After he had finished, Aislin sat on the bed, a shocked look frozen on her face. Laylen secretly gave me an I-told-you-so look because he had guessed that Alex would know how to get into to The Underworld.

Something occurred to me as I stood there staring at the maroon walls of the bedroom, with my hand pressed to my bitten neck. Had it really been necessary to go speak to Vladislav? I mean, if Alex knew a way to get to The Underworld, maybe he knew another way to find out if she was alive. Of course, I’d had to use what Vladislav had told us about my mother being the Queen’s slave for Alex to admit he knew a way. But still …maybe our little trip could have been avoided.

Well, I guess we had really messed up on that one.

And now Laylen might end up getting hunted down by a bunch of revengeful vampires.

“Jocelyn’s still alive…in The Underworld…” Aislin said. “For all these years?”

Well, according to Vladislav, she is” Alex replied, shooting Laylen a glare.

“He wasn’t lying,” Laylen assured him, standing up from his chair. “I could feel that he wasn’t.”

“I already said we’d go try to rescue her,” Alex said sharply. “I don’t need you to try and convince me.”

“I wasn’t trying to convince you,” Laylen said. “I was just pointing out the fact that, despite what you believe, vampires do tell the truth sometimes.”

“That might be true,” Alex replied. “But your little trip out there also backed up my theory that vampires can’t control their need to bite.”

“Well, I can control my need.” Laylen took a threatening step toward Alex.

“Yeah, but for how long?” Alex asked, taking a step toward Laylen. “How long do you think you’ll be able to keep it under control before you lose it?”

“Can you two just stop arguing,” I cried out, startling myself and everyone else in the room. All their eyes were on me. “The longer we stand around here arguing, the longer my mom has to be down there suffering. And the more time we waste not trying to figure out what the heck Stephan is trying to do with me and the star.”

They were all speechless for a minute, which almost always happens when I make a big speech like that.

“But how do we get Nicholas here?” Aislin asked, fidgeting with one of her diamond earrings. “Isn’t going to the City of Crystal the only way to find him?

And to do that don’t we need another special kind of crystal ball that is hard to come by. I mean, the only other alternative I can think of is to go to the Kingdom of Fey, and see if he’s there. But he doesn’t spend much time there. At least I don’t think he does.”

“Besides,” Laylen added. “Whether we end up finding a way to enter the City of Crystal, or if we decide to go to the Kingdom of Fey, both places are not very accepting of unwelcomed visitors.”

“Kingdom of Fey?” I asked.

“It’s where the Fey live,” Aislin explained. “And since Nicholas is part Fey, he goes there sometimes.

But I don’t think he’s very fond of it because…well, because the fey can be…”

“Everything’s a joke to them,” Alex interrupted.

“Which means there’s a lot of running around in circles. And it doesn’t matter because I’m not planning on going to either one of those places.” Alex caught my eye. “Gemma’s going to bring him here.”

“What…” I gaped at him. “I’m going to bring him here? How am I…Oh…” I stopped as it dawned on me what he was referring to. I was going to use a good old normal crystal ball, which in turn would allow the Foreseers to know that I was using a crystal ball again, something I’d been forbidden to do until I’d been trained, and something Alex had promised Dyvinius I wouldn’t use until I had. So if I used the power of the crystal, Nicholas would show up here to collect on Alex’s promise.

“But if I bring him here that way then you’ll have to

–” I started to say.

Alex shook his head at me, trying to get me to stop talking.

“Have to what?” Aislin asked curiously.

I gave Alex a funny look, wondering why I couldn’t say anything to Ailsin and Laylen about the promise he’d made to Dyvinius.

“Then he’ll be super annoying, just like he always is,” Alex said quickly, taking me by the hand, which threw me completely off guard. “Look, I have to talk to Gemma for a minute about what’s going to happen when Nicholas gets here, so excuse us for just a second.”

Before anyone could respond to this, Alex was pulling me toward the door. Laylen and Ailsin exchanged a perplexed look, which I’m sure matched the look on my own face.

“What’s wrong with you?” I pulled my hand from his grip after we’d made it out of the room. “Why can’t I say anything about the promise you made to Dyvinius.”

“Because...” he glanced back at Ailsin and Laylen, and then shut the door. “Ailsin will freak out if she finds out about it.”

“Why? How bad is it?”

“I told you that's for me to worry about.” He backed away toward the stairs. “We need to get that bite cleaned up before we bring Nicholas here. The less he knows about what’s going on, the better.” And with that, he headed down the stairs.

I sighed, trotting down the stairs after him. “But what happens when he gets here?” I asked, following Alex into the kitchen. “Are we just supposed to ask him for the Ira crystal ball and hope that’ll he’ll give it to us.” Alex started opening up the top cupboards that surrounded the cooking area of the kitchen. “No.

You’re probably going to have to do that.”

“Why would I have to?” I asked, wondering what he was looking for.

“Because…” he bent down and opened the cupboard below the sink. “I probably won’t be here.”

“Huh….Why won’t you…Alex what the heck is going to happen to you when I use the crystal ball.” He reached inside the cupboard and pulled out a first aid kit. “I told you—”

I cut him off. “Just tell me, please.” He looked at me, and I looked back at him, the electricity coursing all around.

“I’m just going to be gone for a little while,” he finally said with a shrug. “It’s nothing major.”

“But you’ll come back, right?” I asked, suddenly worried I’d never see him again. Hmm…That was weird.

He paused, considering what I’d asked him.

“Eventually, yeah.”

Chapter 8

As Alex patched the bite on my neck, his words lingered in my head. Eventually. Eventually, he’d be back, but when? Did he even know?

I was sitting on the kitchen table, with my feet up on one of the chairs, as Alex stood in front of me, patting my neck with a cotton ball.

“What exactly do you mean by eventually?” I asked him, flinching from the pain. “’Just how long are you talking about? And why will you be gone? Can’t you just break the promise?” I mean he was good at breaking promises to me, so why not to Dyvinius.

He gave me a funny look. “You know, you ask more questions than anyone I’ve ever known.” I rolled my eyes. “Well, if you’d just tell me things, then I wouldn’t have to ask the questions.” He shook his head, trying not to smile. “Well, I’m not sure when I’ll be back—there’s no time frame for what I’ll be doing. And I won’t break the promise because I can’t. It’s binding because I made it in the City of Crystal. It’s how things work—promises are unbreakable when made there.”

“Well, can you at least tell me what you have to do while you’re be there?” I asked as he pulled out a square piece of gauze.

“It’s better if I didn’t.” He peeled off the wrapper from the gauze. “Trust me, you’re better off not knowing.”

It was bad—I could tell. “Well, if it’s that bad then why are you doing it?”

He took the roll of tape out, looking very uncomfortable. “Because…as of right now it’s the only way I can think of to get some answers.” He ripped two pieces of tape off and tossed the roll back into the first aid kit. “And also because…” He struggled with his words as he taped the gauze to my neck.

“Because I’m hoping if I do, then maybe you’ll start…

trusting me more. And perhaps…” He closed the first aid kit, picked it up, and headed back toward the cupboard where he’d gotten it from. “You’ll forgive me.”

He said it so quietly I wasn’t sure if he’d actually said it. Before I could get around to asking him to please repeat himself, Laylen entered the kitchen.

“So I’m assuming you need a normal Foreseers crystal ball to get this Ira crystal ball,” he said to Alex as he slid onto the table beside me.

Alex shut the cupboard and nodded. “Yeah, does Adessa have one?”

Laylen nodded, and we followed him out of the room to go get one. I couldn’t help but look at Alex, thinking about what I thought he said—that I’d forgive him. The more I thought about it, though, the more I was convinced I’d misunderstood him.

After we got a regular old vision-seeing kind of crystal ball from Adessa, we went into the now cleaned up living room. Evidently, Adessa had used magic to clean and mend up Laylen’s and Alex’s mess. The shelves were back up on the dark blue walls, the knickknacks standing on them. The apothecary table was no longer broken and the black candles were topping it once again. And the crack in the wall had miraculously been fixed.

It was really early in the morning, and Adessa had decided she needed to do some inventory in her store. Alex had suggested to Aislin that she should go help Adessa. I think he did it so that Aislin would be distracted from the fact that when Nicholas showed up, he would be taken away to the City of Crystal. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to tell her, but there was no use trying to argue with him. Whatever the promise was, he wanted to keep it a secret from her.

While we had been getting things set up, Alex had informed me that he still wasn’t sure if this was going to work. All he knew was that Foreseers did have a Ira crystal ball, which allowed them to travel to and from places that people normally couldn’t travel to—like say for instance The Underworld—but he wasn’t sure how it would work exactly. All we could hope for is that we’d be able to get Nicholas to tell us. For some reason, I had a feeling that this was going to be tricky.

Faeries were tricky after all, so getting information from one seemed liked it would be tricky.

The violet ribbons swirled and danced inside the crystal ball, which was balanced in its stand on top of the apothecary table in front of us. Laylen sat on the one side of me, while Alex sat on the other side of me. I’d put myself in the middle of them intentionally, figuring it’d be best to separate them, just in case they decided to get mad at one another again.

I felt a little afraid looking down at the glinting crystal ball. I worried where I would end up when I went in, and if I would even be able to get myself out. But we were all taking risks here, and I guess this was mine.

All I could do was cross my fingers, and hope that I would return to Adessa’s and find a more than cooperative Nicholas awaiting to tell me in detail what needed to be done to get my mother out of that horrendous place known as The Underworld.

But I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be nearly that easy.

“Okay, so now what?” Laylen asked. “Gemma’s just supposed to go into a vision and faerie boy will show up here and hand over this Ira crystal ball and then, BAM, we’ll just be able to travel to The Underworld without having to get dragged down through the lake by a Water Faerie?”

“Something like that,” Alex mumbled quietly as he stared at the crystal ball. He looked at me. “Whenever you’re ready, go ahead.”

I eyed the crystal ball warily. “Okay….” Well, here goes nothing. I reached for the crystal ball, but Alex caught my hand before my fingers grazed the glass.

“You need to make sure you go somewhere safe,” he insisted, holding onto my hand. “Just think of something simple that might have happened in your past. You have to be careful you don’t alter anything.

Or get yourself stuck…You do remember how Nicholas got you out of the vision, when you went in with him, right?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “He just blinked and we were out.” He frowned. “But he didn’t have you try.” I sighed. “Look, I’ll be okay. I’ve gone in and out of visions on my own before. Some without using a crystal ball.”

“What?” Laylen said, at the exact same time Alex shot me a pointed look.

“You can go into a vision without a crystal ball?” Laylen asked, his bright blue eyes wide in amazement.

“Alright, let’s get this done and over with,” Alex said, before I could answer. It was funny, but I was realizing that Alex was doing the same thing with Laylen as he did so often with me—dodged the truth and answering questions.

Alex let go of my hand, and I took a deep breath and reached for the crystal. Then I was surrounded by nothing but light.