The Eternity Key (13 page)

“It was a spontaneous gathering,” Dax says, like he’s worried about her feelings.

I am not as inclined at the moment. “What, like you don’t have better things to do on a Friday night?” I ask.

“Whatever, I just got off a date with Derek Van Houser from the lacrosse team.” She tosses her blond hair over her shoulder. “Saw you guys and thought I might grace you with my presence if you were up to anything interesting. Where are you boys off to now? Wine cooler run? You know I prefer Cristal,” she says, with exaggerated indifference.

“We’re not having fun. We’re headed out to investigate a lead on Abbie,” I say, my voice indicating that I’m trying to politely
dismiss her. I’m not in the mood to be her postdate entertainment.

“Ooh,” she says, suddenly interested. “Get in. I’ll drive.”

“We’ve already got a ride,” I say, pointing at Dax’s
two-seater
Roadster.

She scoffs. “That thing is tiny. I suggest you let me drive … unless you
want
me to sit in your lap.”

I am suddenly too flustered to respond. What makes her think she’s coming? Or that I’d want her to sit on my lap?

“She does have more room,” Dax says with a chuckle, and heads for the backseat of the BMW. I blink at him, wondering why he’s going along with letting her come.

“Lap or Beemer, Tobin?” Lexie croons out the window. “Lap or Beemer?”

I can feel my face burning. For all the help she’s offered us in the last few weeks as part of our team, it didn’t erase the fact that Lexie had mastered the Soprano art of irritation by sophomore year.

Sometimes, I wonder how we had ever been friends before that.

“Beemer,” I say, getting in the passenger seat next to her, since Dax is sprawled out in the backseat.

“Where to?” she asks excitedly.

“Old Sutton Mill,” Dax says before I can answer.

“It’s supposedly haunted,” I say, making a last-ditch effort to deter her. “It could be dangerous.”

“Neat!” Lexie says, hitting the gas and flying away from the curb.

I give her the side eye as we drive. I expected Lexie, queen bee of the Sopranos, to balk at the idea of poking around an old, abandoned mill in the middle of the night, but instead it seems she can’t
wait to get there. Either her date with Derek Van Housitwhatsits had been a real snooze fest, or perhaps the old Lexie, the one I’d spent the summer before freshman year with, making our own faux documentaries about swamp people in the Olympus Hills lake, was still in there somewhere under all the designer clothing and hair products.

It strikes me a few minutes later, as we pull onto Old Sutton Road, approaching the mill, that, even though in the last few months, I had come to consider Daphne to be my closest confidante when it came to Abbie, it isn’t she who is with me now, following this lead—but Lexie Simmons, the last person I expected to want to help me.

chapter fifteen

After Tobin and Dax leave, I wander off to find a spare room upstairs. I choose the one with a small balcony that looks out over the lake. I stand, leaning my elbows against the railing, looking out at the rippling water, and feel a surprising pang of disappointment that Haden isn’t standing next to me. I smile a little to myself, remembering when he’d shocked my hand while we were cooking—and that horror-struck look on his face that he’d tried to pass off as sheepish. Then, with encircling warmth, I think about the touch of his hand against my face. The closeness of his lips to mine. The thrumming notes pulsing off his body, as if an electric current had been building in his chest.

I don’t know exactly why I’d chosen to come here tonight.

Or maybe I do
.

Haden had been a welcome distraction when I had lost my hope that night in Vegas, and had treated me with such concern since. Perhaps part of me had been looking for that kind of diversion again—or maybe something
more
.…

I had pretended to be fine with Tobin’s intrusion because from the broken notes that were coming off him, I knew he needed my friendship, but his timing couldn’t have been worse. It had taken
a stroke of courage for me to finally work up my nerve enough to share my secret with Haden—to show him my new power, but then I lost my chance when Tobin arrived.

I’d been more than disappointed when the doorbell had interrupted my concentration, but at the same time, I have to admit that I am also relieved. In the moment, I had wanted to share with Haden. I had wanted to open up to him.

Hell, if he’d tried to kiss me, I might have let him, despite my better judgment.

But maybe it was better that I didn’t get the chance for any of that.

CeCe—I mean, Abbie—had always teased me about having a wall around my heart. I’d put it there after being disappointed by my father time and time again as a kid, but over the last few months of living with Joe and getting to know Haden, I had let some of my defenses down. Opened up. But now that I know what Joe did to me, now that my trust has been so thoroughly betrayed by the one person who is supposed to want to protect me above anything else—my father—how am I supposed to truly trust anyone else again?

And now that I know that my heart and soul might need to be sacrificed to get the Key, I don’t want to just rebuild the wall around my heart; I want to line it with battlements and cannons.

Would my secret be safe with Haden? Would he tell the others? Would he still be my ally, or would he only see me as a more valuable prize?

I try to shake that last idea off. Haden had traded everything he’d ever wanted to keep me out of his father’s hands. The feel of his scarred hand he’d held against my cheek had been a reminder of his refusal. Even if I didn’t know why he’d given it all up for
me, that was the reason I’d almost opened up to him earlier this evening. It was the reason I felt safe staying here now.…

And yet, I still don’t know if I can let him in.

It’s a clear night, and I can see all the way out to the smaller island of the lake. It sits silent and dark in the water, no longer singing the lullaby it sang to me the first night I arrived in Olympus Hills, the song that drew me to it the next day—the day I met Haden, and the same day Tobin and I found Pear almost drowned in the lake at the edge of the island. The song had seemed fractured then, broken notes and distressful strains, as if the island had been calling out to me that something was wrong. Pear—who is still in a coma at the Olympus Hills Medical Center—might have died if not for that. But after that night, the grove fell silent, like it had gone into hibernation. I hadn’t heard its song since that first day, but it was still etched inside my heart.

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

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

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.