The Eternity Key (14 page)

“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

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 strange 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

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