The Eternity Key (26 page)

chapter thirty-seven

The walk home is always the worst part of my day. Between schoolwork, poring over Abbie’s journal pages for some clue as to where she might be, plotting to get the Key out of the grove, and
actually
rehearsing for the school play, for most of the day, I don’t have to think about having a conversation with
that woman
who calls herself my mother. But after all that is done, I have to walk home.

Because her latest form of punishment for my “uncharacteristic bad behavior” is taking away my car keys.

And when I’m walking home, all I can do is think about seeing her again.

The woman is a kidnapper, a liar, a thief, and a murderer … even if that last one is only by association. Every girl whom she’s let be taken from this community has been given a death sentence. And then she does it to her own daughter? Every time I have to smile at her or pose for a picture or answer her questions as if nothing is wrong, it feels like I lose a small piece of myself.

I walk down the path leading to Olympus Row. I like to take the long way home. It takes an extra ten minutes if I pass through the shops. Longer if I stop in at Olympus Brew to ask the barista
if Marta has shown up for her daily espresso—but the answer is always no. It’s a little colder out tonight than it has been. Spring is unquestionably near, and winters are never really all that cold in Olympus Hills, but tonight there is a definite chill. I don’t mind the cold, though. It helps me get in the right frame of mind for when I get home.

I pass the gelato shop and notice a dark-haired girl in a leather jacket sitting cross-legged on a bench out front and eating a scoop of bright orange sorbet. She smiles at me, and for a moment I think I’m having a vision of Abbie. But reality snaps back in as quickly as that thought crossed my mind.
Crap. It’s Terresa
.

I hadn’t seen the resemblance when Daphne had pointed it out to me—it had been six years since I’d seen Abbie, while only a few months for Daphne—but the way Terresa’s nose crinkles with her smile sends a sudden memory of my sister through my mind. Even if Terresa’s smile is obviously fake.

She stands up and waves to me like she’s been waiting here for me.

“Hello, Tobin.”

“Um, hi. It’s Terresa, right?” I say, like I’ve barely noticed her in class.

“Look, can we just not pretend anymore?” she says, and takes a bite of her sorbet. “You know who I am; I know who you are. And we need to talk.”

“What could we possibly need to talk about?”

“Well, let’s see, there’s the Key, for one. I know you all are close to finding it.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, and quicken my pace. My hope is that she won’t follow, but of course that doesn’t stop her.

She falls in stride next to me. “And then there’s the matter of our sister.”

I stop in my tracks. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You mean you don’t see the resemblance? Ethan tells me Abbie and I look quite alike. Different hair and all, though.”

“What the hell are you saying?” I ask, not wanting to believe her insinuation, even though the way she licks the sorbet from her spoon is so Abbie I want to scream.

“Abbie and I share the same father, obviously not the same mother. Frankly, I’m a little ashamed he would get involved with a
mortal
.” She says the word like it’s icky. I know she’s talking about my mom, and I don’t really disagree with the distaste in her voice on that account, but I don’t miss the fact that I would fall under the class of “mortal,” too.

“So what? Are you looking to set up a family reunion or something?” I say, coming to a dead stop. I don’t want to believe that I share a sibling with her, let alone go for a leisurely stroll with her on the secluded lake paths. “What do you want from me, Terresa?”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly looking for a gathering of relatives, but I was hoping for your help in getting Abbie back.”

I spin around to face her. “You know where Abbie is?”

“No. But I know how to get her back.”

“How?” I ask tentatively. I’d gotten my hopes up over so many leads in the last few weeks that have only led to one depressing dead end after another.

“You help me get the Key before your ‘friends’ turn it over to the Underrealm Court.”

This insinuation implies that she doesn’t know that Haden is a rogue Underlord. Which means Ethan really isn’t working with
her—or they’re good at acting their parts.

“And how exactly does that get Abbie back?”

“Oh, don’t be an idiot and just stop and think about it, Tobin. It is obvious that some lackey for the Underrealm has her hidden somewhere, just waiting for the gate to open again. Why do you think they want her as a Boon in the first place? They want to infuse Skylord DNA into their bloodlines. They are becoming more and more mortal with each passing generation of human Boons, and that scares them. She was meant to be breeding stock.” The anger in her voice is hard to miss. It reminds me of how I felt when Dax first told me this.

How I still feel now.

“I know all that already,” I say, matching her level of emotion. “But why do you care about Abbie’s fate? You made it sound like you’ve never even met her.”

“I haven’t,” Terresa says. “But the idea of someone I share blood with being bred with Underlords makes me sick.
They
make me sick.”

“I know what you mean,” I say about her last assertion.

“Then why in the names of Zeus and Hera would you want to help them? If we have the Key, we have access to the Underlords. They are trapped in the Underrealm with no way out. We could exterminate them once and for all and never have to deal with their lies or their manipulations or their murderous acts again!”

I take a step back. “That sounds like you’re talking about genocide.”

“Would that really be so bad? Don’t forget what they’ve done to you. To your sister. To all those other girls they’ve taken for thousands of years. Do you call it genocide when you destroy a
nest of poisonous spiders?” Her eyes have gone cold. She no longer seems overcome with anger, but is collected and confident in her statement. The resemblance to Abbie is gone. “That’s what they are, Tobin. Every last one of them only cares about power and glory, about their own selfish desires. They are a race of murderers and rapists.”

Her words have more of an effect on me than I expected. I realize now that a lot of the anger I was placing on my mother was meant for the Underlords, too. I just didn’t think there was anything
I
could do about it. But now Terresa is telling me there is.

“I still don’t see how this gets Abbie back,” I say, thinking her offer sounds too good to be true.

“It’s simple. With the Underlords gone, any lackey that has been gifted with a power granted by the Underrealm will have that power stripped. They will want to know why but will have lost communication with the Underrealm. Therefore, they’ll all return here, seeking answers and direction. Humans are predictable that way. Whoever has Abbie will not want to leave her alone, and so they’ll likely walk right into town with her under their guard. Even if they don’t, it will be easy to pick them off one by one until we find someone who knows where she is. We kill all the Underlords, and Abbie is delivered like a packaged gift.”

Her plan isn’t exactly risk free, and I can see all kinds of ways it could go wrong, but it actually sounds like it might work. But there is still one big problem, as far as I am concerned. “Why should I believe you would hold up your end of the bargain?”

“My father wants Abbie out of the hands of the Underlords, and when my father is happy, I get what I want. Let’s just say there’s a big promotion in it for me.”

I curl my fists at my sides. She’s trying to exploit my affection
for my sister for her own gain. “So your motives are purely selfish, as well. You sound just like an Underlord.”

“Perhaps,” she says. “But I’m not the one who stole your sister. They are. And they deserve to pay.”

“Do I even get Abbie back, or are you just going to whisk her off to the Skyrealm to your father? Will he force her to marry Ethan? That doesn’t sound much better than the people who stole her.”

“Let’s just say that once the Underlord threat is gone, I’m sure I can convince my father to let her go home. Ethan is a good catch. I’m sure he could scrounge up another fiancée in no time. With your help, Abbie could finally be free of both realms.”

I stare at her, not knowing how I want to respond.

“Take some time to think about it. I’ll contact you again soon.” With that, she turns and walks back toward the gelato shop.

And I am left to go the other way, alone with my raging thoughts once more.

I’m on my front porch, digging in my backpack for my house keys, when my phone buzzes from my back pocket. My breath catches for a moment; I’m thinking it might be Terresa trying to contact me already for my answer (how she’d gotten my number, I don’t know), but when I pull the phone out, I see it’s Daphne. I don’t feel like answering it, so I just stand there waiting for it to stop. When it does, I see that she had called me once before, right when I was talking to Terresa.

The phone buzzes with a voice mail that I also ignore.

I finally find my keys, and I’m unlocking the front door when a black Tesla pulls into the semicircle driveway behind me. Still not in the mood for talking, I wonder if I can get away with popping
into the house, locking the door, and pretending I didn’t see them.

“Hey, Tobin,” Dax calls from the driver’s-side window.

Too late.

“What?” I say, turning around. I don’t make much effort to hide the irritation in my voice.

“Get in. We need your help.”

No
please
. No asking if I
want
to help him.

“What for?”

“We’re going to go steal us a Compass.”

Stealing something has a strange appeal at the moment, so I comply. I get in the car and find Haden in the passenger seat. “Where’s Daphne?”

“She’s not a part of this,” Haden says.

“Does she know that?” I ask. “That doesn’t sound like Daphne at all.”

Haden doesn’t answer, and I wonder what’s gotten him so cold at the moment.

“Haden and Garrick are going to meet Rowan for a supposed exchange,” Dax says as he pulls out of my driveway. “We have our doubts Rowan even plans on bringing the Compass, so you and I are going to go stake out the address that Lexie got off her app. If it looks like the right place, we’re going to break in and see what we can find.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say, surprised at how much more relaxing a little B & E sounds compared to eating dinner with my mother.

chapter thirty-eight

It’s twenty-five past midnight when Rowan finally pulls up on his motorcycle outside the school. I should have assumed he’d keep me waiting. I can only hope he didn’t notice Dax and Tobin staking out his place, and isn’t now showing up only to tell me where to find their bodies.

“Having trouble with the time?” I stand with my back leaned against my car, my arms folded casually in front of my chest, even though I feel anything but casual. “You see, the small hand points to the hour while the big hand points to the minutes.”

“Funny.” He smirks as he stands beside his motorcycle. “Since it was your lack of knowledge about time that sent you running back to the grove that first day.”

“How do you know—”

“I know all about your various mistakes, Haden. Like how you tried to take Daphne through the gate the moment you met her. I give you points for gravitas, but your idiocy knows no bounds, does it?”

“Do you have the Compass or not?” I say, in no mood for Rowan’s idea of small talk.

“You know that was the reason the Court insisted on sending
me, right? You almost destroyed yourself and the Cypher your first day here. You screwed up so royally, it didn’t matter what the Oracle said. They shouldn’t have sent a nursling without a nursemaid.”

“Does that mean you’re waiting for me to suckle at your teat?”

Rowan’s smirk falters, as he realizes his poor choice of words.