The Eternity Key (30 page)

“You mean an Underlord was there?” I ask, my anger surging.

She nods. “I didn’t get much out of her before her mom came back from the cafeteria and shooed me out of the room. But do you think … do you think Haden was lying when he said he had nothing to do with Pear’s attack?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “My money would be on Rowan. He came through the gate after them.”

Scum
, I think, remembering what Terresa had called them.
Rowan was nothing but Underlord scum
. Haden and his two cousins may be different, but the rest of them make me sick.

“I wish there was a way to make him pay,” Lexie says.

“Me, too.”
I wish there was a way to make all of them pay
.

My phone in my pocket buzzes. I know it’s another text from Terresa without looking at it. Lexie and I sit in silence until she’s finished half her muffin. She pushes the rest aside, squeezes my hand, and then stands up.

I’m still seething when she says, “Thank you.”

I look up at her, a little taken aback. “For what?”

“For being here. For letting me talk. I know we’re not the best of friends anymore.…” She leans down and pecks my cheek with her lips. “Thanks for even wishing there were something you could do.”

She picks up her purse and leaves before I can think of how to respond.

My phone buzzes once again. I pull it out and find three texts from Terresa, all saying the same thing.

Are you in?

I almost put it back in my pocket, but instead I answer back.
I’ll let you know my answer tomorrow.

I expect Terresa to be the one who is waiting for me on the front steps of the school in the morning, but instead it’s Daphne.

She gives me this look like she can hear my inner tone from a mile away. At the moment, I curse her intuitive abilities, because I don’t need her intruding on my feelings.

“Are you okay?” she asks, falling into step with me as we enter the building.

“Yeah,” I lie.

She gives me a very pointed look. “I’m worried about you, Tobin.”

“Don’t be,” I say.

Her look gets even more pointed.

“What I mean is that you shouldn’t be worrying about me. I should be the one worrying about you. You’re the one headed into the Underrealm in two days.”

I am trying to distract her, but it doesn’t seem to work. “I know you’re not okay, Tobin. You sound like you’re going to implode at any moment. You’ve just been so angry lately.…”

I shake my head. If she thinks the sound coming off me this morning is anger, then she’s not as intuitive as she thinks she is. I’m not angry. Not anymore. I’m resigned.

I stop and put my hands on her shoulders. “I’m okay, Daphne, really. I’m just worried about you and how this quest of yours to the Underrealm is going to play out. That’s all.”

“Okay,” she says, as if she hears the sincerity behind my words. She hugs me and I let her.

“Now, I gotta take care of something before music class,” I say, when she finally lets me go. “See you in a few.”

I know she’s watching me go until I round the corner. I go down another hall until I see the person I’m looking for.

Terresa stands by her locker, chatting with Iris Thompkins, as if she were any other student. When she sees me coming, she excuses herself from the conversation and comes to meet me. I pull a folded-up piece of paper from my pocket and hand it to her.

“What’s this?”

“A time and a location,” I whisper. “Meet me after the play the evening after tomorrow, and I will take you to the Key.”

She nods. I turn around and walk away briskly—only to almost run into Garrick at the end of the hall. “What?” I ask pointedly at his stare.

“Not a thing,” he says, and lets me pass.

chapter forty-three

Over the last two weeks, I’ve completely immersed myself in either rehearsals for the play or practicing honing my powers. I’ve even gotten in a couple of sessions with Haden, in which I use my power to send something flying in the air, and then he blasts it with a bolt. It’s kind of like skeet shooting, but with lightning. He’s polite to me—kind, even—but he doesn’t ever try to touch me or press me more on our relationship status. Instead, he treats me like a comrade in arms.

I like the respect, but sometimes when I watch that concentrated look on his face when I’m teasing him by sending an object whirling in an erratic pattern before he can blast it, I find myself aching for more. A smile. A laugh. The touch of his hand on the small of my back. And then I curse my feelings for trying to betray my head.

The day of the play arrives too quickly. I wake early in the morning, worried that I’m not ready. But then I tell myself that there isn’t more that I could possibly do to prepare. In the late afternoon, I get in one last vocal warm-up while using my voice to rearrange the clothes draped on wooden hangers in my closet, and then get set to leave.

I can’t find Joe in the house, so I decide to head over to the amphitheater on my bike, but instead I discover Joe in the driveway. He’s sitting on the teal green Vespa that he’d bought me for Christmas, and is wearing a leather jacket, a charcoal gray helmet, and aviator sunglasses.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

He smiles. “Your chariot awaits, mademoiselle,” he says, and holds out another gray helmet for me.

“You’re driving that to the play?”

“Bobby says he wants to buy it off me since you don’t want it … but I thought it a shame to get rid of it without at least taking it for an inaugural ride. And, no, I’m not driving it; you’re going to. What kind of rock star father would I be if I didn’t teach my own daughter how to drive a motorcycle … or, er, motor scooter?”

“Right now?”

“No time like the present …” His voice trails off, and I gather his real meaning from the notes that swirl about him. He’s trying to seize the opportunity for a daddy-daughter moment just in case.… Just in case he never gets the chance again …

“You seriously want me to drive this thing?” I ask, taking the helmet from him.

“It’s easy,” he says. “Just like riding your bicycle, but faster.”

I strap on my helmet and climb onto the scooter seat in front of Joe.

Joe’s assertion that it would be as easy as riding my bike doesn’t exactly hold up, but I’m surprised by how fun it is to drive once I (sort of) start to get the hang of it. I even dare to speed up to a whole twenty miles an hour when I figure out that it’s easier to balance, the faster I go. Joe laughs as my long hair in the wind whips him in the face.

I laugh, too, and I can’t help thinking that this is exactly the kind of thing I have always wanted in a father: that person who teaches you how to drive, helps you with your schoolwork, and shows you how to be a better person. Joe may have his problems, but he is
trying
. He’s been doing so much to help us and is doing everything possible to become a better man. I’d been carrying his sobriety coin in my pocket for the last few weeks as a reminder of the promises he’d made to me, but I had also still been carrying what remains of my anger toward him. And I’m tired of it. I’m tired of letting it weigh me down. So as we cruise along the lakeshore road, I decide to just let my anger go. To release it into the wind and let it fly away. And forgive Joe in my heart.

“Lean the scooter but not yourself,” Joe says as we round the corner into the amphitheater parking lot. We pull to a stop—not too hard. Joe gets off first and then steadies the scooter as I swing off it.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“I love it,” I say. “Do you think Bobby would mind if we decide to keep it? I think I’d like to do this some more
when
I get back.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Joe says, with a cheeky smile.

As I leave Joe to park the Vespa in the lot and I head toward the theater, I feel as though a change has come over me. I feel lighter and ever more confident about the tasks that lie ahead of me.

And like the wall around my heart is finally starting to come down again.

Haden is already backstage at the amphitheater when I come out of a dressing room with my hair and makeup done and my costume on. He’s dressed in a rust red toga that shows off the finer parts of his body, while I wear a flowing white Grecian-style dress.
He doesn’t smile when he sees me, but I can tell by his inner tone that he’s relieved—and possibly happy—that I’m with him.

“I have something for you,” he says. Other cast members are milling about, so he speaks softly as he slips something round and metal into my hand.

“The Compass,” I whisper, wrapping my fingers around it. Warmth pulses through my hand, up my arm, and into my chest. It feels like what I imagine having one’s sight restored after a month of blindness must be like.

“I can have Dax hang on to it and bring it to the grove so you don’t have to worry about it while you’re onstage.”

“No, I’ll keep it,” I say, not wanting to let it out of my possession again, and tuck it into the secret pocket I asked Dax to sew into the side seam of my dress. It nestles next to Joe’s sobriety coin, and knowing I have it on me gives me more strength.

Beyond the stage, I can hear the school band tuning their instruments, but I can still make out the shift in Haden’s inner tone as it becomes softer and more fluid.

I look up to find him watching me. He starts to say something, hesitates, and then starts again. “I wanted to say something to you,” he finally says.

I take a deep breath, part expecting, part dreading, and part hoping for another declaration.

“I want to apologize,” he says.

“Apologize?”
Was he going to take back his words?
“For what?”

“For bringing you into all of this. I know none of what has happened to you is part of your big plan for your life, and I’m sorry that, because of me, your future is so uncertain. I also wanted to thank you for sticking with us. You didn’t have to leave Ellis Fields and come back here with us; you didn’t have to agree to go to the
Underrealm tonight. You could have stayed where it was safe and tried to forget about the rest of us, but the truth is we need you and you didn’t run away from that.” He brushes the backs of his fingers lightly against my shoulder, sending a tingling sensation down my arm. “I know this isn’t what you envisioned for your life, but I’m glad we’re doing this together.”

I look down at my hands.
When did they start to tremble?
“You could have done differently, too,” I say, realizing that now. He could have run away. Or stayed in Ellis. He could have said a big “screw you” to the mortal world and gone his merry way. No one had asked him to be a hero.

“I couldn’t have done anything differently,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because it wouldn’t have been right.”

My breath catches in my chest. I want to say something to him … tell him something … but I don’t know the right words to express what I’m feeling.

“Yo, Daphne?” Tobin says, poking his head around the corner of the alcove where I’ve been standing with Haden. I am relieved to note that his inner tone sounds nervous but not angry like it had when I’d confronted him at school. “Joe’s looking for you. He says you have a couple of surprise guests.”

“I do?” I ask, completely confused.

I follow Tobin out of the alcove, with Haden trailing behind me. I can hear a string of tense notes accompanying him. Our plans for later tonight must have him paranoid, and I don’t think he likes the sound of anything surprise-related.

“There you are, Daphne!” Joe says brightly as he comes through the curtains of the amphitheater, but his tone tells me something’s got him worried. He pulls the curtain aside, and the
two people I least expect to see follow him backstage.

“Mom? Jonathan?” I almost want to rub my eyes like a cartoon character to make sure I’m not seeing a mirage brought on by nerves.

“Hello, my little sprout!” Mom says as I throw myself at her. She hugs me tight, like she’s tempted to never let me go. Or run off with me back to Ellis before I have a chance to escape.

“My turn!” Jonathan croons impatiently.

Mom releases me from her death-grip hug, only for Jonathan to scoop me up in his giant, bearlike embrace.

“What are you two doing here?” I ask, when he sets me back on my feet.

“Like we were going to miss your big debut!” Jonathan says.

Actually, that’s exactly what I’d expected to happen. We hadn’t really been speaking to each other since the Christmas debacle, and my mom doesn’t travel—I knew crossing two state lines would be hard enough on her that I hadn’t bothered to invite her to the play. I can tell from the uneasy tone that eeks off her that being here is no small sacrifice.

“Who are your friends?” Jonathan asks, indicating Tobin and Haden, who both stand protectively behind me. “I want to meet every one of your friends.”

“Well, this is Tobin, my costar,” I say as Tobin steps forward.

He shakes both my mom’s and Jonathan’s hands.

“The infamous Tobin Oshiro-Winters.” Jonathan closes both of his huge hands around Tobin’s. “We’ve heard a lot about you.”

“And this is Haden Lord,” I say, almost too reluctantly.