Beautiful Darkness (45 page)

Twyla touched my cheek with her bony finger. “Da truth in both da worlds. Have to lose to gain. We're not here long,
cher
.” It was a warning, almost like she knew something I didn't. After what I'd seen tonight, I was sure she did.

Amma threw her skinny arms around me in one last bone-crushing hug. “I'm gonna make you some luck, my way,” she whispered, and turned to Link. “Wesley Jefferson Lincoln, you best come back in one piece, or I'll tell your mamma what you were doin’ in my basement when you were nine years old, you hear me?”

Link smiled at the familiar threat. “Yes, ma'am.”

Amma didn't say anything to Liv — just a quick nod in her direction. It was her way of showing where her loyalties lay. Now that I knew what Lena had done for me, I had no doubt about how Amma felt about her.

Amma cleared her throat. “The guards are gone, but Twyla can't hold them off forever. You'd best get on.”

I pushed open the wrought iron gate, with Link and Liv behind me.

I'm coming, L. Whether you want me to or not.

6.19

N
obody said a word as we walked along the edge of the road toward the park and the Savannah Doorwell. We decided not to risk going back to Aunt Caroline's, since Aunt Del would be there and wasn't likely to let us keep going without her. Beyond that, there didn't seem to be anything worth saying. Link tried to get his hair to stick up without the aid of industrial strength hair gel, and Liv checked her selenometer and scribbled in her tiny red notebook once or twice.

The same old things.

Only the same old things weren't the same this morning, in the gloomy darkness before dawn. My mind was reeling, and I stumbled more than a few times. This night was worse than a nightmare. I couldn't wake up. I didn't even have to shut my eyes to see the dream, Sarafine and the knife — Lena crying out for me.

I had died.

I was dead, for who knows how long.

Minutes?

Hours?

If it wasn't for Lena, I would be lying in the dirt in His Garden of Perpetual Peace right now. The second sealed cedar box in our family plot.

Had I felt things? Seen things? Had it changed me? I touched the hard line of the scar beneath my shirt. Was it really my scar? Or was it the memory of something that happened to the other Ethan Wate, the one who didn't come back?

It was all a confusing blur, like the dreams Lena and I shared, or the difference between the two skies Liv had shown me, the night the Southern Star disappeared. Which part was real? Had I unconsciously known what Lena had done? Had I sensed it somewhere below everything else that had happened between us?

If she had known what she was choosing, would she have chosen differently?

I owed my life to her, but I didn't feel happy. All I felt was brokenness. The fear of dirt and nothingness and being alone. The loss of my mom and Macon and, in a way, Lena. And something else.

The crippling sadness and the incredible guilt of being the one who lived.

Forsyth Park was eerie at dawn. I had never seen it when it wasn't teeming with people. Without them, I almost didn't recognize the door to the Tunnels. No trolley bells, no sightseers. No miniature dogs or gardeners trimming azaleas. I thought of all the living, breathing people who would wander through the park today.

“You didn't see it.” Liv pulled on my arm.

“What?”

“The door. You walked right by it.”

She was right. We had walked past the archway before I recognized it. I almost forgot how subtly the Caster world worked, always hidden in plain sight. You couldn't have seen the Outer Door in the park unless you were looking for it, and the archway kept it in perpetual shadow, probably a Cast of its own. Link went to work, ratcheting his shears into the crack between the door and the frame as quickly as possible, prying it open with a groan. The dim recesses of the tunnel were even darker than the summer dawn.

“I can't believe that works.” I shook my head.

“I've been thinking about it since we left Gatlin,” Liv said. “I think it makes loads of sense.”

“It makes sense that a crappy pair of garden shears can open a Caster door?”

“That's the beauty of the Order of Things. I told you, there's the magical universe and the material universe.” Liv stared up at the sky.

My eyes followed hers. “Like the two skies.”

“Exactly. One isn't any more real than the other. They coexist.”

“So rusty metal scissors can take on a magic portal?” I don't know why I was surprised.

“Not always. But where the two universes meet, there will always be some sort of seam. Right?” It made perfect sense to Liv.

I nodded.

“I wonder if a strength in one universe corresponds to a weakness in the other.” She was talking to herself as much as to me.

“You mean, the door is easy for Link to open because it's impossible for a Caster?” Link had been having a suspiciously easy time with the Doorwells. On the other hand, Liv didn't know Link had been picking locks since his mom gave him his first curfew, in about sixth grade.

“Possibly. It might account for what's happening with the Arclight.”

“Or what about this? The Caster doors keep on openin’ because I'm a ragin’ stud.” Link flexed.

“Or the Casters who built these Tunnels hundreds of years ago weren't thinking about garden shears,” I said.

“Because they were thinkin’ about my extreme studliness, in both universes.” He stuck the shears back in his belt. “Ladies first.”

Liv climbed down into the tunnel. “As if I should be surprised.”

We followed the stairs back down into the still air of the tunnel. It was completely quiet, without even an echo from our footsteps. The silence settled over us, thick and heavy. The air beneath the Mortal world had none of the weightlessness of the air above.

At the bottom of the Doorwell, we found ourselves facing the same dark road that had led us to Savannah. The one that had split into two directions: the forbidding, shadowy street we were on, and the meadow path suffused with light. Directly in front of us, the old neon motel sign was flickering on and off now, but that was the only difference.

That, and Lucille lying rolled up beneath it, the light hitting
her fur as it blinked. She yawned to see us, slowly pulling herself up one paw at a time.

“You're gettin’ to be a tease, Lucille.” Link squatted on his heels to scratch her ears. Lucille meowed, or growled, depending on how you looked at it. “Aw, I forgive you.” Everything was a compliment to Link.

“What now?” I faced the crossroads.

“Stairway to hell, or the Yellow Brick Road? Why don't you give your 8 Ball a shake and see if it's ready to play again.” Link stood up.

I took the Arclight out of my pocket. It was still glowing, flashing on and off, but the emerald color that led us to Savannah was gone. Now it had turned a deep blue, like one of those satellite photos of the Earth.

Liv touched the sphere, the color deepening under her fingertip. “The blue is so much more intense than the green. I think it's getting stronger.”

“Or your superpowers are getting stronger.” Link gave me a shove, and I almost dropped the Arclight.

“And you wonder why this thing stopped working?” I pulled it away from him, annoyed.

Link checked me with his shoulder. “Try to read my mind. Wait, no. Try to fly.”

“Stop messing around,” Liv snapped. “You heard Ethan's mom. We don't have much time. The Arclight will work or it won't. Either way, we need an answer.”

Link straightened up. The weight of what we had seen at the graveyard was on all our shoulders now. The strain was beginning to show.

“Shh. Listen —” I took a few steps forward, in the direction
of the tunnel carpeted in tall grass. You could actually hear the birds chirping now.

I raised the Arclight and held my breath. I wouldn't have minded if it went black and sent us down the other path, the one with the shadows, the rusty fire escapes crawling down the sides of dark buildings, the unmarked doors. As long as it gave us an answer.

Not this time.

“Try the other way,” Liv said, never taking her eyes off the light. I retraced my steps.

No change.

No Arclight, and no Wayward. Because deep down I knew that without the Arclight, I wouldn't have been able to find my way out of a paper bag, especially not in the Tunnels.

“I guess that's the answer. We're screwed.” I pocketed the ball.

“Great.” Link started down the sunlit path without another thought.

“Where are you going?”

“No offense, but unless you have some kinda secret Wayward clue about where to go, I'm not goin’ down there.” He looked back at the darker path. “The way I see it, we're lost no matter what, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“Or if you look at it the other way, we've got a fifty-fifty chance of gettin’ things right half the time.” I didn't try to correct his math. “So I figure we take our chances on Oz and tell ourselves things are finally lookin’ up. ’Cause what do we have to lose?” It was hard to argue with Link's twisted logic when he tried to be logical.

“Got a better idea?”

Liv shook her head. “Shockingly, no.”

We headed for Oz.

The tunnel really was right out of a page of one of my mom's tattered old L. Frank Baum books. Willows stretched over the dusty path, and the underground sky was open and endless and blue.

The scene was calm, which had the opposite effect on me. I was used to the shadows. This path seemed too idyllic. I expected a Vex to fly down over the hills in the distance any second.

Or a house to drop on my head when I least expected it.

My life had taken a stranger turn than I could've ever imagined. What was I doing on this path? Where was I headed really? Who was I to take on a battle between powers I didn't understand — armed with a runaway cat, a uniquely bad drummer, a pair of garden shears, and an Ovaltine-drinking teen Galileo?

To save a girl who didn't want to be saved?

“Wait up, you stupid cat!” Link scrambled after Lucille, who had become the leader, zigzagging her way in front of us as if she knew exactly where we were going. It was ironic, because I didn't have a clue.