Endless

Willingly

I stared at Krista, feeling Steven Nell’s awful breath warming the back of my neck. She was the accomplice? It wasn’t possible. She was my friend. My best friend. I’d treated her like a sister, and she had done the same for me. How could she have done this? How could she have tried to pin everything on me, dragged my family to the Shadowlands, plotted behind our backs, and lied to our faces?

Krista smoothed her wet hair back from her face and lifted her chin as she stared me down. But she was still Krista. Still a sweet, pretty girl who wanted nothing more than to be everyone’s friend.

Wasn’t she?

“I can’t just take her. You know that,” Steven Nell said, his watery eyes flicking over Krista like she was beneath his notice. “Rory Miller must come willingly.”

He held his right arm around my middle like a vise, my back against his torso, and reached up to run his frigid, dry knuckles down my cheek. I could feel the random stubble on his chin pinching my skull through my hair as my head rubbed up against it. Bile rose up in the back of my throat. I squirmed, trying to wrench away from him, but he was strong. So much stronger than he’d been in life.

“Krista?” I said, pulse pounding furiously in my veins. Every inch of my body trembled, which pissed me off. I hated showing fear in front of Nell. “What the hell is going on?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw something shift in the darkness. A whisper of a figure. My father? Darcy? Could I still save them?

“I just want to go home,” Krista said simply. “I don’t belong here.”

“That’s what this is about?” I demanded. “You getting to go to your damn prom?”

“Don’t you get it, Rory? I wasn’t supposed to die,” Krista snapped, bending at the waist. “You know it. I know it. And that night I brought Steven Nell up here, he told me the universe knew it, too. That it upsets the balance when someone takes their life by mistake. So he made me an offer. He wanted you for his eternal pet, but the Shadowlands won’t just take a goody-goody Lifer like you unless you come willingly. And he knew how to make that happen.”

“What about Darcy? She didn’t come willingly,” I said.

Krista smirked. “You forget: She wasn’t a Lifer yet. Not officially.”

“You’re insane,” I said, shaking my head, trying to pull away as Nell stroked my hair. “There’s nothing that could make me sign up for an eternity with him.”

“Oh, I think you will,” Nell said lightly.

He lifted a lock of my hair and slowly drew it under his nose, sniffing it. A disgusting shudder of sheer pleasure rocked his entire body before he reverently touched it to his lips. My bottom lip wobbled and I closed my eyes, trying not to give Nell the satisfaction of hearing me sob.

“He gave me the tainted coins. He told me that if I ushered eighteen souls to the Shadowlands, including your little family”—Krista spat the word as if it had singed her tongue—“I could have what I wanted. I could have my life back. I got Pete to help me because I knew I couldn’t overpower those people alone. Told him the Shadowlands would repay him for his hard work, too.”

“What did you promise him?” I bit out.

“He wanted to see his brother again. Kid died when Pete was only eight years old. So I told him he could go to the Light and see him.” Krista shrugged.

“And I’m guessing you never intended to deliver on that promise.”

Krista smirked. “How could I? I’m just little old me. Little old persuasive me. It was just too bad Cori followed me, when I went to meet up with Pete that night after he ‘disappeared,’ and overheard us together. It really sucked, having to push her off that cliff.”

My throat burned, and tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Couldn’t believe it was coming from Krista Parrish’s mouth.

“Why eighteen souls?” I asked. “Why take my family?”

“Because he knew if I did that, he’d be able to cut another deal. With you.”

I swallowed hard. My scalp tingled every time Nell’s fingernails brushed my hair. “What?” I asked. “What deal?”

Krista took a step forward. Her eyes looked dead as she tilted her chin and got right in my face. “Your eternal soul for theirs.”

My heart free-fell into my stomach. Nell started to laugh. I felt the breath of it against my ear. His scrawny body shook from the force of it, jarring against mine in fits and starts. I turned my head to gaze into the endless black. My family was in there somewhere, and I was the only one who could save them.

As long as I sacrificed myself.

Not that it was even a choice. Was there any way I could ever choose myself over them? They wouldn’t even be dead if it weren’t for me. If I hadn’t gotten away from Nell that day in the woods, Darcy and Dad would still be alive. They’d be sad without me, sure, but they’d be alive and they’d move on. Instead, their lives were over and they’d just logged a few days in hell to boot, thanks to little old me.

The choice was clear. If it was either me suffering forever in the Shadowlands, or them, I picked me.

I looked down at my feet, a steely cold resolve coming over me. I knew they didn’t deserve to be here, but in the end, in truth, didn’t I? Nell might have been an evil bringer of death, but he was still a living human being, and I had killed him. I had done it on purpose. I had done it with malice in my heart. I had relished the act of it. In that moment, murdering him had felt good. It had felt right.

My dad and Darcy didn’t belong in the Shadowlands. But maybe I did.

I closed my eyes and pictured my father, Darcy, my mom. In my mind’s eye, I looked at each of them, solidifying their images in my mind, and said good-bye.

“No, Rory!” I heard Darcy scream, though whether it was real or imagined, I had no idea. “No! Don’t do it! Please!”

I blocked out her appeals, which made what I was about to do that much easier.

I opened my mouth to say it. To say yes, I would willingly go to the Shadowlands if the innocents would be set free. I looked up at Nell. His awful grin widened, deepening the lines on his face.

“I—”

“Rory, no!” Tristan’s voice shouted. “Don’t do it! It’s a trap!”