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Joaquin nodded, looking green, and pressed himself up against the peeling wallpaper along the stairway. I held my breath as I crept just behind him, each step an excruciating eternity. My eyes were trained on the front bedroom door. The door to the room where Tristan had spied on me during those days after we’d first arrived—the room where he’d taken me on my first Lifer tour, when I’d tried to kiss him, and he’d broken my heart.
Temporarily. Because he’d felt he had to. Now I wished he’d just left it broken back then. It would have started healing by now.
We’d reached the top of the stairs. Joaquin and I locked eyes, and I saw the determination in his. Suddenly I felt weak and childish and stupid. This was not about how Tristan had betrayed me. It was about Darcy and Dad and Aaron and Jennifer and the other innocent souls suffering needlessly in the Shadowlands. It was time to get them back.
“Screw this,” I said under my breath.
Then I turned and threw open the door, the others right on my heels. The curtains were drawn. The room was lit by two kerosene lanterns and one small candle. The first thing I saw by their uncertain light was Tristan, passed out diagonally across two sleeping bags on the floor. I lost my breath at the sight of him. He was on his back in a black T-shirt, one arm stretched out at his side, the other crooked awkwardly over his chest with a bandage wrapped around his hand. His legs were splayed in dirty, wet jeans. A hank of his blond hair fell across his forehead like a crescent moon.
He was here. He was really here.
And I didn’t know what to do. Laugh? Cry? Scream?
Fisher pushed past me into the room. “Tristan!” He thundered, kicking his booted foot.
Tristan groaned and rolled on his side. That was when we saw the blood. It was everywhere. A thick pool of it, dark as oil, spreading out from behind his head. My hands flew to cover my mouth. Cori, meanwhile, crept along the front of the room as if looking for something, keeping her back to the wall.
“Tristan?” Bea gasped, falling to her knees.
She tentatively touched his head, and the color drained from her cheeks. “It’s bad, you guys. His whole skull…”
She turned away, swallowing hard, then got up and staggered to the window, ripping the curtains aside and heaving for breath.
“Who would do this? Who would come in here and attack him?” I asked.
Then, suddenly, Cori screamed.
“What the—”
“Nadia! It’s Nadia!” Cori was pointing at the floor near the back of the room, shaking. “She’s not breathing, you guys! I don’t think she’s breathing.”
I grabbed a lantern and rushed over to Cori’s side. The first thing I saw were Nadia’s black Converse, twisted over each other. My eyes traveled up her skinny legs, her flat torso, up her neck to her face. I gasped and took a step back. Her eyes were open and staring. Not blinking. There was no life in them.
“No, no, no,” Joaquin said, joining us. “That’s not possible. She’s just screwing with us.”
He crouched next to Nadia’s body and put his fingers to her neck. His brows knit and he moved his fingers. Then he moved them again. His hand trembled. When his gaze flicked up to meet mine, I could tell he didn’t want to speak.
“What?” Bea croaked from the far corner, hugging herself. “What, Joaquin?”
“There’s no pulse,” Joaquin said, surprised. “Cori’s right. Nadia’s dead.”
Cori wailed and buried her face in Fisher’s shoulder. Lauren buckled backward, staggering until she collided with the wall, where she sank to the floor, straggly strands of her wet hair snagging on tears in the ancient wallpaper.
“I don’t understand,” I said. We were supposed to be immortal. That was the deal. “If a Lifer dies, where does their soul go?”
No one answered, because there was no answer. This had never happened before. Not in anyone’s memory. Ice-cold fear permeated the room, trembling the air around us, turning eyes wide and jaws slack. Where had Nadia gone? Where would any of us go?
“Please…”
Tristan. His eyes were still closed, but his fingertips clawed at the dusty floor, curling in toward his palm. He groaned and my knees buckled. I threw myself onto the worn throw rug next to him, my heart wrenched inside my throat.
“Tristan?”
I put my hand on his shoulder. He felt cold—impossibly cold—and I could feel the muscles quivering beneath his skin.
“Help…” he muttered, the words a half wheeze. “Help us.”
And then his body went slack.
