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I was halfway up the steps when Krista sprinted up to the guardrail, her blue eyes wild, half her hair falling out of her ponytail. Her face was as gray as ash.
“You guys, it’s happening again,” she choked out right in front of the visitors, the Lifers, everyone. “Three souls were just ushered to the Shadowlands.”
“Um…what’s the Shadowlands?” one of the visitors asked finally.
Everyone ignored him, but the question seemed to spark something inside Tristan, who started up the beach in his bare feet, flowered swim trunks, and rash guard.
“Tristan? Where are you going?”
The look on his face as he moved past me up the steps was like nothing I’d ever seen before. At least not from him. The anger, the determination seemed to radiate from somewhere deep within him, making every step rigid, and inspiring everyone in his path to scurry out of the way.
“No, seriously. What’s the Shadowlands?” the same kid repeated. I bit my lip as silence reigned. To explain it to him would mean damning him there, and damning ourselves as well. We just had to hope he’d forget about it, or else we’d take him to the mayor for a memory wipe. As long as no one answered him, we’d be okay.
I reached for Tristan’s arm. He turned on me, his blue eyes bright with rage.
“You want to talk to Pete, so let’s go talk to Pete,” he snapped, shooting a death ray over my head in Joaquin’s direction. “Let’s put an end to this once and for all.”
He tromped up the stairs and passed a still-stricken Krista without so much as a glance. The rest of us stood around uncertainly, a fierce breeze tearing at our clothes and whipping my hair into my eyes. Were we supposed to follow him? Did he even want us to?
I glanced at Joaquin, my heart a destroyed and pounding mess. His eyes hardened, and I felt something inside me fall away.
“So let’s go,” he said.
Joaquin bounded up the stairs, and the rest of us followed. Maybe Tristan had been right earlier, in
the park. Maybe this party had been a bad idea. We had let our guard down. We had forgotten to be vigilant. And now we were responsible for more devastation.
“There’s something else,” Krista said to Joaquin as she fell into step with him. I stayed right behind them on our way up the hill, blowing by the old Victorian houses and ducking under the bowed branches of bare and spindly trees. “The twins got away from the mayor before she could wipe their memories again.”
“What?” I demanded.
“So they’re out there right now telling people that a bunch of locals are making people disappear at the bridge?” Joaquin said fiercely. “Great. That’s the best news I’ve heard today.”
Krista looked green. “She’s got Chief Grantz looking for them, so hopefully they’ll be locked up soon, too.”
Joaquin upped his pace, and I trained my eyes on Tristan’s back until we finally reached the town square. Tristan stormed across the park and took the steps to the police station two at a time. As he yanked open the front door, I paused to look back at the mayor’s house. What had once looked like an exclusive hotel to me now seemed like the menacing witch’s dark castle, another symbol of everything that was wrong with this world. The weather vane, sure enough, pointed south, obstinately ignoring the wind that swirled around it.
“What’s Tristan going to do?” I asked Bea as she caught up to me. I hugged my arms against the chill.
“I don’t know, but it’s gonna be interesting.”
We jogged across the park to catch up, blowing by Joaquin as we bounded up the marble steps. Through the lobby and down the stairs, we could hear Tristan shouting. In the time I’d known him I’d only ever heard him raise his voice once, and that was during an argument with Joaquin. Bea’s eyes widened with mine as we bolted for the door at the far end. Pete was sitting facing the corner of his cell, his knees drawn up under his chin. Tristan shouted at Pete’s back, crouched on the floor as close as he could get to the bars. Dorn stood in the far corner, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared everyone else down like he was Tristan’s personal bodyguard.
“You killed her, Pete!” Tristan blurted, gripping the steel poles. “You killed Nadia! Do you even realize what that means? Do you know what’s going to happen to you when we finally decide to usher you? Have you thought about what it’s going to be like in Oblivion?”
“Tristan,” Bea said softly.
The four-foot space between the outer bars of the two cells and the exterior wall of the room was now crowded with Lifers. Bea and I were closer to Tristan than anyone, having arrived first, but we were giving him a wide berth. His muscles were so taut, his teeth so tightly clenched, that I was almost afraid to touch him. He looked like a feral animal. Pete, ever so slowly, started to rock forward and back, forward and back. His forehead dipped toward his knees.
“Your only hope is to help us, Pete,” Tristan continued, leaning into the bars. “That’s your only hope. Because I swear to god if you don’t open your mouth and start talking right now, I’ll rip you out of that cell myself and send you over the bridge directly to Oblivion. I’ll do it happily.”
Pete let out a strangled sob. I didn’t know what I had planned to say to Pete to persuade him to help us, but it wasn’t this. I swallowed my fears and put my hand on Tristan’s shoulder. He flinched, but then relaxed when he saw that it was me.
“Tristan, please. Listen to yourself,” I whispered. He didn’t move. I squatted next to him, moving my hand gently down his back. The curve of his spine, the lines of the muscles in his shoulders were visible through his shirt. “This isn’t you.”
His eyes darted to mine. For a second I thought he was going to contradict me, but instead, he sighed. Slowly, he stood up, tugging my hand to bring me with him.
Just then, Liam slid sideways into the room. His eyes met mine as he slunk along the back wall, trying to disappear behind the crowd of Lifers in front of him. But he wasn’t fast enough to hide the fact that he was out of breath, that his white tank top was stained with sweat around the collar.
