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“They picked.”
“No changing now.”
“Don’t peek.”
The Keres laughed, and the sound was more irritating than a mosquito buzzing right in my ear. At least with a bug there was something I could swat at and kill.
Each step I took felt like I was being dragged back, like I was in quicksand and if I stood too long in one place I might not come unstuck again. A simple walk had never been such a labor before.
“Tallulah.” This was not the voice of a Keres, but it rang sweetly familiar all the same. “Tallulah Belle, come back.”
My body froze on the spot, and my hands began to tremble violently. I wanted to shout for Leo, to ask if he heard it too, but I was terrified any distraction would make him look for me. That was all this was, a distraction.
I couldn’t possibly be hearing the real Sunny.
She was still alive. She was alive and safe in Arizona. Whatever was speaking to me now wasn’t her, couldn’t be her.
But what if Charon called in your promise?
My legs were made of lead, and the darkness poured in around me, threatening to pull me under an unseen wave and never let me back up for air. Not that I could breathe anyway.
The tiniest sliver of possibility that it could really be Sunny behind me was keeping me anchored in place, at war with myself.
“Tallulah, please.” The voice was so her, so perfectly Sunny, it sounded like she was standing right behind me. Pleading with me. Begging.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, and my brain refused to make a decision. If she was real and I looked back, I damned her. But if I ignored her and went on and discovered it had been Sunny, my Sunny, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for leaving her here alone.
“Sun,” I whispered. “I can’t.”
“Don’t leave me.”
Some sane part of me broke with that word, and the tears flowed all the more freely. Violent tremors shook me, and I sank to the ground, sitting cross-legged, refusing to budge. I wanted to shout to Leo, to beg him to glance back. He could take the decision out of my hands. If he looked, then I would have no choice but to stay with Sunny. He’d make things so easy for me.
“Sunny, don’t do this to me.” I buried my face in my hands, covering my eyes to keep myself from looking. The temptation to seek her out was so strong I couldn’t bear it. Having her this close and knowing what I was leaving her to, it hurt me to my very soul.
How could I choose when there was no right answer?
She wouldn’t make you choose, a voice whispered in the back of my head.
At first I thought it might be her or the Keres again, but no, this was different. This was that little voice of reason that had so often been the fine thread that kept me tethered to reality when all else seemed beyond comprehension.
And I listened.
Sunny wouldn’t ask you to stay.
I caught my breath, trying to coax this new voice to speak louder than the others, because there was a logic to the words I was having trouble believing,
and I needed to hear more of it.
Sunny wouldn’t ask.
It clicked then, all at once, the absolute correctness of this statement.
Sunny wouldn’t ask me to stay. Just like I’d never beg her to stay. If our places were reversed and it was me behind my sister, I’d stay quiet. I’d shut my mouth and let her go, because I’d know anything else would be torture for her. That this exact situation was one I’d never want to make her endure.
I wasn’t even willing to let Leo bear the burden.
My sister would never, not in a million lifetimes, ask me to stay in the underworld for her.
