“They are, except for Ethan. He’s in rough shape, but we gave him a couple of green gummy bears and hopefully that will help him perk up until we can get him to a healer,” she said.
Gummy bears? Another thing I probably didn’t want to know about. Or maybe I was just too tired to care as long as he was okay. For now. “Why didn’t he stay in the House of Wonder?”
“Because he thinks he’s in love with you, and now has to prove it to you by coming to your rescue even though you don’t love him,” Wally said. “He has no idea that you are one hundred percent in love with Rory.”
My jaw dropped and I stumbled to a stop, my ears ringing violently. “What? What did you just say?”
Wally didn’t look at me, just tightened her hold on my arm and kept dragging me along. “Ethan doesn’t realize he doesn’t stand a chance against Rory. Never has.” She shrugged. “But he could be a good friend and help us out of this jam, so I’m not telling him what he doesn’t need to know. Or what he chooses not to see.”
“I’m not in love with Rory. I mean, not like that,” I spluttered. Okay, so I was lying through my teeth, but the thing was he’d made his choice in Gen. I had to let him go in that respect. Even if Wally was pretty much spot-on about my feelings. So lies it was. “He’s family. That’s it.”
Wally pointed at the bright flashing lights of a fast-food joint. “Let’s get food to take with us. We’re almost there.”
“I’m not in love with Rory,” I said again.
“What do you want? Just burgers and fries?”
“I’m not!” I yelped, not liking the way my voice squeaked. “Wally, I’m not.”
“And some bottled water, that’ll be good. We both need to hydrate. You know that dehydration counts for twenty-three thousand deaths a year? Amazing, just for not drinking up a little more.” She pushed open the glass door of the fast-food joint and got in line. All while completely ignoring my protests about Rory.
She ordered a stack of burgers, fries, apple pies, and bottled water. Two overloaded, greasy bags full of even greasier food later, we were back outside and on our way to the mausoleum.
“I’m not,” I whispered.
“I think a purple dragon once quoted ‘the lady doth protest too much, methinks.’ You do know that you completely opened up—emotionally, that is—when you saw him doing something with another girl? I’m guessing on that last bit. Putting the pieces together with how she trailed after him, I would say it was Gen?” Wally tipped her head toward me. “I don’t think any of us meant to feel it. More like it was this wave of heartbreaking emotion that kind of slammed into all of us at once.”
Oh. Shit. “You . . . all of you felt it?”
She nodded and picked a fry out of her bag, popping it in her mouth. “Yup. I would bet Ethan and Colt felt it too. Though, Ethan might not have realized what it was exactly. He seems to be only picking up some things since he kind of stepped away from us and vice versa. Also I think he’s got blinders on when it comes to you. Like he can’t imagine anyone not wanting him. Here we are,” she said brightly as she stepped off the sidewalk and onto a paved pathway that led into a graveyard.
It was fancy, with manicured grass and flowers set in front of huge tombstones and crypts. There were even a few candles lit for the souls of the lost that were impossibly still lit even in the sputtering rain. All in all, it was a perfect place for an ambush if you asked me.
To be fair, I was scoping the location, but I was doing it on autopilot as I absorbed what Wally had just told me. That my emotions had run over, that they—every single one of my crew—knew I loved Rory. Okay, so being honest with myself for once, yes, it was true. But I hated that I’d been rejected before I’d even had a chance to say the words.
I could let him go, if he was happy with her. I could.
Also, my middle name was surely Denial, even I knew that. I wrinkled up my nose. Emotions were as messy as a kid with finger-paint, and about as predictable.
Wally led me through the graveyard without a single pause until we stood in front of a six-foot-high crypt, the etchings over the doorway nothing but symbols. I squinted at them, feeling as though I could almost understand them.
I blinked, and the symbols morphed in front of my eyes like when I’d read the Latin in the House of Wonder.
I spoke slowly, because the words were both dark and light at the same time. “Fear not death, for it comes on gentle wings to ease your sorrows.”
Wally smiled at me. “See? You’re a natural.” She stood on her tiptoes and brushed her fingers over the symbols before stepping back. The cyphers lit up with the deep burgundy of her magic, a flash in the darkness that was there and then gone like a lightning bolt.
“That should do it,” she said.
Deep burgundy? “Wait, your magic was pink before, wasn’t it?”
Wally ducked her head. “When the Shadowkiller took you, I . . . things happened. My magic seemed to shift into high gear. So did Gregory’s. Ethan broke a spell at the pier that he shouldn’t have been able to, and Rory’s slowly connecting with us. I think that fight changed things for all of us.”
Before I could ask another question, the door slid open, moving on silent, well-oiled hinges. I pulled the flashlight from my pack, and in we went, checking the space over. The walls had deep, coffin-sized recesses, but none were full. The entire crypt was maybe ten feet by twelve and completely dry and empty of anything but a bit of dust that we’d stirred up.
I still didn’t know what was upsetting me more: that we were going to eat dinner in a crypt, that my crew knew about my feelings for Rory, that we were being hunted by two Chameleons, or that maybe Colt had felt my love for someone else and it had caused him to be reckless. A lot of possibilities when it came to being upset.
I made myself pace out the small space, running my hands over the walls, checking for anything that could be out of place despite my fatigue.
“Colt,” I finally said as the door shut behind us. “He knew that I . . . loved . . . Rory? You think he really felt that?”
“Yeah, I would say so—” Wally turned to me with her eyes wide. “You don’t think . . . that he put himself in danger because of that?”
Yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking.
If I’d thought my grief and guilt over his death couldn’t get any worse, I’d been wrong.
Dead wrong.
8
Wally and I slid to the floor, side by side. She handed me one of the brown paper bags. “You need to eat before you do anything else. Before you can even think about Colt and all the ‘what-ifs’ of his death.” She slid a bottle of water over to me. “I can feel the guys still; they have stopped moving, but nobody is hurt or anything.”
She was right and I wasn’t about to argue with her. The cheeseburgers were loaded with grease and ketchup, and nothing had ever tasted so good. I downed three and a bottle of water before I slowed.
I leaned my head against the cold wall, staring at the ceiling. The flashlight sat at our feet and made a perfect circle of light above us. I wanted to flick on the walkie-talkie, but I held back. It had only been half an hour, at most, since I spoke with the Sandman. I had to give him time to find out where Frost was—if he even could.