“I don’t thin
k Tristan’s coming,” he said, closing the door.
Everyone looked around nervously.
“What the hell is going on?” Bea asked, cracking her knuckles.
“What’s going on is, I just sent someone to the Shadowlands,” Kevin blurted out vehemently. “Someone who was not supposed to go there.”
“Me, too,” Krista said quietly.
“Anyone else?” Joaquin asked, stepping farther into the room.
Nadia raised her hand, staring straight at me until I had to look away.
“Me, too,” Cori said.
That made four.
“Who else? There were five,” Joaquin said. His question was met with silence, apart from the laughter out in the bar. “Who else?” Joaquin shouted.
“Pete!” Cori said through her teeth.
“All right! I brought someone up there, but if he went to the Shadowlands, I got no beef with it,” he said. “That guy deserved it.”
“All right, fine,” Joaquin said. “That’s four out of five gone to the wrong place.”
“And three of us had one, too,” Fisher said. “Me, J., and Rory.”
All eyes flicked to me.
“There’s a shock,” Nadia muttered.
“Nadia, don’t even start,” Bea said.
My legs trembled. My eyes darted to the door.
“Oh, please! Do you people really not see what’s going on here?” Nadia said, gesturing at me with an open hand. “She’s doing this! First the dying and the insects and the sickness, now this! All of it started when she got here, but somehow she’s got all of you snowed! Even Tristan! It’s just like Jessica all over again.”
“Shut up about Jessica!” Joaquin shouted, his voice ringing loudly through the room. “You don’t know anything about her!”
The room went silent. I held my breath, startled. Joaquin’s chest heaved, his face a hardened mask of fury. He pressed his fist into his other hand and clenched his jaw. Suddenly I remembered what Nadia had said the other night at the cove, about a pissing match over a girl. Jessica. It had to have been.
“Were any of you here when the Jessica incident happened?” Joaquin asked. “No! You weren’t. I was, and this is nothing like what Jessica did. What she did was the fault of one person, a result of an error in judgment.”
Kevin scoffed.
“Okay, a huge error in judgment, but still…” Joaquin continued. “She made a choice and acted on it. This is nothing like that. This couldn’t be perpetrated by one person and especially not by one person who just learned our ways five days ago.”
“I don’t know,” Kevin said, looking me up and down. “She did kill someone in the other world.”
My jaw dropped. “He was a serial killer!”
“She was only defending herself, Kevin,” Krista put in. “And he killed her first.” She cast me an apologetic look. “Sort of.”
“Yeah, and you’re hardly one to throw stones, Slimy, considering your life,” Bea added.
“Screw you, Bea! Not all of us grew up in a perfect house with perfect parents and crazy athletic genes!” Kevin shouted, getting right in her face.