Hereafter (Shadowlands 2)

I gulped. “A mob?”

Tristan nodded sadly. “Mobs were big back then.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“There was nothing much we could do,” he replied. “We tried to reason with them, but once angry people get together and are out for blood, they’re not satisfied until they get it. Fighting broke out and a lot of people were hurt, but eventually we got it under control.” He pressed his lips together, chagrined. “We Lifers knew the island a lot better. We had what Dorn would call a tactical advantage.”

My nerves sizzled at the mention of Dorn, and I thought once more of him whispering to the person in the silver car. “Was he here?”

Tristan shook his head. “Not yet. He’s a lot newer. Showed up during the first Gulf War.”

“Oh.” I said, doing quick calculations in my mind. How long had Tristan been here that twenty years felt “new”?

“Anyway, we had to round up everyone Jessica had told and take them to the bridge,” Tristan continued, his blue eyes dark with pain. “That was the worst part, sending all those people to the Shadowlands.”

A twisting ache filled my chest. “But it wasn’t their fault Jessica told them.”

“Yes, but that’s the rule,” Tristan said emphatically. “It’s there to scare Lifers out of telling people the truth and robbing them of their chance to resolve their issues, but Jessica clearly didn’t care about that, and once it was done, there was nothing we could do to change it. I couldn’t have sent them off to the Light at that point any more than I could have saved Jessica. It’s the coins that make the decision, and the coins knew. They were all damned to the Shadowlands.”

He released my hand and pressed his palms into his jeans, breathing in and out. He shook his head and glanced up at the ceiling with this look in his eyes, like he couldn’t believe any of this had actually happened, even though it had been almost a hundred years ago.

“But that’s so…wrong,” I said. “Is there any way to change the rules?”

He looked at me and scoffed sadly. “I wish.”

We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the fan tick, tick, tick overhead.

“What happened to Jessica?” I asked.

“Jessica,” he said, then looked me in the eye. “Jessica was sent to Oblivion.”

My hand went to my wrist, clutching my leather bracelet. “But you said there were only two destinations.”

“There are. For the visitors,” he said quietly. “Oblivion is a very specific, very awful region of the Shadowlands. It’s reserved for Lifers who break the rules.”

“So…wait a minute,” I said, getting off the stool, my feet hitting the floor with a thud. “If I had left you at the ferry landing yesterday and told my family what was going on, not only would they have gone to the Shadowlands, but I would’ve gone to Oblivion? You didn’t feel the need to share that little factoid with me?”

“I didn’t have to,” Tristan told me. “I knew you wouldn’t tell them. You love them too much to do that to them.”

“Is this why you…I mean—” I paused, trying to summon the guts to say what I wanted to say, what I needed to know. “Is this why you backed away from me this morning?” I fumbled out. “Because you think I’ll go bad? Because you don’t trust me?”

Tristan shook his head and stepped down from his bar stool. “No,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to go bad. I just…what Jessica did…it killed me. It killed me that I didn’t see it coming. If I hadn’t been so blindly in love with her, I could have stopped it from happening and saved all those people,” he said. “Forget about trusting someone else. For a long time I didn’t trust myself. And I realized somewhere along the line that I was going to have to live with that pain and uncertainty forever.”

I breathed in and out slowly. For a long moment we just looked at each other, and all I wanted to do was sink into him. To hold him. To wrap my arms around him and tell him that I was different, that I would never hurt him, that I wasn’t Jessica.

But he didn’t move, and neither did I.

“This is what’s best, Rory,” Tristan said finally, formally. I looked into his eyes and saw hardness that cracked my heart in two. “It’s what’s best for both of us.”

So now she knows. Not everything in this magical place is exactly what it seems. Whatever people say about trust and family, there are always secrets. Always half-truths. There’s always more to learn. But now she knows the most important fact, that however idealistic we all make it sound, things can go wrong here. They can go very, very wrong. The question is, will she even realize that it’s already happening? Will she be able to stop it before it’s too late?

Not if I can help it.

The next morning, I stood in our kitchen, surrounded by cracked eggs and white powder. After several attempts, the pancake batter I’d made finally started to hold its roundish shape in the hissing pan. I placed another heavy skillet on the next burner and grabbed the matches. Today was going to be a normal day. Just me and my family, eating pancakes and bacon and sipping fresh coffee. No Lifers, no usherings, no insane accusations. Just a normal day. I struck the match, but nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. I was just going for a third try when I saw something move outside the kitchen window. I was so distracted that the flame traveled down the match and burned my fingers.

“Ow!” The match dropped to the linoleum floor, and I stamped it out under my sneaker. “Great,” I said to myself, sucking on my fingertips. “Burn yourself over a stupid bird.”

But even as I said it, I saw another flash. Someone darting by the back window, right outside on our deck. Someone wearing a black sweatshirt. My heart hit the floor. Whoever it was had been watching me. Placing the matches silently on the counter, I tiptoed toward the door. The lurker had either sprinted down the steps to the beach or was standing in the blind spot between two windows, not three feet away.