For my family, with endless love
“Rory, stop!”
I tried to freeze, but the muddy, rocky path beneath my left foot began to slip, crumbling into the deep roadside river below. Rain pounded on my useless vinyl hood as I grasped at the air with cold, wet fingers. I was finally able to grab the slippery fabric of Joaquin Marquez’s sleeve, and he hoisted me back up onto solid ground, my heart pounding in my throat at a maddening rate. The muddy pathway we were traversing had been, until recently, wide enough for at least one car, if not two, to navigate safely. But now it was half its former width and eroding by the moment. The rain had been nonstop since Saturday night. Now it was Wednesday, and half the island of Juniper Landing seemed to have turned to mush. The sand on the beaches had taken on the consistency of oatmeal in spots, and the grasses and reeds and flowers had been flattened to the ground, beaten into submission by the relentless weather.
“Are you okay?” Joaquin asked.
I nodded, clutching both his elbows for stability. His brown eyes were shaded by the brim of his own hood, and a few days’ worth of dark stubble covered his sharp cheekbones and chin. This had become a habit of Joaquin’s lately—saving me from serious injury. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact that the boy my sister used to hook up with was now my protector, but I was grateful to have someone by my side. And it clearly wasn’t going to be the boy I used to hook up with. He was no longer around.
Which was why we were out here in the first place—looking for Tristan Parrish. The guy I had been falling in love with, until a few days ago. The guy who had betrayed us all. According to Joaquin, there was a cave beneath the bridge where Tristan used to go to for his “big thinks”—the days he just wanted some space away from the other Lifers. Unfortunately, it was located in a part of the island Joaquin had always avoided unless he was ushering a visitor to the bridge, so we weren’t entirely clear on where we were going. That, plus the relentless rain, didn’t make our mission any easier.
“Is this ever going to stop?” I asked.
As if in answer, a bolt of lightning cracked overhead and the whole world trembled with the accompanying thunder. Over Joaquin’s shoulder I saw a shadow illuminated by the flash—someone standing on a rock ledge not fifty yards away, raincoat billowing in the wind. My fingernails dug into Joaquin’s arm.
“Is that…?”
Joaquin turned, but just like that, there was no one there. One blink, and the shadow had disappeared. The storm was playing tricks on my mind.
“What?” Joaquin asked.
“Nothing. Forget it.” I didn’t want to admit I was seeing things. “I just can’t handle much more of this.”
“Relax. Take a breather,” Joaquin said. “Let me figure out where the hell we are.”
As he moved off to peer into the grayness surrounding us, I tried to shake the jittery feeling that shadow had left behind and looked north toward the bridge. It was so encased in fog that I could see nothing but the pointless warning lights throbbing at the top of its four spires. The bridge had become—to me, anyway—the symbol of everything that was wrong on this island. Juniper Landing was an in-between—a place where souls came to reside between death and the afterlife, a place where they were given a chance to resolve any issues that might have plagued them during their lifetimes before moving on. Joaquin and I were both Lifers, a group of souls charged with helping others find their resolutions and ushering them to their final destinations. The bridge was the means of transport. When a soul was ready to go, we would take the person to the bridge and hand him or her a coin. As soon as he or she touched the coin, it just sort of knew whether that soul was destined for the Light or the Shadowlands, based on how good or evil the person had been in life. We would then usher that person across the bridge, where a portal would open, taking him or her to the proper place. This was a system that had been in place since the dawn of time and had always worked perfectly, maintaining the balance of the universe.
Until now. Recently the whole thing had gone haywire, with devastating consequences. We were pretty sure that the coins were somehow to blame, since Tristan had been hiding a whole bag of them—more than any Lifer had ever seen in one place at one time—and had fled the second the rest of us discovered his stash. We weren’t clear on what exactly was wrong with the coins, how they had been tampered with, or where Tristan had even gotten them. All we knew was that last week, a few souls who were undeniably good had wound up in the Shadowlands. Souls like my friend Aaron and Joaquin’s charge Jennifer. Souls like my father. They were good people, damned to hell, and soon after they had left, we caught Tristan with the coins.
Something lodged in my throat at the mere thought of my dad in the Shadowlands—alone, terrified, possibly tortured—and for a second, I couldn’t breathe.
“I think it’s this way,” Joaquin said, nodding toward the bridge. “Let’s keep moving.”
I let him lead the way, allowing myself one glance back over my shoulder at the spot where the shadow had been. The outcropping was deserted. I breathed in and out deliberately, trying to calm the frantic beating of my heart. As we moved closer to the bridge, I could just make out two figures clad in black ra
in gear, their nebulous forms like dark ghosts, moving in and out of my waterlogged vision. Ever since we’d discovered the tainted coins, the Lifers had been taking turns guarding the bridge, to insure no one could cross over. I had no idea who was scheduled to be there now, and from this distance through the rain, I couldn’t make out their faces. For some reason, their dark presence felt ominous instead of comforting.
It’s going to be okay, I told myself. You’re going to fix this. You just have to find Tristan and Nadia and make them tell you how to fix it.
Tristan. The image of him and his smiling, duplicitous face twisted my stomach into knots. I had believed in him. I had trusted him more than anyone. I had loved him. And he’d betrayed me. I had been suspected of ushering good souls to the Shadowlands, and then it was finally revealed that Tristan was the villain. Tristan, who had told me that the rules of this place couldn’t be broken. That I had to trust in the system. That everything would be fine.
He’d said those things to me. He’d kissed me. He’d made me feel safe. And then he’d ushered my father straight to hell.
Joaquin and I turned up an even scrawnier, more circuitous path, leading toward the drop-off into the ocean, toward the very foot of the bridge. As a cold rivulet of water found its way under my collar and down my back, I couldn’t help wondering, for the millionth time, Why? Why had Tristan done this to Aaron, to Jennifer, to my dad…to all of us? What did he stand to gain? And, most selfishly, why had he done this to me? Why suck me in and make me care? Why make me believe in him and everything this place was about, only to turn around and betray me and destroy his home?
Joaquin looked back at me and held out a hand. I grasped his fingers, half expecting them to slip away from me, but his grip was surprisingly solid. A few weeks ago I never would have believed that I would one day willingly hold Joaquin’s hand. When I first met him, I had hated him. He was that guy. That guy who knew how hot he was and used that fact to toy with the heart of any girl who showed an interest in him. In this case, that girl had been my sister, Darcy.
But the more I got to know Joaquin, the more I respected him. He truly cared about his charges, about his friends, and about this place. And when things had started to go sideways, he’d basically become my personal bodyguard. And over the past few days, since we’d found out Tristan was the big bad around here, we bonded even more. No one wanted to find Tristan more than we did. Joaquin had been his best friend. I’d been Tristan’s girlfriend. (Would-be-ex-girlfriend the second I saw him again.) We needed to find him. We needed to ask him that one burning question: Why?
It was what kept us going—the hope that we would one day get the answers we were looking for: why he had done what he’d done, how he could betray everyone he claimed to care about, and, most important, how to free my dad and Aaron and Jennifer and those other poor souls. What I didn’t know was what we were going to do with Tristan and Nadia—another Lifer who’d disappeared with Tristan—once we’d found them. My brain didn’t even want to go there.
“I think it’s down there,” Joaquin said, squinting downward, tiny droplets clinging to the ends of his thick eyelashes. “I noticed the pathway the other day. It’s kind of like a series of steps cut into the rock.”
I didn’t see anything, but I shrugged. “You lead the way.”
Together we started slowly and carefully down the side of the drop-off. My foot slipped on the very first step, and Joaquin’s grip on me tightened. We both froze.
“You good?” Joaquin asked.
I nodded mutely.
“Okay. Stay behind me and be careful.”
He didn’t have to ask me twice.