daphne

I realize as I sit with Tobin near the fountain, that the lobby of a Vegas hotel isn't the best place to tell him the worst news of his life-but it's too late. I've already made up my mind to do it, and if I stop now, I don't know how I'll find the courage to do it later.

"I know what happened to Abbie," I say before my words fail me. "She's gone, Tobin."

"Yeah, she was taken by one of these Underlords, right? That's why I need to go see this Oracle.

She'll tell me how to get her back."

"It's not that simple." My voice catches and I clear my throat.

"What is it, Daphne?" he says, like he can see the trepidation on my face. "What's wrong?"

"I am afraid . . . I'm afraid she's dead."

He pulls his hand out from under mine. "How do you know that? You can't know that!"

"I met the Lord who was supposed to bring her back to the Underrealm with him. . . ."

"What do you mean, 'supposed to'? Like he didn't . . . ?"

"Your sister really did run away, Tobin. Or at least she tried to. The Lord who was supposed to take her, Dax is his name. . . . They fell in love and tried to run away instead of going back to the underworld. But something went wrong. Somebody came after them. And she died."

"What went wrong?" Tears flood his eyes. "What happened?"

"I don't know." I bite my lip, trying to hold it together. "I don't know any more than that." Tobin covers his eyes with his hands. He crumples forward and I catch him, leaning his head against my shoulder. He quakes as I hold him, giving off notes so strained with sorrow that it drowns out the Christmas music and hotel noises. They wrap around me and I feel as though I am engulfed in a coc.o.o.n of his grief.

"There's more, Tobin." I don't want to say it, but I have to. I can't keep the truth from him any longer.

I would want to know if it were me. "That list you showed me. The one of all those missing girls.

Those have to be all the girls who have been taken to the underworld; these Boons as they call them. .

. . And if my name is on your mother's list now, before . . . before I was even taken . . . that means . .

Tobin's sorrowful melody shifts suddenly into harsh, broken notes. He lets go of me and I can see the anger flashing in his eyes, not just hear it coursing off him. "It means my mother knew," he says, finishing for me. "She knew that my sister was one of their targets. But why wouldn't she try to stop them?"

"Tobin, I-"

He looks at me, anger hardening his face. Or maybe it's determination. "I'm going to get her back," he says. "I'm getting Abbie back."

INTO THE DARK 411.

"But she's dead. . . ."

"That Orpheus guy did it. That's what your dad's play is about, isn't it? He went down there and got his wife back."

And failed. "I don't think it works that way. . . ."

"I'm going to get her back."

I feel Tobin clinging to this idea like it's the only thing keeping him from falling into a dark hole of despair. I can't bring myself to tell him that even the son of a G.o.d had failed at trying to bring his loved one back from the world of the dead. Instead, I just nod and let him keep holding on. In the meantime, I can feel myself slipping off the edge.

When the others retire to our hotel room, I can't bring myself to follow. Talking to Tobin had done exactly what I feared it would-it had made all of this real. Far too real. The soft, filmy coat of denial I'd been looking at everything through had been eaten away by cold, harsh reality. Tobin's hope makes it only worse. It makes him seem naive and delusional, and made me realize that I could no longer deny what is happening. That the world, as I had known it for seventeen years, is a lie, that it hides terrible secrets like monsters and vengeful G.o.ds, Cyphers and Keys, and a selfish underworld prince who isn't going to stop until he gets what he wants: me.

Is there even anything this Oracle can do to help me stop it? Is there anywhere I can hide where they wouldn't just hunt me down? And what if I do escape, would the consequences of losing the Cypher be as catastrophic as Haden had tried to make me believe?

Do I really have a choice in any of this?

I wander the hotel, looking for a distraction. Anything that can bring back that easy film of denial.

Anything that can help me forget. I try going into the casino, where people sit at machines, looking like dull zombies, but someone barks at me when I try to step off the carpet walkway that leads through the area. No kids allowed. I keep walking until I find myself at the Crossroads Blues Club- the place where my parents met all those years ago. The place that led to a drive-thru wedding and a three-day honeymoon before Joe got a call from that talent scout and he ran off to become a rock star.

I expect someone else to yell at me when I walk into the club, but instead, the man in the entry takes one look at me, slams a green stamp on my hand, and tells me that the right half of the room is reserved for "contestants and their families."

The club is dim and smells thick of booze-which seems fitting since it reminds me of Joe. This is the place where it had all started. I probably wouldn't have ever been born if my parents hadn't both ended up here that fateful night.

I laugh to myself at that word. Fateful. Fate. That thing Haden clings to and I desperately want to escape.

I want to forget.

A waitress stops at a booth with a tray of shot gla.s.ses. She sets it on an empty table and starts flirting with a group of frat boys who've called her over.

I've always despised Joe for his drinking. I've never understood his need to drown out the world. But at that moment, I get it. Because all I want is to forget-if only for one night. I want to stop feeling. I want to be numb.

I want to make it all go away.

While the waitress is distracted, I snag four shot gla.s.ses-two in each hand-and retreat to a secluded booth in the back of the club. Where I can drown in the dark.

chapter fifty-one.

haden

"How many of those have you had?" I ask Daphne when I find her in the Crossroads Blues Club.

There's some sort of talent compet.i.tion going on and the place is packed. A teenage boy is onstage, playing a wicked solo on the ba.s.s guitar. Daphne sits in a booth near the back of the club. In front of her sit a few small gla.s.ses filled with an amber liquid that gives off a sharp, woody smell, which makes me gag. She looks a bit green in the face.

"Two," she says, holding up two fingers. "Two sips, that is. I keep trying to down a shot whole, but the taste makes me gag."

I had begun to worry when it started to get late and Daphne hadn't come back to the room. Garrick was pa.s.sed out on the couch in the suite and Tobin was raiding the minibar and giving me sidelong death glances, so I decided to go looking for her. Somehow, I knew she'd be in the club. And from the looks of her, I'd been right to be worried.

"I think two shots will get me buzzed," she says. "I think a third shot will get me properly drunk. It may take four or five before I black out. I don't know. I've never had alcohol before."

"How did you even get those?" I'd used the ID that said I was twenty-one at the entrance of the club, but because of the talent compet.i.tion, the place is overrun by underage kids and their families.

Daphne has a bright fluorescent green stamp on her hand to indicate she isn't legal.

"Stole 'em off a tray."

"That takes some guts."

"Don't worry, I'll leave some money on the table."

"That's not what I'm worried about."

"I haven't decided if I'm going to keep trying to drink this one yet," she says, running her finger around the rim of the gla.s.s. "I don't drink. I swore I never would because of Joe. My mom is always giving me lectures about how kids of alcoholics have to be real careful-how underage drinking increases their risks of losing control. I don't like not being in control. It doesn't fit into my plan.

Everything I've done my whole life has been part of my master plan. Teaching myself music, rehearsing day and night, practicing self-discipline. It was all leading toward the same goal. I knew exactly where I was going and how I wanted to get there. And then you had to come along. . . ."

"Can I sit?"

She shrugs. "It's not like I could stop you."

"You could if you wanted to."

She looks up at me. "Could I?"

I purse my lips.

The guy with the ba.s.s guitar finishes his solo and the crowd goes wild with applause. A table of who I a.s.sume are judges hold up white cards with numbers on them. The audience gets even more excited.

She slides over in the booth. "Knock yourself out." She pats the seat next to her and I figure she's inviting me to sit next to her, not punch myself in the head. So I sit.

She scoots the shot gla.s.s closer to her. "I've been in denial since last night," she says. "Thinking I have some sort of say in all of this. It's just . . . telling Tobin about his sister made all of this suddenly feel very real. Too real." The tip of her finger curls over the lip of the gla.s.s into the amber liquid.

"And I haven't got the slightest idea what to do."

I want to tell her to give in. I want to tell her to stop fighting her destiny. I want to tell her to agree to come with me. Instead, I say, "I don't think you're going to find the answers in the bottom of that gla.s.s."

"Yeah, but maybe I'll find some distraction. I want to forget for a while," she says, holding the gla.s.s.

She sighs and looks up at the girl on the stage. "That was supposed to be me, you know?"

"How so?"

"It's funny," she says, "that I'm here. This weekend. In Las Vegas. Trying to save myself. Because that was part of my original plan."

A girl onstage goes to the microphone and starts singing. She's good, but not half as good as Daphne.

"My plan was to be here for this very compet.i.tion." She points up at the sign over the stage. "All-American Teen Talent Compet.i.tion. I was headed to the preliminary auditions for this compet.i.tion the day Joe showed up in Ellis and told me I was coming to live with him. Before I met you. This was the plan. I was going to kill it at the auditions and make it past the preliminary round and end up here." She laughs a little to herself. "I told Jonathan that I'd settle for second place, but that wasn't true. I knew I'd end up here. Some big talent scout or college recruiter was going to see me sing and give me my big break. My big ticket out of Ellis Fields. Away from that small-town, n.o.body life." She gives a short little laugh. "I didn't know that the final compet.i.tion was going to be at the Crossroads, though.

That's just kind of . . . weird."

I nod.

"I guess it wouldn't have mattered. They would have just sent you to Ellis Fields instead of Olympus Hills. I'd still be in this mess, and the plan would still have gone to h.e.l.l." She smirks like she finds it all pretty funny. From the way she's talking so openly, I'd think she's already had more to drink than a couple of sips.

"You know?" she says, seeming to speak to the shot gla.s.s instead of me. "Why the h.e.l.l not? Let's get good and drunk. My life is probably over anyway." She picks up the gla.s.s, like she's going to down it in one gulp "Bottoms up!" she says, pinching her nose.

"No," I say, putting my hand over the top of the gla.s.s, stopping her. "I've got a better idea for a distraction." I set the gla.s.s on the tray of a pa.s.sing server. "Come on." I pull her from the booth.

"What are we doing?" she asks, but she doesn't protest being propelled from the club out into the casino.

"You'll see. First, we need some leverage."

I tell her to wait outside the club entrance and I make my way nonchalantly to an unoccupied slot machine. I watch how a woman in a giant, tentlike dress uses the machine next to mine. Then I pull a quarter from my pocket and put it into the slot machine. I pull the lever and then place my hand on top of the machine and send an electrical pulse into it from my fingertips. The woman next to me goes nuts as the entire row of slot machines comes to life, blinking and beeping and announcing a winner.

"Jackpot!" she shouts. "Jackpot!" All eyes are on her as I pull a slip of paper from my own blinking machine.

Five thousand dollars. Not bad for my first attempt at the slots.

"What was that?" Daphne asks as I lead her back inside the club.

"I told you. Leverage."

I walk right up to the table where the MC for the compet.i.tion waits while the contestants perform on the stage. She's a middleaged woman who is sporting more cleavage than shirt.

"What are you doing, Haden?" Daphne whispers after me.

I lean in close to the MC, and she looks up at me, a bit more than startled. I set the slip of paper on the table in front of her. "How about a late entry?"

"I'm sorry, sonny. I can't do that."

"You've got to. You see my friend over there?" I gesture to Daphne, who stands very tentatively a few feet behind me. She probably thinks I've gone insane. "It was her dream to be part of this compet.i.tion, but something came up that threw off her plan, something that was kind of my fault, and now I'm trying to make it up to her. And I need you to help me." I smile at her in a way that hopefully doesn't make her think of me as a "sonny" and slide the paper closer to her so she can see the amount of money she can redeem it for. "Just let her sing, please?"

"All right, honey," she whispers. "Can't say no to a boy with a smile like that. And this ain't too bad, too." She picks up the slip of paper and tucks it into the front of her shirt. "I'd think about telling you my room number, sugar, but it's obvious you've got a thing for your friend over there." I whisper a few more things to her, and then when the latest contestant finishes and the crowd applauds, the MC heads up to the stage.