I swallowed hard. “So if the vision I saw really ends up happening, then the woman’s going to end up being tortured down there.”
“Maybe. But she also might already be down there.” He sighed. “Sometimes when someone inexperienced tries to see into the future they just end up seeing something that has already happened.”
“So she could be down there right now!” The loudness of my voice made us both glance around nervously. I’m not sure what we were looking for, though. There was nothing around but vacant buildings.
Alex gave me a look that stressed for me to keep my voice down. “She could be down there right now, but if she’s been down there for awhile, then she may have already died. Depending on how strong she is, she could be able to survive the torture for up to a few years without it driving her mad. But if she’s already lost her mind, the Queen would have had her killed.”
“Why would the Queen have her killed? And who’s this Queen anyway?”
“The Queen of the Dead. She’s in charge of everything that goes on in The Underworld. After a prisoner goes insane, they no longer produce the right kind of fear for her people to feed off of so she gets rid of them.”
I gaped. “By killing them.”
Alex sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “You have to understand that most of the things—or people we send down there have committed horrible crimes. The kind of crimes that haunt peoples’ nightmares.”
“Yeah, well, considering the Death Walker’s haunt my nightmares…” I trailed off. I really shouldn’t have mentioned that.
He cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve dreamt about them?”
I nodded. “A lot actually.”
“Why the heck didn’t you tell me this before?”
I shrugged. “You keep secrets,” and probably still are, “so why can’t I.”
He shook his head, clearly irritated. “Did you dream about them before you ever saw them in real-life?”
“Yeah, I started having the dreams a couple of months ago, and the first time I saw something that I thought might be a Death Walker was only a couple of weeks ago in the school parking lot. But I wasn’t one hundred percent sure if I’d actually seen one. I thought I might have imagined seeing it or something.”
“It was back when I had to chase you down in the parking lot so I could give you your book, wasn’t it? When you were freaking out and wouldn’t tell me why.”
I nodded. It seemed like such a long time ago.
He stretched his arm across the top of the seat. “So you started dreaming about them around the same time you started to experience emotions?”
A touchy subject for me, especially since I knew he wanted my emotions gone. I needed to make sure and be vague with my answer, because I didn’t want to let anything slip out that might help him solve why I’d spontaneously started to feel. As ridiculously selfish as I knew it was, I wanted to keep feeling.
For the most part, anyway.
“I don’t know.” I turned to the window. “Maybe.”
Electricity tickled up and down my spine. Being alone with Alex in the poorly ventilated car was driving me absolutely insane. Not necessarily in a bad way, though. In fact, I think my body was building up a tolerance to electric sensation, because it was no longer making me feel like I had a fever. Warm and sparkly, it felt kind of good.
“So,” I began, turning my head back to him. “If it was a future vision I saw, would we be able to change what happened?”
He shook his head. “Prophecies are very hard to change, and I don’t have a clue as to how we’d even be able to find out if it was a past or future vision. That is, unless we want to go to the City of Crystal and chat it up with the Foreseers.”
“City of Crystal?”
“It’s where most of the Foreseer’s live, but you can’t get there without this special kind of crystal ball, which happens to be very hard to come by.”
I felt like I just might cry. If I’d seen a future vision, how was I supposed to just sit around and let the woman get taken away to The Underworld for real? The place sounded awful and…well, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew the woman somehow. “I don’t get it. You say that prophecies are hard to change, but isn’t that exactly what you guys are trying to do with me?”
“That’s different, though. We knew yours was a future prophecy right from the start, and a lot of energy and time has gone into trying to change it.” He sighed. “Besides, you are emotional so we haven’t done a very good job of changing it.”
“But you’re still trying to, right?” I picked at a loose string hanging off the hem of my denim skirt. “I mean, I’m sure you have a backup plan.”
“No we don’t,” he said quickly.
Way too quickly.
A red flag immediately went up. “What is it you’re not telling me?”
“I’m not keeping anything from you.” His voice smoothed out like honey
I let out a cynical laugh. “I highly doubt that because, first off, it’s you were talking about. And second, you freaked out when I just asked you if you had a backup plan. So what is it? What’s your big backup plan? Are you going to put me up in some super secret chamber and lock me away from everyone and everything until the only emotion I can feel is loneliness?”
“Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” he said. “I’ll have to pass that one on to Stephan.”
Furious, I reached around the side of the seat and searched for the handle that scooted it forward. I was so out of here.
Alex caught me by the elbow and drew me back. “I don’t think so. You’re not going anywhere.”
Wanna bet.
I tried to shuck off his hand. “Let go of me.”
He tightened his grip. “No.”
“I’m not going to just sit here and listen to you talk about turning me back into a walking zombie.” I reached for seat with my free hand, hoping if I could grab hold of something then maybe I could jerk away from him.
Still grasping onto my arm, he snaked his free hand around my waist and pulled me back.
“You’re hurting my stitches,” I whined, even though his hand was on the opposite side.
He pulled me closer to him. “No, I’m not.”
I put up quite a fight, but in the end, he still managed to pin me against him, my back pressing firmly against his chest. This was both good and bad. Bad because I was really pissed off at him, and the last thing I wanted was to be near him. But it was also good because…Well, because it felt good. Nice and warm and effervescent.
Ugh.
“This is so stupid.” I seethed. “You can’t have control over everything I do.”
“Yeah, I can.” He held me so tight my skin warmed like melting butter, and I thought I might actually melt into him, “Especially when you’re trying to do something stupid. Do you think what happened back at the Black Dungeon was a game? Do you not realize how close you came to getting killed? Because, let me tell you, if I wouldn’t have shown up when I did, then you and I wouldn’t be sitting here having this argument.”
I froze, slowly taking in his words. With every breath he took, I could feel his chest rising and falling against my back. My own breathing lifted and fell, rhythmically matching with his. The electricity seemed to be synchronizing with it, as if it were trying to create a harmonious song or something. It was weird and strangely comforting. Like, if I closed my eyes, I’d drift off into a peaceful, Death-Walker-free dream.
“Gemma,” Alex whispered in my ear, sounding breathless. “I think that—”
I never got to hear what he thought, because the passenger door swung open, and the interior lights clicked on.
It was Aislin. She held a small, gold box in her hands, which I assumed held a crystal inside. She started to climb in, but stopped when she caught sight of us. “What are you two doing?”
I can only imagine what this looked like to her; me practically sitting on Alex’s lap, his arms wrapped around me, obviously trapping me against him. Yeah, I’m pretty sure more than a few question marks were popping up in her head.
A few question marks were popping up in my head.
“Gemma was getting out of hand,” Alex replied coolly. “She needed to be dealt with.”
“I wasn’t getting out of hand,” I said indignantly. I tried to jam my elbow into his side, but it didn’t go very far since I could barely move. “You are such a—”
Alex threw his hand over my mouth. I thought about biting it, but then decided against it. I’m not sure why.
“Alex!” Aislin exclaimed. “You can’t just do whatever you want with her.”
Alex dropped his hand from my mouth. “Aislin, she was trying to jump out of the car and run away.”
Aislin frowned as she slammed the door. The lights shut off, and I could barely make out the outline of her face. “You two really need to figure out a way to get along. This whole fighting-about-everything thing is not helping the stress level in this already way too stressful situation.”
“Well, if she’d behave,” Alex started at the same time I said, “If he’d leave me alone—”
Aislin lifted her eyebrows, giving us a see-what-I-mean look.
“Fine,” Alex surrender. “I’ll stop.”
“I’ll stop too,” I told her. “Just as long as he lets me go.”
I guess to prove a point that he could still have some control over me, Alex waited about twenty more seconds before finally letting me go. And he refused to sit anywhere else but in the middle of the seat so he could be close enough to me in case I made an irrational decision to “jump out of the car while it was moving” as he so bluntly put it. Yeah, even I wasn’t that crazy. But whatever.
By the time the seating arrangement was all settled, Laylen emerged from Adessa’s looking somewhat happy. Hmmm….I wonder what was up with that.
He climbed in the car. “So what happened?” he asked me.
I furrowed my eyebrows. “What? With the crystal ball?”
He nodded. “Did you get sucked into a vision?”
“What!” Aislin shouted. “She got sucked into a vision and no one told me.”
I felt like I was getting strangled to death—that’s the effect just thinking about the vision had on me.
“I’ll explain it on the way back to the house,” Alex said. If I wouldn’t have known better, I would have thought he said it because he’d sensed my lack of comfort with the subject. But I did know better so…
“Okay.” Laylen started up the car, and the engine roared to life.
Aislin was more reluctant to give up on the discussion. She remained turned around in her seat, continuously eyeballing Alex and I until Laylen merged the car back onto the busy main street of Vegas. Then the dancing lights and throngs of people distracted her attention away from us.
After we’d made it back onto the highway, and the last of the lights had fizzled away, I rested my head against the window, and, without even meaning to, I fell asleep.