Beautiful Darkness(95)

“And you wonder why this thing stopped working?” I pulled it away from him, annoyed.

Link checked me with his shoulder. “Try to read my mind. Wait, no. Try to fly.”

“Stop messing around,” Liv snapped. “You heard Ethan's mom. We don't have much time. The Arclight will work or it won't. Either way, we need an answer.”

Link straightened up. The weight of what we had seen at the graveyard was on all our shoulders now. The strain was beginning to show.

“Shh. Listen —” I took a few steps forward, in the direction of the tunnel carpeted in tall grass. You could actually hear the birds chirping now.

I raised the Arclight and held my breath. I wouldn't have minded if it went black and sent us down the other path, the one with the shadows, the rusty fire escapes crawling down the sides of dark buildings, the unmarked doors. As long as it gave us an answer.

Not this time.

“Try the other way,” Liv said, never taking her eyes off the light. I retraced my steps.

No change.

No Arclight, and no Wayward. Because deep down I knew that without the Arclight, I wouldn't have been able to find my way out of a paper bag, especially not in the Tunnels.

“I guess that's the answer. We're screwed.” I pocketed the ball.

“Great.” Link started down the sunlit path without another thought.

“Where are you going?”

“No offense, but unless you have some kinda secret Wayward clue about where to go, I'm not goin’ down there.” He looked back at the darker path. “The way I see it, we're lost no matter what, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“Or if you look at it the other way, we've got a fifty-fifty chance of gettin’ things right half the time.” I didn't try to correct his math. “So I figure we take our chances on Oz and tell ourselves things are finally lookin’ up. ’Cause what do we have to lose?” It was hard to argue with Link's twisted logic when he tried to be logical.

“Got a better idea?”

Liv shook her head. “Shockingly, no.”

We headed for Oz.

The tunnel really was right out of a page of one of my mom's tattered old L. Frank Baum books. Willows stretched over the dusty path, and the underground sky was open and endless and blue.

The scene was calm, which had the opposite effect on me. I was used to the shadows. This path seemed too idyllic. I expected a Vex to fly down over the hills in the distance any second.

Or a house to drop on my head when I least expected it.

My life had taken a stranger turn than I could've ever imagined. What was I doing on this path? Where was I headed really? Who was I to take on a battle between powers I didn't understand — armed with a runaway cat, a uniquely bad drummer, a pair of garden shears, and an Ovaltine-drinking teen Galileo?

To save a girl who didn't want to be saved?

“Wait up, you stupid cat!” Link scrambled after Lucille, who had become the leader, zigzagging her way in front of us as if she knew exactly where we were going. It was ironic, because I didn't have a clue.





Two hours later, the sun was still shining, and my uneasy feelings were growing. Liv and Link were walking ahead of me, which was Liv's way of avoiding me, or at least the situation. I couldn't blame her. She'd seen my mother and heard everything Amma said. She knew what Lena had done for me, how it explained her Dark and erratic behavior. Nothing had changed, but the reasons for everything had. For the second time this summer, a girl I cared about — who cared about me — couldn't bear to look me in the eye.

Instead, she was passing the time walking up the path with Link, teaching him British insults and pretending to laugh at his jokes.

“Your room is grotty. Your car is skanky, maybe manky,” Liv teased, but her heart wasn't in it.

“How do you know?”

“From looking at you.” Liv sounded distant. Teasing Link didn't seem to be enough of a distraction.

“What about me?” Link ran his hand over his spiky hair, to make sure it was sticking up just right.

“Let's see. You, you're a git, a prat.” Liv tried to force a smile.

“That's all good, right?”

“Of course. The best.”

Good old Link. His trademark charmless charm could salvage almost any desperate social situation.

“Do you hear that?” Liv stopped walking. Usually when I heard singing, I was the only one, and it was Lena's song. This time, everyone heard it, and the song was a far cry from the hypnotic voice of Seventeen Moons. This was bad singing, dying animal bad. Lucille meowed, her hair standing on end.

Link looked around. “What is that?”

“I don't know. It sounds almost like …” I stopped.

“Someone in trouble?” Liv held her hand near her ear.

“I was going to say ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.’ ” It was an old hymn they sang at the Sisters’ church. I was half right.

When we rounded the corner, Aunt Prue was walking toward us holding on to Thelma's arm, singing as if it was Sunday at church. She was wearing her white flowered dress and matching white gloves, shuffling along in her beige orthopedic shoes. Harlon James was scampering along behind them, nearly as large as Aunt Prue's patent-leather handbag. It looked like the three of them were out for a stroll on a sunny afternoon.