“You can tell if each other are lying.” Wow. It was like he had his own little lie detector built into him. Too bad it didn’t work on beautiful, bright green-eyed, Keepers. “Although Vladislav never did get around to saying how we can get my mom out of The Underworld.”

“I have a hunch….though,” he said as Adessa’s red brick building came into view, “that there just might be someone else that we can talk to about getting her out of there. And maybe now that we know Jocelyn is alive, he might be more on board with rescuing her.” I tilted my head to the side, confused as I looked up at him. “Who?”

“Alex,” he said.

The gravel speckling the parking lot crunched underneath our shoes, filling up the silence. I stared at Laylen like he had to be joking, but then he met my eyes, and I realized he was absolutely, one-hundred percent serious.

“You think Alex knows how to get my mom out of The Underworld,” I said, making sure that’s what we were talking about here. Because I had talked to Alex about my mother before and whether or not she could still be alive, and he had said there was a slim chance that she could be. Never did he ever mention that there was a way to get people out of The Underworld.

Yeah, he might not have known my mom was alive—

although I wouldn’t put it past him if he did—but if he knew a way to rescue someone from The Underworld, he should have said so. But I guess this was Alex, so why was I so surprised.

“ H e might know something,” Laylen stressed.

“Since Stephan’s his father and was the one who was in charge of sentencing people to The Underworld, he may have told Alex a way to get down there without being yanked down through the lake."

“So you don’t know for sure if he does.” I frowned, disappointed. “You’re just guessing.”

He nodded. “But I think for now, he’s probably our best bet…because I think I just eliminated all of my other options.”

“If we can get the truth out of him,” I muttered.

Laylen nodded in agreement. Honestly, though, I wondered if telling Alex what we had found out tonight would do more bad than good. I mean, for one thing that would require us to explain to him how we received the information, which in turn would result in a full on freak out on Alex’s part. And most of his freak out would probably be directed at Laylen. I knew Laylen could deal with it and everything, but it didn’t mean he should have to. He already helped me out enough, so why make him pay more.

Besides, I wasn’t sure if Alex could be trusted still.

His story of what had happened back at the cabin seemed off. For all I knew what really could have happened was that the memory erasing rock couldn’t erase my memory and so Stephan had put Alex in charge to keep an eye on me until he found an alternative way to extract my memory.

As I went back and forth with what I thought we should do with the “telling Alex dilemma,” a set of headlights flashed across the parking lot, and Laylen quickly hid us behind a black Mazda. A car pulled into the parking lot and parked. Then two people climbed out of the car; a short, round man and a thin, tall woman wearing neon pink high heels that clicked loudly against the ground as the two of them walked toward a tan brick building that was right next to Adessa’s house.

“Are they vampires?” I whispered to Laylen.

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so...” We waited until the people had disappeared around the corner of the building before stepping out from behind the Mazda. We made the rest of the walk hurriedly. The rest of our conversation consisted of creating a plan for what we should tell everyone happened to my neck, because I was sure they were going to ask. Laylen insisted that we should just blame the bite on him, since Alex was probably going to accuse him of it anyway. I thought this was a ridiculous idea, and told him we didn’t need to tell Alex anything, and that I would just wear a turtle neck or something. But then I realized that wearing a turtle neck in the scorching hot desert would look a little bit suspicious

So that problem just hung in the air.

It was when we reached Adessa’s that we both realized we had another problem. One that needed to be dealt with really fast.

During our little jumping-out-of-the-building thing, it never had occurred to either one of us that getting back up might be a little tricky. So we just stood there, staring up at the window we’d jumped out of, trying to come up with some kind of solution.

“Maybe there’s a fire escape somewhere?” I suggested.

He shook his head. “I don’t think there is.” In the distances, dogs were howling like crazy, and I saw Laylen tense up as he glanced around apprehensively. When the dogs stopped howling, he shook his head and let out a frustrated sigh. Then he kicked a plastic bottle that was on the ground and it whipped up in the air and thumped against the side of the brick building.

“Dammit,” he cursed noisily, and now I was the one glancing around apprehensively.

“Laylen,” I whispered. “You need to be a little quieter or someone’s going to hear us.” He ran his fingers through his blond hair, and I was sensing that a meltdown was about to take place.

“Who cares. I’m already screwed anyway.”

“Why are you screwed? Because you staked Vladislav? I thought you said you just had to lay low for awhile and it would pass over,” I said.

He looked at me gravely. “Gemma, I didn’t just stake Vladislav. I staked Vladislav, one of the oldest vampires.”

“So is that worse than staking a young vampire?” I asked.

He stared at me, not answering, and I suddenly grasped that he was in more trouble than he first let on.

“Laylen, you shouldn’t have let me go with you.” I told him, guilt choking up inside me.

“It was your choice, Gemma,” he said. “You should be able to choose what you want to do.”

“Well, I think I picked the wrong one.” I swallowed hard. “I’m really sor…” I stopped as a spark of electricity coiled up my spine. “Ah crap.”

“What’s the matter?” Laylen asked, his eyebrows dipping down.

Before I could tell him what was up, or try to find a place for us to hide, Laylen’s gaze darted over my shoulder, and I knew without even looking that we were so busted.

“So funny thing,” Alex’s voice came up from right behind me. “I was up in my room, and I just happened to look out the window. And boy was I surprised to find you two standing down here, in the middle of the night, for God knows what reason.”

I caught Laylen’s eye, and I tried to communicate to him telepathically what we should do. Of course, I didn’t have telepathic abilities and neither did Laylen so guess how well that went.

I shook my head, and decided to face the inevitable. I took a deep breath, and covering the bite on my neck with my hand, I turned to face Alex. I wasn’t too worried about what he was going to say to me. He could chew me out all he wanted—I was used to it. I just felt guilty because I knew Alex was going to put most of it on Laylen.

Alex’s eyes were all over me as if he could sense something was wrong. “What’s the matter with your neck?”

The lighting was scarce, so I was hoping that it was dark enough that he couldn’t see the blood dried up on my skin. “I have a kink in it.”

He gave me a yeah-right look. “You have a kink in it?”

I shrugged. “It happens.”

He shook his head, irritated. “So why are you two standing out here?”

I had no idea what to tell him and the way he was staring at me was making my brain all hazy.

“How about we go inside, and then we’ll tell you,” Laylen said restlessly.

Alex glanced back and forth between Laylen and me, looking a little lost. “Okay….Let's go inside, then.” So apparently Alex had woken up Adessa when he’d seen Laylen and me standing outside in the dark. He had to wake her up or he wouldn’t have been able to walk out the front door without getting blasted by Adessa’s charms.