He caught me by the arm and pulled me back down on the sofa. “Hang on just a sec, before you go freaking out.”

I wiggled my arm free. “I wasn’t freaking out. I just don’t want to hear what you have to say unless it’s going to help me get my mom out of that awful place.” He massaged the sides of his temples with his fingers and let out a stressed breath. “If we were to do this—if we were to go to The Underworld and try to save your mother, you’d have to promise me that you’d do everything I told you to do.” He looked up at me. “If I tell you something’s too dangerous for you, you’d have to listen.”

I considered this. I know I might sound like a brat here, but the idea of doing everything he told me to do was making my insides burn. I’d done that too much already. And besides, what if he was playing me? “I don’t know….”

He shrugged. “Then no deal.”

No deal. His words echoed in my head, and I felt torn. In the end, though, I think I knew that I would make the deal. I just hoped that his side of the deal was genuine—that Alex would finally come through for me. “Okay, it’s a deal. Now how do we do it?” He sighed, got to his feet, and looked down at me with a very unhappy expression. “The first thing we do is bring Nicholas here.”

Chapter 7

“Bring Nicholas here?” I frowned at him. “Like the faerie/Foreseer/likes-to-invade-my-personal-space Nicholas?”

He nodded, trying hard not to smile as he slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “That would be the one.”

I sat there for a second, processing this. “But why do we need him?”

“Because we need a Foreseer.”

I pointed at myself. “You have one right here.” Hello.

He pressed back a grin as if I’d just told him a joke or something. “I understand that, but it’s not just the power of a Foreseer that we need. We also need a special kind of crystal ball called an Ira.”

“Okay, but…Does Nicholas have to be the one to give us this Ira?”

“I think he’ll be our best bet.” When I kept frowning he continued, “None of this is going to be easy, Gemma. Nothing ever is. You should know that by now.”

“I do know that,” I said, thinking about my mom, me, my soul, and my emotions. None of them were easy. “I know that way too well.”

We stared at each other, having this weird moment of understanding, like our thoughts had momentarily connected. Sometimes I really wished our thoughts could connect, that way I’d be able to read his mind and know if he was telling the truth.

“So…what do we have to do, then?” I asked, breaking our weird connection moment. “I mean, how do we get Nicholas here? Or do we have to go get him.” God, I hoped we didn’t have to go get him because I really didn’t want to go back to the City of Crystal again.

“No, we can’t go get him.” He sighed. “We have to bring him here.”

“Okay…well …Are you sure there isn’t another way to get this Ira crystal ball?” I asked. “Maybe Adessa has one.”

“It’s not the kind of a crystal ball she’d have,” Alex explained. “It’s one of a kind—the one Foreseers use to travel to and from places that no one is allowed to travel to.”

“Of course it is,” I said, feeling frustrated. “Because, if it wasn’t, then it would make things easy. And I think we both already agreed that nothing is ever easy.” He gave me a small smile. “Yeah. I think we did.”

“So what do we do then—to get this Ira traveling crystal ball thingy?”

He shifted his weight uneasily. “We get Nicholas here and see if we can persuade him to give it to us.” I thought about the half-faerie, and how being around him had creeped me out. And asking him for a favor…Nicholas was so the last person I ever wanted to persuade for a favor. Well, besides Stephan.

“Are you sure there’s not someone else we can go and get it from?” I asked again just to make sure.

He shook his head. “Only another Foreseer—

they’re the only ones who know of its existence.”

“Well, then how do you know it exists?” I wondered.

He didn’t look at me. He was staring off into space as he answered, “My father told me about it once.”

“Oh.” Was all I could think of to say.

Next to my feet lay a clock that had been knocked on the floor during Laylen and Alex’s fight. The glass had been shattered and it was letting off an unsteady tick tock, which was the only sound filling in the silence. Tick tock. Tick Tock. Just like a ticking time bomb. It was like a warning that we were running out of time. We needed to find answers, before Stephan found us—or should I say found me. The world was depending on it.

“Okay, so we get Nicholas and then what? We just ask him to give us the Ira crystal ball?” I asked, doubting that it would be that easy.

“Something like that,” Alex spoke through gritted teeth.

“Are you okay?” I asked, picking up on some uneasiness flowing off of him.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know…you tell me.” He didn’t answer as he picked up the broken clock and flipped it over to the back, fiddling with the knob.

Tick Tock. Tick tock. The ticking and tocking was slowing down to a gurgle.

“So we get the Ira crystal ball, and we use it to go to The Underworld?” I asked, making sure that was the plan.

still no answer as he twisted the knob on the soon-to-be-dead clock.

I stood up. “Alex…if I use this Ira crystal ball, what does that mean for the promise you made to Dyvinius?”

Tick…tock…tick…The clock stopped.

Times up.

Alex set the clock down on the floor. “That’s not for you to worry about.”

“Just tell me what happens if I use the crystal?” I asked, taking a step back as he walked by me.

“I already told you that was my problem,” he said, his voice tight. “I made the promise. Not you.”

“But that doesn’t—” I started.

“Look,” he turned around to face me, “”I’ll figure something out, okay? Do you want to get your mother out or not?”

I nodded. “I do, but I—”

“Okay, then let’s go summon Nicholas.” Before we set out to bring Nicholas here, we first went to go find Laylen and Aislin and let them in on our little plan. I felt kind of proud of myself that I’d gotten Alex to cooperate, but I also had a ping in my gut when I thought about how he was going to have to fulfil the promise he’d made to Dyvinius. Although I wasn’t sure what that promise was exactly, I figured it had to be bad. The dark look that had passed over Dyvinius’s eyes when he gotten Alex to make the promise had proved that it was bad.

As we searched the downstairs for Laylen and Aislin, I casually mentioned to Alex that maybe he should apologize to Laylen for accusing him of biting me, because I figured it would make things easier if the two of them weren’t fighting. He ignored my casual suggestion, though, so I decided I would drop it….For now, anyway.

We found Laylen and Aislin in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Aislin was sitting cross-legged on the bed, still wearing her plaid pajamas. Laylen was sitting in a corner chair, and I could tell he was still all worked up over the fight. But I also got the impression that Alex and I might have interrupted a very serious conversation going on between the two of them, like we might have shattered a private moment they had been having.

Alex gave both of them a quick rundown of our plan.

After he had finished, Aislin sat on the bed, a shocked look frozen on her face. Laylen secretly gave me an I-told-you-so look because he had guessed that Alex would know how to get into to The Underworld.

Something occurred to me as I stood there staring at the maroon walls of the bedroom, with my hand pressed to my bitten neck. Had it really been necessary to go speak to Vladislav? I mean, if Alex knew a way to get to The Underworld, maybe he knew another way to find out if she was alive. Of course, I’d had to use what Vladislav had told us about my mother being the Queen’s slave for Alex to admit he knew a way. But still …maybe our little trip could have been avoided.