“I don’t know…” He said quickly looking away from me.

“Laylen, please just tell me if you know something” I begged. “You always tell me stuff. Don’t be like Alex.” He turned his head back toward me. “The thought has crossed my mind that maybe…that maybe that’s exactly what he’s doing.”

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Even though I had thought it myself, it was a lot harder to deal with hearing him say it aloud. That I could be carrying something around inside me that could end the world. That my very existence could be bad. “How long have you thought this?”

“Since Aislin and I showed up at the Hartfield cabin back in Colorado—when Stephan showed up with the Death Walkers, but yet he didn’t try to kill you. He wants you alive for some reason. And that reason I’m sure isn’t a good one.”

I nodded. Keep it together. Keep it together.

“Okay…Okay.” I was trying very hard not to fall apart.

But, at the same time, how could I not fall apart?

“Are you okay?” Laylen asked, concerned.

I had to force myself to speak and was startled by the hollow tone my voice had taken on—something I hadn’t heard it do in awhile. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but I decided to stop him, because honestly, I didn’t want to talk about how I was feeling at the moment. Or about the fact that the prickle was poking at the back of my neck releasing an abundance of worry and panic at a level I had never felt before.

“I think I better get back to Nicholas and my training.” I stood up from the bed.

“Gemma.” Laylen got to his feet. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.” My voice sounded numb. “I just need to get back, if for nothing else, so I can get into The Underworld to save my mom. Then maybe we’ll get actual answers, instead of just a bunch of guesses.”

“Okay…” Laylen watched me as if I were a scared mental patient who was about to go off the deep end, and I left the room with a giant lump swelling in my throat.

Chapter 15

Nicholas was turning out not to be so bad to be around. Let me stress the not so bad part, because he still got under my skin more times than he didn’t.

This could have been because, after what Laylen had said to me about him thinking that I just might be carrying around something that would end the world that I really just didn’t care anymore how Nicholas was. I mean, why waste time getting worked up over a guy who was a little bit friendly. Okay, well a lot friendly, but at least he was friendly. And yeah, he did smell strongly of flowers and rain and forest, which was kind of a strange smell to be coming off of a guy, but he was a faerie, and these little things seemed like they might just be faerie traits, and something he probably couldn’t help.

At least that’s what I was telling myself.

It’d been two days of excruciating training, falling into visions, blinking out of visions. Fortunately, I hadn’t dropped down into anything world-ending, because I really didn’t want to see that again. In fact, I hadn’t dropped into anything important at all, which was okay with me.

I needed a break from seeing things I didn’t want to see, like the world frozen over by ice, my soul getting removed, and me curled up in a little ball with my eyes looking very empty.

It was too much.

After my crazy little episode I had during the world-ending vision, Nicholas had decided to take control over where we went for now, and all these places had ended up being fairly dull places so far. What Nicholas didn’t know—but desperately wanted to know—was what I had seen when I dropped into the end-of-the-world vision. He pressed me to tell him for over an hour before finally giving up.

And now here Nicholas and I were sitting on the black and white tile floor of Adessa living room, with the shimmering, violet ribbon floating, crystal ball balanced between us.

“So where’s the next place we’re going?” I asked Nicholas.

He was wearing a bright green shirt, and a pair of dark blue jeans. Each night, after everyone went to bed, he’d leave, and when he would return in the morning he would be all cleaned up and ready to go.

“Hmmm….” He tapped his finger on his lips, which he almost always did when I asked him a question.

“That’s a good question.”

“And it’s a question only you can answer,” I pointed out, crossing my legs.

“Maybe…or maybe not,” he wavered. “I think maybe it is time for you to try and pick the place again.” I shuddered as I remembered the end-of-the-world vision I had thrown us into the last time I’d tried to control going into one on my own.

Nicholas must have sensed something was wrong with me because he said, “If you don’t practice going into and out of visions on your own then you’re going to be no use when it comes to trying to go into The Underworld. Besides, practicing might help you when you drift off into one of your visions without a crystal ball.”

Okay, time to change the subject. “Okay.” I took a deep breath and extended my hand out to Nicholas, my other hand hovering over the crystal ball. “Then I’ll try again.”

“Do you have an idea where you’re going to take us?” Nicholas asked, taking hold of my hand and unnecessarily intertwining our fingers.

“Yeah, I have an idea….” I shut my eyes and brushed my fingers across the cold glass of the crystal ball.

Yeah, it might have been a stupid idea, but I figured it was the best way to get an answer to my current problem. I mean, how bad could it end up being? I had already seen the world at its end, and there weren’t many things that were worse than seeing that.

But with as inexperienced as I was, I knew I was taking a risk, especially since Nicholas had warned me before that when we actually tried to enter The Underworld through the Ira, many things could go wrong.

I needed to know, though, how I was going to do it

—how I was going to get my mother out of The Underworld. Because I had no idea, and neither did Laylen. When I had asked him how I was supposed to get my mom out of there, Laylen had looked as perplexed as I felt. And asking Alex was not an option, at least not until he got back, which his release date hadn’t been determined yet.

It was important that I knew what kind of bargaining tool we would use to get the Queen to let my mom go, and the only way I could think of to do this was to see what I would do. Of course, I wasn’t sure if it was going to work or not. For all I knew, the vision would show me that I would fail—that I don’t free my mom.

But I had to try.

I honestly wasn’t sure whether I had pulled it off, as I had taken us through the crystal ball, all I kept thinking was: The Underworld, my mom’s freedom, the Queen.

But even after I landed with a great stumble, and a bump of my elbow, I still wasn’t sure I was in the right place.

“So where’d you take us,” Nicholas asked, rubbing his hands together excitedly. “Somewhere good I hope.”

“Um…” I stared down the tunnel we were standing in, the walls dripping with musty water and moss traced the cracks in the dirt floors. Was this The Underworld? “I think I…” I tried to think of something to tell him and then I thought, you know what, who cares.

We were here so I might as well tell him the truth. “I think we might be in The Underworld.”

He was not happy. And I found out right then and there that faeries can get very angry very fast.

“You what?” He was struggling to contain himself.

“I think I took us to The Underworld,” I repeated, feeling like I might need to duck down and take cover.

He opened his mouth and sputtered a bunch of incoherent words and then kicked the wall of the tunnel, causing bits and pieces of mud and dirt to crumble to the floor. He was pissed, and I totally got that, since he had told me a bunch of times to take us to a simple places. But then a shriek ricochet through the air, and all of my attention went to solving where the noise had come from.