The Eternity Key (23 page)

Haden, Lexie, and I huddle around Joe’s dining room table after the dance, waiting for Tobin to unroll the scroll. Maybe because it is his mother’s property, or maybe because he’d worked the hardest to get it, or maybe it’s just plain that no one else wants to take responsibility for possibly damaging such an old artifact, but we had all agreed to give Tobin the honor of being the one to handle the scroll.

He wears a pair of latex gloves and unfurls it with great care, one millimeter at a time. I find myself holding my breath and willing our only lead not to disintegrate in Tobin’s hands. Once it’s unfurled, it’s about the size of a regular piece of printer paper. Tobin places it gingerly between two pieces of glass that I’ve stolen out of a couple of Joe’s picture frames. He holds it in the glass sandwich in front of him.

“What is it? What does it say?” I ask, trying to see over his shoulder.

“I have no idea,” he says, setting it on the table. “It all looks like ancient Greek pictographs or something just as archaic. It’s useless unless anyone here knows an archeologist or something, because I doubt we can plug
this
into a translator app and get an answer.”

“This sucks,” Lexie says.

The bubble of excitement that has been building in my chest starts to deflate.

Haden clears his throat. “Or happens to know someone from an ancient Greek society. Archaic languages are kind of one of my specialties.”

“Oh yeah, duh,” Tobin says, sliding the glass-encased scroll over to him.

Haden studies it for a minute. “Do you have paper and a writing utensil?” he asks me.

I grab my notebook and a pen from my purse and hand them to him. “Just call it a pen.”

“Noted,” he says, and starts jotting a few lines in my notebook. He crosses something out and then keeps going. After about ten lines, he stops and reads it over.

“Out loud,” I prompt. “Out loud.”

Haden holds up the page and reads out loud. “ ‘Cupid and Psyche are made as one. Your true self they will become. Cupid is courage, in the face of fear. Psyche is strength, to deliver all. Let them go. Let them flow, unfurling like the wind. Cupid and Psyche. Cupid and Psyche. Grant them both, and your will be done.’ ”

“What the crap does that mean?” Lexie says.

I shake my head.

“It appears to be nothing more than a poem about Cupid and Psyche,” Haden says, and I can hear the disappointed notes rolling off him. “Just something some ancient poet jotted down, from what I can tell.”

“But what about the drawing with the symbols?” Tobin asks. “That has to mean something.”

“Or it could have just been a doodle,” I say halfheartedly.

“That’s it?” Lexie says. “A poem and a doodle? You mean I had to kiss Tobin so we could liberate some ancient person’s purse trash?”

I look at Tobin. “You kissed Lexie?”

Tobin crosses his arms. “Only so we didn’t get hauled off by security. Besides, she’s the one who instigated it.”

“Whatever,” she says.

“Well, I’m pretty sure you enjoyed it, thank you very much,” he says, tipping his fedora to her and winking like Frank Sinatra.

“You. Wish.” For someone who had kissed a practical stranger with barely a second thought, I can’t help but think this protestation seems a little strange.

I turn my attention back to the scroll. “You’re sure that’s what it says?” I ask Haden.

“It’s a slightly different dialect than I’ve seen before, but I think the translation is as close as it’s going to get.”

I sit with my head buried in my hands, my bubble of excitement completely burst. I know it was totally silly and far too optimistic for me to have hoped, but in my fantasies of how this night was supposed to play out, I thought I’d be sitting here with an instruction book on how to use the Compass without sacrificing myself—and instead all I got was this crappy poem.

I’m glad when the others leave shortly after the revelation that our entire evening had been a waste of time—save for striking a deal with Rowan, that is. The energy I’d had at the dance is completely zapped, and the despair over having fewer answers now makes me feel as useless as an out-of-tune piano.

I can hear Joe and a couple of his bandmates pulling into the driveway, so I take the scroll and my notebook up to my room
before they see me. I don’t have the energy right now to try to carry on a conversation with Bobby Rox or Chris Trip. It really was pretty epic of them to agree to play at a high school dance, and I might burst into tears of frustration if they ask me if I had a good night.

I set the scroll on my desk and change into my pajamas, ready to go to bed and sleep off my disappointment when I find a red envelope on my bed. At first, I think it’s from Joe or even, for a half a second, that Haden might have found his way up here before leaving with the others, but then I see the Ellis Fields return address and know it’s from Jonathan. The man loves holidays—from themed costumes at Halloween, elf hats and caroling at Christmas, to his New Year’s Eve matchmaking—but there is no holiday he revels in more than Valentine’s Day. Being a florist and all, it is like his own personal Super Bowl.

I tear open the envelope, ready to see what monstrosity of a card he picked out this year, and find a picture of a chubby teddy bear dressed like Cupid with a big heart-shaped arrow pointed at me.
Grin and bear it, it’s Valentine’s Day!
the front of the card says. It is just like Jonathan to know that grinning and bearing it is how I face almost every Valentine’s Day. I open the card and a puff of red, glittering confetti falls on my bed. Inside the card is a handwritten note from Jonathan.

I smile and shake my head, knowing exactly where my
chocolates ended up. I place the card, standing up on my desk, next to the scroll—and then something from Jonathan’s message pops into my head.
Everything your heart and soul desire. Heart and soul. Heart and Soul
.

Hadn’t Ethan said something about Cupid’s and Psyche’s names meaning the same thing as
heart
and
soul
? The two mythological characters represent the two halves of what made a person who they are—their heart and their soul? I open my notebook to Haden’s translation of the poem. Taking a total shot in the dark, I cross out everywhere Haden has written
Cupid
and replace it with
Heart
and then
Psyche
with
Soul
. I read the entire poem with my edits:

Heart and Soul are made as one. Your true self they will become. Heart is courage, in the face of fear. Soul is strength, to deliver all. Let them go. Let them flow, unfurling like the wind. Heart and soul. Heart and soul. Grant them both, and your will be done
.

I read the words over and over again, and as I do, they seem to sound more and more like, not just a poem, but a song. Though I imagine it’s a much more beautiful-sounding one in its intended language. I speak the first few lines out loud in a singsong voice, not sure of the melody, and feel a surge of power with each word.

Another idea strikes me, and this time I sing the song using the melody of the grove. I can feel power rippling through the air, riding on the sound waves of my voice, as if reaching out to the world around me. I look at my geode collection that Jonathan had sent with my shipment of stuff from Ellis when I first moved here. The geodes sit on my desk, lining up from smallest to largest. I concentrate my voice on the smallest of them as I sing the song. It had taken all of my concentration to manipulate a few raindrops only a couple of weeks ago, so I don’t expect much from the
crystallized rock—maybe to lift a few inches off the desk—but when I beckon to it to come to me,
all
of the geodes lift off the desk. Even the largest rock, the size of a softball, swirls up in the air. They dance around me as I sing, as if they weigh nothing at all.

I remember Sarah the Oracle’s words to me before she died. She had said that I was the Keeper of Orpheus’s Heart and Soul, the Vessel of His Voice. But what if she had meant those things interchangeably? Orpheus’s voice was what made him who he was—metaphorically, his voice was his heart and soul.

Hope rises up in my chest, and I want to sing out so loud that I would be heard all the way across town. The Oracle had said that I was the only one who could unlock the Key because my heart and soul are what is needed to obtain it. But what if she hadn’t meant that literally? It wasn’t my literal heart and soul that were needed to unlock the Key. It was my voice—and this song, I was willing to bet everything on it—was the pass code.

In my vision of the echoes in the grove, I had witnessed Orpheus use his voice to lock away the Key, so it makes perfect sense that I, his descendant, am meant to unlock it, using the Compass as a conduit for my voice.

Now all we need to do is get the Compass away from Rowan.

chapter thirty-five

Brim is waiting up for me when I get home from Daphne’s after the dance. She paces the counter in the kitchen, meowing in the direction of the fridge. Before I left, I’d fed her some canned concoction Dax picked up after we finally broke down and made a supply run to the grocery store—one of the more perplexing experiences of my life, because food in the Underrealm does not come as rows and rows of brightly colored boxes and cans—but I know what she wants. Eggs. Daphne had spoiled her with that treat, and now it’s all she wants.

“You’re getting fat,” I tell Brim. “No eggs.”

She glares at me, not amused. She really is getting awfully round, but there’s no negotiating with a hellcat.

“Fine, you want scrambled?” I don’t know why I bother to ask. Scrambled eggs and French toast are still the only things I know how to cook. I know I could probably become a master chef if I downloaded some cooking shows from the Internet … but I like the idea of letting Daphne teach me instead. I only wish I didn’t have to be so careful about being seen with her outside of school. I’d like to learn something more advanced.

Brim gives a little purring meow and leaps off the counter onto
my shoulder. She rubs her cheek against mine to show her appreciation. How do you say no to that?

Dax comes in through the garage. He looks haggard, with his tie loosened and his jacket slung over his shoulder.

“You know you’re not
really
a school counselor. You didn’t have to stay behind to stack all the chairs,” I say.

“I do if I want to get a paycheck. Simon’s money won’t last forever. Especially if we have to withdraw fifty grand for Rowan.”

Oh yes, there’s that.

“How did it go?” he asks, dropping his jacket on the counter.

I’m not sure if he’s referring to my attempt to ask Daphne to dance or with unraveling the scroll. I choose to respond to the latter because I don’t feel like talking about the former.

“The scroll was nothing of import.”

Dax sinks heavily into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “Just when you think you’re starting to get somewhere …”

I can hear the exhaustion in his voice and decide to make him some eggs, too. “There’s still the deal with Rowan,” I say, pulling a skillet from the dishwasher.

“Do you think he’ll hand it over?”

“I don’t know. Especially if we don’t have the talisman to trade.”

I open the fridge and gag. The rankest smell wafts out of it. Brim hunkers down on my shoulder and covers her nose with her paws. We’d stocked the fridge with more supplies but hadn’t bothered to clean the old food out. I open one of the drawers and find a bag of turnips so far gone that they’ve started to liquefy.

“Ah Hades,” I say, lifting it up. Gray moldy liquid drips on my shoes, and I can’t help but think that an Underlord should not have to do such tasks as cleaning out a refrigerator. If only Garrick were still my servant …

As I head to the garbage with the reeking bag, I notice something glinting like metal in the turnip slop. Instead of into the garbage, I dump the bag in the sink. Something round and metal makes a clunking noise as it hits the bottom of the tub. I fish my fingers into the muck and find the end of what feels like a chain. I lift it up and see that it’s attached to a large, oval-shaped medallion.

“What’ve you got there?” Dax asks.

“Simon’s talisman, I think.” I shake my head in disbelief. “He’d hidden it in a bag of turnips.”

Dax crows with laughter—and relief. “Well, it is the last place his teenage houseguests would ever look.”

We both have a good laugh at that, and for a moment our situation doesn’t feel quite so dire.

“Find a good place to hide that,” Dax says. He picks up his jacket and discarded tie. “If you don’t mind, I think I might skip out on our group meeting on Monday. I’m thinking of taking a sick day and driving out to Santa Monica. I found an address for a pen pal of Abbie’s out there. Thought I’d go check it out.”