Page 18 of Flames

13

MACK

It took some fucking effort to appear cheerful just now. Snow is pacing inside my head like a maniac. He can’t stand seeing Nova hurting, and the half hour it took us to run here from the cabin was like torture for him. He lost Layla. He can’t lose Nova too. Neither can I.

“It’s okay, buddy, she’s safe,” I mutter to myself.

It’s not lost on me—the weirdness of my symbiotic existence with Snow. It’s hard to put into words, but even harder to imagine what it would be like without him in my head. We are one being, and two beings at the same time. He is me. I am him. We are each other.

And yeah, I know that makes me sound like a fucking transcript on an ancient scroll or something Kole ordained from the skies. But it is what it is.

The pants Rev gave me are horrendously tight-fitting. I’m used to gray sweatpants after a shift, and fashionable slacks when I’m dressed properly. Not jeans that make it impossible to move and cut off my circulation.

The shirt isn’t much better. When I emerge from the bathroom, though, Nova looks approvingly at me. “Suits you,” she says, standing up and crossing the room to slot her hand in mine. “You should wear black more often.”

Still uncomfortable, I pull the teal sweater over the black t-shirt, then sit down at the table. Rev hands me a mug of tea I just know is going to taste disgusting. It smells like bath salts or a grandmother’s perfume.

“Just drink it,” she says disdainfully.

After one sip, I put the mug down and glance toward the living room. “Where’s Sarah?” I ask. “Did you speak to her?”

Nova sits opposite me. “Yes,” she says quietly. “She doesn’t believe Sam is dead.”

I notice the lilt in Nova’s voice. Instantly, my stomach clenches. Rev is watching us from the corner of the room; she noticed it too. “Nova,” I say firmly, “we saw him fall.”

But Nova simply shakes her head. “We didn’t, actually,” she says, her eyelashes fluttering as she meets my gaze. “We saw him holding on, then he lost his grip, and the ground closed up. We didn’t see him fall and, even if he did, we don’t know what he fell into. We don’t know where he fell into.”

I glance at Rev. She shrugs her shoulders and grimaces a little as if she’s already had this conversation with Nova and isn’t sure what else she can add.

I breathe in slowly, feeling my nostrils flare. A long silence stretches between us. I tap my fingers on the table then say, “Nova, Sam was taken to…” I trail off and look at Rev. She nods at me but doesn’t come to my aid.

Nova has folded her arms and is staring at me. “The underworld?” she says. “Hell? A dark place full of demons and devils and—” She scoffs a little, and I feel Snow’s growl rumbling in my chest.

“Yes,” I say darkly. “That is precisely where he was taken.”

“But it is a place,” she says. “A real place. Not an intangible fairy-tale kind of place like Heaven. A real place.”

I search her face, then try to summon the part of me that used to be good at explaining this kind of thing. I take her hand across the table and stroke her palm with my index finger. “Nova, as supers, we grow up learning about the constructs that hold our universe together. We are taught about the existence of different dimensions. We take classes on demons and devils and learn spells to ward them off. We learn about the three comings of the underworld—times in Earth’s long history when The Shadow King succeeded in breaking through but was eventually locked back into his own dimension by brave and powerful mages.”

Nova swallows hard. “He has succeeded before?” she asks quietly.

“Three times,” I tell her. “The last was over ten thousand years ago.”

“Ten thousand?” Nova asks, her voice barely a whisper.

I nod solemnly. “He has remained in the darkest of our dimensions—the one we now call the underworld, but which humans call Hell—for ten thousand years. Waiting to return.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Nova asks, searching my face.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I wish we’d had time. I wish I could teach you everything you need to know, but things are moving faster than we ever thought they would.”

As Rev joins us at the table, she lights a candle and places it in our midst.

“We always thought there would be signs,” I say, still holding Nova’s hand. “We moved to Phoenix Falls because we thought there would be signs that the prophecy was going to be set in motion. But there was nothing—not a thing—until you arrived in town.”

Nova looks at our hands, then takes hers back and puts it in her lap. “You’re telling me Sam is in another dimension? The underworld. That’s where he is?”

“I believe so, yes, but there’s no way to know for certain.”