A pang of guilt rang through me at that thought, for the way I’d yelled at him. Yes, he was being a real pain, but only because I wouldn’t tell him what I was doing. It wasn’t his fault. When this whole mess was over and I was done lying, I’d make him a pan of brownies.

Chocolate says “I’m sorry” so much better than words.

“The fact that there probably won’t be razor wheat doesn’t mean the plant life will be safe.” Nash sounded grim and almost angry as he stepped over a concrete wheel stop. He didn’t want to cross over, and honestly, neither did I. “Don’t touch anything, just in case.”

“So, all the plants are dangerous?”

Tod cleared his throat and pivoted to walk backward, facing us as he spoke, walking right through steel barricades and light posts. “The sun in the Netherworld doesn’t shine as purely as it does here. It’s kind of…filtered. Anemic. So the plants have adapted. They supplement their diet with blood, from wherever they can find it. Mostly rodents, and lizards, and other scuttlers. But they’ll try for your blood, too, if you flaunt it.”

Lovely… A dark chill washed over me, and I rubbed my arms for warmth. I hated the Netherworld already, and I’d spent only minutes there. “It sounds like Little Shop of Horrors.”

Tod gave a harsh huff and turned smoothly to face forward. “That was only one plant.”

I stepped onto the raised sidewalk in front of the stadium, walking confidently to hide the fear pumping through my veins, chilling me from the inside out. “So, don’t touch anything and stay away from the plant life.”

“Right.” Tod nodded, apparently satisfied. “Let’s go. It’s not getting any earlier, on either plane.”

Keening was even easier that time than the time before, and to my surprise—and concern—I was able to do it without consciously remembering anyone’s death. Instead I forced myself to endure the nightmare unfolding in my mind, like a bloom dripping blood.

Nash’s death.

It wasn’t a premonition. I knew that at the first touch of the terror-soaked, thorny vine creeping up the base of my skull. I wasn’t predicting Nash’s death. I was imagining it in horrifying, soul-wrenching detail. My biggest anti-wish. It played out behind my closed eyes, drawing from me a wail so strong the first thin tendrils of sound scorched my throat like I’d choked on living flames.

I wanted to spit those flames back up. Needed to purge them from my body for my own sanity. But I made myself swallow them, all but a ribbon of sound vibrating from my vocal chords, bypassing my sealed lips. My insides smoldered, ethereal smoke making the back of my throat itch.

I opened my eyes, and the world had gone gray.

The stadium was still there, rising in front of me like a domed,steel-and-concrete mushroom. But now an otherworldly fog shrouded the exposed beams and the underside of the massive stands.

Nash stared at me, his eyes churning colorlessly in fear for me. Fear for us all.

Tod watched us both carefully, and I read doubt in every line on his face. He wasn’t sure I could cross over. Or at least that I could take Nash with me.

The reaper’s skepticism fueled my determination, pushing me past the pain in my throat and the awful bloated feeling in my core, as if my insides would soon rupture from holding back my own wail. I thought of the Netherworld, and my intense need to be there. To find the hellion who’d sucked the Page sisters’ souls. To get those souls back.

At first nothing happened. Then, just when frustration threatened to rip the full cry from throat, I realized the problem. I was still thinking about the razor wheat, and my desire never to step into it again. And those thoughts interfered with my intent to actually cross over.

Growling a bit, in sharp, dissonant harmony with my keening, I forced thoughts of the glasslike stalks from my mind and concentrated on Nash’s assurance that it couldn’t grow in such a populated area.

Suddenly the stadium began to fade into that featureless haze, and for one long moment I saw nothing but gray. Felt nothing but gray. I’d had my eyes closed the first time I’d crossed over, so I’d missed this claustrophobic emptiness, as if the world had swallowed me whole and wrapped me in fog.

My hands flailed in front of me, reaching desperately, blindly for Nash, before it was too late to take him with me. I did not want to have to cross over again.

His hands closed over mine with a familiar, soothing warmth. My finger brushed the pencil callous on the middle finger of his right hand, and the long, raised scar on his left palm, where he’d sliced it open working on his bike when he was twelve. I squeezed his hands, and an instant later the world whooshed back into focus around me.

Only it wasn’t our world. It was the Netherworld. Again.

My previous crossover had prepared me for this trip no more than a trip to the farm would prepare an alien visitor for an evening in New York City.

My biggest surprise was that the Netherworld had sidewalks—a sign of civilization and advanced order I had not expected. I’d known the stadium would exist on both levels. As a center of high-volume human activity, it was one of the anchors pinning the human plane to the Netherworld like a dress pattern over a bolt of cloth. Where the pin pierced both, the layers remained flat and even, and time and space were relatively constant. But between the pins, the bottom layer—the Netherworld—could bunch, and shift, and wrinkle. And that’s where things were likely to get the weirdest.

Not that they were exactly normal even at one of the anchors….