Hello, Hell

I was alone.

I was alone in the Faerie Paths.

Once the connection was broken, you could never find the other person. Ever. Again. And no one would be able to find me in the infinite blank darkness. All the times I'd woken up, panicked and sweating from this nightmare, and now . . .

Oh, please, please let this be a nightmare.

I looked frantically around. Maybe I could find Jack again. Maybe what I'd heard about the Paths was a lie, just another thing Raquel told me so that I wouldn't mess around on transports. "Jack?" I called, my voice ringing through the silence almost scarier than the silence itself. Because once my voice stopped without an echo, snuffed out like a light, the silence felt even heavier, a palpable weight on my shoulders.

I had options. There had to be options. The door! We were right by the door to the Faerie Realms. I put my hand out, shaking and desperate, feeling for it. The only thing I sensed were tendrils of the gates to chaos-hell-those swirling, evil places Jack had wanted me to send the faeries.

What if I tried to open a door and opened a gate, instead?

Oh, bleep, I was in hell and my only options for getting out of it were hells, too.

It would be okay. Someone would help me. Someone had to help me.

"Reth!" I was suddenly desperate for the sight of his golden face. "Lorethan!" I screamed, knowing it wouldn't work, but hoping maybe, somehow, he still kept tabs on his old name.

He would come for me. He told me himself: he always knew where I was. He'd know, and he'd come. I just had to wait.

Hadn't it been long enough?

Surely this was enough time for him to find me.

I counted to one thousand, timing my breaths to the numbers.

Two thousand.

Three thousand.

I was going to die.

Four thousand.

I was going to die, here in the silent dark, by myself.

Five thousand.

And no one would ever know, and no one would care.

Six thousand-where the holy crap are you, Reth? Where are you?

He wasn't coming. My breath came quicker, my heart pulsing too fast in my chest, trying to pound its way out of my body. I took a step, then another, then another and another and another, running, but there was no wind in my hair, no sense of movement other than my feet that kept going and going and going

nowhere.

There was nowhere to go. I was the only thing that existed here. I looked down and was hit with a wave of vertigo. How did I know I was standing on anything? What if I was falling, had been falling this whole time, would fall here in the darkness for all eternity?

I sank down, curling into fetal position. Everything was deadened, numbed. Even my broken arm barely hurt anymore. I couldn't feel anything around me as I wondered what would kill me first. Thirst? Starvation? Finally finding the bottom of this abyss? Or what if I never died at all-what if I just lay here in the dark forever?

My chest was tight, too tight, my heartbeat an actual pain. Maybe I would die of a heart attack.

I was going to die.

I was going to die, and I'd never see Lend again. He'd never know what happened to me. I'd never get to tell him sorry, or how much I loved him and would always love him, even if I had to leave him. And Raquel, Arianna, David, even Vivian and Carlee-I'd left them all without a word of explanation. I'd been so desperate to find out who I was, find my place in the world, I'd lied to and left behind the people who loved me and were willing to give me a place no matter who or what I was.

Now poor Vivian would be forever alone in her dreams. Maybe before I died I would sleep, and visit her one last time. I'd like that.

I could picture Lend with David and Arianna, worrying. Lend's face-I hated myself for what this would do to him, what I'd already done to him. How could I have been so selfish, lied to him for so long? He deserved the chance to make up his own mind, but I'd taken it away from him by hiding the truth, like so many people had hidden it from me. And, sure, he hadn't chosen me, wouldn't choose me, but it was his choice. At least for the time we'd had I'd been happier than I'd ever been the rest of my life.

And I'd had a locker. That was something, too.

I took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm my heart rate. If I was going to die, I wanted it to be peaceful, at least. I would lie here and die as I thought of Lend, Raquel, Arianna, and David. Slipping into oblivion filled with my love for them wasn't a bad way to go.

I smiled, remembering the time Arianna cussed out Reth and got thrown into a tree for her efforts. Too bad we'd never find out whether Cheyenne and Landon ended up together. I hoped for Arianna's sake they did. She'd had enough disappointment in her life and death as it was.

David and his ridiculous faith in everyone around him, his undying love for a paranormal that would never, could never, love him back the same way. He wasn't stupid or naive. Loving someone completely like that was far braver than I'd ever given him credit for.

Raquel. Her soft Spanish accent and her infinite arsenal of sighs. I wondered which one she'd use when I never came back. I didn't wonder if she'd be sad. I knew that now, knew I was as much a daughter to her as she was a mother to me. And if we were both screwed up, well, the more I saw of normal life, the more I realized that was typical.

And Lend. My Lend. All I had to do was think of his face. That would be enough to sustain me in the emptiness, had always made me feel like I wasn't empty. I'd never been empty with Lend.

My heart calmed down, the pain replaced by something new: a strange sort of gentle tugging, like I was the needle in a compass. The more I thought about the people I loved-especially Lend-the stronger it got. I wanted him. I wanted to be with him more than anything in the whole world.

I stood, too scared to think about what I was doing, too scared to hope. I followed the sensation, thinking of Lend. What it felt like to hold his hand. Watching him draw. Those precious times when he got to be nothing but himself around me. The way he laughed. The look he got in his eyes when he was about to say something he knew was clever. The way he looked at me while I talked, like I was all he had ever wanted in the entire world.

I closed my eyes, walking forward with my good hand up, smiling as I followed this feeling. I held on to my image of Lend, surrounded by Arianna, Raquel, and David. That image felt like a place, felt like what I'd always imagined home would feel like. The dead air in front of me stirred, solidified, and I tripped and tumbled out of the darkness and straight into Lend.

My Lend.

And then he was holding me, and I was crying, and Raquel and David and Arianna were there, too. Lend stroked my hair, repeating the same thing over and over.

"It's okay, you're home. You're home."

And for the first time in my life, I knew it was true.