All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [229]
She’d kept the trinket as a souvenir.
And everyone had forgotten about it. Almost.
She found herself gazing into the depths of the stone, and quickly averted her eyes before it pulled her too deep. Using two pencils, Cecilia pushed and prodded the stone back into the sock and rolled it up.
This could change everything, even save Eliot . . . and perhaps damn millions of souls.
What did that matter? As long as Cecilia saved the ones she loved.
67
THE BIGGEST LIE OF HIS LIFE
Eliot stared at his teammates.
They stared back at him like he was crazy. Even Amanda—always on Eliot’s side—looked shocked.
“Rescue Jezebel?” Jeremy asked with a smirk. “The Jezebel who is an Infernal duchess? The one who could pummel you if she had half a mind to do? You want to rescue her?”
Eliot took a step toward Jeremy. His classmate didn’t know how far Eliot had come in the last few months. How Jezebel had smashed a rock against his head that should’ve crushed it and he’d barely felt it. How he’d leveled a few city blocks with his music in Costa Esmeralda.
And how . . . right now, he was more than willing to prove himself to the ever-irritating Jeremy Covington.
Sarah jumped up and stood between them.
Eliot’s temper cooled a bit as he remembered how she’d been nice to him recently.
Jeremy, however, continued his mocking glare.
Sarah said, “It’s a noble thing you’re proposing, Eliot, but Jezebel has withdrawn from Paxington. There’s nothing to be done.”
“Jezebel withdrew because she had to,” Eliot said. “Because she’s trapped behind enemy lines. We get her out, and that all changes. Miss Westin said she was ‘inclined to grant the request’—she hasn’t actually done it yet. There’s still time.”
Fiona shook her head and wouldn’t even look at him.
“She needs our help.” But Eliot’s plea was weak and pathetic—everything he was trying not to sound like.
How could he be so powerful and heroic one moment, and the next be such an ineffectual dork?
They were all silent. Eliot’s gaze dropped to the black-and-white checkerboard floor of Miss Westin’s waiting room.
“Just to be clear,” Amanda finally whispered, “you are talking about going to Hell? The real burn-forever-in-eternal-torment Hades?”
“I’ve been there,” Eliot told her, unfazed. He looked up. “It’s not that bad . . . well, parts of it aren’t that bad.”
Fiona scoffed. “We were at the Gates of Perdition. Once. We never went inside.”
“I’m not talking about that,” Eliot said. “I took the Night Train into Hell. It runs from the Market Street BART station into the Blasted Lands, and then to the Poppy Lands where Jezebel lives. It’s no big deal.”
Fiona’s eyes widened. “You did what?”
A few months ago, he would have told her everything he’d done. Now he was able to keep secrets.
He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
Eliot explained it all to them: the Night Train, the conductor, and how there were even private trains in Hell to take them back.
“What about the war?” Amanda asked, twirling strands of hair about her pinkie. “That sounds dangerous.”
“There are a few shadows loose,” Eliot said. “But Fiona and I have fought them before. Heck, the six of us together? Nothing could stop us. It’d be easier than a gym match, I bet.”
Jeremy laughed, sat, and reclined on one of the waiting room’s chaises longues. “Oh, to be sure—minus the medics on standby and the ten-minute time limit, and being in the middle of one of the most treacherous-to-mortals places in the outer realms.”
His cousin Sarah shot Jeremy a withering look, which he ignored.
Eliot continued, “But we’re not going to fight their war. We get in, get to Jezebel’s twelve castles, and get her out.”
Sarah bit her lower lip. She looked . . . Eliot wasn’t sure what the look on her face meant. It was the look she’d given him after he played at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Part impressed at his bravura, but something misty in her gaze that might have been disbelief at his stupidity. It was so hard for him to tell with girls.
“No way,” Fiona said, folding