"Kaylee, jeez, you scared me!" Emma cried, loud enough that if any of the neighbors had been awake, they'd have heard her.
"We weren't leaving without you." Nash greeted me with a tame kiss on the tip of my nose, a greeting that spoke of relief, rather than heat. "We were coming to find you."
I wrapped my arm around his waist, pressing into him to share his warmth. "I'm only a couple of minutes…" My voice trailed off as I glanced at my watch. It was twelve thirty-five. I'd left my room around eleven fifty-five, and it had taken me no more than ten minutes to jog from my house to Nash's. And I'd spent less than five minutes in the Netherworld. I was sure of it.
Which meant I was missing twenty-five minutes….
Fear washed over me like a cold ocean wave, and both Hudson boys saw it on my face.
"How did you get out of your house, Kaylee?" Tod asked, his voice deep with suspicion, and when all heads turned his way, I knew Emma could both see and hear him.
I squeezed Nash and stared at my feet. "My dad fell asleep in the living room. I didn't have any other choice."
"So you crossed over?" Nash's voice was lower and more dangerous than I'd ever heard it, and his words held no hint of calm. He held me at arms' length, both hands on my shoulders. "Don't ever do that again. Do you understand?"
I shrugged out of his grip, my temper flaring to a hot, sharp edge. "It'll be pretty hard to get Addy's soul back without crossing over," I snapped.
"Crossing over?" Emma's brows sank in confusion. "To where?"
"I mean alone," Nash clarified, ignoring her question. "You can't go there alone, Kaylee. You have no idea what…stuff is out there."
"What stuff is where?" Emma demanded, propping both hands on her hips.
"Well, I know a little better now." Turning from Nash, I slid into the passenger seat, then I caught Emma's eye and tossed my head toward the driver's side, urging her silently to get in.
The guys followed our lead reluctantly.
"What happened?" Nash demanded softly, as he clicked his seat belt home in the backseat. "Did you see something?"
I twisted around and smiled to relax him. I didn't like the bossy side of him, but knew it stemmed from concern for me. "Just a field full of weird grass with something slithering through it."
"Lizards," Tod said, and I knew based on Emma's reaction—or lack thereof—that he hadn't let her hear him that time. Which meant we weren't talking about ordinary lizards.
I glanced at Nash with my brows raised in question, but he only shook his head. We'd talk about it later, after we'd dropped Emma at her house. Or rather, after she'd dropped herself off.
Em was still irritated by our refusal to explain what was going on, but she hugged me when she got out of the car and told me to be careful doing…whatever we were doing.
I hugged her back and thanked her sincerely. Then I hugged her again, hoping it wouldn't be the last time I'd see her. I really didn't want to die in the Netherworld. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Not yet, anyway.
I slid into the driver's seat and Nash climbed over the center console to sit next to me. Then I twisted to look out the rear windshield as I backed slowly out of Emma's driveway, while she let herself into her house. "So, time moves slower in the Netherworld? That would have been nice to know."
"If we'd known you were going, we would have told you," Tod said matter-of-factly. "Along with the fact that most species of Netherworld lizards are poisonous to humans."
"And to bean sidhes," Nash clarified, in case I didn't get it.
"Yeah, thanks. And the plant life isn't exactly amber waves of grain."
Tod grinned, and I knew that he, at least, had forgiven me. "It won't be like that closer to the city. The Netherworld is like a reflection of our world, anchored at certain, highly populated spots. Like public buildings. But the farther you go from those meccas, the less the Netherworld resembles our own. Including plant and animal life. And space and time."
So I really had gone farther in the Netherworld than I had on the human plane.
"Space and time?" I took the next corner too fast, distracted by the new information.
"Yeah." Tod shifted onto the center of the back bench seat so I could see him better in the mirror. "The human world is the constant, and time in the Netherworld will never go faster than it does here. And you'll never move farther here than you would have there. But time will move slower in the parts of the Netherworld that are least firmly anchored to the human plane, and it's very easy to think you've traveled far enough, yet when you cross back over, you haven't gone as far here as you thought you had."
Which was exactly what had happened to me.
"So, how are we supposed to get around in the Netherworld, if we never know where or when we'll be when we cross back over?" I shot a worried glance at Nash.
"Very carefully," he said, his voice grim and dark again. But this time he let a thread of calm snake through it to wrap around me, and I settled into that calm, inhaling it just for the taste of Nash. "Because most mistakes made in the Netherworld can't be fixed."
CHAPTER 16
We took I-30 to Highway 12, in Irving, where the Dallas Cowboys were finishing their last season in the old stadium. I drove and Nash navigated. Fortunately, he'd been to Texas Stadium a bunch of times, and except for one missed exit—I hate it when highway signs aren't marked well in advance—we had no problems getting there. Though, I was a little creeped out by the late-night, nearly deserted feel of the area.
We parked in a lot south of the stadium, and the sound of my car door closing echoed across the expanse of bare concrete. The air outside was warmer and more humid than in the car, but goose bumps popped up all over my arms, as if my skin knew better than my head that I ought to be afraid.
The dark chill of anticipation could probably be attributed to my imagination. Or to the fear that I would cross over from the human plane into another field of glass spears, or something even worse.
"You ready?" Tod asked from the other side of Emma's car, one hand on the roof between us. Nash stood next to him, watching me carefully, as if I might melt into a puddle of fear and raw nerves any minute. Or maybe burst into tears.
Did he really think I was that fragile?
No, I was not ready. But neither was I going to delay our mission. Addy's time was running out.
"This is a public place with a very large concentration of human life force most of the time, so this section of the Netherworld should be pretty well anchored to ours," Tod began, stuffing his hands into his jacket pockets. "Which means that, for the most part, you can trust that time and space are running along pretty normal lines."
"But there hasn't been a game here in a couple of weeks, right?" I glanced from one brother to the other. "Shouldn't that lack of human activity cause the anchor to slip a little?"
Nash rounded the hood of the car to take my hand, and his brother shrugged. "It might slip a bit during the off-season, but there's been so much human energy built up here over the years that two weeks isn't enough to make much of a difference." The reaper ran one hand through his blond curls and joined us at the front of the car. "There might be a slight time and space discrepancy because it's the middle of the night and no one's around right now, but it'll be very small. Definitely much less than what you felt at home."
"What about the grass? Are we going to be shredded by vegetation when we cross over?"
Nash rubbed my upper arms through my jacket as I shivered. "I doubt it. There's too much activity here for razor wheat to get a foothold on the land. It takes a while for that shit to establish strong roots, which it can't do with Netherworlders stomping through it all the time. Right?" He glanced at Tod for confirmation, and the reaper nodded. Then Nash lifted my chin until my gaze met his. "And by the way, if you ever have to do that again—which I would not recommend—wear waders. Waist high, at least. Mom says that's the only way to get out of razor wheat without getting sliced to bits."