lake—the entrance to The Underworld—where she’d been tortured to insanity by Water Faeries.
“You okay?” Laylen asked.
“I’m fine.” My voice sounded choked. There was a gap of silence before I asked, “Do you think there’s a way she can still be alive? My mom, I mean.”
Laylen sat there, looking at me, not in a feeling-sorry-for-me kind of way, but more as if he was seriously contemplating what I’d asked him. Part of me grew eager that he might say yes; that there was a possibility that my mother, who I hadn’t seen since I was four years-old, and could barely remember a thing about—thanks to the detachment of my soul from my emotions causing my memories to be erased away as well—might still be alive.
“I don’t know, Gemma,” he said softly. “She’s been down there for a really long time.”
My eagerness dropped to the floor and shattered like glass. “Oh. Okay.”
“Now hold on one second before you go getting that sad look on your face. All I said was that she’s been down there for awhile, not that there was no way she could be alive.”
I tried to keep my excitement to a bare minimum. “So, are you saying that there might be a chance she still is?”
He twisted his lip ring from side to side. “Maybe…There’ve been some people that have survived the Water Faeries tortured for a long amount of time without going too insane. And there have even been a few people that have escaped The Underworld before.”
“There have!” I shouted, and then made an oh-crap face at the loudness of my voice. We both stayed silent for a moment, making sure no one had heard and had decided to head upstairs to check on me. The house was quiet, as still as the hot desert air, the only noise coming from the humming of engines from the cars passing by. “Sorry,” I whispered. “But I’m just really confused. The way Alex made it sound, it seemed like there was hardly any way that anyone could ever escape The Underworld. That once they were sent down there, they were basically trapped there until they died from the torture.”
Laylen’s bright blue eyes twinkled mischievously. “Yeah, but Alex doesn’t hang around with the same kind of crowd as I do, does he? You learn a lot of stuff when you’re not just limited to the Keepers circle.”
Now I was letting myself get a little excited over what Laylen was saying. Well, except for the fact that he said “crowd.” What kind of crowd were we talking about here? Vampire crowd? Witch crowd? Black Angel crowd? All were possibilities, and there were probably other possibilities that I didn’t even know about.
“Is there any way we could find someone who will maybe help us find out if she’s alive? And help us find out if there’s a way we could get her out of The Underworld if she is?” I held my breath as I waited for him to answer.
It took him a second, but he nodded. “It won’t be easy, though…And it’ll be dangerous.”
I should have been scared. But after you’ve faced a swarm of murderous Death Walkers, been hit by their Chill of Death, and stared into the eyes of a man who is trying to wipe your mind away, “dangerous” becomes a little easier to deal with. “So you’re saying that maybe we could go and talk to someone about her?”
He mulled over my question for so long that I was sure he was going to say no. “Yeah, I think we might be able to do that.”
“Really,” I was practically bouncing. “Are you serious?”
He nodded. “I think your mom may know more about what’s going on than anyone does. I think that might be part of the reason why Stephan sent her there—so she couldn’t tell anyone what she knew.”
“I think so too,” I agreed. “In fact, in the vision, she told Stephan that one day he’d get caught and that he didn’t have everyone wrapped around his finger.”
“Then I think the sooner we can find out if she’s alive the better. And maybe we can put all this madness together and get some real answers.” He paused. “But I don’t want you to get too excited, just in case things don’t turn out the way…the way you want them to.”
“I won’t,” I assured him, but I still couldn’t help but get a little excited. Well, okay, I was beyond excited. In fact, I think I’d hit a