demanded for him to come back, to wake up. When I looked to Vayl to see if watching this scene was breaking his heart too, I saw two bloody tears tracking down his face.
Helena wrapped her arms around her love and cried even harder, which I hadn’t thought possible. Vayl crouched down to lay a hand across her shoulder. The rest of us stood by, helpless.
Behind us, a sigh. We turned. Sthenno had dropped to the ground, her snakes limp around her head, her entire chest such a bloody mess she looked like she’d just fal en off an autopsy table. But she wasn’t too far gone to whisper, “Cole. You’ve hovered over the edge of the pit before.
Remember al the delectable temptations Kyphas dangled in front of you? She could have given you everything you ever dreamed of. But I can give you more. Not just eternity. You have that now, I can see it in your eyes. Not just women, your skil s are so renowned that even I have heard of them.” Her dying eyes turned to me. “I can give you Jasmine. She considered you once. She’d be easy to turn. And then you’d have a lifetime. Redheaded daughters and towheaded sons. A house on the beach and a big-screen TV to cuddle in front of on rainy nights. What do you say, Cole? Al you have to do is accept me. You’l never even see me.”
He looked at me, then at Vayl. “My girl is waiting for me out there. And I have a feeling she’d be uberpissed if I dumped her before we even met. Plus—” He shook his head at Sthenno. “Girl, your sales pitch is just old. Kyphas tried it on me weeks ago and it worked like a salvage-yard reject.” Sthenno sighed again, closed her eyes, and crumpled in on herself like a wilting flower. Which seemed kind of appropriate given her location.
Helena had now begun the hiccup sobbing that let me know she was fast dropping into hysteria.
I knelt beside her, opposite Vayl, suddenly acutely aware that this woman was probably my granny’s greatgreat-grandmother. That she’d died giving birth to twin girls, one of whom had continued a line that Vayl had watched over until he’d final y met and fal en for me. Had I been the only one? I couldn’t bear to look at him, much less ask just now. So I shook her, whispering, “Helena. Helena,” until she looked up and I was staring into the clear blue eyes of my ancestress. I asked, “What are the rules here? Can he die? I mean, considering the fact that he’s already dead?” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Raoul spoke up. “He’s being given a choice. He can stay in this body and continue to work with Helena. Or he can find peace. If he chooses the latter, we’l see his soul ascend within a few minutes. If he decides to stay, he’s going to be in real danger. The pain wil be immense, and the chance for some sort of wicked infection setting in on a wound like that is excel ent. As soon as we know, we should move him.”
“Then I’d better get busy.”
Cole had shoved his shades back, which swept his hair away from his face as wel , giving him a much more serious look than usual. He held out his hands to me. “I need that tool.” Something about the way he said it made me decide that questioning his motives was so far out of order that I might lose his friendship if I went there. So I just raised the Rocenz to him. He took the hammer and chisel in his hands, holding them so comfortably I’d have thought he’d been born to work wood, except I’d never seen him craft anything more artistic than a ham- and-cheese sandwich.
He took a stone from his pocket. The same one Kyphas had used to carve his name on in Marrakech.
“Cole,” said Vayl, his voice firm, warning. “Do you know what you are doing?” Cole stared into his eyes. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.” He glanced over at me solemnly. “I have to do this.” I nodded, only barely understanding. But I didn’t have to. He was my friend. He needed my support. That was al I real y had to know.
Steadying the rock between his feet just like I’d done with Sthenno’s heartstone, Cole began to chisel letters. K. Y. P. H. A. By the time he got to the first curve of the S, the sky above us had begun to darken. We tried to ignore it, but Helena began to look worried.
“We need to get out of here,” she whispered to Dave, who was bending over Zel , providing the first-aid skil s he’d learned in the military.
He nodded. “I agree.” He looked up at Raoul. “Can you take him to your place? He’s dead so, you know, I can feel his state pretty clearly.” Dave cleared his throat uncomfortably as we tried, and failed, not to gape at him. “The good news is that he’s back.” Helena clapped her hands to her mouth to hold back a whole series of sobs that insisted on pouring out around the edges of her fingers anyway. Dave stared at her grimly. “The bad news is that he’s already infected with something, and he’s not fighting it off because he’s so badly hurt. It’s less like a disease than a way of thinking. He’s already considering giving up.”
“That’s not my Zel ,” said Helena.
Dave shook his head. “No. I think it’s hel , getting into his spirit. And if we don’t evacuate him soon, it’l sink into his core. I’m not saying he couldn’t beat this on his own. He’s got you, Helena, and that’s a lot. But if what Raoul said is true about hel ’s atmosphere, and I’m right about this infection??”
“Then we go,” said Raoul. He picked Zel up and threw him over his shoulder like he weighed only slightly more than a basket of dirty clothes. “You can handle this,” he told me.
“Of course. I’l be in touch.”
He smirked. “That I know.” Then his lips stretched into a smile. “I’m proud of you, Jasmine.” That was al he said. And I didn’t know how to answer except to blink like a damn barn owl. Then Helena distracted us both, reaching out to Vayl, who took her hand, bowed over it like they were stil living in eighteenth-century London, and kissed it. When he rose again, the sorrow in his eyes was so deep it threatened to swal ow them both.
“My girl. Had I known you were here—”
“I know. You would’ve rescued me in an instant. And probably died, or worse, been captured and suffered endless tortures in the attempt.” She smiled up at him. “You showed me the way to survive.” She glanced at Zel . “Even to be happy. And then I found out how to continue on my own. Isn’t that what good parents do?”
He shrugged. “I would not know.”
She put her arms around him. “But you do. I love you, Papa. Zel and I wil come visit as soon as he’s better.” She glanced over at me. “We have a lot of catching up to do, don’t we?”
“Banana Fana Shoshana” along with her newfound backup singers between long sips from her third margarita, so I looked further. To my mental librarian, who was skidding around the stacks in her sensible pumps, pencils sticking out of her bun in five different directions as she searched wildly for something to write with. She found a crayon lying on top of a slightly dented study carrel and waved it at me as she yel ed,
