I glanced at Bea and the others. Fisher looked back at me, grim. Then someone gasped. The vane was spinning again, same as before, but this time it stopped sooner.
Pointing south.
It spun again.
South.
And again.
South.
And once more.
South.
By the time it was done, Lauren had covered her mouth with both hands. Bea was red with anger. Fisher was visibly sweating. In that one fog, five souls had been taken. Five souls had been relegated to the Shadowlands.
New rule
“I’m not going to usher him,” I hissed to Joaquin as we followed Bea, Fisher, and Krista through the crowded Thirsty Swan toward the back hallway. “He’s not going. Not now. Not when everyone’s going to the Shadowlands.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Joaquin whispered back, tugging me toward the wall. “No one will expect you to usher him. I can’t even believe he’s your charge. It’s like the universe is trying to mess with you.”
I scoffed. Like the universe gave a crap about me. But Joaquin fixed me with a stare that made me shrivel inside. Could the universe really be messing with me?
“You should have seen Darcy, though,” I said, trying to think about anything else. “She was sure Steven Nell was out there, ready to grab my father, and she just ran out there to save him. It was intense.”
Joaquin’s eyebrows darted skyward. “Really?”
I laughed under my breath. “Yeah. I’ve never seen her do anything like that before. She was, like, Super Darcy.”
“Interesting,” Joaquin said, stepping sideways to let a visitor pass by with a mug of beer. “Sorry I missed that. I was busy serving chicken soup to my ‘grandma.’”
“Right!” I brought my hand to my forehead. “How is Ursula?”
“She’s…sick,” Joaquin replied, sighing. “I’d say she’ll be all right, since it doesn’t look that bad, but with everything else going on around here, what the hell do I know?”
Bea, Fisher, and Krista were all waiting in the hall, eyeing us expectantly. Joaquin fumbled in his pocket for a set of keys, then opened the door to the stockroom and backed up against it, holding it for us. I stepped through first and slid aside to make way. The room was long and slim and cramped with boxes and barrels, old wooden things with iron clasps that looked like they’d been there for centuries. The air smelled of stale beer and sawdust, peanuts, and salt. The others filed in silently, their sneakers and sandals scraping on the wood floor. Krista hoisted herself up onto a barrel, and Bea leaned back next to her against a shelf full of condiment bottles and coffee mugs. Fisher took a spot by the back door, squaring his shoulders like a bouncer. A moment later Kevin appeared, and right away he began pacing and muttering to himself, as if hopped up on too much Red Bull. Then Lauren slipped through, shooting me an unreadable glance as she squeezed by me.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Her eyes darted to the door. Joaquin had just started to let it shut when a hand stopped it. I held my breath, expecting to see Tristan, but it wasn’t him. It was Pete. A moment later, Nadia and Cori joined him. They walked along the near wall until Pete’s shoulder knocked into a stack of boxes taller than him, and they stopped. Nadia shot me a piercing look as she settled back against the shelves.
My stomach clenched, and the temperature in the room seemed to spike. Joaquin gave me a look that was somehow alarmed and soothing all at once. Like, Yes, this is not good, but it will be fine. I pressed my sweaty palms together and hoped he was right.
“Everyone here?” Joaquin asked.
“Not Tristan,” Krista pointed out.
Joaquin glanced back toward the noisy bar. A loud cheer went up, as if the home team had just scored a goal on TV. Except there were no TVs here. No home team to speak of.
“I don’t think Tristan’s coming,” he said, closing the door.
Everyone looked around nervously.
“What the hell is going on?” Bea asked, cracking her knuckles.
“What’s going on is, I just sent someone to the Shadowlands,” Kevin blurted out vehemently. “Someone who was not supposed to go there.”
“Me, too,” Krista said quietly.
“Anyone else?” Joaquin asked, stepping farther into the room.
Nadia raised her hand, staring straight at me until I had to look away.
“Me, too,” Cori said.
That made four.
“Who else? There were five,” Joaquin said. His question was met with silence, apart from the laughter out in the bar. “Who else?” Joaquin shouted.
“Pete!” Cori said through her teeth.
“All right! I brought someone up there, but if he went to the Shadowlands, I got no beef with it,” he said. “That guy deserved it.”
“All right, fine,” Joaquin said. “That’s four out of five gone to the wrong place.”
“And three of us had one, too,” Fisher said. “Me, J., and Rory.”
All eyes flicked to me.
“There’s a shock,” Nadia muttered.
“Nadia, don’t even start,” Bea said.
My legs trembled. My eyes darted to the door.
“Oh, please! Do you people really not see what’s going on here?” Nadia said, gesturing at me with an open hand. “She’s doing this! First the dying and the insects and the sickness, now this! All of it started when she got here, but somehow she’s got all of you snowed! Even Tristan! It’s just like Jessica all over again.”
“Shut up about Jessica!” Joaquin shouted, his voice ringing loudly through the room. “You don’t know anything about her!”
The room went silent. I held my breath, startled. Joaquin’s chest heaved, his face a hardened mask of fury. He pressed his fist into his other hand and clenched his jaw. Suddenly I remembered what Nadia had said the other night at the cove, about a pissing match over a girl. Jessica. It had to have been.
“Were any of you here when the Jessica incident happened?” Joaquin asked. “No! You weren’t. I was, and this is nothing like what Jessica did. What she did was the fault of one person, a result of an error in judgment.”
Kevin scoffed.
“Okay, a huge error in judgment, but still…” Joaquin continued. “She made a choice and acted on it. This is nothing like that. This couldn’t be perpetrated by one person and especially not by one person who just learned our ways five days ago.”
“I don’t know,” Kevin said, looking me up and down. “She did kill someone in the other world.”
My jaw dropped. “He was a serial killer!”
“She was only defending herself, Kevin,” Krista put in. “And he killed her first.” She cast me an apologetic look. “Sort of.”
“Yeah, and you’re hardly one to throw stones, Slimy, considering your life,” Bea added.
“Screw you, Bea! Not all of us grew up in a perfect house with perfect parents and crazy athletic genes!” Kevin shouted, getting right in her face.
“Oh, will you stop using your drunk father as an excuse, already?” Bea replied. “People make their own choices!”
“You have no clue, Beatrice,” Kevin sneered, looking her up and down.
Suddenly, she took a swing at him, and the situation crumbled. Pete grabbed Kevin, Fisher got between them, and Lauren and Krista did their best to hold back a seething Bea. I flattened myself against the wall as a wayward foot flew toward my face.
“That’s enough!” Joaquin shouted, grabbing Kevin by his lapels and throwing him against the door. The crack brought everyone up short. They froze in the middle of a violent tableau, everyone grabbing everyone else, chests heaving for breath.