Parallel Lines- *RAYOR*

Chapter 22

"I'm sorry," I say. It's different to the previous apologies I have made, even about more trivial things. This time, I don't justify my actions. This time, I mean it.

Aster got a message from a reaper servant a few hours after we got home, and his face turned white.

"What happened?" I ask, looking down at his reflection in my scythe. He grabs his own without a word. "Where are you going?"

"You're coming too, Nicco," he says.

"W-What did I do?" I think I have already been reprimanded enough for the Gabriel incident. What else had I done?

He looks round at me, and his face looks oddly serious. I bite my lip, tears springing to my eyes. "Is Levy at the palace?"

"Yes," says Aster. "They're all there."

I don't understand, but he grabs my wrist and before I know it, we're whisked away. We never use teleportation in the Underworld, because it's so draining.

That's when I realise that something is wrong.

We thump onto a carpeted floor. my brain is woozy. I look up and am blinded by lights. I see Levy first. Then Blake. Aster. Arielle. Kei. Kyle.

And Death.

And I know what is happening, and I need to stop it.

"No! I- I thought you two made a potion!" I say to Levy. "What-"

"It's not working," says Blake. Her face is pale and pinched, and her eyes as dark as black holes. She looks more like the reaper she looked like two years ago than the softer version that had replaced it after Willow's death.

"Is he dead?" I whisper.

"No. But his- his state is critical," says Death jerkily. I didn't know he could stutter. I didn't know that anything could break him.

I guess Gabriel is an exception.

I understand, fully this time. We're here to say goodbye. "No," I say. My voice is too large in this big room. Levy is staring at me. "No, he'll get better." I look round. There's a sort of machine to the side of Gabriel's bed, but I can tell it's magical. It practically hums with it. A vial of green blood is clasped in metal, and a long tube attached to a band is taking Gabriel's pulse. A red line is zigzagging across a screen. I have a feeling the line should be green.

"He's not dead," I say, looking at Gabriel. He's pale, and seems younger than ever; still as a corpse, his eyes closed as if in slumber. His wings make him look like an angel. His complexion is waxen, like he is dead already.

No one says the word.

Yet.

"There's time," I say. "He could stabilise, he-"

"Shut up," hisses Death. I shut up. For a moment.

"He's right," says Blake after a while. "If it stabilises, Gabriel will be okay. If it doesn't-" she looks down.

"What are we waiting for?"

"Him to wake up, or die," says Kei coldly. Blake lets out a choked noise that I didn't think she was capable of.

I wonder why Death is here. Didn't he have business to attend to? But I guess that, even though this could take hours, or possibly forever, he doesn't care.

The red line drops, turning darker. I gasp. I look round, wondering what it means. Arielle's face was tear-stained. Levy was holding back a sob. Kei was looking at Gabriel attentively, and Kyle was holding his hand. I felt a flash of realisation for that small mystery I had always been wondering about. I smile to myself.

"Kyle and I have to leave," says Kei eventually. "I need to go stay with Jade. Mama's been away for a few hours now, she'll be scared."

"Maybe we should leave him with his family," says Arielle. I make a move to walk away with Aster but Blake says jerkily, "Stay. You're as much a family to him as I am."

I am uncomfortable. I should be grateful, I know, and I also know Blake forgives me. And I get how hard that must be for her. But I still didn't like being there. For all we knew the machine was faulty and Gabriel could already be dead.

I watched the red line drop to the bottom of the screen, an inch away from another line which I knew indicated death.

"I'm sorry," I say. It's different to the previous apologies I have made, even about more trivial things. This time, I don't justify my actions. This time, I mean it. It's like Levy, and Gabriel, and Blake, and Aster, have pulled me through a door into a room which holds the truth, but only now has my sight cleared enough to see it.

It was spoken quietly, but the large room amplified the sound. I look down, embarrassed. But I have to finish. "It wasn't fair. I was being selfish; I knew I was risking his life but I got too caught up with mine to care. It wasn't right. It- isn't right."

It's an unsatisfactory ending. The glare of Death, and Blake's expression of shock, is making my face heat up in embarrassment. I keep staring at the floor, as if it will help my predicament. Levy's looking at me. I know it; I can sense it. He's my twin.

The machine beeps and Blake looks away, presumably to check it but I saw the glint of light reflecting off a tear on her cheek.

She gasps, and almost knocks me over as she leaps forwards to get a better look at the machine.

"What?" Levy cries, standing on his tiptoes to look over Blake's head. I notice he's got taller.

Aster, fearing the worse, strides forward but stops dead when he looks at the machine. "Oh my god."

"What?" I say, exchanging a glance with Levy. I can hear the panic in my own voice. His eyes are quickly filling up with tears. I instinctively reach out and squeeze his hand, then pull him forwards, into the space between Aster and Blake's shoulders.

I watched the red line bob up and down, zigzagging a little, but... rising. It was now a quarter- no, half the way between the line that indicates death and the line that indicates wakefulness. Then it stops rising, still tracing its way across the screen. Not dropping. Not rising, anymore. But out of the danger zone marked in red. Out of trouble.

Into safety.

Blake starts to cry. Aster's crying too. He puts an arm round her and my eyes are stinging. I realise I'm still holding Levy's hand and I let go, and turn around to look at Death. His eyes are glinting from beneath his hood, but not in the angry way before. I wondered if he was crying too.

The tears drip off my chin before I realise that they have escaped my eyes, and a choked sound comes from Levy. I see his face, wet with tears, and inwardly scoff. He's crying more than me, I think, as if it's some sort of achievement. He was always the weaker of the two.

But it doesn't matter now. Nothing matters. Aster pulls me and Levy into a hug, and it's so tight that the air is squeezed out of me. I can't see anything through the blur of tears and hair, but I know these hands- Aster's, warm and friendly, Blake's, slender and graceful- and Levy's, which I know as well as my own.