EverWorld (Book 3 of the Down World Series)

Chapter Two

From a distance, the pyramid house almost looked like what it was always supposed to be: full of life.

In the film of moonlight creeping through the wisps of winter clouds, it was hard to make out the decay of the years, the century of misuse and neglect that had left it a hulking shadow of its glory days, back in the '20s when it had been built by a wealthy banker trying to outdo his neighbors.

I climbed through the window like a thief, just as I had the first night I came here, and it felt like all the years were whirling into one frozen moment. Was I fifteen again? Seventeen? Was I back in this room the night Adam first kissed me, the music box smashed against the wall, mermaids diving in infinite loops, oceans crashing all around us.

Looking about the deserted room, I could still picture it the way it had looked that night. The overelaborate bric-a-brac, the silken love seat, the gilded art that was trying a little too hard to prove to anyone who might be interested that the people who lived here were better than them.

I could smell the vodka pouring out of the bottle, acrid and harsh, dripping onto my bare feet. Adam's strong arms lifting me into the air.

But I shook my head. That's not why I was here.

I turned when I saw the headlights stream through the now-opened window, drowning me in a blast of yellow. My throat ran dry as I combed my fingers through my hair, removing the ponytail as I did so.

Then there was nothing to do but wait as he turned off the engine and climbed in to meet me.

Kieren bumped his head as he passed the window frame, probably a result of the extra two inches he'd grown since the last time we'd come here together—the night he told me the truth about the train accident, how Robbie had never really died.

He didn't look a thing like that young boy anymore, to be honest. He had grown out his hair, an obvious rebuttal of the close military crop ROTC had insisted upon. Now that he was almost twenty-one, he had finished the program, a fact which I knew from one of his very rare social media posts.

We hadn't talked in a couple months when I "hearted" that post, not since I'd said goodbye to him at the train station in August. He then hearted one of mine, which led to a handful of polite mid-afternoon text messages, followed by a couple of late-night ones that were a little less polite. You were the one that wanted this might have been the last one I sent him. That was a month ago.

He'd been asking me to meet up since I tagged my father's house as a location last week. But until tonight, I hadn't responded.

He smiled when he saw me waiting for him, and despite what I had promised myself, I smiled back.

I always smiled back when I saw Kieren.

"I win the bet then," he said.

"What bet is that?"

"I bet myself you wouldn't come."

"Yeah, what were my odds?"

"Fifty-fifty," he said, laughing either at himself for winning, or at me for caving. I wasn't sure which.

"Why here?" I asked. Kieren didn't know any of the details of what had happened between Adam and me in the past. I mean, he didn't know anything more than what Brady had told him, and even that was a lot of speculation.

So he had no way of knowing that this was the very room where Adam and I had first kissed, which was either a year or twenty years ago, depending on how you looked at it. So was it just a coincidence that he'd picked this location for our late-night rendezvous?