Rogue (31 page)

“Well, neither have I, so . . .” She waved her hand. “Just keep going.”

But whatever he was doing wasn’t working. He closed his eyes, his voice worried. “Shit.”

“Hey, I have an idea,” Lex said. “Give me a sec.”

He kept trying. “Idea as in ‘good idea,’ or idea as in ‘let’s take the Ferris wheel, everyone, I’m sure it’ll be a carefree ride of thrills and delights and whimsy’—”

“Does this help?”

Driggs opened his eyes and, in the space of a yoctosecond, popped right into a solid body. Lex half expected to hear a wacky
boing
sound effect.

She grabbed his arm to keep him that way, while he kept on staring at her bare chest. “So,” he said, swallowing, “good idea, then.”

“Thank you.”

He pulled her close and gave her a kiss. “And thank
you
for sparing me your devil corset.”

She held it up and waved it in his face. “It’s a standard bra, Driggs. From, like, Target.”

“Satan employs many disguises.”

“Like you’re from the Land of Superior Underwear. Let’s see what sort of designer boxers you’ve chosen to grace my presence with today.” She unzipped his pants and looked. “Dude. Penguins?”

“Um, penguins are officially recognized as the most adorable bird on the planet,” he said, a hint of anxiety creeping into his voice. “What’s wrong with penguins?”

“Nothing—”

“And igloos. See their little igloos?”

“Yes—”

“The Santa >a ashats are a bit much, I’ll give you that, but they were a Christmas present, okay? And if I’d known that I was going to die while wearing them and be forever doomed to their Arctic quirkiness—and of hypothermia, too, how’s that for irony—”

“Driggs,” she interrupted, grabbing his chin and boring her eyes into his. “I thought we were on a tight time frame here.”

“Right.” He scratched his head. “I think that perhaps, since I’m talking way too much, there is the slightest chance that I might be a tiny bit nervous.”

Lex smirked. “Relax, spaz.”

“Oh, no way. You do
not
get to use that against me. I just—” He scratched his head. “I want this to be perfect.”

“I’m not sure we’re capable of perfect. Would you be willing to settle for cracktastic?”

Driggs thought about this, then nodded. “I would.”

With that, they started making out so heavily that Lex was sure the gas tank would explode and send them both to a firebally grave. They stopped only once so that Driggs could point at the fogged windshield and say, “Remember that scene from
Titanic
—”

“Yes, Driggs. Everyone remembers that scene from
Titanic
.”

“See? Classic cinema.”

“Just please don’t start shouting that you’re the king of the world, or I swear, I will not hesitate for one second to cut off your—ow!”

“What?”

“Gearshift. Stabbing me. In the back.”

“Okay, maybe if I lift you this way—”

Her elbow knocked into something. The windshield wipers sprang to life.

“Oh, this is fun,” she said. “Now all we need is some whipped cream and a video camera.”

Driggs laughed and squeezed her tighter. “Lex?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re ridiculous. I love you.”

She felt a lump rise in her throat, but she pushed it back down. Not now. She ran her hands through his still-wet hair and looked into his blue-brown eyes. “I love you too.”

He ran his hand down her cheek. “And Lex?”

“Yes?”

“There’s a bug in your hair.”

“Even better.”

She gave him another quick peck, then looked in the mirror to investigate her hair.
“Shit,”
she said, her eyes opening wide. “Don’t move.”

“Why, are you sticking to the leather seat? Because I am all kinds of sticking to the leather seat, in places that I didn’t even
know
about—”

“No. Slightly bigger problem,” she said, still frozen. “Uncle Mort: staring. Us: very naked.”

“Crap.” Driggs tried to wipe his face clean of saliva, though there was a s
izable amount. “Think he can see us?”

“He’s not a dinosaur, Driggs. His vision doesn’t depend solely on movement.”

“Okay, you really need to stop basing your entire knowledge of dinosaurs on what you learned in
Jurassic Park
.”

Lex shushed him again, poked her head up over the headrest, and made eye contact with her frowning uncle.

Cringing, she held her breath and waited for the yelling and separating and lifelong grounding to commence, complete with a sideshow of exposed body parts flapping whimsically in the night breeze—

But he just turned around and went back into the house.

“What . . . just happened?” Driggs asked.

“I’m not sure,” Lex said. “I think we just got consent to do—” She waved her hands. “You know. Stuff.”

“Then stuff,” he said, taking her back into his arms, “is what we shall do.”

So they diem" She wavd stuff. All night long. Awkward, sweaty, inexperienced, painful, wonderful, gearshift-poking, windshield-wiper-waving stuff.

And it couldn’t have been more cracktastic.

“Rise and shine, Croakers!” Uncle Mort’s Cuff shouted early the next morning. “G’day? Anyone there?”

The Juniors jolted up from the makeshift beds they’d fashioned for themselves around the living room—except for Driggs, who’d gone back to Croak to check on Lex’s parents, and Ferbus, who was still sleeping, snoring, and drooling.

They huddled together around Uncle Mort. “Broomie?” he rasped into his Cuff, still half asleep.

“Yeah, I’ve got some bloody good news. It worked.”

That woke him up. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, sealing the portal—it worked!” she exclaimed. Lex could just imagine her with a giant Yorick in hand, sloshing it around. “It just occurred to me that you had no way of knowing that, so I thought I’d check in. The plan is officially working. The Afterlife hasn’t lightened up any yet, but hey, we’ll take what we can get, eh?”

“How do you know that for sure?” Lex asked.

“Lest you forget, we had a portal ourselves up until a few hours ago. The souls inside were kind enough to fill us in, Pip among them.”

Bang tensed up and grabbed Elysia’s arm.

“Pip’s okay?” Elysia asked.

“Oh, more than okay. He’s with Riqo, and they’re as happy as pigs in slop.”

A tiny smile formed on Bang’s face.

“Some girl named Sofi, too. She said to tell Elysia thanks, whatever that means.”

“How’s everything else going in DeMyse?” Uncle Mort asked.

They heard a slosh of liquid and a gulp. “Swimmingly!” she said, mouth half full. “Only one problem: that dillhole Norwood is still Crashing around like a drunken elephant—”

“Actually,” Uncle Mort said with a bit of guilt, “that was us.”

“Oh. Well, knock it off. Violations can still cause damage—and the portal destruction itself is far from a delicate procedure. The blast zones around them are hit pretty hard.”

“And—your portal?”

“Yep. LeRoy took care of it. Blew the hub clean up, but we’re all right.”

Uncle Mort looked visibly relieved. “Good. Now we can start spreading the word—”

“Start? What do you think I’ve been doing all night long?”

Puzzled, Uncle Mort reached into his bag and pulled out a rolled-up sheet of paper. Lex recognized it as the world map he’d taken from his basement. But what she hadn’t noticed then were the little dots spattered around in nearly every country.

“Grim towns!” Elysia said.

There they were, all over the world. Some, like Croak, were green, while Necropolis and DeMyse and many others were red. In fact, some of them were switching colors before their eyes.

“Whoa,” Lex said, pointing at one that had just turned red, right in the middle of Australia. “What happened?”

“The mayor of Perish just destroyed its portal,” Uncle Mort explained.

Just like the keypad doors in Necropolis
, Lex thought,
but the other way around
. Green to red, doors to the Afterlife locking them out forever.

She surveyed the map. There weren’t many green ones left. “You were right,” she said to Uncle Mort. “The mayors really are sealing the portals.”

“Yeah,” he said, lightly running his fingers over the dots, his eyes filling with something that Lex assumed was gratiingnot looktude. “They are.”

“At this rate,” Broomie said, “they should all be closed up within a few hours. Once they are, Mort, you take care of the last one, and bam—damage stopped. Then Lex does her thing, zaps that Grotton dickwad to kingdom come—and double bam, damage reversed!”

Lex felt like retching at the prospect, but she said nothing. “One small snag, though,” Broomie said. “You’ll have to get past Norwood. Sounds like he and all the other gun-toting blokes in Croak are gearing up for a showdown.”

Lex swallowed. “One that will probably involve my parents.”

“Most likely,” Broomie said. “Pandora issued a national statement requiring all Grims to do as you ask, give you anything you need, and get the hell out of your way. She said compliance is mandatory, but Norwood doesn’t give a bugger what she says. So be prepared for a bit of a tussle.”

Uncle Mort nodded. “This is more than I could have hoped for. Thank you, Broomie.”

“No worries, mate. Good luck.” She clicked off.

Uncle Mort sat quietly for a moment, looking at the map, then stood up. “Okay, you heard the woman,” he said flatly. “We leave for Croak in a few hours.” He tossed the map to Elysia. “Lys, you’re on map duty. Let me know when all the cities have changed to red.”

“You got it!” she said, eagerly rolling it out in front of her.

“Until then, I’m going to take a walk,” he said, getting up. “Won’t be gone long.”

Lex watched him go. He drifted out the door, his eyes vacant. Was he just tired, or was he acting weird?

Lex rubbed her eyes again, then glanced at Elysia, who was
definitely
acting weird. The girl was grinning from ear to ear, staring at that map.

“Lys, what’s going on with you?” Lex asked. “You seem . . .”

She couldn’t put her finger on it. Elysia was just as scared and miserable as the rest of them, Lex knew, especially after everything that had happened in Necropolis. Still, she was unmistakably bubblier than usual.

“Different, right?” Elysia put her elbow on the table and propped her chin up with her hand. “I
feel
different. I don’t know—lighter, somehow. Like, you know how back when you were in school, you’d be so worried about the end of the year, with all the tests and finals and stuff, and then when they were all over and it was summer vacation, you just felt like this big weight had been lifted off of you and all you had to worry about was what time the pool opened so you could go swimming all day?”

“Uh—sure.”

“That’s what it feels like!” Her eyes were sparkling.
Sparkling
. “I know it doesn’t make any sense with everything that’s happened, especially since we’re all about to die in this carnagepalooza, but it’s the truth. I feel—I feel—”

“Perky.”

“
So
perky!” Elysia shook her head. “I’m really, really sorry, Lex. It’s awful, isn’t it? I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s not like I’m
happy
that any of this has happened.”

“Of course not,” said Lex. “Still—when did you start feeling this way?”

Elysia frowned. “I think it was after I got caught by the guards. Maybe I was relieved, you know? I mean, our main goal in Necropolis was to not get caught, so once I got caught, it was like, well, there’s nothing else I can do, right? Pressure’s off. Plus, Boulder was really nice to me, made me feel comfortable and not completely scared out of my gourd—”

“You said you felt weird.”

“Huh?” Elysia asked, thrown.

“Driggs grabbed you and tried to pull you up into the air duct, but then he disappeared e dight had band you fell down to the floor,” Lex said, slowly recalling the series of events, “and you said you felt weird.”

Elysia scrunched up her nose. “Did I? That whole thing was a blur. I barely remember it.”

Lex thought for a moment, then dug around in her bag and pulled out her Lifeglass. She hated looking at the thing—it stored way more bad memories than good ones—but its replay function had saved their asses once. Maybe it could again.

She put it on the table and peered into the upper bulb. Images from the past few hours started to flash through the glass, but in reverse, like a DVD skipping back through its chapters: the call from Broomie, Lex and Driggs undressing in the car . . . 

Lex reddened. “You probably weren’t supposed to see that.”

“Come on, Lex,” said Elysia. “We heard the whole thing.”

Lex reddened some more.

The images kept coming. The arrival at Ayjay’s house, the explosion at Necropolis, the president’s office, the training modules. Then there it was: the Junior dorm.

Lex shook the Lifeglass, trying to make it play forward. She’d never quite learned how to work it. “There,” she said, pointing at the air duct. “Driggs grabbed you, you fell back down to the floor, and—there’s that strange look on your face. What were you thinking at that moment?”

Elysia’s eyes widened. “Something happened when Driggs touched me,” she said, and Lex remembered it too. That weird shock wave that had emanated out of him. “It was like he’d punched me, but with—I don’t know. Air? A magnetic force field or something?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. But I meant it, I
did
feel weird. And ever since, I’ve had all these nutty happy feelings.”

Lex puffed some air out of her mouth. “Strange.” She picked up the Lifeglass and gave it another shake, hoping to turn it off, but it started rewinding again. “No,
stop
,” she scolded it. “Don’t—”

“Wait!” Elysia grabbed the Lifeglass out of her hands and paused it. “It’s Zara!”

It
was
Zara. And she looked just as surprised as they did.

“How?” Lex said, utterly confused. “The only time I saw Zara was in the president’s office, and this isn’t . . .”

It was then that she spotted the tiles. Dark green, with little crossed scythes in the middle of them.