Fractured Souls(49)

I slip out from under him and run for the doorway. “Laylen!” I shout.
Nicholas staggers to his feet and chases after me. I feel his fingers graze my back right as I step up the stairs and then suddenly he’s wrenching me back toward him again by the back of my shirt. I fall on my knees on the first stair and slam my head against the wooden step.
“Help!” I scream, clawing my way away from him as my head throbs. “Goddammit let me go!”
Laylen appears at the bottom step as if out of thin air. He takes one quick look at Nicholas lying on top of me as I try to crawl my way up the stairs and grabs Nicholas by the back of the neck, prying him off me. I skitter to the side of the banister as Laylen shoves Nicholas down to the floor on his back.
“If you ever touch her again,” Laylen stands over him, “I’ll fucking break your legs off.”
I could hug Laylen right now and maybe in a few minutes I will. I work to catch my breath as I cup the bottom of my neck that I’m sure is going to have fingertip sized bruises on it when morning rolls around.
“Are you okay?” Laylen glances over my body, shaking his head at the wounds on my neck.
I nod, rubbing my cheek that Nicolas slapped. “Yeah, I think so.”
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Laylen says when he sees my swollen cheek, and then he turns back to Nicholas.
As Laylen reaches for Nicholas he rolls to the side and hops to his feet before running into the living room. He stands in the corner, putting the crystal ball into his pocket.
“Don’t you even think about it!" Laylen runs for him, knocking over the sofa as he leaps over it.
Laylen lands only feet away from him, Nicholas winks at me, and then evaporates from the living room, taking the Ira and my ticket to The Underworld—and my mother—with him.
 

Chapter 16
 
After Nicholas leaves with the Ira, Laylen makes us some coffee and we sit down in the kitchen while I explain to him in detail what happened, not just with the vision, but how Nicholas isn’t even supposed to be in The Underworld and he was pretty much playing us all along for God knows what reason.
“I still can’t believe it,” Laylen mumbles, shaking his head. “Why would he go through all that trouble to hang around here if he was never planning on taking you there? It’s such a waste of time.”
“Well, he did get that invisibility powder stuff out of it, but still… he got that in the beginning so why stick around?” I shake my head, feeling so Goddamn frustrated and powerless. My head and cheek are swollen, and I’m so damn jittery it’s ridiculous. “And I never got the Ira… yet I know we get in there somehow…. I saw Alex and myself in The Underworld trying to save my mom, so there’s got to be a way to do it.”
Laylen contemplates while fiddling with his lip ring, twisting it back and forth. “Alex was there…” He takes a sip of his coffee, dazing off into space. “Maybe that’s where we need to start, then.”
“With Alex?” I give him a quizzical look as I take a gulp of coffee from my mug and the warm liquid spills down my throat, soothing my insides. “But he’s in the City of Crystal and I’m not sure how to get him out of there since I have no idea what he’s doing down there.”
He tenses. “Well, with what you saw, he kind of has to be here to make it happen. He also has to have that gem you saw.”
“Which, from what my memories are telling me, Alex and I had once in a hideout hidden in the forest, but I don’t know exactly where it is because my memories haven’t connected that part yet.”
“Alex should know, though,” Laylen points out. “Let’s just hope the gem’s still there.”
I frown as I set my mug on the table. “The frustrating thing is that Alex is in the City of Crystal for pretty much no reason.”
Laylen shakes his head. “That’s not completely true. Because of Nicholas’s involvement, you now know that you need to have the Ira to get into The Underworld. It just sucks that he has it.”
“I know.” I mutter and sip on my coffee.
Laylen adds a spoonful of sugar to his coffee and stirs it. “I say we start with Alex and get him back here. Then we’ll make a plan to get the Ira and the gem. We just need to find a way to get into the City of Crystal.”
The idea of going there again doesn’t make me happy, but saving Alex does. So does the idea that he and I will be going into The Underworld to save my mother, even if she did look completely hollow, I still have hope that somehow, through all this, she’ll come back to me and be able to help figure out what Stephan’s up to. Or maybe, if I’m lucky, get the star’s energy out of me.