Everyone mattered.
Kody swallowed hard. “Can I ask a personal question?”
Xev shrugged. “Sure.”
“Given that amount of power you were born with … how did they ever capture you?”
Agony swam in the hazel depths of Xev’s rust-colored eyes. His features turned to stone as a single tear slid down his cheek. “There’s the bitterest irony of all. They unknowingly sent the only warrior after me I would never harm.”
“Who?” Nick asked.
“The one life I wouldn’t take.”
“And that was?”
“A life that mattered more to me than my own.”
Nick sighed as he passed an irritated grimace to Kody and gave up on the never-ending hamster wheel loop of madness. It was obvious that even now, Xev had no inclination of sharing that identity with anyone. Whoever it was, he intended to let no one use them to hurt him again.
He could respect that, too.
Given that, Nick changed the subject. “So which of the gates do you control in this smorgasbord of fun-filled nightmarish holocaust?”
“The prison realms of the cursed gods. Both good and bad. I can bring them all back into play and return them to war against each other.”
Kody gestured toward the window. “And the Memitim? Who holds their key?”
“The souls of the dead are controlled by Yrre. She’s the one who would have unleashed them against Caleb.”
Kody went pale. “Nick saw her earlier.”
“What?”
Nick nodded. “In the hallway at school. Right before Caleb got sick.”
“And neither of you mentioned it before now?” His tone betrayed his outrage.
“I thought I was hallucinating.”
Xev arched one arctic blue brow. “You do that a lot?”
“Here lately? More than I want to cop to. Let us not forget that I just got back from an alternate universe. While I like to think I’m adjusting pretty well to that, I do still have some lingering issues.”
Xev cursed under his breath.
“But the gates were sealed shut after his father died,” Kody insisted. “Caleb wouldn’t have made that mistake. He knows the severity of those consequences.”
Xev ignored her outburst. “Are there any other hallucinations I need to be aware of?”
“Aside from you—the cat that drinks up all my milk in the middle of the night while I sleep—suicide crows, ghost riders in the school hallway, killer mosquitos, and plague doctors, I think we’re covered. Unless you want to count the rampaging teenage werewolves.” He glanced over to Kody. “Oh, and the ghost girlfriend, of course.”
“Plague doctors?” Xev scowled. “What are plague doctors?”
Nick snorted. “That’s all you got out of my rant? Really?”
Kody ignored him. “Zeitjägers.”
“Why were they there?”
Shaking his head, Nick shrugged. “No idea. They didn’t exactly speak. Just stared at me like my mom at a parent-teacher conference where I royally screwed up. And speaking of, none of this is getting me closer to my mom. I’m thinking we should go see Mark and find out what happened, as soon as possible.” He peeked through the curtains. “So how do we get rid of or through psycho Daffy Duck out there?”