Everbound by Brodi Ashton

was the only other mortal who knew all about the Everneath, and I’d been talking to her about how to get back there. But we’d been so focused on that first step—finding Cole—that we hadn’t discussed anything else. Maybe she would know what Cole was hiding.
    If anything.
    It was too early to go to Mrs. Jenkins’s house now, so I closed the drawer and went into the kitchen to brew some coffee. Tommy was at the table. He still had school today. Three more days until he was done for the summer.
    I looked over his shoulder. The top of the paper read HELP DOROTHY FIND HER WAY TO THE WIZARD . “Mazes? That’s what the fourth grade considers homework?”
    Tommy pressed his pencil into the paper so he wouldn’t lose his spot and looked up at me. “It’s the last week of school. I have, like, a stack of these to do.” He lowered his head. “And they’re harder than they look.”
    “Start from the end.”
    “Why?”
    I paused, not really sure why. It was just how I’d always done them. “It’s easier that way.”
    He lifted his pencil and placed the point deliberately at the end. “I’ll try,” he said.
    I couldn’t stop staring at the maze. Pencil lines twisted around corners and back on themselves where Tommy had run into a block.
    I’d never understood the educational legitimacy of mazes. They didn’t necessarily test cognitive ability. Wasn’t it really just an exercise in trial and error? Did anyone ever lose points for going the wrong way initially?
    Not in a maze. And yet the exercise of putting pencil to paper and getting to the end of a maze never disappeared. Nobody lost points for going the wrong way at first in a maze. But they did in life. Every wrong turn had an effect on the rest of the maze. Every mistake affected the path, didn’t it?
    My wrong turn—choosing to go to the Everneath with Cole—had taken a life.
    No. My choice hadn’t taken a life yet. Jack wasn’t dead yet.
    Mazes. Why was I dwelling on them? Last night Cole had described the Everneath as a maze. I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. There was something there. It was as if seeing Tommy’s maze had caused a flash inside my head. Not a big flash but more like the negative of a photograph. A little seedling deep in my mind, prompting me forward.
    Grabbing the new mythology book that had been sitting on the table all day, I ruffed up Tommy’s hair and then went to my room. I pushed aside the stacks of books next to my computer to make space. Where had I read about a maze before? Or a labyrinth?
    I rifled through the scattered notes on my desk, a compilation of every myth and legend that I thought might have something to do with the Everneath. Cole used to tell me that myths and legends were rooted in truth. The problem was discovering which ones were specific to my case.
    But none of my latest notes mentioned a maze. Leaning back in my chair, I grabbed the new book my dad had given me and skimmed the topics page.
    There was nothing about mazes under the M s, so I tried L for labyrinth . There I found the reference for “Labyrinth, Minotaur.”
    I smacked my head. Of course I should’ve remembered the story about the Minotaur—the half-man, half-bull creature—who was trapped in the labyrinth. Every nine years, fourteen young Athenians were sent inside the maze as a sacrifice to ward off a plague. This happened until someone, a hero maybe, entered the maze and killed the Minotaur. And then found his way out. Who was it?
    I had picked up the book to thumb through it to the page listed in the index when I heard the garage door open. My dad was home early. He never came home early. Then it hit me.
    “Crap,” I muttered. I’d forgotten about Mrs. Caputo’s detective coming to interview me.
    I threw the book on my bed and closed my eyes. Last night I hadn’t been nervous about facing the detective, but maybe that was because I’d been exhausted and weakened by my encounter with the Shades.
    Today it was