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The voice inside his head was so jarringly not his own, it knocked Jack off-kilter, sending him stumbling just enough that the bullet he’d begun to accept as his fate ripped through the curls on one side of his meticulously coiffed hair, narrowly missing anything more substantial. Eli staggered to his feet just behind Jack, who was already preparing for another round of playing human shield when a wet crack tore through the tumult of the scene. Jack swiveled toward the center of the room to find Greer in the final throes of a headbutt, Gerard’s free hand flying to his nose as a geyser of blood erupted from it. Without missing a beat, Carter charged the hand with the gun, but Eli beat him to it. He’d moved so fast, Jack hadn’t even realized he’d slipped out from behind him.

Eli wrestled the gun away with ease, Gerard still distracted by the pain of his freshly broken nose. Greer turned her gaze to Jack as something raw and primal settled over Eli’s expression.

“Eli,” Jack said quietly, “you did it. You got the gun. Everyone’s safe now. Let’s just put it down, all right?”

But Eli wasn’t listening. He wasn’t there. He was back at the pool they never should have been at on that summer night all those years ago. Jack could see it in his eyes. In many ways, none of them had left. Jack had always been too afraid to, he realized. Because if he left, it meant admitting what happened after. It meant acknowledging it was all real. But if he continued to live his life in the past the way he always had, it would all happen again right here in the present. Jack would lose Eli. He had already lost too much.

Jules. He let her name into his mind in a way he rarely had the courage to before, let every memory surge through him until it possessed him like a wayward spirit. And for a moment, he nearly let it fully take the wheel.

No. It was time to leave that pool.

Eli’s arm rose, steady in its conviction and yet trembling under the weight of its mission. The gun glimmered in his grasp, Gerard’s chest positioned squarely at the end of it.

Gerard himself had only just lowered his head after tilting it back to ease his bloody nose. “Go ahead,” he said as he caught sight of the weapon. “I’m slated to die anyway. You’ll only be expediting my fate and ruining the Scroll of Souls in the process.” He gave a chest pocket in his cardigan a pat.

But that was the least of it, Jack knew. Eli would ruin himself and his chance at a future in the process.

Eli’s finger hugged the trigger.

“Eli, no, please.” Greer took a step toward her brother but quickly thought better of it, his body tensing at the sound of her movement. His eyes were rimmed red, a layer of tears dancing over them, their focus deep in the broken past. He was lost, too far gone for anyone’s words to reach him. One wrong move and that gun would fire, if not at Gerard, then at someone he’d truly never recover from harming.

If Jack closed his eyes and listened past the chaos of that little sewer chamber, he could still hear it all. The click of the gun, the screams, the sirens. Eli wailing in the hospital hallway, Greer and the others too consumed by their own grief to hold his pain. That was the day it all fell apart, the day they all fell apart. And that was how it had been ever since. Jack never had the chance to put them all back together again. Had never let himself even realize he was broken.

He took a step. Eli’s bleary eyes shifted his way, the gun following suit. Jack took another step. That finger hovered over the trigger.

Not yet.

The voice came again, but Jack decided to ignore it. He was inches from the gun now, Eli’s arm still stretched out to its full length in front of him. An exhale sent Jack close enough to feel the weapon’s cool metal against his forehead before he ducked beneath the outstretched arm and wrapped his own arms around Eli’s torso in a tight, unrelenting hug. Jack could feel Eli tense beneath his hold. Every one of Eli’s lithe muscles seemed to twitch, as though they’d been carrying something very heavy for a very long time and had only now realized its toll. Then he began to tremble, then heave. He was sobbing, Jack realized, tears pelting down on Jack’s head like the bullets of a gun that had long been loaded with no release.

The real gun, the one in Eli’s grasp, dropped gently to the floor as Eli crumpled, dragging Jack down to the concrete with him.

“It’s okay,” Jack said softly, giving Eli’s back a pat as a tear wrestled loose from his own eye. They were both here now, for the first time in far too long. “It’s okay, buddy. I’m so sorry. For everything.”

Greer stumbled over and slumped down beside them, wrapping her arms around them both. Her cheek was wet where it pressed against Jack’s forearm. Then came Carter, enveloping the lot in his muscles. No one spoke. There was nothing to say.

From the corner of Jack’s eye, he caught Dale watching them from where he hovered by the chamber entrance. His bravado had slipped like a Halloween mask, revealing the lost little boy underneath, and Jack knew he’d never forgive himself for not seeing that boy there before. Then, in a blink, Dale was gone—a fugitive from death, skulking away into the night. But Dale was right about one thing: Jack had a way of escaping consequences that most didn’t, and Dale’s consequence would be an afterlife trapped on this earth as a ghost if Jack couldn’t get to him first. But he didn’t have time to worry about that now.

“Well, this is all very touching,” came Cyrus’s forgotten voice, “but what the hell are we going to do about him?” Cyrus had crept from his hiding spot and nabbed Gerard by the scruff of his cardigan as the older man attempted to escape. “I need that list.”

Jack untangled himself from the You Agains, their warmth receding as he pulled himself to his feet. The voice in his head was louder now, and it hummed with information Jack never thought he’d receive, information Margaret had shut away somewhere he’d never previously been able to access. Information that meant there was another way. It was as though the brush with her own death had brought Margaret back to life, and suddenly she was feeling generous.

“Gerard’s right,” Jack said, and those two words were enough to force everyone else in that chamber into silence. “His methods are questionable,” he clarified quickly, “but he’s right. We can’t just sell that list and risk who-knows-what happening to all those people’s souls.”

Greer peeled herself away from the others. Jack could feel her behind him, those hazel eyes boring into his back.

“Jack.” That desperation in her voice again. “Please. I need this.”

“No,” Jack said gently. “You need money. But it doesn’t have to be this. Menace without harm, remember? That was because of you.”

The expression on her face held the same sting of betrayal Jack had felt when he’d seen Dale down there in that chamber with them. The fact that he was the cause of it was almost enough to make him take back everything he’d just said. But he had a plan. He always had a plan. “There’s another way,” he said. “I just need you to trust me.”

Greer studied him a long moment, her gaze piercing deep into Jack’s own, so deep he could feel its weight on his soul. Greer jerked back, blinking hard, as though for a moment she had seen him as he was. Not the scheming boy, but the man he’d become beneath the woman he wore. Who he truly was.

“Okay,” she said in a weak voice. “If it means we can get out of this stinking sewer, then okay.”

“And what the hell am I supposed to tell my buyers?” Cyrus spat.

Jack let his glance dart to Eli, still clinging to Carter as his wound painted his face. “Tell them what you saw the day you and Eli looked into the other side. See how bad they still want to play with death after that.”