We walked for what seems like days in the cold caverns, everyone walking in silence.

Matt wasn’t talking to me, I wasn’t talking to him, Garret had all his attention on the flaming torch he kept twirling so he didn’t pay attention to us and Baron looked like he had some kind of headache so he wasn’t talkative either.

The silence was unsettling…

Baron had been able to announce our visit when he had left after the little bursting into gas trick of his. I didn’t fully understand how it worked, the announcing thing, but it sounded like a good thing for Dimathrias and Garret so I guessed it was.

I kept thinking back about the conversations I had with both Dimathrias and Baron.

What should I do now? Try to act like everything was normal with Matt? Or try to at least accept it? He had told me he was still Matt and it was true that few things he had done or said proved that, my Matt was still there… And acting the way I was wasn’t something I would have done to my best friend. I would have supported him no matter what. And that’s what I should be doing now. But it was still hard when you weren’t sure if the person in front of you was still the person you once knew…

It didn’t really feel like Matt anymore but maybe if I tried to be more understanding, maybe I could still feel it…

Matt had always been there for me… I had to be there for him too…

“When we get to the Hinges you have to know a few things,” Baron started to say, stopping my thinking process, “For one thing they will be able to have access to everything in you brain; memories, feelings, apprehension, everything. And you have to let them. They are not here to judge so don’t throw a hissy fit and try to block them out of your brain. It’s useless and it will make us lose time.” He turned his face to look at me, probably making sure I understood what he was saying and nodded once for his benefit, “Once they do that we will meet in the chamber. They will be all in their immaterial form so try not to freak.” Hmm lovely, “And they don’t speak out loud. They will be talking in your head. All of them together in perfect harmony. It will be unsettling but they’ll understand that. Again, they won’t judge, we are only here to keep balance you know.”

“And what exactly are we doing here? Asking permission to kill Basil?” I asked.

Baron didn’t answer right away but kept walking for a few seconds, “Mainly yes. Last time we tried to stop Basil we did it of our own accord and it didn’t end well, this time we’re going to do things the right way, consult and then act. Whatever Basil is planning it can’t be good, and his killing threatens the balance, therefore the other Spirits will have to agree with us.”

I didn’t like this, any of this.

“But can’t we solve the problem another way? Maybe put him in one of his glass prison or something? Do we need to kill him?” My voice was trembling when I asked that. Whatever Basil had done… I couldn’t… kill someone?

Baron’s tone was finale, “He needs to die Jasmine; he deserves to die.”

“But…”

Suddenly, Matt wrapped his hand around mine. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to be the one to do it, you won’t even need to be there when it will happen,” he whispered.

That wasn’t enough though, not enough to not make me feel bad and I could see it in his eyes that he knew that. Matt knew me, Matt knew what my position on hurting people and violence was. And even if they said I wouldn’t have to be part of it, in felonies, wasn’t knowing as bad as doing? Didn’t accomplice get the same sentences? I understood the fact that sometimes we had to make drastic decisions in order to rid ourselves of bad people but wasn’t doing the same thing as them, and in the situation killing someone, making us as bad as Basil?

“It’s Basil that killed your parents and sucked their Life Force out of them, don’t you want revenge? Or at least for him to pay?” Garret asked, completely taken me by surprise.

I hadn’t realized he was listening to my thoughts.

Were they always listening to them?

Not always, I heard Garret’s voice say in my head.

Okay, that was freaky and distracting me from the trouble at hand… which wasn’t exactly productive.

“Revenge won’t bring my parents back” I answered him.

My parents’ death was still too fresh in my head; it was almost like I still hadn’t registered it thoroughly, so getting revenge was definitely not in my immediate plans. In my head, my parents were still home and worried silly about where I was. In my head they weren’t dead. It was easier to go on that way, by imagining they still were. 

But Garret still didn’t drop the matter, “But it can give you mental solace.”

“No, not at all” Matt answered for me, squeezing my hand he still held.

I felt like leaning my head against his shoulder; this was my Matt.

“Basil is family too you know, he’s my grandfather after all. You’re asking me to kill my grandfather, you realize that right?”

Even if I had no real relation with the man and pretty much was frightened of him, he was my grandfather, I had his blood coursing through my veins.

“Much more of a reason to end his life. You realize what he’s been doing to your mother right? He’s been controlling her for years. It’s because of him she had to hide you away. He killed your father. What more do you need to hear?”

Was he purposely trying to make me feel sick and hysterical again?

Did I need all those reminders, of how really messed up my life was right now?

“Look, try to see things this way; if we don’t kill him, other people will get kill plus the guy lived well over any human normal life span so his time is up now,” Garret added.

Seriously, did he really think he could convince me into accepting a murder?

Doesn’t hurt to try, Garret’s voice rang in my head, a slight smugness in his tone.

I glared at his back even though he wasn’t looking my way; he probably knew I was doing it anyway since he didn’t seem to GET OUT OF MY HEAD. “Stop doing that.”

He let out a small laugh, “Gotta get used to it blondie, soon you’ll have all the eldest Spirits not in Rest snooping in your head, listening to all of your deep dark secrets”

Matt groaned, “That’s definitely not helping Garret.”

“We’re almost here,” Baron announced effectively stopping the conversation. He seemed odd for some reason. He hadn’t been arguing with us after he had simply stated Basil needed to die. I don’t know he just felt quiet, and not his usual smug self.

Yes the boy had kind of screw up my life but I couldn’t only blame him for it and whether I liked it or not, with all the time I had spent with him in my dreams Baron was my friend. He was my friend and at the end of the day I cared about him and about what he thought and how he felt.

How messed up were things, really?

“Don’t worry Jass, everything will be alright. The Spirits there, they’re reasonable, they’ll make the right decisions and they’ll take into consideration how you feel about this,” Matt whispered to me, still holding my hand.

I don’t know if the walk he had taken earlier when he had left me had changed him, cleared his mind or something but this was my Matt, this felt like my Matt. I didn’t want to celebrate too early but something inside me told me he was telling the truth and that everything would be okay, and that if my Matt was really back then there were even more reason to think that way.

I didn’t have the time to ponder too much about this thought because right in front of us, standing in our way was a man. He was tall and had a bulk built. This area was lightened with many torches hanging from each side of the caves so I could see his hair that was cropped short, and his facial features that weren’t beautiful or ugly, just standard. The only thing that truthfully stood out was his gaze. It was… it was hard to describe, almost like empty. There was something wrong about it, really really wrong and I held Matt’s hand more tightly tugging him the other way to get the hell away, but he wasn’t moving anymore and so were Baron and Garret.

I inched closer to Matt, and whispered against his arm, holding onto his hand like my life depended on it, “Who’s that?”

Matt looked down at me, his eyes reassuring “The guard. The Spirits in there don’t take material form, they don’t fancy that practice. So they have to control the mind of a person with a tangible body to be able to per say stop people or fight. And no it’s not like Basil” he added, obviously knowing where my thoughts were going “He’s human, and he volunteered.”

Well that was odd…

And then the man started to talk, his voice stoic, “Welcome home Baron, Garret and Dimathrias. It has been too long.”

The three men bowed their heads slightly and simultaneously.

Really odd.

The guard’s empty gaze fixed on me next and I tried not to shiver and cowardly hide behind Matt. “Welcome Jasmine. We have been waiting for you.”

Following what the boys had done, I bowed my head too but the man still didn’t look away and added, “This will only take a second.”

That statement confused me but it barely took me an instant to understand it.

Apparently when you die you see your life flash before your eyes, if it’s true that’s exactly what it felt like. Obviously that’s what Baron had been implying by the Spirits going through my head.

All the memories, thoughts, emotions, everything all passed through me in just a few seconds and I couldn’t hold the gasp that escaped my lips. It was overwhelming and destabilizing. It made me dizzy.

Let’s just say I didn’t like it.

It wasn’t just the feeling of it happening that bothered me. Wasn’t privacy in their vocabularies?

I didn’t want people to know everything I had ever thought and felt, I wanted to keep those things for myself; there was a reason why our thoughts were locked in our heads. They belonged to us and people weren’t supposed to snoop around them.

When I thought that the overwhelming images and feeling stopped and I heard in my head, like hundreds of voices talking, their voices like they were in a tunnel or something, Secrets are irrelevant to us, Young One, secrets only lead to mayhem. Spirits don’t keep secrets

It was seriously creepy…

“I’m not a Spirit,” I gasped, trying to find my breath and not throw up. I could still feel Matt’s hand in mine but he was obviously going through the same process because he looked out of it too.

That’s not what the working of your mind is showing us, the voices added and faded.

The ground slightly shook while the rock faces behind the empty gazed man moved revealing a round room. He stepped aside, motioning with his hand towards it and announced, “You may now step in.”