Like me.
Alara unzipped one of the backpacks that Lukas grabbed on the way out. “I have my grandmother’s notebook with her recipes for spells and wards, but it’ll be hard to replace the herbs and supplies. It’s not like they sell lodestones and cowrie shells at the grocery store.”
“We can’t go back.” Jared sounded determined. “Priest can make more weapons, and we’ll replace everything else.”
She glared at him. “You mean I’ll replace it.”
“You’re the one with the trust fund.” Lukas winked at her. “But you’re welcome to the twenty in my wallet.”
“It’s not a revolving line of credit,” she said. “I only get a certain amount every month.”
I remembered Alara mentioning that Lilburn reminded her of her house. I thought she was talking about the antiques or the chandeliers, not the actual mansion.
Priest shook his head, doubtful. “I can’t weld just anywhere.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find somewhere.” Jared forced a smile, but his nails were bitten down to the quick.
“Can we listen to some music or something?” I asked.
Everyone groaned.
Jared shook his head. “Don’t start.”
“Come on, play your favorite CD for Kennedy.” Lukas smiled and turned around in the seat like he was confiding his darkest secret—or his brother’s. “And I do mean CD.”
Jared elbowed him. “Whatever. The van’s old.”
“So is that CD.” Lukas pressed a few buttons and 1980s music blasted out of the speakers.
It sounded familiar. “Is this from a movie?”
They all burst out laughing.
Jared hit the volume control with his free hand, managing to turn it down a notch for every three Lukas turned it up.
“Make it stop,” Priest whined. “My ears are bleeding.”
Lukas finally gave up and let Jared shut it off, but even Alara couldn’t keep a straight face. “It’s the theme song from this old and totally lame movie called The Lost Boys.”
“It’s a good movie,” Jared shot back, his face flushed.
Priest cleared his throat and did a bad imitation of an adult’s voice that sounded a lot like my math teacher’s. “I hear the soundtrack’s pretty good, too, kids.”
“You’re lucky I can’t weld.” Jared tried to look annoyed, but his mouth turned up at the corners.
Priest tossed his torch on the seat next to me. His name was soldered into the metal handle.
“Is Priest your real name?” I’d been curious since the first time I heard it.
He grinned. “No. It’s kind of an inside joke.”
“Another joke? I’m not sure I can take it.”
“This is a good one,” Lukas said. “So the first time I watched him build a gun, I said it seemed like a crazy specialty for the descendant of a priest. Even an ex-priest.”
Priest pulled his hood over his head. “And I said building vengeance spirit hunting weapons is a religion, and I’m the high priest. Except I can hook up with girls.”
Everyone started laughing. It felt like we all stopped holding our breath at exactly the same moment, and we were regular kids again—driving home from a party to raid the fridge. Instead of wishing we still had a place to call home.
Priest flipped through his journal and ran the blue glass disk over the pages, hoping to decipher lines of hidden text. “You see anything?”
I didn’t, and we both knew it.
We were sitting at a booth in a diner outside of Baltimore. After two waffles and a cup of coffee spiked with cinnamon, I felt like myself again.
Lukas stirred his strawberry shake with a straw. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Alara rolled her eyes. “What did you expect? You’re drinking a milkshake for breakfast.”
“Want the rest?” He pushed the glass in her direction.
She eyed the glass like it was full of motor oil. “You know I don’t eat pink food.”
“Are you allergic to strawberries?” I asked.
“No. I just don’t eat anything pink,” she said, like it was perfectly logical.
“Why not?”
Alara gave me a long look, and emptied what had to be the tenth packet of sugar into her coffee. “In my family, pink symbolizes death. I would rather eat a rat.”
Priest pointed at her cup. “With extra sugar.”
Jared sat alone at the counter, staring out the window at the nothingness you see when you’re too lost in thought to see anything else. I wondered why he was sitting alone. Why he seemed to set himself apart from everyone else, like he was the one who didn’t belong.
He caught me watching him, but didn’t turn away.
I walked over to the empty seat next to him. “Can I sit?”
“Be my guest.” Jared’s army jacket was balled up in his lap, and he was wringing it between his hands.
For a moment, neither of us spoke, the silence building a bridge between us.
“This is my fault.” I needed to say it out loud.
“It isn’t.”
I looked out the window, my stomach twisted in knots. I was embarrassed to face him. “You guys were safe in the warehouse until I showed up.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “We’re never safe, not really.”
“At least you had a place to sleep.” I felt responsible for everything that had happened—even my mom’s death. What if I led the demon to her somehow, the same way I led the vengeance spirits to the warehouse?
Jared rubbed his eyes, and I realized how tired he looked—the kind of tired that went beyond a lack of sleep. The kind that came from carrying something you couldn’t put down, or share. “No one told you the windowsills were salted. I’m the one who screwed up.” Jared dropped his head and leaned forward so I couldn’t see his face anymore. “It’s not the first time.”
“Because you didn’t tell me?”
“No—” He put his hands behind his neck like he was shielding himself from an unseen attack. “Forget it.”
He reached for the coffee cup, and his T-shirt slid up, revealing a tattoo of a bird on his upper arm. It wasn’t a raven or a hawk—the type I would’ve expected to see inked on the skin of someone like Jared. The bird looked almost delicate.
“What’s that?” I pointed at the tattoo, accidentally grazing his skin, and he jerked away.
I started to get up, trying to hide my embarrassment.
Jared’s hand closed around my wrist, blue eyes pleading.
Heat rushed through my body like a shot of adrenaline. I froze, paralyzed by a feeling I recognized immediately. The one I felt when Chris used to hold my hand, and all I could think about was his skin against mine and the emotions tangled up inside me—the one that kept me from seeing the truth about him. He was my first real boyfriend, scarred and damaged, leaving me with scars of my own.
I didn’t need any more.
Jared stared at me, his hand still curled around my wrist. “It’s a black dove,” he said quietly. “The priests chose it because black doves are rar
e and small in number, like the Legion. And a dove is the only bird the devil can’t transform into, which means a demon can’t either.”
He watched me, measuring my reaction.
I sat back down and my wrist slid from his hand. “So you believe in the devil?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jared hesitated. “He believes in us.”
I hoped this was another piece of information his father had passed down and not something he knew firsthand.
“Are you guys gonna help us out or what?” Priest called across the empty diner.
Lukas glanced over at us. He seemed disappointed as he turned away. I felt a pang of guilt. It was hard to walk the line between the two of them, especially when it shifted constantly. One minute they were defending each other against paranormal entities, and the next they were at each other’s throats.
Jared followed me back to the booth where everyone else was sitting, and he slipped into silence.
Alara had turned her attention away from the offensive pink shake and back to the broken piece of the doll. “Middle River. I’ve seen that name somewhere before.” She scanned her journal until she reached a page with a yellowed newspaper clipping taped in the corner. Above the article was a faded photo of a young woman in a floral dress, holding a little boy’s hand. “I can’t believe it. My grandmother told me this story a hundred times, but she never mentioned the name of the woman or where it happened.”
Priest leaned over Alara’s shoulder. He was the only person she seemed to allow into her personal space. “What’s the deal?”
“This wealthy doctor had an affair with the seamstress who worked at his estate. Six or seven years later, the guy came home drunk and confessed everything to his wife. She went nuts and dragged the seamstress’ little boy down to the well.
The child’s mother tried to stop her, but the woman pushed the kid over the side. He couldn’t swim, so his mom jumped in after him. She broke her neck in the fall, and the boy drowned. According to this article, her name was Millicent Avery.”
“You think one of the pieces of the Shift is hidden there?” It was the first thing Lukas had said since Jared and I sat down.