“Kennedy!” Lukas grabbed my arm and yanked it so hard that it felt like my shoulder was coming out of the socket.
A car horn blared and tires skidded.
Lukas pulled me back onto the sidewalk, and I slammed against his chest. He folded his arms around me. For a second, I was too scared to move. He pushed me away gently and held me at arm’s length. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, watching as the coffee seeped out of the cups and into the street.
Lukas shook his head. “I’m a jerk. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You’re not the jerk.”
He pushed the hair away from my face. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
I couldn’t look at him. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”
His silver coin was lying on the sidewalk. I bent down to pick it up, studying it for the first time.
“It belonged to my dad. It was the one thing he gave me instead of Jared.”
In the center of the coin, a dove perched on a limb with five branches. A phrase was stamped around the circumference of the coin, in a language I couldn’t place.
“It’s Italian. It says, ‘May the black dove always carry you.’ ”
I turned the coin over so I could see the other side.
It was exactly the same.
After a second coffee run, we finally made it back to the van. Jared was sitting on the hood sorting through a bag from the sporting goods store with Priest.
“You guys were gone a long time.” Jared tried to hide the edge in his voice. “I thought someone recognized you again.”
I walked past him. “We were talking.”
“Well, we’ve been waiting.” He made an attempt to sound casual, but failed miserably. “Alara found something and she wants to show all of us at the same time.”
Alara was sitting on the grass with the journals spread out in front of her.
“So what have you got?” Priest asked.
“Take a look.” She opened Jared’s journal to a page covered in rows of letters with blank spaces between them.
Jared sighed. “That’s been there forever. It’s an old encryption technique. You leave out every other letter in each word. But it’s not easy to crack because the words aren’t separated, so the pattern’s hard to figure out. Lukas already tried.”
“What if we don’t need to identify the pattern?” The hint of a smile played on Alara’s lips.
Priest leaned over the page. “There’s no other way to decipher it.”
She held up one of the disks from the magic shop. “That’s what I thought. But you said the colored glass could reveal different layers of the infrared spectrum. So I ran them both over different pages in our journals on the off chance one of them might pick up something.”
Alara ran the green glass over the page, and one by one the missing letters appeared. They were still strung together with no breaks, but the letters were all there. She held up the disk between her fingers. “Turns out, it’s this one.”
Lukas’ jaw dropped. “Get me some paper.”
Alara dictated the letters while Lukas transcribed them. Within minutes, the page was covered and his pen still hadn’t stopped moving.
“What does it say?” Priest leaned over Lukas’ shoulder, the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” blasting from his headphones. He nodded in time with the beat as Lukas slashed lines between the letters to separate the words.
When he finished, Lukas turned the journal around. “Take a look.”
derek / lockhart
the piece is hidden where most will never dare to look / in the hands of its guardian who most will never pass / but if you are reading this the task remains the same / remember the lessons from others who have tried to steal from the dead / no one will ever get it out of hearts of mercy / may the black dove always carry you
Alara added a few more packets of sugar to her coffee. “That’s encouraging.”
“Ever heard of Hearts of Mercy?” Priest asked.
Lukas took out his cell and started typing. “It has to be a place.”
Alara picked at her silver nail polish. “You sure about that?”
“All the other clues referred to places,” he said. “I’ve already got some hits.”
I wasn’t listening anymore. I couldn’t stop thinking about the part of the message none of them were talking about.
Remember the lessons from others who have tried to steal from the dead. No one will ever get it out of Hearts of Mercy.
“The family of five was discovered late last night after a neighbor reported gunshots.” The newscaster’s voice crackled over the van’s radio. “This is the third multiple homicide in western Montgomery County in the last two weeks. In an official statement this morning, Police Chief Montano stated that this level of violence is unprecedented. Frightened citizens are looking for answers.”
It was the second report chronicling an incident of violent crime in less than an hour.
Lukas turned off the radio. “Either we’re getting closer to the Marrow, or a crapload of criminals all decided to move to the same area.”
Jared guided the van along the narrow back roads that twisted through the woods. “I just hope you’re right about where we’re going.”
“The children’s home is the only Hearts of Mercy within two hundred miles,” Lukas said. “And judging from what happened in that place, the disk will be there.”
Priest dumped out the bag from the sporting goods store and a pile of guns clattered onto the floor. “Don’t worry. I’ve got us covered.”
“Someone sold you those?” I asked. Priest didn’t look old enough to buy a lottery ticket.
“Paintball guns.” He held up a black military-style model. “Close range with a laser sight.” Priest opened a package of gray plastic balls. “I’m going to fill the cases with holy water and agrimony instead of paint.”
Alara examined one of the cases. “Not unless you grabbed a jar of agrimony from the warehouse.”
“Is there anything else we can use?”
She picked up a silver double-barreled pistol that matched her nail polish. “Rock salt and cloves should do the trick. They both repel spirits.”
Priest leaned over the front seat. “Can you find a market and a hardware store? I still need a caulking gun, fireplace lighters, and hair spray. You know, the basics.”
“Planning a little home improvement?” Alara teased.
Priest started sketching a weapon design on a sheet of paper. “Something like that.”
Priest tossed the tenth silver can into the shopping cart. We were in the grocery store picking up the supplies he needed for whatever he was making, a detail he refused to share.
“What exactly are you going to do with all that hair spray?” I kept my voice down, careful to hide my face under the folds of Priest’s gigantic hoodie.
“Inventors never reveal their secrets.” He crossed another item off the list written on his hand.
“I thought that was magicians.”
He grabbed a few rolls of duct tape, the staple of his arsenal. “Same rule applies.”
“Should we get extra cloves?”
; Alara had already purchased a basketful and retreated to the van with Lukas to fill the paintball cases and Jared was at the hardware store looking for a caulking gun that met Priest’s specifications. We were in charge of everything else on the list.
Priest shrugged. “Might as well. Alara wants tobacco, too. In cans.” I didn’t ask.
I pushed the cart as he tossed a few fireplace starters inside. “You said you grew up in Northern California, right?”
“Yeah. Near Berkeley.”
“With your parents?” After Alara’s story, I hoped grandparents hijacking their grandchildren for training wasn’t the norm.
Priest ticked the items off on his fingers, mentally totaling our purchases. “My parents died in a car accident when I was three. My granddad raised me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t really remember my mom and dad, but he talked about them all the time.”
We walked down the cereal aisle, and Priest grabbed a box of Lucky Charms. “Don’t tell Alara. These aren’t on the approved shopping list.”
I stared at the red box, remembering the first time my mom pulled one just like it out of a grocery bag in our kitchen.
We sat cross-legged on the living room floor as she dumped the cereal into a giant glass bowl. Then she handed me a smaller bowl. “We’re going to pick all the colored marshmallows out of the cereal and put them in your bowl, okay?”
“Then what?”
She laughed and popped one of the marshmallows in my mouth. “We eat them.”
“Kennedy?” Priest stared back at me. He was halfway up the aisle and I was standing in exactly the same spot.
“Sorry. What else do we need?”
He checked his hand again. “Tobacco, glass cleaner, a novena candle, matches, and shortening.”
“Shortening?”
“It’s basically grease. Cheap WD-40.”
I made a mental note never to eat anything with shortening in it again.
I wondered what he could possibly make with this junk. “I can’t believe your grandfather taught you how to do all this.”
“He taught me everything.” Priest opened the Lucky Charms and picked out a few marshmallows. He offered me the box, but I only shook my head. “I was homeschooled. Half the day was the state curriculum on steroids, and the other half was mechanical engineering, physics, and basic Legion stuff.”