by Kami Garcia
Now I was responsible for other people’s lives? Keeping myself alive was hard enough.
I felt the weight of his words bearing down on me.
Before I could respond, shouts cut through the silence. They were coming from the opposite side of the warehouse.
Jared took off running.
On the other side of the sheet, Lukas, Priest, and Alara crowded around the window as the metal frame rattled. Thick screws untwisted themselves and hit the concrete floor one after another.
Lukas pressed his palms against the frame, trying to hold it in place. “I don’t know what happened. The window was salted, but there’s a break in the line.”
It was the same window I’d been looking out not even an hour ago.
A break in the line.
I lifted my arm slowly. A thin layer of white dust coated the inside of my forearm from wrist to elbow. Jared noticed and pulled me closer to get a better look. He touched the crystals and brushed them off my skin as if he expected to see something underneath.
“I didn’t realize—”
Jared cut me off. “We have to leave. Now.” He dropped his voice so no one else could hear him. “Don’t say anything about this. I’ll handle it.”
Alara started to pour another salt line along the windowsill.
Jared took the bag from her and tossed it on the floor, white crystals spraying across the gray concrete. “There’s no point. It won’t be long before Andras finds out about this place.” He turned to Lukas and Priest. “Grab the gear. We’re gone.”
Alara pushed past me. “Let’s make sure we can get out first.”
The window rattled despite the fresh salt. Maybe nothing was coming in, but something definitely wanted to. Jared fought to hold the frame in place, but only a few rusted screws remained.
I reached for the loose side of the window, but Jared nodded toward the sheets. “Help Priest. We need to take as much as we can.”
I hesitated.
Another screw shot out of its casing and rolled across the floor.
I ran.
“Alara, a little help here!” Jared yelled. She slipped through the sheets carrying a stainless steel bowl. She scooped out a handful of dark green mud and smeared it over the glass, in the shape of an X.
I passed Lukas shoveling armloads of books and clothes into backpacks, but I didn’t stop until I reached Priest.
Two duffel bags lay open on his worktable, and he was tossing everything from weapons to tools and scrap metal inside. I grabbed stuff from the metal shelves, but I didn’t know what to take. Boxes of nails and ammunition, or tools?
“Is it another poltergeist?”
Priest shook his head, blond hair hanging in his eyes. “Don’t know. Wanna stay and find out?”
Glass shattered, the sound echoing against the cinder block walls.
Jared burst through the sheets with Lukas and Alara. “We have to go.”
I grabbed one of the bags and ran for the door. Priest yanked the other one off the table and the handle ripped, sending screwdrivers and ammo flying across the floor. He dropped to his knees, scooping up whatever he could carry.
Metal groaned somewhere on the opposite side of the warehouse, louder than a hundred screws hitting the floor.
Alara’s eyes darted around the room. “We’re not going to be able to get out.”
Priest abandoned the broken bag. “Get the tank.”
Jared yanked a red fire extinguisher off the wall.
“On three.” He nodded at Lukas. “One, two, three.”
Lukas threw open the door, and Jared bolted outside, spraying a heavy layer of white mist around us. Within seconds, we were all covered in the sticky solution.
“Get in the van.” Lukas practically threw me inside.
Jared peeled away from the curb as Priest wiped the salt off his face.
“That was killer. I’ll have to make more of those babies.” He lifted something out of the soaked duffel. “At least I’ve got my torch. You never know when you’ll need to set something on fire.”
I hugged my knees and tried to stop shaking.
There would be no sneaking off in the middle of the night after this—not to Elle’s, or my aunt’s, or the stupid boarding school I’d never seen. The demon had already found me twice, and he’d find me again.
I watched as the warehouse grew smaller and smaller. In the space of a few seconds, it seemed impossibly far away.
Another safe place that wasn’t safe anymore.
17. MIDDLE RIVER
We’re missing a lot of gear, not to mention weapons and ammo.” Priest sat across from me in the back of the van, rummaging around in his duffel bag. He looked even younger in the colored flashes of the traffic lights.
“You can make more.” Lukas didn’t sound very convincing.
“Not without my tools and a place to work.”
Guilt twisted in my stomach. I wanted to apologize, but Jared kept stealing glances at me in the rearview mirror, silently reminding me not to say anything. Maybe there was a reason, something else I didn’t understand, like the red circles on the map and the salt line.
I watched the dark streets go by, empty except for a couple of kids huddled together, smoking cigarettes under a broken liquor store sign. Their jackets were dirty and ripped, their faces worn in less definable ways. Probably runaways.
Like me.
Alara unzipped one of the backpacks that Lukas had 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 mall.”
“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 about to reveal 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.
“You see anything?”
Priest flipped through his journal and ran the blue glass disk over the pages, hoping to decipher lines of hidden text.
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 milk shake 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, as if 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 always set himself apart from everyone else, like he was the one who didn’t belong.
He caught me watching him, but instead of looking away, he held my gaze.
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 had 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 way 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 laced his fingers 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. 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 churning inside me—the feeling that kept me from seeing the truth about him. Chris was scarred and damaged, and he left me with scars of my own.
I couldn’t handle 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 rare 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 and 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, 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’s 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.
Priest slid the strawberry shake in front of him. “Alara’s grandmother was the only member of the Legion my granddad knew how to contact. If he left the clue for her at Lilburn, it makes sense that it leads to a place Alara’s grandmother knew about.”
“Were they friends?” I asked.
Alara shook her head, dark curls falling over her shoulder. “No, the chain of information moves in one direction. Priest’s grandfather knew my grandmother’s name, but she didn’t know his. Lukas’ uncle was the only member she knew how to contact.”
“Even our uncle didn’t know the identity of anyone in the Legion except our father,” Lukas added. “Dad’s contact was the missing member. He was the only person in the Legion who would’ve had information about two different members—our uncle and your mom.”
I mapped it out in my mind: Priest’s grandfather to Alara’s grandmother; her grandmother to Lukas and Jared’s uncle; their uncle to their dad; their dad to the fifth member; and the fifth member to Priest’s grandfather. I realized why the missing member was so important. The fifth member didn’t just make the Legion stronger. That person also completed the chain of information.
I looked at Alara. “If your grandmother and Priest’s granddad weren’t friends, how did he know to hide the disk in Middle River?” I asked Alara.
“My grandmother owned a bakery in
El Portal, where we lived in Florida. Sometimes messages showed up. They were always encrypted, in envelopes with no return address. She’d take them in the back to her real shop where she made her wards, and decipher them. Maybe he sent her the article about Millicent Avery, or told her the disk was there.”
I tried to imagine living with the rules and secrets the four of them seemed so comfortable with. Jared and Lukas had each other, but what about Alara and Priest? Did they have friends back home?
Alara touched the newspaper clipping. “My grandmother told me that story so many times. She said a good mother always protects her child.”
“Maybe Millicent is protecting something else now,” I said.
“If a piece of the Shift is with her, you know what that means.” Priest shook his head.
“It’s in the well,” Lukas finished.
Alara threw a napkin over the offensive pink shake. “Then we should get going.”
Jared nodded at the TV mounted on the wall. “I vote for sooner,” he whispered.
The volume was turned down low, but an orange news ticker ran across the bottom of the morning show feed: AMBER ALERT—KENNEDY WATERS, AGE 17. LAST SEEN AT HER HOME IN GEORGETOWN. My yearbook photo smiled back from the screen.
I strained to hear the newscaster’s voice. “Kennedy Waters is seventeen years old, five foot four and one hundred twenty pounds, with long brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen on November thirtieth at her home on O Street, in Georgetown.” A shaky camera panned my street and stopped on what was left of my front yard. There were cops everywhere—red and blue lights flashed in the background.
Jared dropped the van keys in my hand and gestured at the door without a word. Then he walked up to the register and ordered a cup of coffee to distract the waitress while I slipped out.
From the front seat of the van, I watched Jared flirt with a woman old enough to be his mom, while Lukas casually gathered up the journals. Alara slipped on her black leather jacket, and Priest stuffed his gadgets and screwdrivers in his backpack.
If you didn’t know any better, they looked like four regular teenagers grabbing coffee on their way to school—the guy no one knew anything about because he wouldn’t let anyone get close, the kid genius who skipped three grades and still knew all the answers in Calculus, the girl who all the guys wanted to date but they were too intimidated to approach, and the sweet guy who seemed like the boy-next-door but had too many secrets to qualify. I knew they were all those things and none of them.