Almost everyone bit back a smile. I took a small whiff and got nothing. Must be a wolf thing…
“I took one before bed,” Zeke countered.
“If we’re sitting this close, you need it,” Asher replied.
“Why are we in a too-small booth and not in the empty corner booth?” I finally asked.
The guys shared a look but said nothing.
I sighed. “Just tell me.”
“Ordin’s mother is here with several women,” Miles announced almost absently.
I shook my head. Clay Ordin’s mother. Fuck. That bitch had sworn to the cops I was lying about the cabin in January. Clenching my teeth, I felt that tingle again. Ethan squeezed my thigh.
“She’s been staring at me, hasn’t she?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah.” Zeke shifted in the cramped space.
Asher scooted over more, his frustration written across his face. “Next time, someone else sits next to Zeke.”
I looked up at Isaac. “Move, please.”
He grinned at me before getting to his feet. I followed him out of the booth and started toward the corner booth. I wasn’t about to sit there squished between everyone just because some woman’s son was a sick fuck who hurt me. I caught Gladys’ eye as we passed each other. “We’re taking the corner booth.”
Gladys shook her head. “Are we playing musical booths?”
I gave her an apologetic look as I slid into the middle of the booth. The guys slid in around me as I glanced around the diner. There. A table of four women, all of them dressed as if they were politician’s wives. One of them glared at me, her jaw clenching. I just held eye contact with her until Gladys took our order and blocked my view.
“So, what’ll it be?”
Everyone ordered their usual. Asher hesitated, then ordered oatmeal, hard boiled eggs and fruit. Nothing that would touch the grill.
When Gladys left, Isaac turned to me. “Damn, Red.”
I smiled. “I’m not the one who did something wrong. Why should I hide?”
The guys shared a small smile that I didn’t quite understand.
“So, how are you enjoying not having to cross the dead?” Ethan turned back to me.
I thought about it and beamed. “Not having to go to the cemetery is amazing. You have no freaking idea.”
“Give us an idea,” Isaac teased.
I thought about it. “Imagine having a rock in your shoe for so long you’ve forgotten what it’s like to not have one.”
Asher grinned. “That’s a good feeling.”
Our convo went on to nothing special. Just the usual and I loved it. No one was bickering, no one was eyeing each other if a touch happened. Hell, it was rather obvious that Ethan had his hand on my knee again and no one said a thing. It was warm, comfy. It felt like… us.
We were halfway through our meal when Mrs. Ordin and her friends got to their feet, saying their goodbyes. Mrs. Ordin stopped and seemed to change her mind.
She turned back and cast her shadow over our suddenly silent table.
I met her gaze and waited.
She eyed me as if I were a bug under her Prada heel. “You lied about my son. How can you look me in the eye?”
I scoffed. “I wish I had to lie. I’d have fewer nightmares.” When she didn’t say anything or leave, I asked sweetly, “Can I help you?”
“You led my son on,” she stated.
I rolled my eyes. “No, I really didn’t.”
“This isn’t the place, come on.” One of her friends had come back to take her arm.
Mrs. Ordin blinked, then seemed to realize what she was doing. She raised her head and straightened her shoulders. Without another word she left with her friend.
I set my fork down, my appetite gone. I knew I didn’t do anything but be a smartass, and that wasn’t a beating offense.
“Lexie.” Ethan’s voice was his smoky, toe-curling one. I met his chocolate eyes. “Let’s get going, Uma said she wanted all day to work with us.”
I nodded, reached into my pocket and dropped a ten on the table for my breakfast. We didn’t get more than three steps from the table before Ethan reached back and took my hand. I squeezed his in thanks as we headed outside.
We were almost to the Blazer when I spotted a certain small redheaded ghost in a Care Bear shirt and jeans.
I beamed. “Where the hell have you been, young lady? I’ve been worried sick about you!”
Claire chuckled. “Searching the woods, hot shot.”
I snorted.
She turned to Ethan then did a double take. “What happened to you? You’re… different.”
“No clue,” he quipped.
She shrugged and simply accepted it. She turned to me, a smile stretching across her face. “I found it.”
* * *
We picked up Hades and drove out of town toward Dulcet. I drove while Ethan talked to Uma on the phone. We needed everyone out at the site Claire had found. Trying to stay calm, I followed her instructions to a scenic overlook between Dulcet and Spring Mountain.
It wasn’t long before the two of us were following Claire through the underbrush and up a steep hill.
Hades’ ears perked up, bringing me to a stop. A heartbeat later, Hades was running off into the underbrush.
“Hades!” I called. He kept going.
“Shit,” Ethan cursed before he started after them. I crashed through the underbrush right behind him.
Heart pounding, we followed the red hair hustling through the trees. I was replaying every cheesy scary movie I’d ever seen as we spotted Claire at the top of an even steeper incline.
“Ya know, this is how horror movies start,” Ethan teased as he reached back to help me.
I chuckled. “I was just thinking that.”
He pulled me up the boulder in our way and helped me to my feet. Right next to a wall. It was a wall of camo.
I wouldn’t have noticed it from below if it hadn’t been for Claire. I looked up and spotted the wires holding the camouflage between two trees That chill ran down my neck. A big one. Our breath came out as a fog. There were souls around, a lot of them.
“Claire?” I whispered. “Is anyone on the other side?”
She poked her head out through the camo. “Just ghosts.” She popped back through the fabric, her passing fluttering the cloth and showing us the seam.
“I’ll go in first.” He barely said it before he slipped through the hole and disappeared from sight.
Stomach in knots, I moved the fabric and stepped to the other side. Hades shoved in past me as I looked up at the walls of several cliffs. That temperature continued to drop. My teeth chattered as I reached Ethan and a small cliff entrance.
I pulled out my phone and I dinged my location so they knew exactly where we were. My phone began to vibrate in my pocket almost immediately. Ignoring it, I followed Ethan into the small entrance and around a bend of rock. A red glow had me blinking until my eyes adjusted. Hades pressed against my hip, letting me know he was here. My heart stopped. It was a ravine. Like before. Only this time the pulsing, massive red circles with triangles inside them were packed in everywhere over the rock. Every conceivable space was taken up by Triangles of Solomon.
And in those traps were souls. A lot of trapped souls. Some hunching, some lying down in the space. Some barely an image at all. All of them groaning or crying in pain. Stunned, I couldn’t move for several heartbeats.
When ghosts needed energy, they pulled from the environment. At the very least they pull the warmth from the air. They had been here long enough that large icicles had formed on several rock edges over our heads.
They were trapped. Hurting. I spotted the setup under a battered, fraying tarp. Rage pouring through me, I strode past a cold Hades and toward the more complicated setup and eyed it. This one was different. A generator was puttering and hooked up to something else I couldn’t even begin to identify. There was a still working just like the last one, only this time, the
re was a lab vial full of bright blue glowing gel.
Ethan moved to my side, his brow furrowed as he took it in.
The cries of the souls pulled my attention back to them. That’s when I saw the hoses. Every soul trap had one, funneling back through some gadget and down another hose toward the setup. The gadget was humming. I reached over to the generator and flipped the switch to off. The noises stopped.
The dead turned to us with relieved faces. Several began to cheer, some sobbed. I recognized a lot of them. They were my missing ghosts.
“Hades, guard.” I walked around the setup. “Are you guys okay?”
Several dropped to the stone. Ethan silently picked up a long stick and went to the closest triangle. He began to scrape up enough paint to break the trap lines and the light went out. There were a lot of them.
I pulled my phone out again.
Alexis: We’re fine. We found them. Bring a shit ton of paint remover.
I found my own stick and started scraping the paint just enough to let them out. “Where are the others?”
“They’re gone,” one woman said before tilting her head to the setup. “What’s left of them… is there.”
I stopped scraping. “You mean the blue stuff?”
She nodded. “The trap keeps us here. The still… it wears us down.”
I shared a disturbed look with Ethan then went back to scraping as I listened. I listened to how they had to watch as other souls slowly became barely an image and then watch as they were pulled into a hose.
Eventually, Hades barked.
“Ethan! Lexie!” Zeke’s bellow was unmistakable.
“Here! Hades, heel,” I shouted. “Make your way back toward us.”
It wasn’t long before Zeke led Miles and Lucy into the odd ravine, though he had to suck it in to get through.
Lucy’s eyes grew wide at the area. Both her and Miles’ jaws dropped as they made their way through all the souls that were free. Some faded away as soon as they were released, moving on to the Veil.
“You found them,” Zeke said, as he looked around the crowd still here.
I nodded as the glow from the last triangle blinked out before I pointed Miles and Lucy toward the cover. “Go look at the setup and tell me what you see. Don’t touch the blue stuff though.”
“Sure…” Lucy left our sides and went to do as I ordered.
“How did you find them?” Zeke asked, his hand going to my lower back.
“Claire.” I turned to look up at him. “She led us straight here.”
“Hey, I’m right here,” Claire chirped. Almost everyone turned to her to say hi. Zeke’s eyes narrowed at me as he thumbed a tear from my cheek.
“They broke down souls,” I whispered, my heart aching. “I think… he killed them.”
“He?” Miles’ head snapped up.
I nodded and wiped my ice-cold face. “That’s the one thing they could all agree on. That the person who came here was a man.”
Miles’ brows drew together, making that small wrinkle. It was his thinking face.
Zeke lifted my chin and noticed my shivering. He pulled his hoodie off and wrapped it around me. “This one you can’t keep.”
I didn’t realize how cold I was until his body heat wrapped around me with the hoodie. I slipped it on and pulled it tighter. His hand stayed on the middle of my back. “We’ll find him, Baby.”
I looked up at him, stunned. His eyes were glowing as he looked around the groups of souls, some barely even existing. He was mad. He wasn’t the only one.
When I was a little warmer, I stepped away from him and turned to the dead. “It’s time to cross.”
“No.” One of the women turned to me. Modern clothes, no sign of death. “We’re not leaving until he’s stopped.”
I sighed. “I don’t know how long that will be, but I promise we will find him.” I shook my head. “This fucker already stole enough from you guys. Don’t let him steal this too.”
After some thought, they all finally nodded.
By the time I finished making sure the dead crossed over, Uma had arrived. She was examining the vial of blue liquid while Lucy began pulling the machine apart.
When Lucy managed to get the top off the tank, she turned white. “Oh my God.”
She suddenly had everyone’s attention. From Zeke and Isaac, who were trying to get all the paint off the rock, to Ethan and Asher who were watching the entrance.
Everyone hurried to Lucy.
She picked up a stick and began to dig around inside the tank. From the look on everyone else’s faces, I was grateful for the first time in my life that I was short and couldn’t see.
“I definitely see… salt, willow, thyme, wormwood, some frankincense…” Lucy’s face grew paler and paler after each herb she listed. “What is that smell?”
A whiff of pine hit me; it was so strong I plugged my nose.
“Tar water,” Uma announced.
Lucy looked up at Uma. “Everything in there is used for purification, isn’t it?”
Uma shook her head. “Not just purification, but transformation.”
“Shit,” Miles cursed.
I turned and looked up at him in surprise.
He walked off toward the gadget between the triangles and the setup. He crouched down and pried the cover off. “It’s a vacuum.”
Lucy’s jaw dropped. “He’s using alchemy to break souls down into pure energy.”
“He can do that?” Asher asked, moving up to my side. I moved a little closer to him and his body heat while I pulled Zeke’s hoodie closed.
Uma and Lucy nodded in unison.
“He’s managed to infect those triangles with enough rage to twist them into breaking down souls.” Uma’s face grew paler.
Lucy shook her head. “Normally, if you did this, you’d probably get next to nothing. A drop, maybe two, but that’s it.”
My heart stopped. “But with the Veil closed, the energy had been building and the dead were picking it up like sponges.”
“They’re batteries.” Uma met Lucy’s gaze. They both filled with dread.
“Okay, he’s broken down souls to make batteries.” Zeke crossed his arms over his chest. “What is he using it for?”
Lucy shrugged. “It could be to power an enormous alchemical machine or gadget. I don’t know what else. I’d have to experiment with it, but I’m not touching this.”
Uma held up the vial in her hand. “It’s incredibly versatile. You could use it to power one hell of a spell, something world altering. It could keep a person alive through just about anything. Hell, you could even use it as a power source for a house if you had the right equipment.”
I was stuck back on keep someone alive. “How would this keep a person alive?”
Uma let out a deep breath. “As a person starts dying, their body isn’t producing the energy to keep it going anymore. This could replace it.”
“It’s Dylan.”
Everyone turned to me.
Suddenly so many things made sense. The book he hid in his room, this ‘project’ he had that took up so much time… Pieces fell into place so well that bile rose in the back of my throat. “Fuck…” I turned away from them, took a couple steps, and was sick on top of a pot of flowers. Hands were there, holding my hair back, holding my suddenly shaking body. It had to be Dylan…
When I could, I wiped my mouth and turned back to them.
“Why do you say that?” Miles asked, tapping his fingers against his thigh.
I met his eyes. “His dad’s dying. Has been for a while. He’s in hospice now.”
Ethan frowned. “How do you know?”
“’Cause, he called me last night.”
The tension rose with an almost audible snap.
I rolled my eyes. “He asked me to make his mom’s cookies. His dad’s not eating right now, and he was hoping it would help.”
“We don’t have proof,” Miles whispered in that soothing voice I loved. “Let’s not jump to conc
lusions. We only have circumstantial evidence at best.” He turned back to Uma as I straightened.
“How world altering are we talking about?” Miles asked as he pulled a roll of mints from his pocket and handed it to me.
I popped several into my mouth to chase way the acidic aftertaste.
Uma’s eyes unfocused. “If it was just one vial, it could power an easy spell for a person’s lifetime. Like a glamour. But…” she shook her head. “He must have hundreds at this point.”
Lucy swallowed hard. “It’s going to depend on how much information he has, what his resources are.” She gestured at the setup. “This is a pieced together system. There’s only so much he can do.”
“Even with the energy?” Miles asked.
Lucy turned to him. “If this person was at my experience level and had my resources?” She pointed at the vial. “With hundreds of those, I can build a machine capable of altering the world within six months. And I’m talking on a cellular level. Like, everyone in the world can suddenly breathe through gills type of change.”
Oh shit… “So, something is limiting him somehow?”
Lucy nodded. “Yes. This has been going on, what? Over a year?”
“Yes, I’d say since the summer before last. That’s our best guess,” Miles said.
Lucy’s eyes unfocused. “There’s the possibility that he’s using it as fuel for something but not using it in an efficient way. Maybe that’s why he has to keep collecting? He’s running through it too quickly.”
“Perhaps. It’d be the same if he was using it to keep someone alive though.” Uma sighed. “But we aren’t going to figure it out tonight. Let’s finish up with the symbols and break this system down. It’ll slow him down at the very least.”
Everyone got back to work while Miles and Lucy broke the setup apart.
Chapter 17
Hours later
I had just finished brushing my teeth in Miles’ bathroom when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in.”
“How are you feeling?” Miles asked.
I shrugged as I rinsed off my toothbrush and put it in the holder beside his. Apparently, besides clothes I had a toothbrush in every bathroom now.
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