I wanted to tell him it was okay—that I needed someone to hold me until the pain melted away.
Someone who wouldn’t let go.
I wasn’t capable of saying the words, but Jared heard them anyway. He hooked a finger through my belt loop and tugged me closer. He kept his gaze locked on mine, and it felt like he could see the fears I was trying so hard to hide.
Can you see me?
Everything about his expression said yes. He closed the distance left between us and wrapped his arms around me. I buried my face in his chest. Jared’s hand slid under my hair, his thumb trailing along my neck.
I forgot how to breathe or think or do anything except hold on. “I’m not the one. I never was.”
Jared’s cheek brushed mine, as he whispered in my ear. “You’re the only one.”
A tear slid down my cheek. “You don’t have to try to make me feel better.”
“I want to.”
“Why? I’m always screwing up and making things harder for you…” I bit my lip, wishing I hadn’t said anything.
Jared pulled back, his hand still on my neck. “You think you make things harder for me?”
“I know I do.”
He leaned in, bringing his mouth to my ear. “Only because I worry about you.”
“You don’t have to feel responsible for me,” I said, my voice raw.
Jared ran his finger down my cheek, tracing the line where a tear had fallen. “That’s not the reason.”
I opened my hand and rested it against his chest without thinking. Jared’s heart beat against my unmarked skin. “Half the time you won’t even look at me.”
His fingers slid down the back of my neck. “And the other half, I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I closed my hand, balling his shirt in my fist. “Jared—”
His face clouded over, and he stepped back. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It was a mistake.”
For a second, the words didn’t register. Not when he just chased me and held me in his arms and said—
It was a mistake.
I was a mistake. That’s what he meant.
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard those words. Heat crawled up my neck where his hand had been only a moment ago. I wanted to be anywhere but here—standing in front of the boy who didn’t want me.
Jared reached for my arm, and I backed away, determined not to let him touch me again.
“Kennedy, you don’t understand—”
I swallowed hard, struggling to find my voice. I didn’t want him to know how much I was hurting. “There’s nothing to understand.”
I started to turn away.
Jared caught my hand again. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I know what I want.” He bit his lip and stared at the gravel beneath our feet. “I just can’t have it.”
“Why not?”
Jared’s blue eyes drifted back up to meet mine, too many emotions fighting for control. He let my fingers slip out of his.
“I screw everything up, and the people close to me are the ones who get hurt.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded behind me. “Just ask Lukas.”
I stood there paralyzed, as Lukas and Priest walked toward us.
Lukas’ smile faded, anger and jealousy warring in his eyes as he mentally calculated the distance between Jared and me. He had no way of knowing that we were miles apart in every way that mattered.
Priest didn’t seem to notice. “We know you’re one of us, Kennedy. And I think we figured out why your mark didn’t show up.”
The mark.
Jared’s rejection had temporarily distracted me from the fact that the universe had rejected me, too.
“We need to compare notes to be sure.” Priest kept talking, but I was only half-listening. Jared wouldn’t look at me, and Lukas wouldn’t stop looking at his brother.
The words registered slowly. “Wait? You don’t know how they work?”
Priest paced across the asphalt. “Our families didn’t go into a lot of detail. It was sort of like ‘destroy a vengeance spirit and you’ll get your mark.’ ”
“That’s pretty self-explanatory.” I didn’t realize how badly I wanted to be one of them until the possibility disappeared.
Lukas pushed his way past Jared until he was standing next to me. “There were lots of things they didn’t tell us about, like the Shift, or the fact that one of the members of the Legion had dropped off the grid. This is probably another one of those things.”
I thought about all the moments when the four of them seemed to be figuring things out as they went along. Their relatives probably never imagined they would all die on the same day, leaving the Legion in the hands of five teenagers who’d have to ditch class to protect the world from a demon.
Lukas nudged my shoulder with his. “Come back to the van, and we’ll explain why your mark didn’t show up.”
He sounded so sure.
But what if he was wrong?
Alara was sitting in the back of the van with the doors open, her journal resting in her lap. “Did you tell her?”
“Not yet.” Priest hopped up next to her, buzzing with excitement. “So check it out. I got my mark after I destroyed Millicent’s spirit in the well with the bolt I made, right?”
Lukas continued without missing a beat. “Mine showed up after I took out a Lady in White whose patterns I had tracked for months.”
Alara fidgeted with her eyebrow ring. “And my mark manifested because I used protective wards to take out the dybbuk—holy water to drive it into the cabinet, and fire to destroy it.”
“But I drew the Wall,” I countered. “I helped.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Priest said. “The fire’s what actually destroyed it. Think about it. The bolt I made, the spirit Lukas tracked, Alara’s wards…”
Jared’s eyes lit up. “It makes sense.”
“I’m glad it makes sense to someone,” I said.
“Weapons isn’t your specialty,” Priest continued. “The mark didn’t show up because you shot the vengeance spirit with a gun.”
“I don’t understand.”
He turned to Jared. “How’d you get yours?”
Jared closed his hand around the place where his mark lay dormant. “A cold-iron rod. Had the spirit in a headlock, and I drove the rod through his rib cage.”
Alara rolled her eyes. “We wouldn’t expect anything less.”
I might still be one of them.
“But I don’t have a specialty.”
Alara raised her eyebrows. “You’re kidding right? You drew the Wall from memory.”
My eidetic memory didn’t seem like an impressive weapon in a battle against deadly spirits.
Priest shook his head. “More than that, the ability to draw symbols is directly related to invocation. Summoning and commanding angels and demons.”
“I can definitely draw, but I can’t summon anything—let alone an angel or a demon.”
Priest looked right at me. “Then you’re in luck because you don’t have to invoke a vengeance spirit. You just have to kill one.”
CHAPTER 24
The Only One
I stood outside the coffee shop and watched Lukas through the window as he paid the barista. After sleeping in the van all night, I would’ve killed to sink into one of the leather armchairs inside. But the shop was tiny, and even though we were fifty miles from Sunshine, we decided the possibility of someone recognizing me was too high.
Standing out here was still better than being stuck in the van.
Priest and Jared had headed into town to pick up supplies as soon as they woke up, while Alara pored over the journals, searching for a clue that might lead to another piece of the Shift. She had only lasted twenty minutes before she insisted on a caffeine run, and we jumped at the chance to see something other than the inside of a journal.
Lukas came back out with a cardboard drink carrier and handed me a steaming cup. “This one’s yours.”
“T
hanks.” I took a sip. “You put cinnamon in it.”
He shrugged. “I remembered you like it.”
Of course he did.
Lukas walked down the street and I fell in step next to him. “Is everything okay?”
He gave me a weak smile. “You mean besides almost getting killed and setting a store on fire?”
“It feels like you’re mad at me.”
Lukas took his coin out of his pocket and rolled it over his fingers a few times before he answered. “I’m not mad. Just disappointed. I didn’t think Jared would have a chance with you. You’re not like the girls who usually fall for him.”
My stomach lurched.
How many girls was he talking about?
Heat spread through my cheeks. I walked faster, hoping Lukas wouldn’t notice me blushing.
“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.”