Because I wasn’t just hunting vengeance spirits. If the four of them were right, I was following the path my mom left behind, the one she hid from me for reasons I might never know. There were too many questions I needed to answer.
Was she really a member of the Legion?
And the question I didn’t even want to ask myself.
Am I?
CHAPTER 14
Wonderland
Jared’s eyes searched mine, and it felt like he could see the fears I was fighting so hard to hide.
“You have to do exactly what I tell you in there.”
I nodded, too nervous to say anything.
When we came back around the side of the van, everyone was waiting. I knew they had probably overheard our entire conversation. Priest tried to act busy for my benefit, but Alara looked right at me.
“You okay?” Lukas mouthed.
I smiled weakly.
“Are we going to hang out here all day or what?” Alara stalked over to Priest’s duffel bag. She pulled out the heavy leather glove with the spikes made of cold-iron bolts and slipped it on.
“Let’s go.” Lukas slung the crossbow over his shoulder.
I reached for the nail gun.
“No,” they said practically in unison.
“I can’t go in empty-handed. That can’t be safe.”
“You’re right.” Jared climbed into the van and returned with something I recognized immediately.
“You want me to wear a bulletproof vest? Are the ghosts going to shoot me?”
“It won’t stop bullets, just vengeance spirits. Priest rigged it.” He handed it to me, and my shoulder almost jerked out of the socket when I took it.
“Are you serious? This thing must weigh fifty pounds.”
“I replaced the Kevlar fibers with cold-iron pellets.” Priest shrugged. “They weigh a little more. I’m still working out the kinks.”
I dropped the vest in the dirt.
“I’m good,” I lied, wishing it were true.
Priest took Lilburn’s front steps two at a time. He pulled out the handheld device and waved it around the door. “I’ve got nothing out here.”
“Did he make that thing?” I asked Alara.
“It’s an electromagnetic field meter,” she answered. “He didn’t make it, but I’m sure he tweaked it. Priest doesn’t trust anything he didn’t design.” She pulled out one of her own, a rectangular device with a band of numbers and a needle at the end. “Spirits give off electromagnetic energy we can’t sense. EMFs measure it.”
“I probably need one, too.”
Alara reached around her tool belt and handed me a flashlight, with a smug smile. “Rule number one: only carry things you know how to use.”
Her condescending attitude was getting old. Even if had to walk inside with nothing but a plastic flashlight and the knowledge I’d picked up from watching bad horror movies, I was still going in, whether Alara liked it or not.
I turned away, and she caught my arm.
“It was a joke.” She sighed and handed me the EMF. “If that needle starts moving, there’s a good chance a spirit is nearby. Consider yourself trained.”
Priest leaned back, examining the upper stories. “This place is a lot bigger than it looked in the picture. You really think we can find the Shift?”
“It might not even be in there,” Jared said.
Lukas stood in front of the house. “It’s here. We just have to find it.”
“Then let’s start looking.” Jared waved Priest down from the porch and glanced in my direction. “Kennedy, you can check out the tower with me and Priest.”
“She’s coming with us,” Lukas said forcefully.
Jared started to say something, then stopped. “I was trying to do you a favor, Luk. You’re gonna have to babysit her in there.”
My cheeks burned, and I stared at the scratches on the boots my mom had given me the night she died. How long before they were completely ruined?
Lukas nudged me with his shoulder. Something inside me relaxed, and a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “Ignore him. Jared always leaves behind a pretty high body count.”
Is he talking about girls?
My smile vanished. “It’s no big deal.”
He touched my arm lightly when we reached the door. “Stay close, and if I tell you to get out of the house, you go. No arguments and no looking back. Understand?”
I nodded, every nerve in my body on edge.
Lukas cracked the lock with the butt of his crossbow.
The door swung open. Light poured into the entryway, dust glittering in the stagnant air. I stepped into the hallway, heart pounding. My eyes followed the worn crimson carpet up the staircase.
The front door slammed behind us, and I spun around.
A shadow blackened the marble floor.
Lukas and Alara inched toward it slowly. I waited for a battered vengeance spirit like the girl from my room to lunge at them.
The shadow didn’t move.
Alara edged closer and looked up, her eyes resting on a huge crystal chandelier. “I think we’re okay.”
“Sorry.” I felt like an idiot.
Lukas walked into the living room, where half-packed boxes were scattered around a velvet sofa. “Better safe than sorry, right?”
Alara rolled her eyes and ran a finger along the dusty banister. “Reminds me of my house. Minus the dirt.” She zeroed in on the stained rose-colored sofa. “And the pink.”
I navigated between the boxes, watching the needle on my EMF. A mirror in a gilded frame caught my reflection, the warped glass making the room appear off kilter.
The needle didn’t move as I followed them into the musty library on the other side of the staircase. Lukas stopped in the doorway.
“If I needed to hide something, this is where I’d put it.”
We searched the shelves crammed with books and stranger things—beetles and butterflies in shadow boxes, dozens of clocks stopped at exactly the same time, and brass bookends depicting characters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The Cheshire Cat smiled down from a tall shelf.
Alara lifted the Mad Hatter clutching a broken teapot. “This isn’t creepy or anything.”
I didn’t know what unsettled me more—the perfect replica of Lilburn Mansion drowning in the thickened glitter of an old snow globe, or the image of a terrified Mad Hatter holding a broken piece of Wonderland.
“Maybe it’s somewhere less obvious,” I offered.
Alara kicked an empty box. “We should check upstairs. That’s where all the activity was reported.”
Lukas not so subtly stepped in front of me. “I’m right behind you.”
The staircase rose sharply. I imagined someone reaching the last step and being pushed backward by an invisible hand. I gripped the railing tighter. When Lukas made it to the top, he grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the landing.
Six doors flanked each side of the narrow hallway. Oil portraits of women bound in layers of fabric, and girls in pressed dresses, lined the walls between them. They all wore the same hopeless expression.
The EMF detector pinged.
“You got something?” The red light on Lucas’ EMF blinked erratically, as the needle jerked back and forth.
“Where is it?” I looked around, but didn’t see anything.
“It might not be a paranormal entity,” he said. “Other things can set them off—appliances, electrical wires, even water pipes in the walls. And these readings are all over the place.”
Alara stopped, and we almost plowed into her. “I don’t think it’s an electrical wire.”
I followed her eyes to the end of the hall.
A little girl in a yellow chiffon dress sat on the carpet playing with a porcelain doll. Its tangled blond hair spilled onto the floor.
As the girl rose, her body flickered like static on an old television set. She walked toward us, dragging the doll behind her by one arm. With her smooth flushed skin, she look
ed nothing like the corpse floating in my bedroom.
“Did you come to play?” The child’s eyes lit up, bright and curious.
Lukas tried to push me behind him again, but my feet were rooted to the floor.
“Sure,” Alara answered carefully. “What kind of games do you like?”
The child studied Lukas, her blue eyes lingering on his wrist. She acted as if she saw something more than his bare skin. The hem of her yellow dress fluttered in a nonexistent wind.
The little girl’s body flickered, revealing another face beneath her own. An old woman’s empty eyes leered at us, her face slack and covered in scratches. Matted gray hair hung limp at her shoulders where the child’s shiny blond strands had hung a moment ago.
She lifted the doll off the ground, its head dangling from the cord holding the toy together.
The old woman’s scratched face flashed in front of the child’s as she raised the broken doll higher. “I like the kind of games where people like you end up like this.”
CHAPTER 15
Girl in the Yellow Dress
The wind increased and the girl’s hair whipped around her. She stepped forward one shiny patent-leather Mary Jane at a time, dragging the mangled doll. The child pointed at Lukas, the rage in her voice at odds with her innocent features. “I know what you want.”
Air swirled around the child, tangled blond hair lashing her face.
“We don’t want anything.” Lukas backed away, matching Alara step for step. “Kennedy, get out of here.”
I heard the words, but my body didn’t react. What if I moved and it made the spirit angrier?
“You can’t have my doll!” she shrieked.
“We aren’t trying to take your doll,” Alara promised, clutching the silver medal around her neck.
“Liar!” the child screamed. “I know who you are. He told me you’d come.”
Lukas raised the crossbow and aimed it over Alara’s shoulder.
“Go,” he barked at me.
I stumbled back a few steps.
The child’s face twisted into a wicked smile and her form flickered again, exposing the old woman lurking inside her.
Paintings flew off the walls, and heavy frames splintered against Lukas’ back. He dropped to his knees, covering his head, and the crossbow slipped out of his hand.
Carpet nails ripped out of the floor, pelting us like knives.
“Hey.” Alara pointed the spiked glove at the girl. “Screw you and your doll.”
The vengeance spirit’s eyes widened, the yellow dress twisting in the whirlwind encircling her.
Lukas staggered to his feet and grabbed the crossbow, raising it again. The bolt flew through the air and hit the spirit square in the shoulder.
The doll slipped from her grasp, smashing to pieces.
The spirit’s eyes darted to the broken shards of the doll. She opened her mouth and let out an inhuman wail that echoed off the walls.
A wooden side table pushed itself away from the wall and careened toward me. Time skipped as images flashed in front of me in a surreal sort of stop-motion.
Alara screaming—
Lukas lunging for me—
The flat edge of the table slamming into my stomach—
I heard the sound of wood cracking as my back hit the railing. I felt my body falling, the smooth white ceiling above me.
“Kennedy!”
Something clamped down hard around my ankle, and my body jerked to a stop.
The floor swayed dangerously below me, pieces of the railing scattered over the smooth marble. The grip on my ankle tightened, and I felt myself being lifted. My body slid over the edge of the landing, and Lukas stared down at me.
“Lukas…” Alara’s voice rose urgently, and Lukas jumped to his feet.
Alara’s combat boots were positioned between me and the white Mary Janes marching down the hallway.
The spirit pointed at Lukas. “You broke my doll.”
The old woman’s face flashed behind the child’s, and the spirit hurled her body into the air. Alara stepped in front of Lukas and cocked her arm back, cold-iron bolts protruding from the knuckles of her gloved hand. Alara waited until the spirit was practically on top of her before she plunged the iron spikes into the girl’s stomach.
The vengeance spirit’s eyes bulged, and she opened her mouth to scream. But there was no sound. Her body crackled in and out of focus, as it hung from Alara’s glove like another broken doll.
Lukas raised the crossbow for the third time and fired. The bolt struck the child-that-wasn’t-a-child in the shoulder, and she exploded into a million fragments of nothing.
Then everything went black.
“Kennedy? Can you hear me?” Lukas leaned over me. “Talk to me.”
The room came back into focus, and my thoughts stitched themselves together slowly. I pushed myself up, and Lukas put his hand on my back for support.
Relief replaced the panic in his eyes. “Take it easy.”
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Where’s Alara?”
“She went to find Jared and Priest.” He shook his head, tension carved into every line on his face. “When you fell, I thought…”
“I should’ve listened when you told me to go.” I wasn’t sure how to apologize for almost getting us killed. “I know this was important.”
His fingers pressed lightly against the small of my back. “That’s not what I was saying. Finding a piece of the Shift isn’t worth what could’ve happened—”
“Wait? Did you find something?”
“Yeah. One of those colored glass disks from the diagram in Priest’s journal.” He looked over at the broken bits of the doll scattered across the floor. “It was hidden inside.”
“Where are the other pieces?”
“I don’t know.” Lukas ran his hand up my back and squeezed my shoulder gently. “Think you can walk?”
I nodded though I wasn’t sure. My back felt like someone had stomped on it. “Give me a minute.”
Lukas spread his jacket on the floor and collected what was left of the doll, tossing the shards into the center of the fabric.
“What are you doing?”
“We need to burn these. If a spirit’s remains aren’t destroyed, it can come back. The same principle applies to personal items.” When he finished, Lukas gathered the sides of his jacket to form a bundle. As he pulled me up, his hand slipped under the edge of my T-shirt and slid across my bare skin.
“Wait. You missed one.” I pointed at the triangular sliver embedded with a blue plastic eye. Black script was scrawled across the inside. “Something’s written on it.”
Lukas picked it up, keeping one arm firmly around me, and turned over the chipped porcelain: Millicent Avery. Middle River, Maryland.
“What do you think it means?”
“Maybe it’s the name of the person who made the doll.” Lukas handed me the shard, and I slipped it in my pocket.
As he eased me down the steps, I leaned against his chest and listened to his heartbeat, focusing on the soothing rhythm instead of the vicious ache in my muscles. A sudden rush of fear swept through me.
What if the little girl isn’t the only spirit in the house?
At the bottom of the stairs, the door was open and bits of gray light reflected off the dusty chandelier and glittered across the floor. It reminded me of the snow globe with the miniature version of Lilburn trapped inside something that was once beautiful.
Relief swept over me as I crossed the threshold.
Jared barreled around the side of the house before we made it down the front steps, rage coming off him in waves. Alara and Priest struggled to keep up. Lukas’ arm was still around my waist, and suddenly I felt self-conscious.
Ignoring a rush of dizziness, I pulled away.
“What happened?” Jared demanded, his anger completely focused on Lukas.
“The vengeance spirit of a little girl was in there—” r />
“Alara said you almost got her killed,” Jared yelled. It sounded like he actually cared about what happened to me.
Alara looked stunned. “That’s not what I said.”
Lukas’ hands curled into fists at his sides. “Because she would’ve been safer with you? We both know putting other people first isn’t your strong suit.”
Jared flinched as if his brother had punched him.
Alara elbowed her way between them. She held up a silver disk with a circle of blue glass in the center. “You two can argue later. We need to find the rest of the Shift.”
Jared didn’t move.
Lukas dropped his jacket on the ground, revealing broken bits of the doll. “These have to be burned.”
“There’s writing on this one.” I fished the shard out of my pocket and handed it to Priest.
“Guys?” Priest stared at the piece of porcelain in his hand.
“What if something had happened to her?” Jared demanded, his eyes still fixed on his brother. “The four of us can’t do this alone.”
The words hung in the air for a moment as the truth sank in. Jared didn’t feel responsible for me. I was a means to an end.
I pushed past him, ignoring the pain burning up my back.
“Guys! Priest yelled this time.
Jared spun around. “What?”
The broken piece of the doll was still in Priest’s palm. “This is my granddad’s handwriting.”
CHAPTER 16
A Break in the Line
I waited for sleep to find me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the last few days and what Jared said outside of Lilburn. I knew Lukas and Jared saved my life that first night because they were convinced I was one of them—the missing fifth member they needed.
I also knew that when I climbed into the van with them, I didn’t believe it.
But I still got in. Because unlike Jared, Lukas, Alara, and Priest, I was alone. They had each other now, protected by the barrier belonging provides.
I wanted desperately to belong to something—to face the real and emotional demons of the world with someone beside me. But that was impossible. The only person I belonged to now was myself.