Alara craned her neck and did a double take. “He’s right.”
“Lots of people are better.” I handed him the pad and tucked the pencil behind my ear.
“Well, I don’t know any.” Priest ripped off the sheet and put it in his pocket. “I’m saving this in case you’re famous one day.”
If someone had said that a week ago, I would’ve holed up in my room and sketched for the rest of the day. Instead, I was hiding in a warehouse, packing ammo, just hoping to make it through another one.
CHAPTER 13
Cold Iron
With its weathered gray brick and medieval tower, Lilburn Mansion looked more like an abandoned castle from a European guidebook than the scene of paranormal attacks.
I stared at the second-story windows, wondering which one the person fell from. Whether the spirits inside the house were under the influence of a demon or not, two people had almost died here.
I wasn’t studying maps and sorting weapons anymore.
This was a real haunted house.
“You okay?” Lukas walked up beside me.
“I’m good.” If I pretended it was true, maybe I could fool myself.
“I was six the first time I saw a ghost.” Lukas faced the house, but I sensed him watching me. “I woke up one night, and a little girl was sitting by the window playing cat’s cradle. When the moonlight hit her body, it passed right through.”
I pictured the girl with the handprints around her throat. “Were you scared?”
“I thought it was a dream until I saw her again. She was sitting in the same spot playing cat’s cradle. After what felt like forever, she held up her hands with the blue string webbed between them, and she spoke to me.”
“What did she say?”
“ ‘You have to lace your fingers just right to catch your dreams. And you don’t want to lose them because they’re not easy to find again.’ Then she faded away like she was never there. When I woke up the next morning, the blue string was on the windowsill, looped in a perfect cat’s cradle.”
I gasped. “I would’ve lost it.”
“That’s the weirdest part. I didn’t. She was just a lonely spirit caught between worlds. I wanted you to know they aren’t all bad.” Lukas reached in his pocket and pulled out something. When he uncurled his fingers, it was tangled in his palm.
A web of blue string.
“And I want you to know something else.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the tangled loops.
“I’m just like you, Kennedy. There are other things I want. Things that have nothing to do with destroying demons and vengeance spirits.” Lukas put the string in my hand and closed my fingers around it. “So you can catch your dreams.”
He knows I’m scared. It doesn’t mean anything else.
I held the string, and I realized the cat’s cradle wasn’t to catch my dreams.
It was to catch me.
Jared was unloading weapons from the van when he noticed us walking down the hill. He stopped, his eyes moving from his brother to me. I started to smile, but he looked away.
Alara threw Lukas a disapproving look, like we had stayed out all night and showed up with our clothes on inside out. I pulled at my T-shirt, suddenly uncomfortable in my own skin.
“How’s it look up there?” Alara asked without turning around.
“Just like the picture,” Lukas said.
Alara pointed at a plastic milk jug on the ground with the words holy water scrawled on the front. “Can you grab that?”
I didn’t know if she was talking to me, but I picked it up anyway.
“Thanks.” She poured some of the holy water into a plastic soda bottle.
“So that stuff really works?”
Alara slipped the bottle into the leather tool belt around her waist. “About sixty percent of the time.”
I watched her systematically fill the rest of her belt—a pouch of salt, liquid salt rounds, a black marker. It reminded me of the way Elle could put on her makeup in the car without a mirror.
“How many times have you done this?” I asked.
Alara shrugged. “With these guys? Six times.”
Unless you counted studying and making out in my room, I hadn’t even been on six dates.
I wanted to ask her so many questions. Would the spirits haunting Lilburn look like the strangled girl from my room? Would they be as easy to destroy? Jared and Lukas only had one gun the night they burst into my room. The four of them were bringing a lot more firepower this time around.
“Heads up, Luk.” Jared tossed his brother the crossbow followed by a ripped cardboard box. Lukas opened the box without a word and examined the pointed projectiles. They didn’t look anything like arrows.
“Cool, huh?” Priest said. “Cold-iron bolts. I made them a few days ago.”
“Why does the iron need to be cold?” I asked.
“That’s what they call it when you hammer iron into shape without heating it.” Priest opened a box of nails and loaded a nail gun. “Spirits hate the stuff. It destroys them or burns like hell, depending on how strong they are.”
“Got it.” I pointed at the nails scattered around him. “Cold iron?”
“You’re catching on.”
Lukas loaded the remaining bolts and filled one of his pockets with salt. His cuff slid up and a thin layer of salt dusted his wrist. It looked like there was a design on his skin.
“Is that a tattoo?” I asked.
Priest glanced at Lukas.
Lukas followed my eyes to his wrist and pulled down his sleeve. “It’s nothing.”
“So what’s the plan?” Priest asked louder than necessary, as he handed Jared the nail gun.
Jared dumped a handful of nails in the pocket of his army jacket. “Lukas and Alara can check out the house. We’ll take the tower.”
“Let me guess? I can monitor the paranormal activity.” Priest sounded disappointed.
Jared checked the trigger on the weapon. “It’s an important job.”
Priest shoved a handheld device that lo
oked like a radio into one of his back pockets and tucked a calculator in the other.
“Planning to do your math homework in the haunted house?” I teased.
Priest perked up. “I wouldn’t need one for my homework, but they’re good for lots of other stuff.” He walked over and stood next Jared. Lukas and Alara were already standing together.
“Who am I going with?” I asked.
The four of them looked at one another. No one reacted except Priest, who immediately put on his headphones.
“Nobody,” Jared finally answered. “You’re staying here.”
Andras was responsible for my mother’s death. If there was a weapon capable of destroying him, I wanted to help them find it. “I’m going with you.”
Jared pushed past me without a word and disappeared around the side of the van.
I followed him. “You think if you ignore me, I’ll just wait out here? I don’t care—”
He whipped around. “I’m not letting you go in that house.”
“It’s not your decision to make.”
A worried crease formed between his eyebrows. “It is if there’s a vengeance spirit in there….”
“You’ve been trying to convince me this is my destiny or my duty, or whatever your parents told you guys to make you trade a normal life for this.” I yanked on the pocket of his jacket, the nails rattling inside. “If I’m really one of you, shouldn’t I see what I’m up against?”
Anger flickered in his eyes. “My parents didn’t tell me anything. My mom died ten minutes after she gave birth to us. And my dad told me the truth. Can you say the same thing?”
I bit the inside of my cheek.
Jared’s voice dropped. “You don’t get to judge my father or my life. What we do is important. It means something.”
I wanted to fire back with a comment that would hurt him the way he had tried to hurt me, but I couldn’t. No matter how different we were, Jared and I shared a common denominator as uncommon as they came.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” My hands were shaking.
Jared noticed and his expression softened. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. Why do you really want to go in?”