“Thanks.” The corner of my mouth turned up.
“Real nice.” Elle shot Alara a look that sent most girls running for cover. “She was practically institutionalized. Let’s have a little sensitivity—”
Alara and Priest plowed through Elle. They each hooked an arm around my neck and hugged me.
“Things weren’t the same without you.” Priest pushed his blond bangs out of his eyes. His signature headphones were hooked around his neck, underneath his hoodie. “Alara moped around, and Jared trashed this hotel room we were staying in.”
Jared jammed his hands in his pockets, but instead of staring at the ground, he kept his eyes on me.
“Why don’t we move this party before somebody figures out Kennedy’s gone?” Lukas walked around the side of the Jeep, wearing a crooked smile—one of the few noticeable differences between the Lockhart twins. Aside from Lukas’ smile and black, nylon flight jacket, and the scar above Jared’s eye, the two brothers were mirror images of each other.
He glanced at Jared and caught me an awkward hug. “It’s good to see you.”
“So where did you get this thing?” I asked, climbing into the backseat next to Jared.
“Impound,” Priest said.
Alara whacked him on the arm. “A friend.”
Lukas pulled off the shoulder. “Alara won’t tell us. I think she borrowed it from the mob.”
“Or an ex-boyfriend,” Elle said.
Alara scowled at her. “Shut up, or I’ll call your mom and tell her where you really are.”
“Where does she think you are?” Lying to Elle’s mom required flawless execution, and I was usually around to help cover her tracks.
Elle threw me a smug smile. “Taking a prestigious drama workshop at the Miami Center for the Performing Arts.”
“She believed that?” The likelihood of Elle’s mother letting her travel to another state without verifying the details were less than zero.
“After she spoke to the director,” Elle said.
“How did you pull that off?”
“Alara helped,” Elle said, as if that explained everything.
“Only because you blackmailed us.” Alara leaned against the car and crossed her arms. “She wouldn’t help us find you unless we agreed to let her come along. If I knew she was such a pain in the ass, I would’ve left her in DC.”
Elle pouted, but I was impressed. She’d always been resourceful, but generally she utilized her talents to torture guys who liked her, or manipulate her teachers. This was a new level. “Give it up. I want details.”
Alara shot Elle an intimidating glance. “My cousin, Thaddeus, is the director. The Center is one of my family’s foundations.”
“You worked things out with your parents?” I knew how hurt Alara had been when they asked her to abandon the Legion and come home.
It had only been a little over three months since my mom died, and I wanted everyone else to make peace with their own mothers while there was still time.
“Not exactly. Thaddeus and Maya have been helping me. Thad dealt with Elle’s mom, and Maya has been sending money whenever she can.” Alara pretended to inspect her silver nail polish at the mention of Maya, the younger sister she had spared by joining the Legion in her place. “She still feels guilty that I was the one who ended up with my grandmother. And Thad and I were always really close.”
“You look cold,” Jared said, changing the subject. He rubbed his hands over my arms to warm me up. “Turn up the heat, Luke.”
Lukas turned a knob on the dashboard and the lyrics of Jared’s favorite song, “Cry Little Sister” blared from the speakers.
Lukas and Priest groaned.
Alara covered her ears. “Make it stop.”
“Change the station.” Elle scrunched up her nose.
I couldn’t help but smile.
“It’s not the radio,” Lukas said.
“Someone paid for… whatever that is?” she asked.
“It’s Jared’s favorite song,” Alara said. “From The Lost Boys soundtrack.”
Elle looked confused. “The lost what?”
“You’re all hilarious.” Jared tried to reach over the seat and turn it off.
Lukas swatted his hand away. “Come on. Just once for Elle.”
“Cry, little sister, thou shall not fall.” Priest, Lukas, Alara, and I joined in for the chorus.
Jared ignored us and dug through a backpack in the trunk. He handed me an extra shirt. “Here. Since my brother doesn’t know how to turn on the heat.”
“Stop crying already.” Lukas shut off the music, with a crooked smile still plastered on his face, and cranked the heat.
Jared peeled off his wet thermal and slid on a dry one. I tried to ignore the way the sight of his bare skin made me feel.
Nice, Elle mouthed, smiling.
I took off my soaked sweater and parka and pulled Jared’s thermal over my head. Within seconds, I had slipped my arms out of the wet fabric and yanked the tank through one of the sleeves.
Jared watched as I tossed it over the seat. “I’ll never figure out how girls do that.”
“It’s an innate ability they’re born with, like rolling their eyes,” Priest said.
I leaned my head against Jared’s shoulder, fighting sleep. “Where are we going anyway?”
Lukas glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “I want to get at least few hours away from here, then we can hit a truck stop and eat.”
Elle stretched her legs between the seats and propped them on the center console, then sighed dramatically. “Promise?”
“Think we should head to West Virginia?” Priest slipped on his headphones. “The prison’s not that far.”
I stiffened. “Why would you ever want to go back there?” The thought of going anywhere near West Virginia State Penitentiary made my skin crawl.
Priest turned to Jared. “You didn’t tell her?”
“Tell me what?”
No one said a word, waiting for Jared to do the honors.
“After the four of us met up on the other side of the state line, we went back to the prison to find the Shift.” Jared paused for a long moment.
“It was gone.”
5. NUMBER 16
Do we still need the Shift?” I tried to sound curious, but thinking about it brought back nothing but bad memories.
With my help.
Lukas glanced at me in the rearview mirror, from the driver’s seat. “No. It served its purpose. But we figured it was better off with us.”
“Just in case,” Priest said.
“In case of what?” My shoulders tensed, and Jared pulled me closer. My body fit into the space underneath his arm perfectly. “Did you find something else in the journals?”
“Priest, what’s your malfunction?” Lukas shot him a warning look. “She’s been locked up in that place for weeks.
“Sorry.” Priest frowned and pushed his bangs under his gray hoodie. “We didn’t find out anything new. But even if the Shift is useless, someone in the Legion probably designed it. I can’t stand the idea of some kid finding it in the rubble a few months from now.”
“He just wants to take it apart and see how it works,” Alara said. She was stretched out in the third row.
“It’s a badass piece of mechanical engineering,” Priest said. “Of course I wanna take it apart.”
I settled back into the space under Jared’s arm, relieved. Priest was just being Priest. “So what have you guys been doing since…” I didn’t want to bring up the night at the penitentiary or Darien Shears or the razor wire. “Since we got separated?”
Jared squeezed my shoulder. “Looking for you.”
“I have no idea what they were doing before I started helping them,” Elle said, her hands gesturing wildly. “But we’ve been doing all kinds of stuff for the last four days. Searching for birth certificates and death certificates, making lists of all the towns with crazy weather, making charts of demon trails.”
“
She means patterns,” Lukas said.
“Exactly.” Elle nodded and launched ahead. “And Alara totally lied to a Priest about needing him to bless a bucket of holy water so her sick dog could drink it.”
“You’ll be thanking me if we run into any more vengeance spirits,” Alara said.
“How many are we talking about?” I turned to Jared, without realizing how close his face was to mine.