“Your grandparents lived there right?” Lukas asked.
I nodded. “They lived in Boston.”
“It’s a connection.” He sounded hopeful.
Alara crossed her arms. “You aren’t actually suggesting we go to Massachusetts because of a sticker? To look for what exactly?”
“I agree with Alara,” I said. “It’s a long shot.”
Priest took off his headphones and hooked them around his neck. “My granddad used to drag me to all these weird places he loved when he was a kid. Maybe Kennedy’s father took her there for a reason.”
“Like to see the world’s largest bottle cap?” Alara rolled her eyes.
Lukas pocketed his coin. “The Shift is gone. Andras is orchestrating a murder spree, and we don’t even know where to find him. So unless you know something the rest of us don’t, this is about as dead as dead ends get.”
“I’ll pay the check.” She slid out of the booth.
Lukas nodded at Priest and they followed her, most likely a tag team effort to sell her on the road trip idea. Otherwise, we were looking at ten hours trapped in a car, on the receiving end of Alara’s sarcasm.
Ten hours in the car.
“Elle, did you bring any extra clothes?” I asked.
“There’s a pair of jeans and a some other stuff in my purse.” She held up her gigantic black, patent leather bag. “Take it with you. It’s totally stocked. Face wash, moisturizer, disposable toothbrushes.” She paused dramatically as I took the bag. “Make up.”
Definitely a hint.
“Did you bring the prom dress to go with all that stuff?” Jared teased.
Elle put her hand on her hip. I stifled a smile and hauled her purse to the bathroom.
As the door closed behind me, I heard her say, “You obviously never read 10 Rules for Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse. Rule Number one.…”
When I came out a few minutes later, Elle was talking to someone in hushed tones. I stopped in the narrow hallway leading back into the restaurant and listened.
“She watched him go.”
“I don’t get it.” The other voice belonged to Jared.
“I mean literally watched,” she said.
“You’re not serious?”
“I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.” Elle sounded nervous. “Kennedy would kill me.”
That’s right Elle. So stop talking.
Elle always had my best interests at heart, but her attempts to protect me had resulted in over-sharing, once or twice—something I should’ve thought about before I left them alone. I held my breath, praying the conversation was over.
“That’s why she won’t let anyone get too close,” Jared said.
Because I’m screwed up and broken and there’s no way to fix me.
“If Kennedy gets scared, she pushes people away,” Elle said. “It’s what she does. But you can’t let her—”
Jared cut her off. “I did everything wrong.”
Elle responded after a long moment. “Then I guess you’d better start doing them right.”
You need to kill this conversation fast.
I opened the bathroom door and slammed it, as if I had just come out. They stopped talking immediately.
Thank god.
Jared and Elle had relocated to the front of the restaurant by the time I came out.
They were staring up at a cheap TV mounted on the wall, while the waitress tried to close out a check.
“Come on, Henry, I was off at one. I gotta get home.”
The trucker pointed at the TV. “Hold on a minute.”
A reporter stood in a parking garage, red and blue lights flashing behind her. I couldn’t hear what she was saying from where I was standing, but I knew the moment the girl’s photo filled the screen.
The trucker tossed a ten-dollar bill on the counter, shaking his head. “Another one of them missing girls.”
Her name was printed under the picture. Hailey Edwards.
Number 16.
6. DEAD PATRIOTS
The museum is closed.” Elle cupped her hands around her face and peered through the window.
Priest fished a twisted piece of wire out of the pocket of his hoodie. “I prefer to think of it as temporarily inaccessible.”
Alara rubbed her gloved hands over her arms and huddled closer to the side of the house. “Hurry up. I’m freezing.”
During the ten-hour drive to Massachusetts, the relentless rain that followed me everywhere had turned to snow. I couldn’t pinpoint the moment when the New England temperature won out, because my lack of sleep over the last nineteen days had finally conquered my nightmares.
“Think anyone will show up?” Alara glanced down the empty, dirt road.
The museum turned out to be a three-story, butterscotch-colored Tudor at the end of an unmarked road. We hadn’t seen a single car since we turned off the highway.
“Doubtful.” Lukas pointed at the brass placard next to the door.
TOPSFIELD MUSEUM OF REVOLUTIONARY
TAXIDERMY AND PATRIOTS
HOURS: 11:00 AM - 4:00 PM
TUESDAYS, THURSDAYS & THE FIRST
SATURDAY OF EVERY MONTH
“HOME OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST
BOTTLE CAP”
“What kind of museum is only open twice a week?” Alara shot Lukas an I-told-you-so look.
He tapped on the front window. “One that’s full of revolutionary taxidermy.”
Priest wiggled the wire and a small screwdriver inside the lock. Elle hovered behind him, which seemed to be slowing him down.
“After we destroy the demon and save the world, I totally need a tutorial,” Elle said. “I can never get into my locker.”
“We’re in.” Priest opened the door and waved Alara over from where she was standing at the edge of the porch. “Alara, let’s go.”
She held up one finger, with her phone to her ear.
Elle grabbed the elbow of my jacket. “Come on. She’s on her cell again.”
“Who’s she talking to?” I’d never seen Alara call anyone except her parents.
“No idea. But every other day, she calls someone.”
Inside, the museum looked like a cross between an eighty-year-old woman’s cluttered living room and a display at a natural history museum. Glass cases, full of Revolutionary War memorabilia, were crammed between antique curios that held everything from pocket watches and thimbles to a shoehorn and a butter dish.
The bizarre taxidermy collection appeared to be the only thing that wasn’t behind glass. A deer dressed in a wedding gown stood on its hind legs behind a Victorian dollhouse. Inside the miniature rooms, chipmunks positioned in classic fencing stances wielded tiny epee swords.
Elle backed away from a squirrel bronco-riding a saddled rattlesnake. “That is wrong on so many levels.”
Priest poked at it. “Some people have too much free time.”
Alara made her way toward us from the front of the store, dodging two white mice with unicorn horns, and a beaver wearing a golden crown.
“Talking to your sister again?” Jared asked.
“When who I call becomes any of your business, I’ll let you know,” Alara snapped.
“So where’s this giant bottle cap?” Elle asked in one of her not so subtle attempts to change the subject.
“In here,” Lukas called from the next room.
Four cables secured the bottle cap to the ceiling.
Elle sighed, unimpressed. “I expected it to be bigger.”
Lukas knocked on the red metal. “It’s the size of a monster truck tire. How big did you think it would be?”
Elle dug through her gigantic purse and pulled out a plastic camera.
Alara started to say something, when Elle waved the camera in the air. “It’s disposable. I don’t need to hear the ‘only use your cell to call your mom’ speech again.” She handed me the camera and stood in front the bottle cap. “Take my picture. And I want one of those stickers that says: I visite
d the world’s biggest bottle cap.”
I snapped the photo before World War III could break out between them.
Priest stared into one of the display cases that ran the length of all four walls. “You can take your picture with John Hancock’s shoelace, too, if you want.”
Someone had taped a laminated note to the glass.
Historical artifacts generously donated by
the residents of Topsfield, Massachusetts
and their families.
According to the labels, the cases lining the walls held the personal effects of Revolutionary War patriots: an assortment of muskets and bayonets, tattered flags, broken dishes, a bible, and a wooden leg. The highlight of the exhibit featured John Hancock’s shoelace, a halfpenny that supposedly belonged to Samuel Adams, and a page from Paul Revere’s Bible.