“I said if I could leave. Like if tomorrow we destroyed Andras and this whole thing was over.”
Priest frowned as if he’d never considered the possibility.
Alara leaned forward and propped her elbows on the back the seat, between Elle and Priest. “If we took down Andras tomorrow, I’d pack my bags and backpack around Europe for a year. Maybe two. And Asia. I’d hang around cafes all day and drink coffee, and walk the Great Wall of China. I’d get a stamp on every page of my passport. What would you do, Lukas?”
Lukas thought about it for a moment. “Go to college, I guess?”
“Where?” Elle asked, egging him on.
Lukas smiled at her sheepishly. “Virginia Tech. My Advanced Calculus teacher always said I could probably get in if I stopped cutting class.”
Jared looked surprised. “When did she say that?”
“When you were in Algebra I with all the freshmen,” Lukas said.
“What would you major in?” I asked.
“Applied Mathematics. But it wouldn’t matter because I’d get recruited by the Department of Defense or Homeland Security, right after I hacked their system during senior year.”
Priest crossed his arms and shifted in his seat. “You mean after they let you out of jail for threatening national security?”
“They only throw you in jail if you’re an actual threat. Otherwise, hacking their mainframe is basically the job interview. I bet half the guys working there are former hackers. How about you, Priest?” Lukas asked. “You could probably walk right into a Mechanical Engineering class at Harvard and ace it, without cracking a book. You’d probably have your PhD before I even graduated.”
Priest pressed his lips together in a tight line. “I’m not interested in going to some pretentious university to earn a worthless degree I don’t need.”
Alara slung her arm around his neck. “I’m with you. Screw the system. Go straight to NASA or revolutionize an entire industry with one of your inventions.”
“Like that guy who invented the star for Christmas trees that sprays water all over the tree if it catches on fire,” Elle said.
“Of course, you’d deejay on the weekends at some exclusive club,” Alara said. “And I’d have to show up every once in a while to scare off all the girls who’d be stalking you.”
Priest shrugged Alara’s arm off his shoulder. “If I invent anything worth remembering, it’ll be for the Legion. We can’t just walk away if we destroy Andras. What about all the vengeance spirits and dangerous paranormal entities out there? Someone has to protect people, and it’s our job.”
“Our job is to protect the world from the malevolent spirits Andras influences, and to keep him from finding a way into this world.” Alara glanced at me awkwardly. “I mean… it was. Now our job is to destroy him. If we do that, it’s over. I’m not sticking around to be one of the Ghostbusters.”
Priest cringed at the reference, his eyes flickering over the faces of the other Legion members. “Is that how you all feel? You’d just bail?”
Alara twisted her eyebrow ring, and Lukas took out his coin and flipped it between his fingers.
“Jared? Is that how you feel, too?” Priest asked.
Jared rubbed the back of his neck. He seemed almost as uncomfortable with the conversation as Priest. “I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t part of the Legion. But I don’t want to fight vengeance spirits if I have a choice.”
Priest stared at him, speechless. Then he put on his headphones and yanked up his hood. “Good to know. I didn’t realize I was the only one who actually believed we had a calling. That we were in this for the long haul.”
“Over two hundred years is a pretty long haul,” Alara said, referring to how long the Legion had been in existence. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life towing that line.”
“Yeah. I got that,” Priest snapped, turning up the music.
Lukas reached over and squeezed Priest’s shoulder. “Come on, Priest. It was a hypothetical conversation. We don’t even know where to find Andras, let alone how to destroy him. The band isn’t exactly breaking up tomorrow.”
Priest relaxed a little, but he didn’t respond.
I couldn’t imagine wanting to lead a life like his forever, not if I had the choice to have a normal one. But to Priest, the Legion probably was normal. His grandfather had raised him and trained Priest from the time he was young. He was home-schooled. I didn’t even know if Priest had any friends before he met Jared, Lukas, and Alara, less than six months ago.
He wanted to belong.
Something I understood better than anyone.
16. HEROES AND MONSTERS
I’m not sleeping with the dog,” Elle said, flopping down on one of the double beds in our hotel room.
Alara unbuckled her tool belt and dropped it on the other bed. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t want to sleep with you either.” She scratched Bear’s ears. “Do you?”
“I hope you’re nicer to Elvis,” I said, prying off my wet boots.
Elle had unofficially adopted my cat when I took off with the Legion. After being possessed by a vengeance spirit, he’d been traumatized enough when she found him.
“Whatever.” She waved a hand in the air. “I treat that cat like the king that he is. I’m definitely a cat person.”
Alara opened a pack of complimentary chocolate chip cookies and fed one to Bear. “That explains a lot.”
Someone knocked on the door to the adjoining room. When neither of them moved, I got up and opened it.
Jared, Lukas, and Priest wandered into the room.
“Why is your room bigger than ours?” Priest asked. He was finally talking again after the awkward conversation in the car.
Alara popped a cookie in her mouth. “Because I’m the one paying.”
Jared sat down on the bed next to me. He noticed my aunt’s silver journal on the nightstand and picked it up. “I still can’t believe we found it.”
“I know.” I opened the cover, my fingers brushing his. “Faith wasn’t exaggerating when she said it was in bad shape. Some of the pages are so faded you can’t even see the letters.”
“You have it. That’s what matters.” He closed it, keeping my hand beneath his.
Priest stretched out next to Alara, with Bear sandwiched between them.
“What do you think?” she asked Priest, as the host of the show challenged the viewers to guess if a punch from a heavyweight boxer was more powerful than one from a mixed martial arts fighter. Over the course of the show, doctors and scientists would gather data from a robotic dummy to determine the answer.
“I’m going with the cage fighter,” he said.
Lukas stood on the other side. “Hey. I’m going down to the vending machine. Anyone hungry?” He looked over my shoulder at Elle.
“I’ll go with you,” she said a little too quickly.
“Of course you will.” Alara turned off the TV and scrolled through the cable channels. “I’ll take chips if they have salt and vinegar. And a Coke.”
“I’ll come with you. Give me a minute to change,” Elle told Lukas, before she disappeared into the bathroom with her gigantic bag.
“Wipe that dopey grin off your face,” Jared said, teasing his brother.
“What?” Lukas looked at me like he was checking to see if Jared’s comment bothered me—and hoping it didn’t.
I smiled at him, and he relaxed.
“Lukas, make sure she calls her mom while you guys are down there.” Alara didn’t look up from the TV. “According to my cousin, her mom is super high maintenance.”
Lukas nodded. “Got it.”
The moment Elle came out of the bathroom, I knew we had a problem.
“You cannot wear those in here.” Alara stared at Elle’s pink sweats like she was wearing raw meat.
Elle glanced at her outfit, trying to figure out what Alara was talking about.
“They’re pink.” Priest pointed at her sweatpants, as if that explain
ed everything.
“And?” Elle asked.
“And that color represents death and bad luck. I’m not sleeping in a room with anything pink in it,” Alara said. “Including you.”
Elle stared at Alara, waiting to see if she was joking.
She wasn’t.
“You have serious issues.” Elle grabbed her purse. “No one told me about the color rules. Are there any others I should be aware of?” Lukas dragged her out of the room, but Elle was still ranting. “Red? Gray? Blue? Let me know.”
“Wow. She’s sensitive.” Alara popped another cookie in her mouth.
The mixed martial arts fighter threw a punch and knocked the head off the robotic dummy. Priest snatched a cookie. “Told you.”
“Want to go in the other room?” Jared whispered.
I nodded and followed him.
“Don’t do anything a priest wouldn’t do.” Even though we left the adjoining door open, Priest couldn’t resist.
I curled up on one of the beds under Jared’s arm “Can I ask you something?”
He pulled me closer. “Anything.”
“If you destroyed Andras tomorrow, what would you do?” Jared was the only Legion member who hadn’t answered the question. “Travel around like Alara? Or go to college?” I didn’t know anything about his dreams—the regular things he wanted that had nothing to do with demons and vengeance spirits.
He bit his lip, frowning. “I’m not college material. Luke is the smart one out of the two of us.”