“Don’t say that.” I sat up and looked down at him. “You figure out things no one else can, and you have instincts I’d kill for. And you’re brave and loyal, and you’d do anything for the people you care about. My mom used to say ‘There are always choices.’ It was kind of her way of asking me if I thought I was making the right one.” I rested my hand on his chest, right over his heart. “When it counts, you make the right ones.”
Jared’s heartbeat sped up under my hand. His lips parted like he was about to say something. But he stayed silent. He watched me, with his eyes wide and heart hammering.
Finally, he reached up and slid his hand behind my neck, pulling me toward him.
I closed my eyes, anticipating the kiss.
“Look at me, Kennedy.” His voice was thick and heavy. “You’re the only person who’s ever said anything like that to me. The only person who sees me that way.”
Our faces were a foot apart, but it felt like Jared was so close he could hear what I was thinking
“That’s not true—”
“Shh.” He moved his hand and brought his finger to my lips. “I don’t care if anyone else thinks those things, as long as you do. The way I feel about you…” He bit his lip, as if he couldn’t find the right words. “Sometimes, when I look at you, I can hardly breathe.”
I pressed my lips against his, trying to make the space between us disappear. It felt the way it always did when our lips finally touched. I sensed how much he wanted me—how much I mattered to him. Like a need I’d never be able to fill.
But I tried until every part of me ached with exhaustion and something I only seemed to find with Jared.
Happiness.
I fell asleep feeling happy, and whole.
When I woke up the next morning still tangled in Jared’s arms, I felt stiff—and desperately in need of a shower. I wiggled out from underneath his arm and tiptoed past Priest, who was sleeping in the other bed.
The adjoining door was still open. Alara was buried under the covers in one bed, with Bear sprawled across the bottom, and Elle and Lukas were asleep on top of the covers in the bed next to hers. Lukas was propped up and Elle was using his chest as a pillow. At some point, she’d changed out of the offensive pink sweats, and now she was wearing red ones.
I dug through her clothes until I found a pair of skinny jeans and a T-shirt that wouldn’t look like a dress on me, and I carried them into the bathroom.
The water barely had time to heat up when I stepped into the shower. As the soap slid down my back, I wished the guilt I felt would wash away as easily.
Jared made it go away.
But I needed to find a way to do it myself—to stop feeling responsible for all the horrible things happening around me for just a few minutes. My mind flipped through the mental snapshots of my life, searching for a happy memory.
My house.
The smell of macaroni and cheese cooking—not the orange kind from a box, but the one my mom always made, with breadcrumbs sprinkled over the top.
A door closed upstairs, and I wait for her to come down. But it isn’t her. My father smiles at me, all green eyes and dimples and five o’clock shadow.
“How’s my sunshine?” He takes something out of his pocket.
I know what it is before I see the writing on the candy bar’s red and white wrapper.
No—
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyelids, forcing the images to fade.
Not him.
My father wasn’t allowed to be a happy memory, or anything else.
The water suddenly felt heavier, like the syrupy filth inside the well in Middle River. I didn’t need those memories coming back, too. I pulled my hands away from my eyes, and the shower floor slowly came into focus.
First the tiles. Then the round, silver drain. Black lines blurred my vision. I blinked a few times and looked down again.
Black streaks cut across the tile, as the letters printed on the drain came into sharp focus: MADE IN THE USA.
Drops of inky liquid splattered onto my skin and around my feet.
I scrambled backward, my hands slipping over the smooth, glass walls. The showerhead was directly above me now.
Dark water ran down my body, the sticky consistency of motor oil.
Dread and panic flooded through my system. I opened my mouth to scream, and the black liquid burned its way down my throat. Cigarette butts and gasoline were my first thought. I stumbled out of the shower, gagging.
My black handprint dripped down the glass.
I snatched a towel and reached for the doorknob. The moment my fingers curled around it, I stopped. A drop of clear water ran down the perfectly clean skin on my wrist. I whipped around to face the glass.
The handprint and the black streaks were gone.
The burning sensation in my throat and the nauseating taste in my mouth—even the smell—had all vanished. Clear water sprayed from the showerhead.
I tugged on the T-shirt and jeans and tore out of the bathroom.
“Something’s in here!” I yelled, slamming the door behind me.
Lukas, Elle, and Alara were awake now, watching TV.
Alara bolted out of bed. “What do you mean?”
Jared and Priest ran into the room, and Jared rushed to my side. “What happened?”
I struggled to catch my breath. “Black stuff came out of the shower. It was all over me. Then it just disappeared.”
“Was it thick?” Jared asked.
“Yeah.” I could still feel the slimy liquid running down my back.
Jared and Lukas exchanged a knowing look, and Priest darted into the other room. He returned moments later with a nail gun in one hand and a kitchen fire extinguisher in the other, which I knew was filled with a rock salt and water solution.
“That black stuff is a sign of demonic activity,” Lukas said.
Alara walked around the room with the EMF. Priest shadowed her, weapon-ready.
She stepped into the bathroom, and I held my breath.
“Nothing,” she called from inside.
“I want to get out of here.” I pulled on my boots and twisted my wet hair into a ponytail.
Elle shoved her stuff back into her bag and grabbed her coat. “Me too.”
We waited in the Jeep while Alara checked out, and Priest snuck Bear down the stairs the same way we’d brought him in the night before. Priest made it back first.
Lukas turned on the radio and switched between stations. “I
want to see if anything weird was going on nearby.”
Meteorologists continued to weigh in on the weather, citing everything from global warming to acid rain as possible causes.
“Pretty soon, these geniuses will be saying the polar ice caps are causing it.” Priest changed the station.
Alara jogged across the parking lot and climbed in just as the weather cut to breaking news: “The body of Father John O’Shea was discovered this morning when a parishioner at Blessed Sacrament arrived for eight o’clock mass to find the priest hanging above the altar. The police have ruled out suicide, due to what they are calling the bizarre details of the crimes.”
“That was an hour ago,” Lukas said, pulling out of the parking space. “Where’s the church?”
“Downtown. Ten minutes away.” Priest had already pulled up a map on his cell.
I tried not to picture a priest hanging from the rafters of his church or the slimy, black handprint on the glass in the shower. But the more I fought to keep the images at bay, the harder my mind held onto them.
“Think it’s him?” Lukas asked.
We weren’t far from the church, but the police had blocked off the street thanks to the morbid crowd of onlookers gathered at the corner.
“Yes.” Alara didn’t hesitate. “Park on the next block. We can walk.”
Lukas guided the Jeep into a parking space, and Priest hauled one of the duffel bags from the trunk.
The Boston sidewalk was teeming with people rushing to escape the rain. Before we turned the corner, I noticed something strange.
On the block across from us, one man stood, unmoving.
People pushed past him, yet he remained stock-still, water dripping from the visor of his Red Sox baseball cap. He stared through the crowd, his black eyes zeroing in on me. When I looked at him, crippling sensations rolled over me one after another like waves.
An icy chill racing up my back—
Black slime sliding over my body in the shower—
The smell of ash and sulfur and rot—
I tried to look away, but I couldn’t.
Other people were staring at him, too, now—and at one another. A woman huddled beneath a designer umbrella bumped into him, then froze for a moment. The woman’s composed demeanor changed, and she shoved an elderly man walking beside her. Within seconds, they were screaming at each other. As people tried to squeeze past them, they accidentally brushed against the black-eyed man. I watched the anger spread through the crowd, radiating from him and rippling from one person to the next.