“Jared doesn’t deserve this.” I said. “I wish it were me.”
Lukas took a shaky breath. “None of us do.”
I wiped my face with the hem of my shirt, and Lukas loosened his grip on me, his arms still around me. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said.
“Hey, I’ve been looking for you—” I heard Elle’s voice behind me.
Lukas dropped his arms and took an awkward step away from me.
“We were down in the basement with Jared,” I said, wiping my nose on my sleeve. “More like not with Jared.”
“Whatever.” I recognized the anger in her voice, but I wasn’t prepared for the expression on her face. My best friend looked like she wanted to kill me. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s not like that.” Lukas skirted his way around me like I had the plague.
Elle took off down the hall in a flash of red hair and black leather.
I leaned against the cold metal behind me and slid to the floor. I wanted to scream and pound on the walls and cry—do anything to avoid feeling the way I did right now.
Broken, battered, and beaten.
This was a war we couldn’t win. Or one we’d already lost.
31. FEAR ME
I found Priest in the Mech Room, standing behind a black table like the ones in high school science labs, wearing his headphones and clear plastic safety glasses. He nodded his head in time with the music, his attention focused on a long silver pipe in front of him. Priest was in his element, surrounded by steel tool chests, overflowing with screwdrivers and power tools. Behind him, hammers, wrenches, and extension cords hung on a pegboard above a huge microscope.
Even as he attached a propane tank to one end of the pipe and drilled a row of holes along the top, his frown never lifted.
Usually his oversized hoodie and long blond bangs reminded me of the skaters from my old high school in Georgetown—the misfit band of freshmen and sophomores that traveled in swarms, with their skateboards sticking out of the top of their backpacks. The boyish quality that had always made Priest seem like one of them was gone now.
I recognized the look on his face. It was the expression of someone who knew what it felt like to be betrayed, and I hated myself for being part of the cause.
“How long have you known?” He asked, as he secured a speaker to the other end of the pipe with a roll of silver duct tape.
I looked down, letting my hair create a curtain between us. “He told me when we were trapped in the wall at Hearts of Mercy.”
“And you didn’t think Alara and I had a right to know?”
“I thought Jared should tell you himself, and he wanted to,” I said.
“Except he didn’t, did he?” Priest turned on the speaker and flames flared from the holes in the pipe, rising and falling to intensity of the music.
“That’s amazing.”
He didn’t look at me. “It’s a Ruben’s Tube. Physics 101. Any idiot can make one.”
Except an idiot like me, who would lie to her friend—that was the message.
“I’m so sorry.”
Priest slammed his fist against the wall behind him and spun around. “Sorry won’t bring my grandfather back. I’m not like the rest of them. Jared and Lukas have each other, and Alara still has a family, even if she doesn’t wanna live with them. My granddad was all I had. I thought you of all people would have understood that.”
“I do.”
He shook his head, anger exaggerating his every movement. “No, you don’t. You went to a regular school. You have a best friend who took off with a bunch of strangers because she wanted to find you. I lived in the same broken-down Tudor with my granddad for as long as I can remember. I was home-schooled. That means no teachers, no friends, no enemies. No one except the two of us. He was my best friend.” Priest’s voice cracked. “My only friend.”
I tried to imagine a life without school and Elle. A life that only existed within the four walls of my house. “You’re right. I should’ve told you.”
Priest unhooked his headphones from around his neck and hurled them down across the room. The plastic smashed against one of the shiny silver walls.
“Jared should’ve told me!” he shouted. “He was supposed to be my friend. I followed him around like a puppy. And the whole time, Jared knew my granddad was dead because of him.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. “He is your friend.”
Priest turned his back on me and stalked down the hall. “We have a different definition of friendship.”
After my conversation with Priest, I wanted to find an empty room and hide, but it would only delay the inevitable. Facing Alara.
I took a deep breath and opened the door to our room. The only sign of Alara was a box of shotgun cartridges and a bottle of rock salt.
“She’s not here.” Elle said.
I sat on the end of her bed, the way I had a million times back in her room at home. “What’s going on with you? You’re acting weird.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why? Because I don’t want to watch you hang all over Lukas?”
For a second, I thought she was joking. Elle had never been jealous of another girl in her life, at least not over a guy. Amazing hair, a cool pair of vintage shoes, maybe. The idea of Elle being jealous of her best friend was even more ridiculous.
“Lukas and I are just friends. Anyone who spends more than five minutes with the two of you can tell how Lukas feels about you. Trust me, you have nothing to worry about.” A sob caught in my throat, and my voice cracked. “The only guy who ever cared about me is sharing a body with a demon.”
“I’m sorry,” Elle said, but she didn’t sound very sympathetic. “I’m acting stupid.”
What’s wrong with her?
“It’s okay.” Maybe Elle was having hard time dealing with this world I’d dragged her into and I hadn’t noticed.
“Don’t worry. She draped an arm over my shoulders. “We’re going to find that thing to save Jared.”
“The Shift.”
I didn’t have the energy to look for Alara. Instead, I fell asleep thinking about another person I couldn’t save.
A scream pierced the darkness and my eyes flew open.
Elle.
I shoved myself off the bed, struggling to reach her.
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed.
Bear barked in the darkness.
The door burst open, and someone turned on the lights. Lukas and Priest stood in the doorway, weapons drawn. Alara must’ve come in after we fell asleep, and she jumped out of bed. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” I scanned the room, but no one else was in here.
Elle clawed at her arms, hysterical and sobbing. Lukas ran to the bed and pulled her into his lap. She was covered in dark bruises, as if someone had hit her.
Foot falls echoed through the hallway. Gabriel and Dimitri appeared in the doorway, out of breath. Gabriel noticed Elle’s bruises. “Who did this?”
The lights flickered, and Priest pus
hed our half-open door closed. “Not who… what.”
On the back of the door, a message was scratched into the metal over and over:
WHEN THE NIGHTMARES COME, FEAR ME.
Lukas hugged Elle tighter. “He’s getting stronger.”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest. I grabbed the contact lens case next to my bed and took off. My bare feet slapped against the cold concrete floor as I ran toward the containment area. Priest was behind me, repeating my name over and over, asking me if I remembered something or had a theory. I didn’t have either, just a feeling something was very wrong.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I popped in the contacts. Voices drifted through the tunnel—the demon’s and a girl’s voice.
The cell door was still closed, but Andras wasn’t alone.
A girl stood in front of him, picking the locks on his wrist shackles with a wire. Even with her back to me, I recognized her.
“Am I hallucinating again?” Priest asked.
The girl turned slowly, her shoulder-length brown waves grazing her neck.
My neck.
The girl in the cell looked exactly like me.
She whispered something to Andras in a strange language, brought her fingers to her lips, and blew me a kiss, the same way Andras had on the street in Boston.
Gabriel caught up to us and struggled to unlock the barred door, but she was already transforming. Her body—my body—spiraled into a ribbon of particles that glittered in the air like dust in the sunshine.
He cracked Azazel in the air, but the whip slid right through her dusty form, and she was gone.
My eyes darted to the wall behind Andras. Every inch was still covered with writing and symbols—new ones overlapping the protective and binding symbols that were already in the cell when Gabriel and Dimitri locked him inside.
Behind the sadistic Scrabble pattern Andras had created from the dead girls’ names, another image jumped out at me, as clearly as if I had drawn it myself.