Unbreakable (22 page)

Lukas tightened his hand around the splintered wood. “Yeah. And if we find it, we can destroy Andras.”

“Let’s get out of here.” Priest handed the metal detector to one of the spirits. The child grabbed it and scampered away.

We walked back down the aisle between the beds. The children were already playing with the metal detector,
possibly the only toy some of them had ever seen. We moved past the nightmarish drawings and up the cracked stairs. I thought about all the innocent people the Legion must have saved over the years, and I couldn’t help but wonder…

Who saved the innocent souls?

I
waited on the front steps, hoping to avoid the awkward-ness of being alone with Lukas and Jared. Priest and Alara had disappeared the moment we left the basement. Priest was determined to figure out where the coordinates on the handle led, and Alara had mumbled something about tying up loose ends.

I stared at my hands, splinters and dirt embedded under my nails instead of black charcoal. Artists protected their hands. What did that say about me? How much would I have to give up for the Legion?

The muffled sound of voices rose inside the house. Without any vengeance spirits to fight, Lukas and Jared were left with each other. A door slammed and snippets of their conversation drifted outside.

“We both know you don’t care about her,” Lukas shouted. “She’s just something else for you to take—”

A knot formed in the pit of my stomach. Lukas meant something to me, even if I couldn’t define exactly what it was. I didn’t want to hurt him.

“Luke, I didn’t mean for this to happen—”

“Like you didn’t mean to kill Dad?” The words echoed through the house, layered with pain and anger.

“You know that was an accident,” Jared said quietly.

“Everything’s an accident with you because you never think about anyone but yourself.” I leaned against the door debating whether or not to open it. “Is Kennedy going to be your next victim?”

“Hey, are you going back in?” Alara climbed the stairs behind me, a canvas knapsack slung over her shoulder.

“Wait—”

She opened the door before I could stop her, catching Lukas and Jared off guard. They both turned and looked past Alara to where I stood. I dropped my eyes, hoping they wouldn’t realize how much I’d heard.

Alara broke the silence. “Am I interrupting something that looks like it needs interrupting?”

Jared slouched against the wall, his eyes glued to the floor.

Lukas noticed Alara’s knapsack. “What are you doing?”

She strode past them. “My grandmother would never
leave the spirits of those children in this awful place. I have to try to release them so they can move on.”

“Can you do that?” I followed her tentatively.

“I’m not sure. I’ve only seen my grandmother do it, and I don’t have the traditional supplies. But I think I can make some substitutions.”

“Why didn’t the spirits disappear like the little boy in the well?” I asked. He had seemed at peace.

“Sometimes they don’t know how to move on. They’re lost and need help finding their way.”

Lukas frowned. “And you’re going to be their guide?”

“More like their travel agent.” Alara pulled four packages of Red Cap tobacco out of her bag. “If you guys want to help, I’m going to need a bucket.”

The spirits crowded around Alara as she emptied one of the tobacco packets into a bucket of water and stirred it with her hand. “We have to make a floor wash and cleanse the room of negative energy or the loas won’t come.”

“The what?”

“The loas are intermediaries in the spirit world. Some of them guide lost souls to the other side,” she explained, her arms soaked to the elbows. “But they won’t show up unless we scrub this room down.”

Jared studied the brown water. “And this is what we’re using to clean the place?”

“Florida Water makes the best floor wash. Unless you have bergamot oil, rose water, oil of neroli, and about seven other ingredients stashed in the van, we’re going with this. Lots of cultures use tobacco to purify sacred spaces.” She handed Jared a wet towel. “Start purifying.”

Lukas walked up and down the stairs, refilling the bucket in the kitchen until Alara ran out of Red Cap and the floors were clean, at least according to her standards. He didn’t say a word to Jared and not much more to me. When he caught me watching him, his usual playful expression was gone.

Alara lit a novena candle in the center of the room. By now, some of the children were sitting cross-legged around her, fascinated. “We need something to offer the loas.”

I glanced at the stripped beds and the IV poles, the bare bulb and the dirty faces of the spirits. There was nothing here. Lukas and Jared looked through their pockets, but weapons and salt didn’t seem like the right sort of offerings.

I only had one thing of value.

My hand shook as I slipped my mother’s silver bracelet off my wrist and handed it to Alara. I heard a rip and turned in time to see Jared tearing something off his father’s jacket. He dropped the white patch bearing his last name next to the candle.

Alara shook her head. “I’m not sure it’s enough.”

One of the smaller children scrambled to her feet and disappeared behind a metal bed frame. She scurried back
and handed Alara a dirty bundle with two circles drawn on the front, and a piece of IV tubing wrapped around it. A crude doll made from one of the bed straps.

Alara’s eyes glistened in the candlelight as she opened her journal and read from a page written in Haitian Creole, the language of the loas. The children listened intently and she turned to the next page, written in English—Psalm 136.

Her voice was quiet, and I only heard snippets as she spoke.

Their bodies started to fade, two or three at a time until there was nothing left but a patch, a silver bracelet, and a doll lying on the floor.

Upstairs, I lingered by the front door, trying to sense the change within the house. Part of me wanted to open the pantry in the kitchen to see if the spirit of the little girl was still locked inside. But I knew she was just a fingerprint left behind, and I wanted to remember the real spirits who had finally found a way out.

Jared was standing in the center of the rusty merry-go-round, staring past the gates over which no child would’ve been tall enough to see. From where I stood, the world was framed by those black bars. Had the children ever seen the world without them? Would they be able to see it now?

“When I was little, I wanted to be a superhero so I could protect people from the bad guys.” Jared didn’t look at me. “I couldn’t even protect you from a dead kid.”

“If you’re talking about what happened today—”

“We could’ve died, Kennedy.”

The front door slammed behind me.

“And whose fault is that?” Lukas stalked across the yard toward his brother.

“Do you really want to go there right now?” Jared stepped off the edge of the merry-go-round, sending it spinning without him.

“I want to know how many people are going to get hurt because of you. Are you gonna get her killed, too?” Lukas asked.

Time seemed to slow down as Lukas closed the distance between them. He lunged, tackling Jared, and they hit the ground hard. They rolled in the dirt, both grappling for the upper hand.

Jared made it to his feet first and grabbed Lukas around the waist, lifting him in the air. He slammed his
brother’s back into the dirt and pinned Lukas’ arms down with his knees.

I ran down the steps just as Jared threw the first punch. “Stop it!”

Jared looked up at me. It was only a second, but it was enough time for Lukas to free one of his arms. His hand closed around Jared’s throat.

“What happened in there wasn’t Jared’s fault or mine,” I said. We all knew I was talking about more than getting trapped inside a wall.

Lukas relaxed his grip and Jared pushed himself away, coughing. “Don’t worry, Luke. You made your point.”

Lukas stood up and wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve before he walked away.

I knelt down next to Jared, and he dropped his head. “He’s right.”

“About what?”

“How close I came to getting us killed.”

I didn’t want to think about what it had felt like inside that wall. “We’re both fine.”

Jared looked at everything but me. “Because Lukas saved us.”

“He had help.”

“Lukas would’ve found you somehow. He protects people,” Jared said, falling silent for a moment. “I get them killed.”

“Don’t do this to yourself. It was an accident.”

He raised his head, eyes dark and shining.

“Five people are dead, and there was nothing accidental about it. I knew there was a risk, and I kept looking anyway. I led Andras right to them.” Jared leaned his head against the wall. “I won’t let you get caught in the cross fire the next time I screw up.”

It felt like my heart stopped beating.

“What are you saying?” But even as I asked, I knew the answer.

He studied the weeds and dead grass at his feet. “I care about you—”

“Just not enough to stick around,” I said.

Whenever I cared about someone, I imagined them leaving—the words they’d say, the way it would feel when they left. I thought if I prepared myself, it would be easier when it finally happened.

“You don’t understand.”

My hands curled into fists at my sides. “Three hours.”

“What?” he asked.

“That’s how long it took for you to walk away.”

I was wrong.

“Kennedy—”

I held up a hand to silence him. “Now let’s see how long it takes you to forget me.”

I
stared out the window as the winding back roads led us closer to the coordinates etched in the sledgehammer. I tried to lose myself in drawing, anything to forget Jared’s arms around me inside the wall, or how easily he had given me up outside it. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other since I left him standing in front of Hearts of Mercy.

There wasn’t anything else to say.

Lukas had spent most of the ride searching websites on his cell phone, so he didn’t have to talk to his brother. When he finally lost the signal, he went back to studying the map.

He drew a line connecting the red circles, while Jared scanned through the static on the radio.

“There’s probably no reception out here.” Priest looked
up from his own sketch, some kind of tube loaded with canisters.

“That’s because this is the edge of the world, and we’re about to fall off,” Alara said.

Jared turned the dial again and this time a voice cut through the static. “The shooting occurred at eleven fifteen this morning at the Walmart in Moundsville. Three people were killed and two others injured before the gunman exited the store, turning his weapon on police.”

“We must be getting close,” Priest said.

“I found something else.” Lukas held up the map. He had added blue
X
s inside the boundary line.

Alara frowned. “You’ll have to elaborate.”

“The circles represent the places that had major surges in the last month, the cities and towns where we looked for Kennedy.” He traced the line with his finger. “The
X
s are the locations where we found pieces of the Shift.”

Priest froze. “They’re all inside that red line.”

“So what does that mean?” Alara asked.

“I think the Marrow is in there, too,” Lukas said. “And if I’m right, Andras is closer than we thought.”

Alara nodded. “Then we need to find the last piece.”

Another newscaster’s voice replaced the first. “Eastern West Virginia is still under tornado watch. Two tornadoes touched down in Westover yesterday, destroying three homes and a community center. The National Weather Service is working to determine the cause—”

“It’s like we’re heading into it,” Priest said.

Alara stared at the black clouds looming in the distance. “Or we’re already there.”

Jared glanced at the sign as we passed. “Only a few more miles.” They were the first words he’d spoken since we left Hearts of Mercy.

The road curved and the sky turned black, but this time it had nothing to do with the clouds.

Alara leaned over the front seat to get a better look. “Please tell me I’m seeing things.”

Hundreds of crows perched in the trees, crowded the telephone wires, and circled the sky.

Alara didn’t take her eyes off the birds. “Black rain. That’s what it’s called when murders of crows gather in one place like this.”

“Because they turn the sky black?” Priest asked.

“Because it’s just as unnatural.”

We moved closer to the birds churning purposefully over a spot in the distance. I didn’t need to see the words etched in the sign we passed to know it was the West Virginia State Penitentiary.