Unbreakable (6 page)

How could the world they were describing possibly exist within the one I had lived in my whole life?

Angels and demons? Ghosts that can possess whatever they want, and a secret society of exorcists…

“Are you telling me that someone in your family was part of the Legion?”

“The responsibility has been passed down, each member choosing a blood descendant to assume the duty at the time of their death. It’s been that way since the night our ancestors accidentally set Andras free.”

For a moment I didn’t respond. I watched them—Jared scowling at the road, Lukas with his boots on the dashboard. Neither of them looked delusional, and they definitely knew something about getting rid of vengeful spirits. But the rest of it sounded like an old family legend—a story that someone had misrepresented as history. Were their parents crazy? Conspiracy theorists who had passed on their deranged beliefs to their sons?

“Do you think the part about the demon could be a story? A way to explain why these spirits try to hurt people?”

Lukas took a leather journal out of the glove compartment. At least it looked like it had been a journal once. Now it was falling apart, scraps and torn pages slipping out from between the scratched covers. He opened it,
tucking the loose pages back into their proper places, and handed it to me. “I wish it was just a story.”

The spine was broken, the ink completely streaked in some places and illegible in others. Faded script from another time stared back at me.

“Is this Latin?”

“Yeah.” Lukas pointed to the clearer print below the passage. “That’s the translation.”

The rest of the page was obscured by water stains, and the back revealed nothing but a few unfamiliar symbols.

“Is there more?”

“In mine.” Jared took a journal out of his jacket and dropped it in my lap. It was smaller, with black leather peeling around the edges. Loose pages were falling out of this one, too. But the handwriting was different.

“I don’t understand. Did Andras kill the angel?” I couldn’t believe I was asking the question. But the faded script, strange hand-drawn symbols, and fingerprints on the yellowed pages made the story seem more plausible.

Lukas leaned against the seat, his shoulders sagging. “No one knows. We only have bits and pieces of the journals and the story. All we know is that the Legion found a way to contain Andras.”

“But once a demon gets a taste of this world, it wants more.” Jared tightened his grip on the wheel, his expression dark. “Andras is settling for revenge.”

“What about that book—the grimoire? Can’t you use it to send him back?”

“Nobody knows what happened to it,” Lukas said.

“You’re saying there’s no way to stop him?”

Jared shook his head. “At this point, it’s damage control. We have to destroy the vengeance spirits Andras controls, so they can’t do his dirty work.”

I realized what they were saying. “You don’t mean the two of you—”

Lukas cut me off. “Konstantin and Markus were cousins, and they each chose a blood relative to take their place. So two people from our family have always been in the Legion. Right now, those two people are Jared and me.”

He couldn’t be serious, not after what I’d witnessed at my house. “Your parents let you exorcise ghosts? Isn’t there a minimum age requirement or something?”

“Our parents are dead.” Jared tensed, but his voice didn’t betray a hint of emotion.

My throat went dry at the sound of the word and the thought of any more dead parents. “I’m sorry. But shouldn’t someone else do it? It’s obviously dangerous.”

Jared turned down an alley flanked by warehouses with dented metal doors. “There’s no one else. It’s our job.”

“Your job?” He made it sound like they were delivering pizza.

Lukas watched me with the intense blue eyes he and his brother shared. “It’s what we do, Kennedy. Our father chose Jared, and our uncle chose me. We’ve been training since we were kids.”

“Somebody has to do it.” Jared seemed almost apologetic. “If it weren’t for us, you’d be dead.”

Like my mom.

My chest tightened, and I took a trembling breath. “Stop the car.”

“What’s wrong?” Lukas asked.

I gripped the edge of the seat, my nails digging into the leather. “Please.”

“Are you gonna be sick?” Jared sounded worried as he guided the van to one side of the alley.

Lukas slid out and held the door open as I stumbled onto the filthy street. I turned my back on them and focused on the shiny puddles of water in the potholes, fighting the tears burning my eyes.

“Kennedy?” I caught a glimpse of Jared’s army jacket.

I spun around, shaking. “My mom is dead because of a demon your family summoned.”

Jared took a step back as if I had slapped him. “Our family didn’t do it alone. Someone from your family was there, too.”

I
heard the words, but they felt impossible.

Someone from your family was there, too.

And there was no one to confirm or deny it. My aunt was the only family I had left. If one of our ancestors was in a secret society, my mom would never have told her. They barely spoke, and when they did, it always ended in an argument.

I swallowed hard, fighting to keep my voice steady. “How do you know?”

Lukas pushed past his brother, walking toward me slowly like he was approaching a frightened animal. “There are always five members of the Legion. A month ago, all five died on the same night. Exactly the same way. Our dad and uncle, your mom—”

Jared leaned against the side of the van, his hands shoved in his pockets. “You weren’t the only one with a psychotic cat.”

“You think this is funny?” I snapped.

“No, I didn’t mean—” Jared’s eyes dropped to the ground.

“I get that this is a lot to take in, but you need to know the truth,” Lukas said.

I only nodded.

“Our place isn’t far.” Lukas led me to the van, and I climbed in without arguing. “It’s not like you can go back to your house.”

I hesitated for a second. “Wait. What time is it?”

“Eleven. Why?”

I was supposed to meet Elle at nine thirty. She would’ve gone by my house when I didn’t show up. I tried to picture exactly how it looked when we left—the door blown off the hinges, windows shattered, knives sticking out of the kitchen walls. Considering the number of people who had been opening their doors when we drove away, the police had probably beaten her there.

The police meant a call to my aunt, who would have me on the next plane to Boston if I went back.

If Lukas and Jared were telling the truth, a plane ride wouldn’t stop vengeance spirits from finding me. I couldn’t risk leaving until I knew how to protect myself.

I turned to Lukas. “I have to make a call. I was supposed to meet my friend, and she’s probably freaking out.”

He handed me his cell phone. “You can’t say anything about us. We don’t want to deal with the cops.”

“I just want to tell her that I’m okay.” I dialed Elle’s number, and she picked up on the first ring.

“Hello?”

“Elle—”

“Kennedy? Oh my god! Where are you?” She was talking so fast I could hardly understand her. “Your house is totally trashed and—”

“Elle? Are you alone?”

“Yeah, why?” Her usual confidence was gone.

“You can’t tell anyone I’m on the phone. Do you hear me?”

“Okay.”

I took a deep breath and tried to sound calm for her benefit. “Listen. I’m fine. Something happened at my house and these guys helped me.”

“What
guys
?” she hissed under her breath. “Everyone is looking for you. Your house is a crime scene, and I found Elvis wandering around in the street.”

“You found him? Is he all right?”

“Your stupid cat’s fine. He’s in my car.” Her voice rose, hysteria taking over. “But I’m in the parking
lot at the police station. I practically had to tell them everything you ate for the last two days. They think you were abducted.”

“Hold on.” I hit Mute and turned to Lukas. “The police think someone kidnapped me. Should she tell them I’m okay?”

“No,” he said quickly. “They’ll ask her a million questions, and she might get nervous and let something slip.”

I got back on the line. “Elle, you can’t tell anyone you talked to me.”

She sniffled. “Are you running away? Is this about boarding school? You can move in with me if you don’t want to go.”

It killed me to scare her like this. “I’m not running away. It has to do with what happened to my mom.”

“Her heart attack? Sometimes those things just—”

“She didn’t die of a heart attack.” The words felt different when I said them out loud. Truer.

For a second, Elle didn’t respond. “What are you talking about?”

Lukas gestured for me to hurry up.

“I have to go.”

“Call me back,” she whispered desperately.

“I will.” I hung up, wishing she was here and grateful she wasn’t at the same time.

Jared pulled away from the curb, and Lukas’ journal slipped off the seat. I picked it up and ran my hand over the worn cover. My mom’s silver bracelet slid down my wrist. “I wish I had something like this that belonged to my mom.”

She would’ve known what to do in this situation. I missed sitting on the counter while she cooked, complaining about school and guys and the current drawing that wasn’t meeting my standards. My mom always had the answers, or at least the brownies.

Lukas tucked the loose pages inside the book. “I inherited it when my uncle died. Every member of the Legion records their experiences in a journal and passes it down to the person who replaces them. Your mom probably had one, too.”

They still believed she was one of them—that her attack wasn’t random, but retribution for our ancestors’ involvement in summoning a demon over two hundred years ago.

It was probably the reason they hadn’t left me back at my house. “She wasn’t a member of the Legion.”

Jared rubbed the back of his neck. “Your mother died exactly like the other members, and a vengeance spirit tried to kill you the same way. You need more proof than that?”

I didn’t have any proof, but it made me wonder if he
did. “Was my mom’s name on a list or something in one of your journals?”

Jared shifted in his seat and pretended to concentrate on the road.

“There’s no list,” Lukas said. “Each member of the Legion only knows the name of one other member. They don’t have any information on the remaining three. It was a safety precaution to keep something like this from happening.”

There was no list, nothing conclusive to link my mom to this group. They were making this up as they went along. “My mom never mentioned any of this to me, and I just finished packing everything she owned. There was no journal.”

“Maybe she hid it somewhere,” Jared said. “Our dad used to do that.”

“Okay. Then why wasn’t she training me?” I turned to Lukas, hoping he would be more reasonable. “You guys have known about all this since you were kids, right?”

“More or less.” Lukas rolled the silver coin over his fingers.

“Maybe you weren’t next in line,” Jared offered. He had no way of knowing how cruel it sounded to me. My mother was the only family I’d ever had.

What if she had something else out there—something more than me?

With so little left to hold on to, I couldn’t let myself
think that way. “There’s no ‘next in line.’ My mom wasn’t part of this. The demon must have made a mistake.”

Lukas tossed the coin in the air and caught it, closing his hand around it. “The only mistake he made was leaving us alive.”

W
e rode the rest of the way in awkward silence. I couldn’t reconcile my life with the secrets Lukas and Jared were convinced it held. The all-night movie marathons and catastrophic cooking classes that left our kitchen draped in homemade pasta we never ate—those were the things my mother and I did together. There were no discussions about ancestry or religion.

My father had abandoned me, taking our shared heritage with him. I didn’t know anything about him except that it destroyed my mom when he left, and I knew even less about his family. Church was equally alien, a place where my friends were trapped on Sundays while I ate chocolate chip pancakes in front of the TV. If my mom
was a member of a secret society charged with protecting the world from vengeance spirits, then the world was seriously screwed.

Three unmarked streets later, Jared pulled over in an alley behind an overflowing Dumpster. Black fire escapes loomed above the doors. It looked like the kind of place where you’d find an underground club.

Why were we stopping here?

Jared grabbed a duffel bag from behind the seat and held the door open. It took me a moment to realize he was holding it for me. I climbed out, misjudging the distance between my foot and the step bar, and slipped. Jared caught my arm to steady me.

“Thanks.” I smiled without thinking. Something registered in his deep blue eyes—a gentleness I hadn’t seen before. It caught me off guard. But then it was gone, and he turned away without a word.