I wrapped my arms around myself.
“Are you cold?” Lukas started to take off his jacket.
“I’m fine,” I said.
We both knew I was lying. It was December, and I was wearing jeans and a thin gray T-shirt. I would’ve killed for a coat, but I didn’t want to admit how far from fine I really was. Lukas didn’t push me.
Maybe he sensed how lost I felt. Lukas and Jared had at least some of the answers, and I didn’t even know the questions. But after the last few hours, I was too exhausted to try to figure them out.
I leaned heavily on one arm, and my hand slid across the seat and bumped into Jared’s. Our fingertips touched for a second. He glanced down at them before I pulled away, folding my hands awkwardly in my lap.
“So what happened back there?” I asked.
“A poltergeist,” Lukas said.
“Like the movie?”
“Did it feel like a movie?” A reassuring smile played across Lukas’ lips. Jared never seemed to smile. Aside from their clothes and Jared’s scar, it was one of the few ways I could tell them apart.
“Not one I’d want to see again.” I tried to relax, but it was impossible with my body wedged between them.
“That movie was actually pretty accurate. Poltergeists are paranormal entities that feed off energy—electrical, mechanical, even human—and use it to move objects and cause some serious damage. No one knows exactly what they are, but they’re not spirits.” It sounded like Lukas was repeating something he read on one of those paranormal websites.
“I still don’t understand what one was doing in my house.”
They both looked away.
“You guys showed up in my bedroom out of nowhere, shot my cat with a gun that looked like something from a video game, and told me a demon’s trying to kill me. How could you possibly know that?”
Jared looked over at me. “Because our family has been fighting his army for over two hundred years.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Andras can influence vengeance spirits, and he uses them to do what he can’t—hurt and kill the living,” Lukas said. “The Legion vowed to protect the world from those attacks.”
“You mean like those ghost hunters on TV?”
Jared frowned. “More like exorcists.”
“I thought exorcists help people who are possessed by demons. Or whatever.” I couldn’t start talking about the devil. I sounded insane enough already.
“Anything can be possessed—places, animals, even objects,” Jared explained. “And demons don’t have the market cornered. Spirits possess things all the time, like your cat.”
I didn’t want to think about it. I secretly hoped that Elvis was curled up in front of the fireplace in one of my neighbors’ houses.
Lukas squeezed my shoulder gently. “Exorcists are like supernatural exterminators. If something is hanging around that isn’t supposed to be there, they get rid of it. For the Legion, that’s a full-time job.”
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 less faded print below the passage. “That’s the translation.”
Konstantin Lockhart
13th December 1776
After careful examination of the grimoire, we have selected the demon most suited to aid us in this mission. Andras, the Author of Discords, one who breeds distrust and dissension among men. In two nights’ time, we shall summon Andras, using the angel, Anarel, to control him, and command the beast to find the Illuminati and destroy it from within.
May the black dove always carry you.