“Maybe you should stay in the van next time,” he said. “I don’t know if I can pull off another performance like that.”
“You were pretty convincing. I think you missed your calling.”
His smile faded and silence stretched between us.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally.
“For what?”
“I know you probably wish you weren’t part of this.” He sounded so lonely. I fought the urge to put my arms around him and breathe in the smell of salt and copper that clung to Jared even when he was only bleeding on the inside.
I wanted to tell him how lonely I was—how badly I needed someone. I wanted to tell him that and so much more. But I couldn’t find the words, or I wouldn’t let myself.
“That’s not true.”
Jared bit his lip. “Come on. You had a life—school, friends, probably a boyfriend—something better than this.”
Was that really what he thought? That I walked away from the perfect life?
“If I had a boyfriend, I would’ve called him by now. I don’t abandon the people I care about.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“And if by better, you mean losing my mom and packing up my whole life to move to a boarding school I’d never seen…” My voice wavered. “Then, yeah, I guess it was better.”
Jared’s face softened, opening up in a way that was beautiful and scary at the same time. He moved his hand slowly to the place where mine rested on the bench between us. My breath caught as he laced our fingers together.
Jared squeezed my hand and my heart stumbled. “I wish—”
The chain-link fence rattled on the other side of the yard as Lukas hopped over it.
I pulled my hand away, leaving Jared’s on the bench. But I could still feel it as if I had never let go.
Sunshine didn’t live up to its name. The guys went into town to see what they could find out, while Alara and I stayed behind and pored over the journals, searching for any information related to dybbuk boxes.
She turned to a page in hers with an elaborate symbol drawn on it—a circle with a heptagram in the center. Words in an unfamiliar language were written inside and around the circumference. It was the same symbol someone had drawn on the floor of the warehouse.
[ART TO COME]
“What’s that?”
“The Devil’s Trap. It’s from The Goetia, one of the oldest grimoires in existence. If a demon steps inside one of these, it can’t get out.” Alara traced the outer circle with her finger. “If the lines are precise enough, the trap can even destroy the demon.”
Below it there was another symbol—two perpendicular lines with elaborate flourishes near each point.
[ART TO COME]
Miray la was written next to it.
“Is that French?”
“Haitian Creole. It means ‘the Wall.’ ”
“Is it like the Devil’s Trap?” I asked.
She shook her head. “The Wall is just a binding symbol. It can keep a spirit bound inside, but it’s not strong enough to destroy one. You have to do that yourself.”
I stared at the Devil’s Trap and wondered if my mom had ever seen one, trying to reconcile the woman who baked me brownies whenever I had a rough day with the missing member of the Legion.
Alara closed the book. “There’s nothing in here. Hopefully, the guys are having better luck.” In this situation, it was a relative term. “But you’re going to need more than luck.”
“What do you mean?”
She climbed into the van and came back with a duct-taped gun and a handful of liquid salt rounds. “Most people only need to know how to defend themselves against the living. I’m going to make sure you can say the same about the dead.”
Alara had lent me some of her extra clothes before we left the motel this morning, since mine smelled like sewage. Now the pockets were filled with salt rounds and cold-iron nails.
“Move your hand higher on the grip.” Alara took the gun and demonstrated. “It gives you more control.”
“Okay,” I said, as she handed me back the gun. I repositioned my hands and took a deep breath. I squeezed the trigger, and the salt round exploded against the ground a few feet from the tree I’d tried to hit.
Alara sighed. “Next time, try keeping your eyes open.”
After an hour, I started to get the hang of it and managed to hit more than a few defenseless trees and one traumatized squirrel.
I was sitting in the grass, rubbing my boots with a rag when I heard gravel crunching on the other side of the van. Priest came around the corner wearing a bright orange hoodie with CINDY’S DINER across the front. “Did you miss me?”
Lukas and Jared were behind him, carrying two Styrofoam cups and a pink cardboard box.
I gestured at Priest’s hoodie. “Subtle.”
“It was this or NASCAR. And I’m not the one with my face in the newspaper.”
“It was TV, not the paper,” I said, like the distinction somehow affected my fugitive status.