I can’t stay in here.
My pulse thundered in my ears, but another sound was louder—a crash.
Was it Priest this time? Or Lukas or Alara? I pictured Jared lying on the floor, and my heart ached. What if he needed a doctor?
What if…
A tiny crack between the hinges threw a slice of light across my boots, but there wasn’t enough room for me to bend down and draw the symbol on the floor. I was going to have to do it on the ceiling, which meant sketching blind.
How would I know if I made a mistake?
“Priest? Lukas? You okay?” Alara shouted, her voice muffled by the layer of wood between us.
“Yeah.”
“Get Jared out of here,” she said.
“We’re not leaving you guys.” Lukas sounded as determined as she did.
“If you want to save your brother, you will,” Alara shot back.
“Pretty girl with an ugly soul.” The voice that answered this time didn’t belong to Lukas. It was distorted and wrong—the sound of something horrific trying on human skin.
Working quickly, I let my mind guide the marker. I drew the first line, positioning my other hand in the center so I knew where to begin the horizontal line I needed to make next.
The heavy metal door to the alley slammed shut.
Someone made it out—maybe all three of them.
But if the door was closed, the guys were locked out. I was the only one who could help Alara. I concentrated on the one thing I had always been able to do—the skill that felt more like a curse than a gift.
My hand finally stopped when the marker finished the last line. I peeked through the crack just as the dybbuk charged Alara. When its body touched her wet skin, a hiss of white steam rose above them, and the dybbuk lurched backward. I had to get that thing away from her and into the cabinet. Fast.
I flung open the door. “Hey, over here! I’m in your nasty box.”
It whirled around, the blackened eye sockets facing me. “Get out!”
“Kennedy, no!” Alara shouted.
It was coming right at me—
Don’t move until it steps inside.
I pressed my hand against the false back of the cabinet, but I wasn’t quick enough.
The impact punched the air out of my lungs. A sickening sensation gripped me, like something was crawling through my body and fighting its way out the other side. I felt the dybbuk twisting and writhing like hundreds of snakes trapped under my flesh.
I threw my weight against the back of the box, and the wall sprang open.
My cheek hit the concrete and I clawed at the floor, dragging myself away from the box. I rolled over and realized it didn’t matter.
The dybbuk was trapped, its limbs jerking back each time it tried to reach outside the boundaries of the box. “What have you done, ugly soul?”
Alara ran toward me, her long legs vaulting over upended stage props that paled in the presence of real magic. She dug through her pockets and unearthed a disposable lighter, holding it against the rotted wood. The flame fluttered and caught, climbing up the edge.
“We have to get out of here,” she said, shoving me toward the door.
Ash flaked in the air like peeled skin as the side of the cabinet charred, and the fire leapt from the box to the wall behind it.
“Go.” Alara pushed me ahead of her.
The alley door was only a few feet away when a spirit stepped out of the shadows, blocking our path.
Deep claw marks covered the dead magician’s face and neck, as if a wild animal had attacked him. Whole sections of flesh had been peeled from his broken body, but a tired velvet suit hid the worst of the damage.
The skin straining over the dybbuk’s bones flashed through my mind—the way it looked like it didn’t quite fit—and my stomach convulsed.
Alara shook her head in disbelief.
“I tried to keep it safe,” he said. “That was the only place I thought no one would find it. I never wanted it to get out.” The spirit glanced at the cabinet that was burning up and vanishing without its magician. His arm shot out toward us. “May—”
I ripped the nail gun from my waistband and squeezed the trigger, sending a spray of cold-iron nails into his body. The magician exploded, tiny bits of purple velvet floating in the air around us.
CHAPTER 23
Marked
The van was already halfway down the block when the black smoke rose from the building, and sirens screamed in the distance. Jared was stretched out on his back with his head in my lap. He rolled toward me, his arm falling around my waist. I brushed the hair away from his bruised face.
Jared’s eyelids fluttered.
He winced and pulled me closer, clutching the back of my shirt as his fingers trailed across my bare skin.
He blinked a few times before his blue eyes stared up at me, glassy and unfocused.
“Kennedy?” he mumbled, struggling to sit up. “What happened?”