able to stop.
The music and video game sounds finally faded, blanketing the room in silence. I slipped through the sheets and tiptoed to the other side of the warehouse where the gun racks and shelves of ammo were silhouetted in the darkness. Evidence of how unprepared I was for everything that was happening to me.
I was safe now, but I couldn’t stay here forever.
Tears slid down my neck before I realized they were falling.
I sat on the floor next to Priest’s worktable and buried my face in my knees. I cried quietly, choking back sobs until my throat was raw.
“Kennedy?” Someone whispered my name.
I covered my face with my hands.
“Want to talk about it?” It was Lukas or Jared, but his voice was so quiet I couldn’t tell which one. I shook my head, tears running through the spaces between my fingers.
He sat down next to me, and I could smell the salt and copper on his skin.
“I know this is hard. I lost it when my dad died, and I didn’t know how we were gonna do this without him.” He spoke slowly, his voice gentle and soothing. I realized it was Lukas, sharing something painful to make me feel better.
“I wish I could take it back.” He hesitated. “I mean, change things.”
I took a ragged breath, and he touched my back gently.
“Hey, will you look at me?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t stop crying, and I didn’t want him to see me falling apart.
“I get it,” he whispered, so close I could feel his breath on my neck. “I don’t think I would’ve made it without Luke.”
I froze.
Lukas wasn’t the one with his hand on my back.
It was Jared, the boy who barely spoke, the one who seemed so distant.
I don’t know how long we stayed that way. Eventually, I ran out of tears, and Jared took my hand and led me through the warehouse. I climbed in his bed, and he retreated to the couch without a word. But I could still smell the salt on his skin.
11. OPHTHALMIC SHIFT
When I woke up, Lukas, Jared, and Alara were hunched over the map again. After an hour of skimming articles for unusual weather patterns and bizarre accounts of unexplained events, I’d learned a few things about surges and paranormal activity. My mind had also taken hundreds of mental snapshots—from neglected houses and morbid crime scenes to used car ads—each one sorted and cataloged automatically.
On Marrow overload, I offered to be Priest’s assistant for a while. He was determined to design the Big Bad of vengeance spirit hunting weapons to take down whatever Andras had waiting for them.
“Hold this.” Priest handed me his blowtorch.
“I don’t think—”
“It’s totally safe. Unless you turn it on.”
“We need some serious firepower.” Priest scanned his journal for old designs he could tweak.
Alara stalked in wearing loose cargos and a fitted tank that showed off her muscular arms. She grabbed a box of Pop-Tarts off Priest’s shelf and threw me a perfunctory glance from under her mascaraed lashes before disappearing again.
“Alara seems nice,” I said once she was out of earshot.
“Ah… are we talking about the same person?”
I laughed. “What’s her specialty? Aside from intimidation?”
“Wards. Her grandmother was a voodoo priestess or something. I forget what they’re called. But Alara’s pretty badass.”
Priest gestured at the journal and headed for the fridge. “Keep looking.”
Turning the pages carefully, something caught my eye—a tiny symbol hidden in one of the designs. I’d seen it before.
Priest came back carrying two sodas.
“What’s this?” I pointed at the sketch.
He glanced at the page. “Some kind of ocular device.”
“Why does it have Andras’ seal on it?”
“What are you talking about?” He leaned over, and I pointed at the symbol. Priest dropped the cans, and soda exploded all over the floor.
Lukas stuck his head between the sheets. “What are you two doing?”
Priest gazed at the page, transfixed. “Get everyone in here. Now.”
They crowded around the worktable to see the diagram—a mechanical cylinder with the words
“Is it one of your grandfather’s inventions?” Jared leaned over my shoulder and examined the drawing. I remembered the way his hand had felt on my back as I cried, and the way he had smelled—the same way he smelled now. I edged forward, trying to put some space between us.
Priest shook his head. “That’s not my granddad’s handwriting, and this sketch is really old.”
A piece of clear glass was cut into one end like a window. Five looping symbols were etched around the outside. There were four other components—silver disks, each embedded with a different shade of glass: blue, red, yellow, and green. According to the diagram, the disks slid into the middle of the cylinder like trays.
Alara twisted her eyebrow ring. “What is it?”
“An ocular device,” Priest said.
“In English?” Jared leaned closer.
Priest tapped the top of the cylinder on the page. “You look through here and each piece of colored glass inside allows you to see a different layer of the infrared spectrum—things you can’t see with the naked eye. The way a black light picks up the color white and amplifies it.”
“Are you saying it’s a decryption device?” Lukas asked.
How did he make that jump?
Priest nodded. “A pretty sophisticated one, considering it’s completely mechanical. If you used the right type of ink, you could write on almost anything and no one would be able to see it without these disks. If someone knew what they were doing, they could actually design a written code that required all five pieces to decipher.”
Lukas froze. “Five pieces?”
“Yeah—” Priest started, but Lukas was halfway across the room.
“Luke?” Jared called after him. His brother didn’t even break stride, and I felt Jared’s body tense behind me.
“And you never noticed that picture before?” Alara asked before an awkward silence set in.
Priest gave her a hard stare. “Of course I did. But there are hundreds of sketches in here. And like I said, that isn’t my granddad’s handwriting. His is down in the corner.” The word
