other against paranormal entities, and the next they were at each other’s throats.
Jared followed me back to the booth, and he slipped into silence.
Alara had turned her attention away from the offensive pink shake and back to the broken piece of the doll. “Middle River. I’ve seen that name somewhere before.” She scanned her journal until she reached a page with a yellowed newspaper clipping taped in the corner. Above the article was a faded photo of a young woman in a floral dress, holding a little boy’s hand. “I can’t believe it. My grandmother told me this story a hundred times, but she never mentioned the name of the woman or where it happened.”
Priest leaned over Alara’s shoulder. He was the only person she seemed to allow into her personal space. “What’s the deal?”
“This wealthy doctor had an affair with the seamstress who worked at his estate. Six or seven years later, the guy came home drunk and confessed everything to his wife. She went nuts and dragged the seamstress’s little boy down to the well.
“The child’s mother tried to stop her, but the woman pushed the kid over the side. He couldn’t swim, so his mom jumped in after him. She broke her neck in the fall, and the boy drowned. According to this article, her name was Millicent Avery.”
“You think one of the pieces of the Shift is hidden there?” It was the first thing Lukas had said since Jared and I sat down.
Priest slid the strawberry shake in front of him. “Alara’s grandmother was the only member of the Legion my granddad knew how to contact. If he left the clue for her at Lilburn, it makes sense that it leads to a place Alara’s grandmother knew about.”
“Were they friends?” I asked.
Alara shook her head, dark curls falling over her shoulder. “No, the chain of information moves in one direction. Priest’s grandfather knew my grandmother’s name, but she didn’t know his. Lukas’ uncle was the only member she knew how to contact.”
“Even our uncle didn’t know the identity of anyone in the Legion except our father,” Lukas added. “Dad’s contact was the missing member. He was the only person in the Legion who would’ve had information about two different members—our uncle and your mom.”
I mapped it out in my mind: Priest’s grandfather to Alara’s grandmother; her grandmother to Lukas and Jared’s uncle; their uncle to their dad; their dad to the fifth member; and the fifth member to Priest’s grandfather. I realized why the missing member was so important. The fifth member didn’t just make the Legion stronger. That person also completed the chain of information.
I looked at Alara. “If your grandmother and Priest’s granddad weren’t friends, how did he know to hide the disk in Middle River?” I asked Alara.
“My grandmother owned a bakery in El Portal, where we lived in Florida. Sometimes messages showed up. They were always encrypted, in envelopes with no return address. She’d take them in the back to her real shop where she made her wards, and decipher them. Maybe he sent her the article about Millicent Avery, or told her the disk was there.”
I tried to imagine living with the rules and secrets the four of them seemed so comfortable with. Jared and Lukas had each other, but what about Alara and Priest? Did they have friends back home?
Alara touched the newspaper clipping. “My grandmother told me that story so many times. She said a good mother always protects her child.”
“Maybe Millicent is protecting something else now,” I said.
“If a piece of the Shift is with her, you know what that means.” Priest shook his head.
“It’s in the well,” Lukas finished.
Alara threw a napkin over the offensive pink shake. “Then we should get going.”
Jared nodded at the TV mounted on the wall. “I vote for sooner,” he whispered.
The volume was turned down low, but an orange news ticker ran across the bottom of the morning show feed: AMBER ALERT—KENNEDY WATERS, AGE 17. LAST SEEN AT HER HOME IN GEORGETOWN. My yearbook photo smiled back from the screen.
I strained to hear the newscaster’s voice. “Kennedy Waters is seventeen years old, five foot four and one hundred twenty pounds, with long brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen on November thirtieth at her home on O Street, in Georgetown.” A shaky camera panned my street and stopped on what was left of my front yard. There were cops everywhere—red and blue lights flashed in the background.
Jared dropped the van keys in my hand and gestured at the door without a word. Then he walked up to the register and ordered a cup of coffee to distract the waitress while I slipped out.
From the front seat of the van, I watched Jared flirt with a woman old enough to be his mom, while Lukas casually gathered up the journals. Alara slipped on her black leather jacket, and Priest stuffed his gadgets and screwdrivers in his backpack.
If you didn’t know any better, they looked like four regular teenagers grabbing coffee on their way to school—the guy no one knew anything about because he wouldn’t let anyone get close, the kid genius who skipped three grades and still knew all the answers in Calculus, the girl who all the guys wanted to date but they were too intimidated to approach, and the sweet guy who seemed like the boy-next-door but had too many secrets to qualify. I knew they were all those things and none of them.
They were part of something bigger.
As they walked through the glass door, for the first time I imagined that I was part of it, too.
18. A GOOD MOTHER
The abandoned estate was a few miles outside of Middle River, its perimeter marked by a barbed-wire fence nailed into a row of scarred trees. A gate secured by a rusty chain blocked the dirt road leading up to the house. Whoever lived here definitely hadn’t wanted any visitors.
Lukas opened the storage space in the floor of the van, and Priest grabbed a nylon rope and a pair of bolt cutters. Considering that Priest traveled with his own blowtorch, bolt cutters weren’t a big surprise.
Alara was the one who used them to cut the chain. She tossed the broken links in the dirt, then leaned in and whispered something to Jared. His eyes darted in my direction.
“It’s safer for everyone,” Alara said, a little louder than necessary.
“What’s safer for everyone?” They were obviously talking about me.
Alara crossed her arms. “I think you should wait here.”
I thought about Lilburn, and the way I froze instead of running when Lukas told me to get out of the house. “I know I made some mistakes—”
“Mistakes?” Alara snapped. “You almost got us all killed last night.”
My throat went dry. She knew.
Lukas turned to Alara. “What are you talking about?”
She looked right at me. “Who do you think broke the salt line?”
I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. Anything was better than the way Alara was looking at me. I thought about Markus’ journal entry, and the way one misplaced line had been the difference between controlling a demon and unleashing one. My ignorance could’ve cost them their lives. Despite the millions of pointless images and textbook pages my memory had recorded over the years, it hadn’t helped me remember the one piece of information I’d actually needed.
“She didn’t know,” Jared said before I had a chance to say anything. “It was an accident.”
“I should have—”
Jared cut me off. “I told her not to say anything. There was no point.”
Why was he defending me?
Lukas leaned against the van, watching his brother. “You still should’ve told us. Secrets are dangerous.” The way he said it sounded like a threat.
Jared stayed silent.
“I—I’m so sorry,” I stammered.
