“Kennedy?” Lukas looked worried. “What’s wrong?”
My eyes rested on the book for a second before I walked away. “Nothing.”
Jared passed out the gear. “We’ve gotta be careful inside. Lots of kids died here, and some of their spirits are probably still hanging around.”
A single palm print was branded in the center of one of the windowpanes.
“How did they die?” I asked.
Lukas slung a paintball gun over his shoulder. “The articles said it was an outbreak of meningitis.”
Jared tossed us each a two-way radio and a pack of batteries. More supplies from the sporting goods store. “Priest rigged them with splitters so we can stay in touch. If we can keep the batteries charged.”
I shoved the extra batteries in the pocket of my cargo pants. “Why wouldn’t they stay charged?”
Priest unscrewed the back of his EMF detector and swapped out the double As. “Spirits absorb the energy from things around them, including batteries. If this place has more than a couple inside, we’ll burn through these fast.”
“Lukas, take Priest and Alara and check out the attic and the second floor.” Jared loaded the black paintball gun. “Kennedy and I will take the first floor and the basement. We call in every twenty minutes. If the radios die, we meet by the front door after a half hour.”
Everyone collected their gear except Lukas. “Why is she going with you?”
Jared didn’t take the bait. “What difference does it make?”
“If it doesn’t matter, then she can come with us.”
“Because you did such a great job of looking out for her last time?” Jared turned his back on Lukas and waved me over. “Let’s go.”
Lukas flinched. “I guess nothing could happen to her with you around? Because you never screw up.”
Jared froze and the color drained from his face. Lukas was referring to something specific.
I stepped in front of Jared, unwilling to be a pawn in their game. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here. I’m a big girl. What happened wasn’t Lukas’ fault.”
Jared stalked toward the orphanage’s cracked concrete steps.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Lukas said.
I waited until Jared was out of earshot. “I’m going with Jared this time. He can’t go in there when he’s angry, or he’ll be distracted. That’s dangerous.”
Lukas’ face fell, but he forced a smile anyway and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
Jared waited at the front door with Priest and Alara. The rotted wood didn’t offer much resistance, and he forced it open easily.
“Catch you later,” Priest called as he climbed the staircase with Lukas and Alara.
The first floor was dark, with patches of light slipping through the scum-covered windows. A moth-eaten yellow sofa surrounded by empty beer cans and cigarette butts was all that was left of the living room. A rat scurried across the floor and I jumped, bumping into Jared.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
He switched on a flashlight, and I followed him to the kitchen.
A small window over the stained white sink was coated in a decade’s worth of grease and provided the only natural light. Linoleum squares peeled up from the floor like the curling edges of burnt paper. The pattern of decay led to the pantry door. It was slightly ajar, ruined and warped like everything else in this place. I nudged it with my boot.
The door creaked open.
I froze. “Jared—”
A little girl sat on the floor in a filthy brown nightgown, hugging her knees to her chest. Huge, tormented brown eyes stared past me as if I wasn’t there. She rocked herself gently, her frail body lost in the folds of fabric. Unlike the full body apparitions I’d encountered, she was hazy and faded.
I backed up slowly.
The child didn’t look away from a spot somewhere beyond me.
Jared caught my elbow. “She’s a residual spirit, energy left behind after the person moves on. She can’t hurt you.”
“I think I’ll keep my distance anyway.”
Even if we didn’t find a single vengeance spirit within these walls, this place was filled with ghosts— remnants of the terrible things that must’ve happened here. Things I could see as clearly as the broken windows outside.
Jared opened the next pantry door and I tensed, expecting to see the face of another lost child. This one was stacked floor to ceiling with vacuum-sealed pallets. Jared bent down and wiped the dust off the thick plastic. I read the labels underneath and gagged.
Dog food—cans and cans of it—towering to the ceiling. Enough to feed fifty dogs.
Jared kicked the stack. “My dad used to say the evil we enact on each other is worse than anything spirits and demons can do to us.” He picked up a dented can of dog food and chucked it against the wall, brown slop splattering across the wallpaper. “I never believed him until now.”
Static crackled over Jared’s radio. “It’s Priest. You guys okay?”
“We’re good,” he said. “Find anything up there?”
“Not yet. Check with you in twenty.”
Jared shoved the radio in his back pocket. “Let’s see if there’s anything in the basement.”
I couldn’t get out of the kitchen fast enough. The residue of despair clung to my skin like the filth coating the windows. We needed to find the next piece of the Shift and get out of this house.
The basement door was tucked under the staircase, secured by two heavy dead bolts at the top, far above the reach of a child.
I couldn’t imagine the terror of being locked in a basement. My pulse raced as Jared unlocked the door. The splintered wooden stairs disappeared into a sea of black.
He used his flashlight to navigate the cracks in the steps. “Stay close.”
“Not a problem.” I had no intention of getting lost down there.
At the base of the staircase, it was impossible to see more than a few feet. I grabbed Jared’s hand without thinking, terrified we might get separated.
A corridor stretched beyond us, but it looked more like a tunnel. “I think it leads to another room.”
Jared shined the light along the walls, and I shuddered. Drawings covered the lower sections—childish depictions of rectangular houses with triangle roofs, and stick-figure families that morphed into more sinister images. Children crying as monsters towered over them, with gnashing teeth and razor-sharp claws.
When the corridor opened up into an enormous room, the temperature dropped, and cold air crawled over my skin. I squeezed Jared’s hand tighter, my pride back at the top of the stairs along with my courage.
A bare bulb flickered at the opposite end of the room, revealing the truth about this place in weak bursts. They stood in two rows at the ends of the aluminum beds that were outfitted with thin mattresses and frayed canvas straps:
Children. At least twenty of them.
Ranging from four or five years old to nine or ten, they were all sickly and gaunt, in matching pairs of stained long underwear. With their hair buzzed to less than an inch, it was hard to distinguish the boys from the girls. Their eyes reflected the light when it hit them, as though they were still among the living.
But something was wrong with their faces.
The muscles were frozen, contorted in unnatural expressions and exaggerated smiles. Only their eyes moved, conveying the emotions their faces couldn’t.
“Turn around slowly.” Jared kept his voice low. “We’re going back the way we came.”
“No, we aren’t.”
I glanced at two children standing behind me. They watched us curiously, their faces as mangled as the others’. They held hands, the taller one clutching the younger child’s protectively. Steel gray eyes and innocent
