Jared took my face in his hands and his lips brushed mine. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a breath. A heartbeat.
“You see what I want you to see. It has nothing to do with who I really am,” I said, our lips barely separated.
“Then let me see the rest,” he whispered.
I shook my head, choking on my tears. “I can’t.”
He pressed his forehead against mine. “Why not?”
“Because I’m afraid I won’t be able to go back to the person I was when you walk away.” I said it before I could stop myself, before I calculated all the ways those words could hurt me.
His hands slid behind my neck, tangling in my hair. “I won’t walk away.”
“Everyone does, eventually.”
He gathered me up in his arms and held me tighter than anyone ever had. Tight enough to make me forget about where we were, or how much I wanted to be someone else. In this moment, I wanted to be me. The girl Jared was holding.
I wanted right now.
“I don’t know how anyone could walk away from you,” he murmured. “How anyone could stand to hurt you.”
“I want…” He hesitated. “Can I kiss you?”
I pushed up onto my toes and pressed my mouth against his, opening into him. He pulled me closer. His body melted against mine, and my breath hitched as Jared’s finger trailed down my throat. I tugged on his bottom lip and he kissed me harder, like it didn’t matter if we ever got out of here.
I leaned into him, my hands crushed between his back and the boards.
“Kennedy.” His voice was ragged, his fingers slipping under the bottom of my shirt. I felt his chest rising and falling, the pressure of all the things we couldn’t say in every kiss.
27. UNEARTHED
Something vibrated on the other side of the wall. Was the spirit nailing in another board?
It intensified, and a piece of wood started to give. I pulled back as the board behind Jared’s shoulders came loose, and light flooded through the crack.
“You guys okay?” Priest’s voice pierced the haze and I turned toward it, blinking hard against the light.
Jared stared back at me, his face streaked with the blood from my hands.
Lukas stood on the other side holding the dislodged board. His eyes dropped to Jared’s hands still resting on my hips, and his expression darkened.
Jared stepped back awkwardly. “We’re good. Just get her out.”
Lukas and Priest tore the boards away one at a time until the opening was big enough to climb through.
I stepped out and Alara threw her arms around me. I winced and she drew back. “Oh my god, Kennedy. Look at your hands.”
I didn’t want to see them. I wanted to remember them touching Jared’s face and wiping his tears, instead of clawing at the boards.
“How did you find us?”
Broken glow sticks bathed the room in green light. Alara pointed at the rows of beds. The spirits of the children gathered in the aisle, except for the one that trapped us inside the wall. He was conspicuously missing, his sledgehammer lying at the foot of one of the beds.
“They showed us where you were,” she said.
I stared out into the sea of expectant faces. “Thank you.”
Would they be able to move on now? I hated the thought of them being trapped in this slaughterhouse.
“What happened to the other one?” I asked.
Priest held up the nail gun loaded with the cold-iron nails. “I took him out.”
Jared leaned against the wall, his head down. “Did you find the disk?”
“There was nothing up there except rats and empty beer bottles,” Alara answered.
“We can’t leave until we find it.” Jared’s eyes drifted to the hole. “Not after that.”
Jared rubbed his hand over his face. Now that I knew the truth about the secret Jared was carrying, I could see the guilt in his every movement.
Priest paced the room. “If you were going to hide something in this house, where would you put it?”
“Down here,” I answered automatically. “Not many people would hang around long enough to find it.”
Priest looked at the spirits. “Think they’ll mind if we try?”
Sifting through the evidence of a mass-murder scene was harder than I expected, especially when the victims were scampering around us. I lifted the thin mattresses easily, working the right side of the room while Alara worked the left. Jared and Lukas checked the walls for cracks and hidden spaces while two of the taller children trailed behind them.
Priest sat on the floor with a handheld transistor radio. A group of spirits gathered around him.
“In the mood for some music?” I asked.
“Just the opposite.” He turned the dial until a steady stream of static crackled through the air, then he cranked the volume all the way up.
“What are you doing?”
He smiled and pulled a calculator out of his jeans. “Watch and learn.”
“You really do carry that thing around all the time.”
“Standard operating genius procedure.” Priest turned on the calculator and held it against the radio until it emitted a loud tone. “You can use calculators to make all sorts of stuff. Can you see if there’s any tape around?”
A tray next to one of the beds held a dirty roll of medical tape—the same kind securing the IV ports onto the spirits’ arms. I tossed it to Priest, eager to have it out of my hands. “Will this work?”
“Yep.”
Lukas came over to take a look. “What are you making?”
Priest held up the contraption. “Behold, all of you scientifically challenged.” He took a few nails out of his pocket and held them next to the calculator. The radio emitted another low tone. “What we have here is a metal detector.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Lukas asked.
“Did you miss my little demonstration?” Priest stood up. The spirits scattered, watching from a safe distance.
He walked back to the mouth of the corridor and reentered the room, sweeping it slowly. Each time he passed a metal tray or an IV pole, the radio emitted the same sound. Like most of Priest’s inventions, the construction reminded me of a futuristic science-fair project. But it was completely functional, and the spirits were mesmerized. Every few minutes, the station changed suddenly.
Alara’s eyes widened. “They’re channeling the electrical energy.”
“Come on, kids. I’m working here.” Priest swept the metal detector around the last bed. When it didn’t pick up anything new, he glanced at the hole. “Should we check in there?”
I shuddered at the thought as the device transmitted another tone.
The sledgehammer rested at the end of the bed next to Priest.
“So much for science.” He lifted it by the handle and smacked the head of the hammer against his hand. “I wonder if I could replace this with cold iron? It’s already loose.”
“Probably from being used to seal us up in a wall,” I said sarcastically. I didn’t want that thing to become a
