their skin, they looked like shells of the men who had died in the same chair where Alara was sitting now.
A man with dark shadows around his eyes stepped in front of her. “Do you have anything to say? They gotta ask you that before they throw the switch.”
The one with empty gray eyes nodded. “It’s the law.”
“Let her go.” Jared raised the semiautomatic paintball gun. “Or I’ll give you a new set of burns.”
Lukas aimed his own weapon and a vengeance spirit with a jagged scar across his cheek and the number thirteen tattooed on his neck smiled. “Ain’t nothin’ left to burn. Except your friend.”
Jared and Lukas opened fire, the lethal mixture of holy water, salt, and cloves spraying across the walls until they ran out of ammunition. Two vengeance spirits exploded, but a half dozen stood fast.
Priest and I lifted our weapons.
Before I could squeeze the trigger, the gun was ripped from my hands.
I searched for a faded form, or the shadowy features of a spirit that wasn’t fully materialized, but there was nothing. Priest was disarmed the same way, his weapon floating in the air next to mine.
Our guns hovered for a moment, then turned and pointed directly at us.
Then the weapons changed direction, and the rounds discharged in rapid succession, hitting the tally marks on the wall over and over. When the ammo was spent, the weapons dropped at our feet.
“A prisoner built this chair. That seem right to you?” The spirit with the dark shadows around his eyes appeared. “Saying goes that if you die in this prison, your soul stays here. Don’t matter if you’re an inmate or not —no heaven or hell, just Moundsville.” He lowered the metal cap onto Alara’s head. “Let’s see if your friend makes it out.”
Alara screamed as Darien Shears materialized and clamped his hand over her mouth. He held a finger to his lips. “Shh.”
Flashes of the prisoners’ faces superimposed themselves over hers—the spirit with the shadows around his eyes, the one with the number thirteen on his neck—a parade of faces rotating in front of Alara’s. Each man buckled and strapped in the chair, the metal headpiece secured to his skull.
Each one screaming and writhing in pain the way Alara was now.
Jared and Lukas ran for the chair.
“I wouldn’t do that.” Number Thirteen flipped the switches on the panel.
“It’s okay,” Priest said. “There’s no power in this building anymore.”
The vengeance spirit tilted his head, considering it. “Who said anything about using the building’s power?”
The spirits focused on the control panel, and the indicators lit up one by one.
The last indicator blinked, but the light didn’t fully illuminate.
“Shears,” Number Thirteen called out. “We need more juice. Hit the generator downstairs.”
Darien looked at Alara, then back at the rest of us. “Now don’t go anywhere. Everybody will get a turn.” He vanished, leaving the other vengeance spirits behind.
Priest reached under his hoodie and pulled out the caulking gun from the hardware store, the barrel loaded with purple cans of cheap hair spray.
What was he doing?
He aimed at the vengeance spirits and pulled the trigger, simultaneously igniting the fireplace starters wired to the end of the caulking gun. It was a makeshift flamethrower made from Aqua Net, electrical tape, and ingenuity.
A stream of flames shot out, and Priest scorched the wall from left to right. The prisoners’ faces contorted as the fire burned them to ash—and then nothing.
I knelt in front of the chair, unbuckling the stubborn leather cuffs.
“Come on!” Alara jerked against the restraints, her face streaked with tears. “Get me out of this thing!”
“I’m working on it.” I fumbled with the ankle cuffs, pulling the last one free. Alara leapt from the chair.
My eyes were still level with the base. A single piece of wood attached the chair to the platform.
A piece shaped like a cylinder.
Someone had cut a crude notch in the wood. I held my breath and reached inside. The wood popped out, and a strip of silver glinted behind it.
My hand closed around the metal that felt as smooth and seamless as glass.
It looked exactly like the sketch in Priest’s journal—strange looping symbols cut into the outside, and empty slots where the disks slid into place.
Lukas noticed the casing in my hand, his expression a mixture of awe and relief. “You found it.”
Jared’s eyes darted to the door. “We still have to get it out of here.”
“Shears said he was coming back. He might catch us before we make it,” Priest said. “We have to destroy him.”
“How?” Alara’s voice trembled.
The answer appeared in my mind slowly, like a print developing in a darkroom. “I know what to do, but I need you to distract him.”
Jared grabbed my arm. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t have time to explain.” And I knew he would never agree if I did. “Do you trust me?”
The words hung between us—the question the four of them had been asking me all along. Now I was the one asking.
One by one they nodded and Jared spoke the words. “I trust you. But—”
“Then I need you to buy me some time.”
Priest handed me the disks. “Take these just in case.”
“No.” I tried to push them back into his hand.
“Don’t you trust me?” Priest gave me a lopsided grin, but his tone was serious.
I shoved them in my pocket.
“I’ll buy you that time,” Priest said before he turned to Alara. “You have to get back in the chair.”
She stumbled away, her eyes wild. “Are you crazy? I’m not going anywhere near that thing.”
Priest led her by the elbow as I took off down the hall. “It’ll be fine. I’ll disconnect the wires.…”
31. DEVIL’S TRAP
I was the only person within these walls, living or dead, who wanted to get into a cell—especially the cell of a psychotic serial killer’s ghost. But there was only one way to destroy him and if I was going to do it, I needed the element of surprise. And about eight minutes.
That was all the time it would take me to draw the one thing Darien couldn’t use his disappearing act to escape.
The Devil’s Trap.
I pictured the intricate design as I stepped back into Darien’s cell—the pentagram inside the circle, within a heptagram inside another circle—every line, every shape, every letter of languages I didn’t recognize.
The square cell was tiny. If I drew the outer circle big enough, the curved lines would touch the walls, leaving only the four corners of the room unmarked. Darien would have to step inside the symbol when he entered the room.
It didn’t matter unless I finished the Devil’s Trap.
Shouts echoed from the other end of the hallway.
My hand started to move. I worked quickly, trusting the part of my mind that remembered the details on the face of a dollar bill, and the spot where every kid stood in our kindergarten class picture. I ignored everything else but the voice of my memory.
