Unbreakable

I was tired of being afraid. I wanted to trust them—the people who meant so much to me now, the ones who believed in me.

“Kennedy, please.” Jared took Alara’s place, and his eyes found mine. This time he could see my tears. “We need you. I need you.”

You can’t choose the person who really sees you—the person who knows what you’re feeling without you saying a word, the person who can make you laugh and cry and everything in between just by looking at you. The one you can’t imagine being lucky enough to have, or unlucky enough to lose.

I was staring at him—the boy who was all those things and more.

My hand trembled as I aligned the final disk.

Darien faded, sputtering out like a candle burned to the wick. I snapped the disk into the casing and the final symbol illuminated.

Darien blinked one last time and whispered, “May the black dove always carry you.”

I froze.

His spirit exploded.

The Shift grew hotter and hotter until it burned my hands. I barely felt it, paralyzed by Darien’s last words.

May the black dove always carry you.

I dropped the cylinder, and a blinding light poured from the strange symbols as it rolled across the floor.

I thought about the other spirits—the girl in the yellow dress protecting her doll with the disk inside.

Millicent’s words from the well: “I won’t let you take anything else from us.”

The magician’s spirit promising he had tried to keep it safe before I destroyed him.

The disk hidden in a room protected by the spirits of dozens of dead children, and the words of the one carrying the sledgehammer it was hidden inside: “If I watch over what’s his, he’ll come back for me.”

And Darien Shears, a serial killer who put the cylinder inside the base of the chair that electrocuted him—a spirit who knew the phrase used by the members of the Legion.

Were the spirits protecting the pieces all along, or did Andras’ reach extend farther than we thought? Maybe Darien heard a member of the Legion say the words and remembered them?

I should have asked before I used my specialty to destroy him.

My specialty.

Salt spilled in between my fingers as I rubbed it over my wrist. I pictured the final section of the seal embedded in my skin and imagined my friends holding their arms against mine to complete the seal.

What will it feel like to be one of them?

I glanced at the Devil’s Trap one last time to be sure. There was nothing inside, not a speck of dust. There was no doubt I had destroyed Darien’s spirit.

But did I really trap a devil?

I waited for the lines to carve themselves into my wrist, hoping it wouldn’t hurt. Familiar voices called out to me as I leaned over my arm, tears dripping down onto my perfectly smooth skin.

32. HEAT OF HELL

A crack snaked up the wall, destroying the perfect rendition of the Shift, as I watched the real one roll back and forth across the floor. I tried to pick it up and it burned the skin off my fingertips. The room shook, the low rumble of thunder trapped within the walls.

Maybe this evil place was coming down around me, and I’d never have to leave Darien’s cell and face the four people who believed I was someone more than myself.

“Kennedy?” a voice called from the hallway.

I hugged my knees to my chest and waited to see if the building would stop shaking before I did.

Metal scraped and creaked as the bolt on the door unlocked.

Jared dragged me to my feet. “What are you doing? We have to get out of here.”

I held out my arm silently, a thin layer of salt still coating my unmarked skin.

Confusion clouded Jared’s beautiful features. Lukas and Alara came over as I rubbed more salt on my wrist.

Nothing.

Jared’s face crumpled.

Lukas ran his fingers over the salt. “I don’t understand. She drew the Devil’s Trap. She destroyed Darien’s spirit. We all saw it.”

“My mark didn’t show up right away. Give it some time,” Alara said.

I fought to keep my voice steady. “Darien’s spirit is gone.”

Alara shook her head. “Something went wrong.”

Not this time.

“Maybe—” Jared started.

“I’m not the one.”

Jared’s breath caught, and he closed his hand around mine. “There has to be another—”

I silenced him with a look. “There’s only one explanation, and we all know what it is.”

The floor buckled, and the ceiling split down the center.

Jared pulled my arm behind him, our fingers still intertwined. He looked down at me, our bodies practically touching. “It doesn’t matter.”

He was the boy inside the wall again—the boy who held me and confessed his deepest secret. The one I could trust.

“We both know it does.”

Lukas reached for the Shift as it rolled across the floor.

“Don’t touch it!” I shouted.

He pulled his hand back the moment his fingers grazed the metal. “What the hell?”

Alara wrapped her jacket around the cylinder and tried to pick it up that way, but the heat burned right through the fabric and she dropped it. “It’s too hot.”

“We have to go. Now.” Jared shoved them toward the door, dragging me behind him.

Priest stood outside the cell, frozen. All the color had drained from his face. He grabbed Jared’s arm and pushed the heavy metal door shut.

Pieces of concrete rained down on us, but no one moved. The letters that had spelled DARIEN SHEARS the first time we saw his cell door had rearranged themselves to spell something else:

anDras is here

“Move!” Lukas yelled.

Lukas and Alara ran for the stairwell with Priest on their heels. The railing vibrated violently, and the shaking intensified as we navigated the stairs.

I slipped, and my knees slammed against the metal steps.

Jared hauled me to my feet, and we tore through the cell block. The deafening rattle of the bars rose up around us. Spirits flickered in our path, awakened by the sudden disturbance in their environment. But they weren’t full body apparitions, and we passed right through them. Each time, I felt the revolting sensation of a cold hand tugging at the back of my neck, marking me in a different way.

Lukas burst through the door to the yard first. Instead of stepping into the afternoon light, there was nothing but darkness.

The black sky pulsed and churned like it was alive. Lightning cracked and illuminated thousands of beating wings, blocking out the sun.

Crows. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

Black rain, pouring from the clouds with no end in sight.