The second knife landed next to me, with the clipped sound of metal against metal as it hit the fridge.
Someone grabbed me around the waist and hauled me out of the kitchen. I wiped my eyes, hot water trailing down my neck. I caught a glimpse of his army jacket and realized it was Jared. He was soaked, water running down his face, a single-minded focus propelling him forward. Jared’s hand locked on my hip, his fingers pressed against me, as if nothing could break that hold.
Lukas was at the front door, yanking on the handle. “It won’t open.”
I glanced through the kitchen doorway. The remaining ten knives drew themselves from the block one by one and lined up in the air.
There was no way we could dodge that many.
“Get out of the way.” Jared released me and pushed his brother aside. He pulled the duct tape-covered gun out of his jacket and fired three shots at the base of the door. Steam poured from holes where the salt rounds gouged the wood.
He looked at Lukas, who was already backing up. “We have to break it down.”
Jared and Lukas charged the door. Their shoulders slammed into it simultaneously, but the hinges only groaned. They backed up again.
This time, I threw my body against the door alongside theirs. I heard the wood crack and felt myself falling.…
I skidded across the front walk, my hands burning as they scraped the pavement. I waited for the world around me to stop swaying before I turned back to my house.
Lights flashed on and off inside like an insidious form of Morse code.
“Kennedy.” Fear and panic warred in Jared’s eyes. He grabbed my hand and pulled me up. “We have to get to the van.”
Lukas was already halfway there.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the house as I ran. It was alive—breathing, consuming, destroying. The kitchen windows exploded, spraying glass all over the sidewalk.
Jared yanked the van door open and shoved me across the bench seat toward Lukas. The air in front of the house started to move like the tide pulling back from the shore—sucking broken glass, splintered wood, and potted plants up the sidewalk and into its jaws, as the house took one long, devastating breath.
“Look what it’s doing.” Lukas’ eyes widened.
The supernatural force pulling everything inside suddenly stopped. The air in the front hall started to churn like a tiny cyclone, our welcome mat and one of my sneakers caught in the brown whirlwind.
Inside, the lights flickered faster and faster.
Lukas glanced from Jared to the house. “Hurry up.”
Jared fumbled to get the keys in the ignition.
“What’s happening?”
A surge of air burst from the hallway like a bomb exploding, tearing what was left of the front door right off its hinges and expelling everything the house had sucked in.
The van pulled away from the curb. I stared out the back window watching as other doors along my street opened, my house growing smaller and smaller.
Was I really leaving with them?
It wasn’t a question anymore.
I had made my decision when I became more than just a girl with a dead mother—somewhere between the girl in the white nightgown, the knives flying, and the cyclone in the hallway. I was a girl whose mother was taken from her by something supernatural.
And something evil.
7. THE LEGION
That was the nastiest poltergeist I’ve ever seen.” Lukas looked out the window one last time like he hoped to catch another glimpse.
“It’s the only one you’ve ever seen.” Jared kept his eyes on the road, his expression tense.
“Whatever. That was some serious energy.”
They were talking about it like a hurricane or a tornado, but it wasn’t some uncontrollable natural disaster. It was completely
I wrapped my arms around myself.
“Are you cold?” Lukas started to take off his jacket.
“I’m fine,” I said.
We both knew I was lying. It was December, and I was wearing my standard uniform, skinny black jeans and a thin gray T-shirt. I would’ve killed for a coat, but I didn’t want them to see how far from fine I really was. Lukas didn’t push.
Maybe he sensed how lost I felt. Lukas and Jared had at least some of the answers, and I didn’t even know the questions. But after the last few hours, I was too exhausted to try to figure them out.
I leaned heavily on one arm, and my hand slid across the seat and bumped into Jared’s. Our fingertips touched for a second. He glanced down at them before I pulled away, folding my hands awkwardly in my lap.
“So what happened back there?” I asked.
“A poltergeist,” Lukas said.
“Like the movie?”
“Did it feel like a movie?” A reassuring smile played across Lukas’ lips. Jared never seemed to smile. Aside from their clothes and Jared’s scar, it was one of the few ways I could tell them apart.
“Not one I’d want to see again.” I tried to relax, but it was impossible with my body wedged between them.
“That movie was actually pretty accurate. Poltergeists are paranormal entities that feed off energy— electrical, mechanical, even human—and use it to move objects and cause some serious damage. No one knows exactly what they are, but they’re not spirits.” It sounded like Lukas was repeating something he read on one of those paranormal websites.
“I still don’t understand what one was doing in my house.”
They both looked away.
“You guys showed up in my bedroom out of nowhere, shot my cat with a gun that looked like something from a video game, and told me that a demon’s trying to kill me. Want to explain how you could possibly know that?”
Jared looked over at me. “Because our family has been fighting his army for over two hundred years.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Andras can influence vengeance spirits, and he uses them to do what he can’t—hurt and kill the living,” Lukas said. “The Legion vowed to protect the world from those attacks.”
“You mean like those ghost hunters on TV?”
Jared frowned. “More like exorcists.”
“I thought exorcists help people who are possessed by demons… or whatever.” I wasn’t ready to start talking about the devil. I sounded insane enough already.
“Anything can be possessed—places, animals, even objects,” Jared explained. “And demons don’t have the market cornered. Spirits possess things all the time, like your cat.”
I didn’t want to think about it. I hoped that Elvis was curled up in front of the fireplace in one of my neighbors’ houses.
Lukas squeezed my shoulder gently. “Exorcists are like supernatural exterminators. If something is hanging around that isn’t supposed to be there, they get rid of it. For the Legion, that’s a full-time job.”
How could the world they were describing possibly exist within the one I had lived in my whole life?
