Unbreakable Read online

  They crowded around the worktable to see the diagram—a mechanical cylinder with the words Ophthalmic Shift printed in tight script at the top.

  “One of your grandfather’s inventions?” Jared leaned over my shoulder and examined the drawing. I remembered the way his hand felt on my back as I cried, and the way he smelled. I stepped forward, trying to put some space between us.

  Priest shook his head. “That’s not my granddad’s handwriting, and this sketch is really old.”

  The cylinder was the size of a small coffee can, with a piece of clear glass cut into one end like a window. Five looping symbols were etched around the outside. There were four other components—silver disks, each embedded with a different shade of glass: blue, red, yellow, and green. According to the diagram, the disks slid into the middle of the cylinder like trays.

  Alara twisted her eyebrow ring. “What is it?”

  “An ocular device,” Priest said.

  “In English?” Jared leaned closer.

  Priest tapped the top of the cylinder on the page. “You look through here and each layer of colored glass inside allows you to see a different part of the infrared spectrum—things you can’t see with the naked eye. The way a black light picks up the color white and amplifies it.”

  “Are you saying it’s a decryption device?” Lukas asked.

  How did he make that jump?

  Priest nodded. “A pretty sophisticated one, considering it’s completely mechanical. If you used the right type of ink, you could write on almost anything and no one would be able to see it without these disks. If someone knew what they were doing, they could actually design a written code that required all five pieces to decipher.”

  Lukas’ head snapped up. “Five pieces?”

  “Yeah—” Priest started to explain, but Lukas was already heading back to the other side of the building.

  “Luk?” Jared called after him. His brother didn’t even break stride, and I felt Jared’s body tense behind me.

  “And you never noticed that picture before?” Alara asked before an awkward silence set in.

  Priest gave her a hard stare. “Of course I did. But there are hundreds of sketches in here. And like I said, that isn’t my granddad’s handwriting. His is down in the corner.” The word Lilburn was printed neatly at the bottom of the page. “Another member of the Legion must have drawn it before he inherited the journal.”

  “Then why is this Shift thing such a big deal all of a sudden?” Jared asked.

  “Because of this.” Priest pointed at the seal. “Kennedy found it.”

  Alara and Jared squinted to see what had taken my mind only seconds to record in complete detail. They gasped as recognition registered on their faces.

  Jared looked up at me. “How’d you even see it?”

  “I have twenty-twenty vision.” I didn’t want to tell them about my freakish memory. Priest might think it was cool, but Alara would undoubtedly point out that we weren’t going to be taking standardized tests anytime soon.

  “If the seal is there, it means something,” Alara said.

  “It does.” Lukas parted the sheet with one hand, his journal in the other. “Listen to this. ‘Five pieces. Separated until the day comes when, united, we can finally destroy him. Until that day, the pieces remain hidden from the demon that hunts them. The shift is the key.’ My uncle read it to me once. He thought it was a metaphor, and the five pieces represented the five members of the Legion, like the pieces of a puzzle.”

  “But it mentions the Shift from the drawing,” I said.

  Lukas set his journal on the worktable so the rest of us could see it. “The word shift isn’t capitalized here. He didn’t think it was a physical object.”

  “ ‘Until the day comes when, united, we can finally destroy him.’ ” Alara repeated the words, trying to work it out.

  “What if—?” Lukas leaned over the diagram. He gripped the sides of the table until his knuckles turned white. He finally raised his eyes to meet ours.

  “I think the Shift is a weapon.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Fingerprints

  We stared at Lukas standing over the drawing of the Shift. No one said anything as the words—and their implication—settled around us.

  A weapon to destroy a demon.

  They weren’t talking about salt rounds or voodoo wards.

  “If you’re right, why didn’t the Legion use the Shift to destroy Andras?” I asked.

  Priest paced in front of the table. “Maybe it was designed before they knew where to find him.”

  “That’s a big maybe,” I said.

  No one responded. They weren’t going to listen to the girl who didn’t even know spirits existed until two strangers shot one in her bedroom.

  Alara watched Jared, waiting for his reaction. “You really think there’s a way to destroy Andras?”

  “If our dad were here, he’d say—”

  “There’s always a way.” Lukas cut him off, an edge in his voice. “You just have to find it.”

  Alara pointed at the word scrawled in the corner of the page. “Does Lilburn mean anything to you?”

  Priest shook his head. “Nope.”

  “We need to figure out who or what Lilburn is,” she said. “And if this Shift exists, we need to find it.”

  Lukas reached for his laptop. “Already on the first part.”

  When he turned it around moments later, a Gothic mansion with a peaked roof filled the screen. A medieval tower rose up on one side, the stone battlements inconsistent with the style of the house. The headline read Haunted History Returns to Lilburn Mansion.

  “It’s in Ellicott City.” Lukas kept reading. “This iron trader, Henry Hazlehurst, built the house in 1857, and his wife and three kids died there. No written accounts of hauntings until 1923, when the new owner tore down the tower and built another one after a fire. But get this. It was completely different from the original.”

  Priest whistled. “That’ll do it. Spirits aren’t fans of construction.”

  Lukas scrolled farther down the page. “That’s an understatement.”

  “Mind sharing with the rest of us?” Jared asked.

  “If you give me a minute,” Lukas snapped. “We don’t need to make any more mistakes.”

  “You mean I don’t.” Jared’s back stiffened, the tension between them stretching like a rubber band about to snap.

  “What does it say?” Alara stepped closer to Lukas, blocking Jared from his line of vision.

  He focused his attention back to the article. “Lilburn’s always been haunted. Footsteps in the tower, a baby crying, a little girl playing in the hall—the usual stuff.”

  “That’s the usual stuff?” The four of them shared a vocabulary that was completely alien to me.

  “If we’re dealing with a residual haunting,” Priest said. I gave him a blank stare. “It’s like a fingerprint, energy that’s left behind after someone dies traumatically. It can be a sound like footsteps, or an actual apparition. But the apparition can’t interact with people because it’s not really there.”

  “There’s nothing residual about what’s going on at Lilburn now.” Lukas handed the laptop to his brother without looking at him.

  Jared’s eyes darkened. “Two people almost died there within a week. One fell down the stairs and the other from a second-story window. Both said they were pushed, but no one else was home when it happened.”

  “The name of this place is written on the same page as the diagram of the Shift,” Alara said. “What are the odds?”

  No one responded. It was one question we could all answer.

  The White Stripes blared from the speakers behind Priest’s worktable. This time it was “Seven Nation Army,” and Priest looked like he was outfitting an army of his own. I checked off supplies from a list on a notepad, quizzing Priest and Alara about every piece of equipment.

  Priest tossed Alara a box of nails and filled in the blanks for me. “It’s like packi
ng for a trip when you don’t have the weather report.”

  I only recognized about 50 percent of what Alara put in the bag, and had no idea what they planned to do with any of it. But I was determined to find out.

  I held up the nails. “I’m guessing these are for severe thunderstorms?”

  Priest grinned. “Or unexpected rain, depending on the vengeance spirit.” He handed Alara a high-tech crossbow with orange duct tape wrapped around the barrel.

  “You can shoot spirits with that?”

  Alara scowled. Spotting Andras’ seal on the diagram had only earned me a temporary reprieve. I sensed her sizing me up every time she looked at me, trying to determine what my ignorance would cost them.

  “Almost any type of weapon works as long as you have the right ammo. Regular bullets won’t hurt spirits. They just piss them off,” Priest said.

  “You grandfather taught you how to make all this stuff?”

  “Yeah. He could build a weapon out of a soda can.” Priest examined a leather glove with spikes protruding from the knuckles. “I need to do a quick fix. Alara, put this on for a minute.”

  She pointed at the soldering iron. “Don’t burn me.”

  I scanned the list while Priest lit the blue flame on the soldering iron: nail gun, crossbow, shotgun, strike gloves, nails, bolts, shells, salt, EMF detectors, batteries, flashlights, torch, headphones. I smiled at the last one and watched Priest work. The pencil in my hand started to move, following the curves of his face, the shape of the hood flipped over his head. But his trademark headphones morphed into part of his body like a crazy steampunk helmet.

  It felt good to be sketching, like I was suddenly me again.

  Priest finished and looked over. “What are you drawing?”

  “You.” I penciled in some quick lines to round out the sketch.

  He pushed the goggles up on his forehead and walked around the table. “Wow. That’s amazing.”

  Alara craned her neck and did a double take. “He’s right.”

  “Lots of people are better.” I handed him the pad and tucked the pencil behind my ear.

  “Well, I don’t know any.” Priest ripped off the sheet and put it in his pocket. “I’m saving this in case you’re famous one day.”

  If someone had said that a week ago, I would’ve holed up in my room and sketched for the rest of the day. Instead, I was hiding in a warehouse, packing ammo, just hoping to make it through another one.

  CHAPTER 13

  Cold Iron

  With its weathered gray brick and medieval tower, Lilburn Mansion looked more like an abandoned castle from a European guidebook than the scene of paranormal attacks.

  I stared at the second-story windows, wondering which one the person fell from. Whether the spirits inside the house were under the influence of a demon or not, two people had almost died here.

  I wasn’t studying maps and sorting weapons anymore.

  This was a real haunted house.

  “You okay?” Lukas walked up beside me.

  “I’m good.” If I pretended it was true, maybe I could fool myself.

  “I was six the first time I saw a ghost.” Lukas faced the house, but I sensed him watching me. “I woke up one night, and a little girl was sitting by the window playing cat’s cradle. When the moonlight hit her body, it passed right through.”

  I pictured the girl with the handprints around her throat. “Were you scared?”

  “I thought it was a dream until I saw her again. She was sitting in the same spot playing cat’s cradle. After what felt like forever, she held up her hands with the blue string webbed between them, and she spoke to me.”

  “What did she say?”

  “ ‘You have to lace your fingers just right to catch your dreams. And you don’t want to lose them because they’re not easy to find again.’ Then she faded away like she was never there. When I woke up the next morning, the blue string was on the windowsill, looped in a perfect cat’s cradle.”

  I gasped. “I would’ve lost it.”

  “That’s the weirdest part. I didn’t. She was just a lonely spirit caught between worlds. I wanted you to know they aren’t all bad.” Lukas reached in his pocket and pulled out something. When he uncurled his fingers, it was tangled in his palm.

  A web of blue string.

  “And I want you to know something else.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the tangled loops.

  “I’m just like you, Kennedy. There are other things I want. Things that have nothing to do with destroying demons and vengeance spirits.” Lukas put the string in my hand and closed my fingers around it. “So you can catch your dreams.”

  He knows I’m scared. It doesn’t mean anything else.

  I held the string, and I realized the cat’s cradle wasn’t to catch my dreams.

  It was to catch me.

  Jared was unloading weapons from the van when he noticed us walking down the hill. He stopped, his eyes moving from his brother to me. I started to smile, but he looked away.

  Alara threw Lukas a disapproving look, like we had stayed out all night and showed up with our clothes on inside out. I pulled at my T-shirt, suddenly uncomfortable in my own skin.

  “How’s it look up there?” Alara asked without turning around.

  “Just like the picture,” Lukas said.

  Alara pointed at a plastic milk jug on the ground with the words holy water scrawled on the front. “Can you grab that?”

  I didn’t know if she was talking to me, but I picked it up anyway.

  “Thanks.” She poured some of the holy water into a plastic soda bottle.

  “So that stuff really works?”

  Alara slipped the bottle into the leather tool belt around her waist. “About sixty percent of the time.”

  I watched her systematically fill the rest of her belt—a pouch of salt, liquid salt rounds, a black marker. It reminded me of the way Elle could put on her makeup in the car without a mirror.

  “How many times have you done this?” I asked.

  Alara shrugged. “With these guys? Six times.”

  Unless you counted studying and making out in my room, I hadn’t even been on six dates.

  I wanted to ask her so many questions. Would the spirits haunting Lilburn look like the strangled girl from my room? Would they be as easy to destroy? Jared and Lukas only had one gun the night they burst into my room. The four of them were bringing a lot more firepower this time around.

  “Heads up, Luk.” Jared tossed his brother the crossbow followed by a ripped cardboard box. Lukas opened the box without a word and examined the pointed projectiles. They didn’t look anything like arrows.

  “Cool, huh?” Priest said. “Cold-iron bolts. I made them a few days ago.”

  “Why does the iron need to be cold?” I asked.

  “That’s what they call it when you hammer iron into shape without heating it.” Priest opened a box of nails and loaded a nail gun. “Spirits hate the stuff. It destroys them or burns like hell, depending on how strong they are.”

  “Got it.” I pointed at the nails scattered around him. “Cold iron?”

  “You’re catching on.”

  Lukas loaded the remaining bolts and filled one of his pockets with salt. His cuff slid up and a thin layer of salt dusted his wrist. It looked like there was a design on his skin.

  “Is that a tattoo?” I asked.

  Priest glanced at Lukas.

  Lukas followed my eyes to his wrist and pulled down his sleeve. “It’s nothing.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Priest asked louder than necessary, as he handed Jared the nail gun.

  Jared dumped a handful of nails in the pocket of his army jacket. “Lukas and Alara can check out the house. We’ll take the tower.”

  “Let me guess? I can monitor the paranormal activity.” Priest sounded disappointed.

  Jared checked the trigger on the weapon. “It’s an important job.”

  Priest shoved a handheld device that lo
oked like a radio into one of his back pockets and tucked a calculator in the other.

  “Planning to do your math homework in the haunted house?” I teased.

  Priest perked up. “I wouldn’t need one for my homework, but they’re good for lots of other stuff.” He walked over and stood next Jared. Lukas and Alara were already standing together.

  “Who am I going with?” I asked.

  The four of them looked at one another. No one reacted except Priest, who immediately put on his headphones.

  “Nobody,” Jared finally answered. “You’re staying here.”

  Andras was responsible for my mother’s death. If there was a weapon capable of destroying him, I wanted to help them find it. “I’m going with you.”

  Jared pushed past me without a word and disappeared around the side of the van.

  I followed him. “You think if you ignore me, I’ll just wait out here? I don’t care—”

  He whipped around. “I’m not letting you go in that house.”

  “It’s not your decision to make.”

  A worried crease formed between his eyebrows. “It is if there’s a vengeance spirit in there….”

  “You’ve been trying to convince me this is my destiny or my duty, or whatever your parents told you guys to make you trade a normal life for this.” I yanked on the pocket of his jacket, the nails rattling inside. “If I’m really one of you, shouldn’t I see what I’m up against?”

  Anger flickered in his eyes. “My parents didn’t tell me anything. My mom died ten minutes after she gave birth to us. And my dad told me the truth. Can you say the same thing?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek.

  Jared’s voice dropped. “You don’t get to judge my father or my life. What we do is important. It means something.”

  I wanted to fire back with a comment that would hurt him the way he had tried to hurt me, but I couldn’t. No matter how different we were, Jared and I shared a common denominator as uncommon as they came.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” My hands were shaking.

  Jared noticed and his expression softened. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. Why do you really want to go in?”