Velocity (29 page)

She banged on the door again with both fists.

“Open the goddamn door! It’s me, Lucy!”

“Where do we go if not here?” I asked.

The door finally swung open. Standing there was my father.

CHAPTER 27

I PRACTICALLY FELL
into his arms. I’d never been happier to see anyone. He hugged me as if I were a little girl. I sobbed and breathed into his chest. Tears were flowing from my eyes before I even got the chance to feel relief. They pulled us inside and locked the door again.

Hugh stroked my hair. “Thank God. I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”

“How did you get out of jail?” I asked, pulling back to make sure he face free of injury.

“He was never in jail,” Detective Stauner said, stepping forward. I was instantly on my guard.

“Ariel, relax,” Hugh soothed. He ushered Henry, Lucy, and Theo farther inside. “I’m so glad you found your way here; I was worried you wouldn’t know.”

“I didn’t know,” I told him, at once angry now that I knew he was okay and with so many questions spilling through my brain. “What does he mean you were never in jail? They told me at the hospital―”

“Why were you in the hospital?” Hugh asked. “I tried to call you from a payphone but you didn’t answer.”

I hesitantly showed him my bandaged wrists. “They tried to kill me. Or just set me up for my own suicide attempt. Dr. Briggs wanted to commit me.”

“Those bastards!” Hugh said, his emotions erupted as he slammed a book beside him against the wall. He smoothed his hand through his hair and took my wrists carefully. “Are you okay? I mean, of course you’re not okay, but are you physically going to be alright?”

I nodded, tears threatening to return. “I think so. So, tell me how you got out of jail.”

“They thought they had me,” Hugh said. He led the four of us down the hall and into a comfortable sitting room, where enough candles burned to give it sufficient light. The candles had been burning for a while, judging by the puddles of wax. There was a decent sized group of twenty or so people in the back room, but Thornhill so far had shown that they had at least four times that many in their ranks. “But they were wrong. Stauner is one of us. He just pretended to take me into custody. I went into seclusion. That’s when I tried to call you. I was starting to worry when I hadn’t heard anything, and then when we woke up this morning and everything had gone to shit…” He shook his head, and hugged me again. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

Stauner nodded. “I don’t know what I’d do if my family was still in town. We were lucky my wife took the kids to visit her mother this weekend.”

“Is Gwen here?” I asked, thinking about her new baby.

“No, they moved to Livonia, remember?” Hugh explained. “She’s only been back a few times She had to find a new job somewhere. She’s been helping us some with the opposition, but she told me she needed to focus on her family. Best thing she could have done.”

Everyone took a seat in the little room, which I assumed must have been an employee break room for the thrift shop workers. All of the furniture looked comfortable but very worn. My Aunt Corinne was sitting by herself, flipping through a stack of her books. Madison Taylor’s parents were sitting in the corner. Mr. Taylor had his arm around his wife, who was muttering prayers.

“What is he doing here?” he asked shortly, indicating Henry. Henry seemed to bristle, his posture stiffening. I squeezed his hand.

“He belongs here,” Hugh said, putting one hand on Henry’s shoulder and causing him to relax. “I don’t want to hear anymore about it.”

“Why did they do this so early?” Henry asked. “I thought they were planning for next weekend.”

“Maybe they found out that we crashed their meeting,” Hugh offered. “Or they were just being very careful not to let anyone know the true date until it happened. That’s the most likely. If Phillip is as sick as you say, he’s out of time and out of options.”

“There are so many of them,” I murmured.

“We knew they were gathering a figurative army, but we just didn’t realize its size or scope,” Callie said.

“Do you think they found the necklace?” I asked. Now that I was sitting still, I could feel the dark crawling against my skin. I felt more tired than I’d ever felt in my life, and strangely hopeless. All the remaining opposition members looked equally abused.

“I have no idea,” Hugh said, staring at the floor. “It would explain why this Dark energy took over town.”

The others sat in silence. I looked at Detective Stauner. He was wearing a sweater and khakis instead of his usual freshly pressed suit.

“I thought you were on their side,” I accused.

“No, I never trusted Thornhill.” Stauner said, still standing. “I only told you what I did about that evidence because I really felt like it wouldn’t be enough. I didn’t know about your father’s group. I was doing my own investigation. They padded the pockets of so many politicians and names in town, it was impossible to take them down without video taped footage of the murders. They were like a cancer that metastasized to the whole body.”

“Why didn’t we see this coming?” I asked my father.

“I don’t know. I should have realized, with all the levels of communication Thornhill has, that when they said it would be next week, so clearly stated, that they were trying to throw us off.”

“Let’s ask Harlow.”

“Harlow?” I asked, raising my eyebrow.

The girl in question stepped into the room, looking like she was leaping into a piranha tank. Her shoulders were hunched over, her face free of its usual perfect mask of makeup.

“Did you capture her as a prisoner of war?” Henry asked sarcastically from where he stood protectively behind my chair.

“Look, I know you don’t know much about me, and what you think you know is mostly awful. But hear me out,” Harlow said, darting her eyes for possible attack. It was then that I noticed a few of them were holding household objects as weapons―a baseball bat, a knife. Jenna’s father had a lead pipe laying across his lap.

I didn’t want to hear her out. I didn’t like her―she had become Lainey’s new twin, after all. Just as evil and slightly more fabulous. But I listened anyway.

Harlow took a deep breath and stared down at her boots. Even during this apocalyptic time she was effortlessly beautiful, and I felt the tiniest sweep of immature jealously.

“Just tell me one thing first,” I spoke up. She looked at me, and I didn’t sense the hardness to her I had so many times before. She actually seemed human. “Did you steal my phone as part of the plot that almost got Theo killed?”

She blinked rapidly, and I realized she was holding back tears. “I’m sorry, Ariel. Theo. I didn’t know that’s what it was for. Lainey just told me to take the phone, so I did. I didn’t really think about the consequences, I thought she was just pranking you.”

I nodded, biting the inside of my cheek. At least it satisfied my curiosity. “Go on.”

She steadied herself again. “I watched my father kill my mother,” she said. I held my breath and Henry’s fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on my shoulders. “It was when this stupid Thornhill thing started. My father was communicating with Phillip Rhodes and his team in Hell. When the others started to get sick, and when Phillip himself got sick, of course they would try to find one of the country’s best neurologists.

“My father had been interested in the occult for a while. He stopped going to church with us. My mom, Fiona, didn’t like what he was doing. She found out the truth about him. She said she was going to the cops with information she had about him putting down terminal patients, and with planning the sacrifices in Hell.”

“I was right there. And he shot her.” She swallowed hard, and I could see her wrestling painfully with her emotions. She was staring off at a distant spot so as not to cry “I had so much anger and hatred for him. I didn’t understand how he could do that to her, and he’s never explained. I went on with his little game, all the time knowing there had to be some way to go against him. He wanted me to befriend those girls, to play the part. My heart was hard enough that it wasn’t too difficult. I didn’t care about anyone. I’m still struggling to care.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was not what I had been expecting.

She turned her attention to me, fixing her brown eyes with mine. “When I found out that you lost your mother too…because of those monsters. I knew I couldn’t stay on their side anymore. They’ll destroy anyone who stands in their way.”

“There was a secret meeting with the inner circle,” Harlow explained. “Before the big show the other night. They told us May Day was the day, not what they’d said at the meeting. We’ve been using the code word “trick-or-treat.” Like, ‘we’re going trick-or-treating’. They’ve been planning for it for months but only announced that it was happening last night. I didn’t even realize how many levels of people were involved.”

“I remember hearing that, trick or treat, and not knowing what you meant,” I said.

“I knew you were there at the meeting,” Harlow said, snapping her fingers. “I don’t know, I just got a feeling it was you.”

I remembered the masked person that had been staring at me. “Did anyone else know.”

Harlow shook her head. “Nope. Not that they admitted to me, anyway, but I’m not part of their inner sanctum.”

“Do they know about Luminos?” Hugh piped in.

“Yeah,” Harlow said, and there was a collective groan from the others. She frowned, and I knew that feeling of delivering an endless stream of bad news. “My father’s talked about it with me, that it was this realm of demons and angel-like creatures. That Phillip thought he was bringing some Dark kingdom to earth, but that Luminos would leak through if they broke the seals. It all sounded like a Michael Bay movie to me, but he believed it. He thought that was his ace in the hole over Mr. Rhodes, but then Rhodes told us all last night that Luminos might try to come through when they perform the ritual, and he might have to use his back up plan to stop it. He’s planning on ascending to another plane, like some Dark king. Secrets and lies all around.”

“What do they want? I mean what are they waiting for?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“They’re looking for a necklace.”

“They don’t have it?” Lucy asked. A spark of hope stirred in the ashes around my heart.

Harlow shook her head. “No. They performed all these chantings and rituals this morning, and that’s what caused the Dark dome. It’s alchemy magic energy. I couldn’t believe it, but there’s no denying it. Now they need the necklace to complete the steps, so they trapped everyone in town so it couldn’t be sneaked out.”

“You actually saw the alchemy magic?” asked Ms. Taylor who was in the corner with her husband. I realized for the first time that Madison wasn’t with them.

“We saw it, too,” Lucy said. “All of a sudden there was a fire hydrant in the road and the car crashed. Then this creepy girl said some words and a wall of water shot up. It was some major budget SFX right there.”

“That’s good to know about the necklace,” Hugh said contemplatively, running his thumb over his lips.

“They know the police had it, but they’ve already knocked through there,” Harlow said. That explained the trashed jail. “So they’re hitting up different places to try to find it. They searched McPherson’s house, top to bottom. They have time. If you guys haven’t noticed, it’s slowed down since they put up the force field. It seems like they need something else, but dad won’t even tell me what it is. Some kind of vessel. Whatever they want, they’re not giving up without a fight.”

Her words had a tinge of familiarity to them, and I scrambled through my thoughts. Whatever it was ran by too fast for me to catch it.

“So we need to find that necklace before they do,” Callie reasoned.

Stauner had been standing off to the side listening. He stepped forward, producing a manila envelope that he’d stashed in his belt. He emptied the contents on to his palm. Eleanor’s necklace slipped out easily, the green stone gleaming. My heart shot into my throat. “I think I already have that problem taken care of.”

Hugh patted him hard on the back. “You are a good egg, Mike.”

Stauner handed it to him. Hugh looked at me and smiled triumphantly. “Here, Ariel.”

I didn’t have time to protest. I opened my hands reflexively as he pushed it into them, and it felt like I’d caught a palm full of fire. The shadows in the corners burst to life around me. I screamed and dropped it, pulse pounding like a snare drum.

“Careful,” Henry said, and picked it up by the silver chain. “Oh, I see. Why is this thing so hot?”

I stared up at him. “Harlow, quick. Touch the stone.”

“You’re a little weird, Ariel,” she said with a bemused smirk. Henry tossed it to her.

“What do you mean it’s hot? It doesn’t feel hot at all.” She held it up to the light. “And it’s kind of tacky.”

Corinne rushed forward, grabbing the necklace in her fist. She frowned. “I don’t feel anything.”

She tossed it back to Henry. ‘Ow!” he said. “What are you talking about? It’s burning up!” He held it carefully by the chain between his fingers.

“Henry, I’ve been putting the pieces together, and I think you have the Sight,” I told him. “Most people don’t feel anything when they touch that necklace.”