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I opened it and my last text to Alara appeared:
did u find it???

One word followed my question:
no.

In a single moment, the last scrap of hope I’d been holding on to vanished.

I
waited until the next morning to visit Jared again.

Today was New Year’s Day, and the idea of seeing him chained up killed me. But I couldn’t leave him down there alone all day either.

Even though he probably doesn’t know today is any different from yesterday.

With no way to track the days, how could he?

It was also time to tell him the truth about the Shift—that it was the key to saving him, but we had no idea where to find it.

If Andras knew what happened to it, maybe Jared knew, too. More evidence of their horrific mind meld was the last thing I wanted. But Jared was running out of time.

One of the bulbs had burned out at the end of the
tunnel, leaving parts of the cell in shadow—along with Jared. Even in the darkness, he looked broken, and I felt myself breaking, too.

He doesn’t deserve this.

Iron bars were the only things separating us.

He didn’t look up from where he sat on the cell floor, leaning against the wall, in nothing but a pair of jeans. I glanced at the chain binding his wrists. With his head bowed, he looked exactly the same.

But he’s not.

I let my fingers curl around the wet metal bars, and I fought the urge to unlock the door and let him out.

“I told you not to come down here anymore.” He hadn’t moved, but I knew he didn’t need to see me to sense my presence. “No one else will.”

He meant Lukas, Priest, and Alara.

“Everyone’s trying to figure this out. They don’t know what to do about—” The words caught in my throat.

“About me.” He rose from the floor and walked toward me—and the bars separating us.

As he drew closer, I counted the links in the chain hanging between his wrists. Anything to keep from looking him in the eye. But instead of moving away, I gripped the bars tighter.

He reached out and wrapped his hands around the metal above mine. Close but not touching.

“Don’t!”

Steam rose from the cold-iron bars as the holy water seared his scarred skin. He held on too long, intentionally letting his palms burn.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he whispered. “It’s not safe.”

Hot tears ran down my cheeks. Every decision we’d made up to this point felt wrong now: the chains coiled around his wrists, the cell soaked in holy water, the bars keeping him caged like an animal.

“I know you’d never hurt me,” I whispered.

The words had barely left my lips when Jared lunged at the bars. He grabbed at my throat and I jumped back, his cold fingers grazing my skin as I slipped out of reach.

“You’re wrong about that, little dove.” His voice sounded different, cruel and soulless.

Laughter echoed off the walls and chills rippled through me. I realized what everyone else had known all along.

The boy I knew was gone.

The one caged before me now was a monster.

And I was the one who would have to kill him.

Unless I could find a way to save him.

A
lara and Dimitri returned the next day—frustrated, exhausted, and barely speaking. Dimitri had dealt out an excessive number of disappointed looks before disappearing into his room with a fresh carton of cigarettes. After a lecture from Gabriel, Alara recounted what sounded like a painstaking search for the Shift. But I already knew how that story ended, and hearing it again made Jared’s situation seem even more hopeless.

I retreated to the athenaeum with Faith’s journal, trying not to think about the way Jared’s hand had felt around my neck. I knew he wasn’t the one who tried to strangle me, but it was his voice that kept replaying in my head.

I lost myself in the journal, skimming over the older,
more damaged entries until I reached what had to be Faith’s handwriting. The word
nightmares
jumped out at me.

I flipped a few pages until I reached another entry.

My hand shook when I saw the demon’s name.

Azazel.

The name of Gabriel’s whip.

I tried to imagine seeing a child’s death before it happened—finding a photograph of a scene from one of my paintings. It was a miracle Faith didn’t lose her mind and go completely crazy, carrying that kind of burden. I remembered when Lukas, Jared, Priest, and Alara first told me that invocation was my specialty.

When they thought I was one of them.

Faith and I had such similar reactions. The ability to summon, and supposedly command, angels and demons hadn’t seemed “special” to me either.

It doesn’t matter. You don’t have a specialty.

I turned back to the journal, pushing the thought away.

I recognized the date.

I must’ve read it wrong.

July 30. My birthday.

Below the entry, Faith had drawn a girl with the snow-white wings of a dove, standing at the edge of a cliff. It reminded me of the painting I was working on when my mom died. A girl standing on a ledge, with swallow wings growing out of her back—who was too scared to fly.

But instead of painful, unwanted wings, the girl’s wings in Faith’s drawing were breathtaking and full—the kind of wings that could carry her.

I’m not sure how many times I reread the page or what shocked me more: knowing Faith predicted my birth down to my name and the day, or the idea that I was the white dove.

Faith’s entry made it sound important, as if I had a special destiny. Maybe there was still room for me somewhere in my friends’ story.

K
ENNEDY’S
P
AINTING

Later that night, I went to see Jared. But this time, I didn’t go alone.

Elle hugged her parka tighter around her thin frame. “It’s freezing down here.”

Lukas pulled her against his shoulder and rubbed his hand up and down her arm. “The more powerful the demon, the colder it gets.”

Even subzero temperatures couldn’t have prepared me for what waited at the end of the tunnel.

The demon stood in the center of the Devil’s Trap, his arms outstretched like he was soaking in the sun. New scars mixed with the old ones to create a map of pain he didn’t seem to feel. Behind him, every inch of the cell was covered in frenzied writing—letters, characters, words, and symbols overlapping or spiraling in circles.

Priest pointed at the script scrawled across the mattress. “That’s Assyrian, for sure.”

Gabriel stood at the bars, speechless. “Sumerian. Ammonite. Minoan. Aramaic. We need to know what it says.”

Distorted drawings of monstrous creatures marred the floor: falcon-headed wolves with human limbs, and masked creatures morphing from equestrian bodies, their claws clutching swords and battle-axes.

“Was there anything like this in the book you were reading?” I asked Elle.

Elle looked at me like I was crazy. “What book?”

“The one Dimitri lent you,” I said.

She frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you okay?”

I glanced at Lukas. Maybe she didn’t want him to know.

Alara gasped, pointing at what looked like demonic Morse code.

“Enochian, the language of light and darkness,” Alara said. “Of angels and demons.”

Andras turned his head slowly toward Alara. “Only a witch would use those words to describe the tongue of the Labyrinth.”

She pulled back her shoulders and stepped closer to the bars. “I am not a witch.”

The demon laughed. “You deal in spells and wards, elements and earth. Your kind met their end in flames, in both our worlds. But in the Labyrinth, we don’t burn witches at the stake. You set fire to one another. And when your souls have burned to ash, the Dark Prince resurrects them so they can be burned again.” Andras smiled at Alara. “Your grandmother is probably there right now, burning as we speak. I can almost smell the stench of her soul.”

“My grandmother is not in hell,” Alara snapped.

He cocked his head. “Are you sure?”

Alara slipped the paintball gun from her tool belt, her delicate features contorted with rage.

Priest grabbed her arm, guiding it back down to her side. “He’s just trying to get under your skin.”

She pointed a shaky finger at Andras. “I’m gonna be the one who kills your miserable ass, you hear me?”

“You’re talking about Jared,” I said softly. A fact that didn’t seem to register with her at all.

Alara spun around, her face only inches from mine, and she pointed at the bars. “That
thing
is not Jared.”

“Let’s calm down.” Gabriel scanned the tunnel for Dimitri. “Andras is the Author of Discords. He incites anger and dissension. We’re giving him what he wants.”

“Shut up, Gabriel,” Alara said.

The demon walked toward the writing on the wall. As he turned, Jared’s back came into view. Every inch of his skin was covered in the same indecipherable symbols. The drawings themselves weren’t as disturbing as their placement: Jared’s lower back, between his shoulder blades—spots he couldn’t possibly reach with his wrists chained in front of him.

My mind flashed on one of Faith’s apocalyptic canvases—the painting of the guy in the cell with the symbols on his back. Looking at Jared now was like seeing it in the flesh.

Elle inched closer to Lukas. “We have officially entered
The Exorcist
territory.”

Footsteps echoed behind us, and Dimitri emerged from the mouth of the tunnel.

“What the hell took so long?” Gabriel demanded.

“I had to add rock salt to the tank. The concentration isn’t strong enough anymore.” Dimitri unzipped a cracked leather bag and tossed a stack of dusty journals and books with crumbling spines on the floor.

“Did you bring the bells?”

Dimitri unearthed a dozen chipped, widemouthed bells, suspended from thick loops of rope.

“Bells?” Priest stared at Dimitri. “That’s your plan?”

Dimitri shoved one into his hands. “These are altar bells, used in some of the most famous churches in history, including the Vatican. Andras is getting stronger, and we need to counteract that. The sound will weaken him.”

The bell ripped from Priest’s hands and clattered across the tunnel floor. The remaining bells flew from the bag as if they were being pulled by a magnet. They rolled across the stone and piled themselves up, climbing over one another like rats scaling a wall.

Once the bells laddered their way to the ceiling, they separated and spread through the tunnel above our heads.

“Oh my god.” Elle backed away.

The deafening sound of clanging metal erupted in the small space, and everyone covered their ears.

Except Andras.

He had returned to the center of the Devil’s Trap, waving his chained arms together as one, like a maestro
conducting a demonic orchestra. He closed his eyes, reveling in the sound that was supposed to bring him to his knees.

The sprinklers whirled on, and more salt rained down on the demon’s body. Pillars of steam rolled off his skin, and without warning, the bells stopped ringing.

“Cover your heads,” Dimitri yelled.

The bells hung in the air for a moment, then dropped. One hit my shoulder, while others crashed to the floor around me.

Gabriel stumbled to his feet and unhooked Azazel. The bones screeched and writhed as he cracked the whip against the bars.

Andras narrowed his eyes. “You cannot control me with your toy, Gabriel.”

The demon cupped his shackled hands, letting them fill with holy water. Steam rose from his palms as he lifted his hands to his lips and drank.

Alara gasped, and Dimitri and Gabriel looked stunned.

When Andras finished, his eyes turned black. “Who is your champion now, Gabriel?” The demon held out his shackled wrists. “This boy’s soul feeds me, like the souls of the girls I killed before I found you, Kennedy.” He pointed at me and smiled. “The girl both of us want to possess.”

A shudder ran through me.

Soaked in holy water, Andras moved closer to the bars.
“Who do you think will win your soul?” His eyes turned the same pale shade of blue as Jared’s. The demon’s body jerked, and he seemed disoriented for a moment.

“Run,” Jared whispered.

I stood perfectly still, afraid the slightest movement might snap the thread between us.

Jared shook his head in quick jerks, and the ink seeped back into his eyes.

Priest backed down the tunnel, with Elle stumbling after him. “We should get out of here. That monster isn’t Jared.”

Andras whipped around. “I agree, Owen. I am
not
Jared. He is an entirely different kind of monster.” He stared at Lukas with a vicious look in his eye. “Isn’t that right, Lukas? Why don’t you tell Owen who was really responsible for his grandfather’s death?”

The color drained from Lukas’ face.

Gabriel studied Lukas, watching his reaction.

“Save it,” Alara said. “No one believes your lies.”

Lukas’ eyes darted from the demon hiding behind his brother’s face to Alara. He flipped his silver coin between his fingers.

The demon jerked the chain shackled to his ankle and stepped closer to the bars. “Am I lying, Lukas? Tell your witch the truth.”

The coin slipped from Lukas’ fingers and dropped on
the floor. Alara watched it clatter to a stop between their boots.

“Lukas?” A hint of fear lurked in Alara’s tone.

He frowned, and a deep line cut between his brows. He didn’t take his eyes off the coin, as if he were letting it decide his fate. Heads or tails. The truth or a lie. But both sides of Lukas’ coin were the same.

“Let’s talk about this upstairs,” Dimitri said.

“No,” Alara snapped. “I’m not going anywhere until I get an answer.”

“It was an accident,” Lukas said finally.

Priest shook his head, confused. “Wait, what are we talking about?”

“He didn’t mean it,” Lukas mumbled.

Priest stiffened. “Didn’t mean
what
? You’re not making any sense.”

The demon threw his head back and laughed. “In the Labyrinth, we lie to our enemies. Only humans lie to their friends.”

Lukas lunged at the bars. “Shut your mouth. Or I swear to god, I’ll kill you myself!”

Andras smiled. “I’m sorry. God is busy performing miracles at the moment.”

Alara grabbed Lukas’ arm and jerked him around to face her. “What’s he talking about?”

“Our uncle wanted to find the missing member of the
Legion. Like I told Faith, he thought the Legion would be stronger if all five members were together.” The words tumbled out, the same way they had when Jared first told me the story inside the wall, at Hearts of Mercy. “Jared figured out the names of all the Legion members. He made a list—”

“A list?” Rage flashed in Alara’s brown eyes.

Gabriel stared at the floor as if he knew where the story was going.

“Jared was trying to help. So we could destroy
him
.” Lukas pointed at the cell, and the demon that looked exactly like his brother.

Alara slumped against the wall. “That’s how Andras found them.”

“It was an accident,” I said.

“Breaking something is an accident.” Priest’s voice grew louder with every word. “Killing five people is something else.”

“Owen does have a point.” Andras smiled.

I ignored him and plowed ahead. “Jared didn’t know Andras would find them.”

“He knew the rules.” Priest pointed at me, seething. “And you’d say anything to protect him.”

I’d never seen Priest this angry, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the demon’s proximity. “That’s not true. My mom died that night, too.”

“Your mother was a spy.”

I stared back at him, speechless.

“That’s enough.” Gabriel stepped between us.

Alara looked up from where she was leaning against the wall. She’d been strangely quiet until now. “Wait. How do you know it was an accident?” She stared at me as if we were the only two people in the room. “You knew this whole time?”

I swallowed hard. “Jared wanted to tell you himself.”

“That’s a lie,” Andras said casually, as he moved closer to the bars. “I should know. I spend all day in his head.”

“No.” Lukas backed away.

Priest gave Andras one last look, then turned and stormed down the tunnel. “I’m getting my stuff, and I’m outta here.”

“Where are you going?” Elle asked, rushing after him. “You can’t leave.”

Dimitri hesitated for a second, then flicked his cigarette against the wall and followed them.

Gabriel looked to us. “Priest isn’t serious, is he?”

“I’ve never seen him that upset,” Alara said softly. “If he says he’s leaving, he means it.”

“We don’t need this right now.” Gabriel stormed down the tunnel.

Alara didn’t say anything until he was gone, but when she finally looked at me, tears glittered in her eyes. “You should’ve told me, Kennedy.”

“I’m sorry.” My voice faltered.

“It’s too late for sorry,” she said, turning away from Luke and me.

“Alara,” Lukas called after her.

Alara spun around and pointed at him, her cheeks streaked with tears. “Don’t.”

Her footsteps echoed through the passage as she walked away, but there was nothing I could say. If anyone understood how it felt to be lied to by someone you trusted, it was me.

“Jared never would’ve told them,” Lukas said finally. “He was too ashamed.”

“He’s right,” Andras said. “And I didn’t need to read your boyfriend’s thoughts to know. Jared’s soul was branded with guilt the first time I saw him, at your aunt’s house.”

The first time he saw him.

Memories slid together in blurry flashes, like black splotches clouding my vision.

Jared standing in front of the shattered bay window at my aunt’s house.

The child’s pupil-less black eyes staring back at him.

Gabriel’s voice replayed in my mind:
If a demon marks your soul, he’ll always be able to find you.

The realization crystalized in my mind with chilling clarity. “That’s how you found us. When Jared looked at you from the window… you marked him.”

We never stood a chance.

Andras took a step forward, but I didn’t move. There was something about the way he was looking at me.

“I didn’t need Jared to find you. His soul isn’t the one I marked that day at Faith’s.” A trail of holy water burned its way down the demon’s cheek. “It was yours.”