Velocity (21 page)

I took the small, deactivated tracker box out of my purse. “They put this on my car. A black Cadillac has been following me wherever I go.”

“Now that’s something we can work with,” Stauner said. “I can file a report…”

“That will get shoved in a drawer and forgotten about,” Hugh muttered.

I was feeling as dejected as he looked.

“Is there anything we can do?” I pleaded.

“Keep looking? Or find a way to move out of town.”

“You’re telling us to give up?” I asked.

“We’re not going to do that,” Hugh shot angrily, already on his feet. “I’ve already been forced out of so much. My home, my business, my marriage. I’m not leaving.”

“I know it’s unfair,” Stauner said, following us. “But you provoked the lion.”

We didn’t need him to show us back out. As we reached the front of the station, Cliff Ford was shaking hands with the police chief. He didn’t even look at us on the way out.

“That settles it. The police are as corrupted as we suspected,” Hugh said as we buckled into his car. He leaned his head against his seat, looking too tired to be awake.

###

The members of the opposition gathered together the next night. There was just enough room in our apartment for everyone to stand. Henry stood beside me, and it seemed like the adults were having trouble not staring at him.

“I don’t think they want me here,” he whispered to me.

“Too bad some people don’t know that staring is rude,” I said loudly. The eyes darted away.

“What brings together this meeting of the midnight society?” Alex asked, making Madison snicker. Theo held a finger to her lips.

“This is really going to happen?” Lucy asked Hugh from her spot on the edge of the couch. “Thornhill is actually going to try to bring some kind of Hell on earth?”

“Yes. We need to do everything we can do to stop the ritual from happening,” Hugh said. “These spirits, these realms, are real. We’ve all sensed this town had something wrong with it. The suicides, the accidents, the reports of ghost sightings. Well, this is the final showdown. And I would encourage anyone who doesn’t believe me to leave now, because I don’t have the time or the energy left to convince you.”

No one so much as stirred.

Henry spoke up. “I know you don’t like the idea, Hugh, but I think we need to spy on one of their meetings.” Everyone quieted and listened to him. “There is an important one coming up next week. All of the kids are invited. I think it means that the ritual is going to be soon. I mean, all of the seals are activated, right? Except the last one?”

“We believe so. Ariel, you said you saw the green light when Charlotte Gary died, correct?”

“Yeah,” I spoke up. “Phillip told me the copper coil inside was busted.”

“If you saw the light, then the seal is active,” Callie said. “At least, everything in our research indicates it.”

I thought back quickly to Charlotte Gary’s death. When her blood touched the seal, the symbol on it had glowed green. It didn’t last for very long, but it had definitely happened.

“It’s active,” I agreed.

“Henry, I think you’re right about the meeting,” Hugh said. Madison’s parents and Mr. Golem looked at him in surprise. “There really are no other options that I can see. We need to know what they are planning so we can stop it. We’ll infiltrate the meeting next week.”

“And if they catch you?” Joe asked. “What then? Obviously they don’t mind killing their problems off.”

“What other choice do we have?” Hugh asked, still looking so tired and worn down. “We’ll take as many precautions as we can. However, I think we should seriously consider sending all of the kids out of town. I don’t think it’s safe for them.”

Henry, Theo, Alex, and I let off shouts of protest.

“No way I’m leaving. They’d have to take me out,” Alex muttered.

“I know you don’t like the idea. I know that I said you were the one to finish this, Ariel, but―” Hugh began, but I didn’t let him finish.

“No, dad. I want to be there,” I said firmly, crossing my arms. “Serafina told us that I was the only one who could finish this.”

“Ariel, we will figure out another way—”

“I have been part of this since the beginning,” I argued. “We are more involved and have more at stake than any of you. I am not going to run away. I’ve spent years running away. We’re going to face them head on, and we are going to defeat them. Thornhill will be nothing but a bad idea.”

“Dang! That was eloquent,” Alex marveled.

Theo laughed and rolled her eyes. Alex smirked, causing Madison to glare reproachfully at Theo. I felt another wave of irritability at their ongoing fight. I wanted Madison on our side, but I also wanted to deck her half the time.

Hugh looked at me with pride in his eyes. A small smile fought to settle on his lips. He turned his attention back to Henry. “When is this meeting?”

“Next Saturday.”

After the meeting was over, Henry pulled me aside.

“I think I should do a little investigation of my own,” he said quietly.

“Of what?” I asked, curiosity piqued.

“My father’s been spending a lot of time in his study. More time than usual. I found out where he keeps his spare key, and I think I’m going to go in and see what he’s hiding in there.”

“I want to check it out, too,” I said immediately.

He frowned at me. “Ariel, I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to be in my house. If he caught you there, it could be really bad. I don’t want…”

“We can be cautious. In and out. I’ve been dying to snoop through Phillip’s stuff. Please?” I held my hands together in a prayer position.

He sighed, pursing his lips. “If you’re up for it, dear, I suppose we can try. But we have to be very careful.”

CHAPTER 19

I’D NEVER BEEN
to Henry’s house before. In all the time we’d been together, the idea had come up, but we’d never actually done it. He drove me there after school in the middle of the week. It had warmed up quite a bit, and thunderstorms were on the wind. His parents were both still at work. They were doing an awful lot of work for people planning on performing a demonic ritual.

The house was just as impressive as I’d imagined―all red brick, four stories high from the street with lots of big windows. The sight of it took my breath away. Inside, it was all dark wood floors and extravagant, antique furnishings in perfect condition. We didn’t even need to turn on lights because she much sunshine came through the windows. But as we walked through, it struck me as emotionally cold. There were no day-to-day, human touches, no signs that anyone actually lived there.

Henry retrieved the small, gold key from his pocket and opened the study door. The study was like a dream to me. Henry had told me about it before, but in real life it was more amazing than I could have imagined. The oval-shaped room housed walls entirely made up of rows of books. Behind his large, tidy desk was a line of windows overlooking shady trees that cast gentle shadows. I wished the room belonged to someone else so I could hang out there. The comfortable-looking leather chair would have been perfect for reading.

Henry wasted no time in starting to dig through his father’s things, pulling open drawers and flipping through piles of paper.

“Are you sure he’s not coming back for a while?” I asked, glancing around me, wondering if there were cameras I couldn’t see.

“Not for a while. He’s been pulling overtime lately. They haven’t been at home much.”

In the second drawer down, he dug through hanging folders, and pulled one out that read “Unintended Consequences.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Henry frowned and bit his lip as he laid open the file, flipping through it. It contained doctor’s evaluations, x-rays, medical bills. But they weren’t just from Phillip; there were several members of Thornhill listed―Bruce Slaughter, Deana and Cliff Ford, Rachel Reed, and McPherson.

“All their brains are all getting affected,” Henry said, scanning a few of the doctor’s reports. They were from Briggs’s neurology clinic. “Not just Warwick and my dad. None of the others have tumors, but Slaughter’s been having seizures and Ford has been hearing voices.”

There were a few handwritten loose papers in the back. The writing was difficult to read.

“I think my father wrote this,” Henry muttered. I tried to read the distorted letters, but I only made out the gist, that Phillip was just trying to put off all of them losing their minds.

“So, he knows about them all going crazy, and he keeps going?” I asked.

Henry nodded, his face twisting in disgust as he put the paper down. “Appears that way. He must think that they’ll all be okay if they succeed in what they’re planning. And look, it says here that he’s giving them those copper pins because the copper seems to slow the progression of the deterioration.”

Information about Phillip’s own tumor was also included.
Stage 4 malignant, frontal lobe
, it read. There were in-depth reports from Dr. Briggs, detailing the increasing severity of his condition. The most recently dated report said that the patient had a prognosis of only a few months.

“I can’t believe he made it this far,” I said. “He must be really desperate. He said he only had until May. And the Luminos energy must be stronger than we thought if it’s causing them all to be affected.”

I still hadn’t told him about being descended from an angel pairing. It wasn’t something that was easy to work into the conversation. Hugh was keeping mum about it at the meetings.

Henry shoved the papers back together and stuck them back where he’d found them. “I wish this was enough.”

I studied his complex expression. “Are you sad about your father having cancer?”

He paused, debating the question as he bit the inside of his lip. “I’m sad that I didn’t have a normal father in the first place.”

Our heads shot up as we heard the front door open.

“Damn it,” Henry said, shutting the desk. “I should have known he would be home early this one time.”

He grabbed my hand and we ran out of the hall and down a flight of stairs into the basement, narrowly avoiding Phillip.

“Wait down here until he’s gone,” Henry said, out of breath. “My room is at the end of the hall.”

“Your room is in the basement?”

“Yeah, like yours was. It used to be upstairs, but I like the privacy of this. Don’t have to worry about my dad hearing my every move. We hardly ever have guests down here anymore.”

“We have so much in common, no wonder we like each other,” I quipped in a whisper. He rolled his eyes and kissed me, then jumped back up the stairs.

I wandered around a little. It was unlike any basement I’d ever been in. There was a huge, fully stocked bar with stools all around, a gigantic TV with a wraparound couch in the next room, and arcade games.

I went down the hallway to the door at the end, which was covered in a gigantic
World of Warcraft
poster.

I didn’t need to flip on the light, it was bright enough inside to see from the green and blue lights of a large aquarium. Exotic tropical fish swam peacefully behind the glass. He had a shelf overflowing with books over his bed. His bed was rumpled and there were clothes on the floor, all of it smelling like his cologne. Much less like the pottery barn catalog I had imagined.

On his desk was a sketchbook, like we’d had in art class. I flipped through it, surprised. I didn’t know he did it outside of class. Many of the pages had drawings on them, and while it wasn’t Theo-level insane quality, his work was good. There were dragons and birds and detailed castles from his books. I caught a drawing of my own face, looking pretty and serene, and I blushed. My name was written underneath it in his familiar handwriting. I shut the book.

On a shelf I caught something that made me snicker. Rows of crystal and metal wizards and dragons were lined up carefully. I picked up one of the wizards, sporting a flowing blue robe and a crystal staff. On the next shelf were boxed collector’s editions of video games that looked like they’d never been used.

I heard the door open behind me and looked as Henry came in. He caught me looking through his things and walked over to me cautiously.

“Are you kidding me with the wizards?” I giggled.

He pretended to grimace and put it back on the shelf. “Hey, this collection took a long time to cultivate.”

“Couldn’t just stick with stamps, huh?”

“These crystals have collector value!” He said. He couldn’t even take himself seriously, though, and broke into laughter, his face turning into the wide, silly grin I had missed. His laughter was infectious and I caught the giggles.

“Why is your father home?” I asked as I was wiping away the tears that had formed in my eyes.

His mood instantly went south. “He said that his business was cut short. He was supposed to have a meeting with a client in Detroit, but the guy didn’t show up.”

I was cautious of keeping my voice down more, even though Henry didn’t tell me to. “How are we going to disguise ourselves at the meeting?”