12. FINGERPRINTS

A weapon to destroy a demon.

The words and their implication settled around us.

“If the Shift is a weapon, 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.”

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 turned to 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 at odds 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.”

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

“What does it say?” Alara stepped between them, and Lukas 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 they were alone in the house 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?”

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 his list. I quizzed Priest and Alara about each piece of equipment.

Priest tossed Alara a box of nails and filled in the blanks for me. “It’s like packing for a trip when you don’t know what the weather will be like.”

I only recognized about half of the items Alara stuffed in the bag, and I 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.

“Your 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 nodded 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. I flipped over the list, and 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 myself 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 behind me. “Wow. That’s amazing.”

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

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

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

If someone had said that to me 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.