THIRTEEN

THAT AFTERNOON, RAY TEXTED and said her mom was babysitting Jackson. That meant she and I could spend time together. Music to my ears.

Around 4:00 p.m., I stopped by Gentry’s house again, but he was gone. I got the idea he’d rather be anywhere but home. The new moon was only six days away, and the Cosmic Rulers had been warned not to wait that long to carry out their assassinations. Meanwhile, I’d made no progress intervening in Gentry’s life and had only thought up one way to try to identify who else made up the thirteen marked for elimination, but I couldn’t execute the plan without being allowed to roam among the students at Masonville High.

I told myself that black snake tail wrapped around Ray’s neck coincidentally resembled the mark of death, and she definitely was not one of the targets. The thought that she might be gave me anxious shakes, so I suppressed it at all costs.

I may have had defender supernaturally sealed on my arm, but I felt like disqualified was more accurate at this point.

On my way to Ray Anne’s, strong gusts of wind blasted against my motorcycle, as if even the weather was determined to work against me. I confided in God. “Lord, you see that I’m trying. Please don’t let me fail.”

What else was I supposed to do?

Don’t give up came to mind.

I knocked on Ray Anne’s garage-apartment door, and from the timid way she asked who was there, I could tell she was still crippled with fear—though I didn’t see the Creeper version anywhere at the moment. But that pale pink one was back, curled up in a ball beneath the bushes outside her room like a drunken squatter, pretending to sleep.

Surely Creepers don’t rest.

I’d confront the thing in a minute. My first priority was to check on Ray Anne.

She opened the door an inch and peeked out, as if it might not be me, even though I’d just said it was. And despite the summer temperatures, she was wearing a sweater that bunched up around her neck, all the way to her chin.

She invited me in, and I told her, “I know you’re grossed out or embarrassed or whatever about that thing around your neck . . .” In your neck, but there was no need to phrase it that way. “But please, Ray, don’t feel like you have to hide it from me. You’ve seen horrible things on me before, and you didn’t back away or hold it against me.”

I hugged her, but her arms hung limp at her sides. “I’m a monster, Owen.”

“No.” I let go and looked into her terrified eyes. “You’re being attacked.”

She huffed, then started gathering Jackson’s toys off the floor and chucking them into a plastic bin like she was pitching fastballs. “Why would God let this happen to me?”

Ah. The real issue.

I followed her around the small room. “Ray Anne, we’ll figure everything out. He’ll show us.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

Really?

I’d only seen this serious of a scowl on her face once, back in high school, when she’d thought she’d caught me kissing Jess. She’d gone into a furious rant about how she couldn’t trust anyone, shouting up at the starry sky. At God. But she’d been quick to come to her senses that night and trust him all over again. And also me.

“Babe, you know you can’t talk like this.” I followed her into the makeshift kitchen area—a minifridge with a microwave stacked on top. “You’ll draw dark forces, and they’ll—”

She spun around and faced me, her cheeks flushed red. “Stop trying to solve everything, Owen, as if I need you to fix me!”

Wow. This attitude from her was as unexpected as my mom’s sobriety and spotless house. I was tempted to get offended, but I knew better than to make this about me. Ray Anne was hurting, and I needed to be there for her. But I had to pause and at least allow the thought to register . . .

It’s scary when you know someone so well and they act way out of character.

There’d been a lot of that lately in my world, mostly corrupt people swearing they’d changed for good. But here was Ray Anne, the most faith-filled person I knew, second-guessing if God could even be trusted and yelling at me just for suggesting he could.

Sure, I wanted to yell back at her, especially since that annoying inner hostility was all over me. But I still had a choice, and I chose to be calm—yes, to try to get through to Ray Anne, but also to hopefully stop evil from closing in on the scene if I could.

I stepped back and gave her some space, trying my best to be empathetic, even though it didn’t always come naturally to me. “Ray, remember how, not that long ago, I was lugging around chains and cords and had no clue how I’d ever get them off me? It all worked out, didn’t it?”

“That’s you. I’m not supposed to have . . .” She didn’t finish her cruel remark, but she and I both knew what she’d been about to say.

So much for my good intentions. Like a volume switch cranked all the way to max, anger surged in me.

I stepped back again, putting even more space between us, then spoke my mind. “Ray Anne, are you saying I’m the kind of person who deserves to have baggage, but not you—cause you’re too good for that?”

She stood there with her arms crossed and her lips pressed tight, as if her new shade of lip gloss was Resentment. But finally she broke, shedding a tear. “I just never thought I’d have some snake in me and feel like I’m looking over my shoulder all the time. It’s like I’m completely defeated.”

Sure enough, there was scampering overhead. Creepers flocking to Ray Anne’s roof. The very thing I’d tried to prevent.

I approached her and held her tight, coming to some important conclusions. “Ray Anne, think about what’s really happening.” I moved my hands to her shoulders, guiding her to look up at me as I made my own confession. “That Spirit of Strife has some kind of hold on me—I’ve been feeling it since the day we encountered him. And it’s obvious the Spirit of Despair is getting to you. I mean, you know you’re not normally a discouraged person.

“As for that snake,” I told her, “it’s bound to be some kind of curse. But just like there’s freedom from chains and cords, we know there has to be a remedy for curses. We just have to figure out what it is.”

She sniffled a few times and her voice quaked. “I know we can fight this.”

Thank God, my brave Ray Anne was sounding more like herself. The stomping on the roof came to a sudden standstill.

We both eyed our defender seals, still glorious and glowing on our arms, and I prayed right then and there for both of us—that we’d quickly come to understand how to combat the attacks being hurled at us. Our worst fears, intentionally being thrown in our faces.

I got Ray Anne caught up on everything that had gone down with Veronica, and she eventually suggested we head to the Caldwell Cemetery this evening for another stakeout. There were two more Rulers we had yet to uncover. I wondered whether she could handle it right now, but I didn’t ask. If she said she was up for it, the only respectful response was to believe her.

On our way out the door, I pointed to the pale-pink trespasser. “That thing is relentless, but it’s got to go.”

“They’ll just hurt him again.” Ray Anne pulled me by the hand toward her car. “Just leave him.”

“Him? Don’t you mean it? And Creepers deserve to get hurt.” Anger began to cluster in my sternum again. The idea that this devil was actually getting her sympathy . . .

“Ray Anne, you can never feel sorry for evil or allow it to stay close.”

She opened her driver’s side door. “He’s outside. It’s not like he’s in my house.”

I clutched her arm, stopping her from getting in the car. “Listen to me. This is no different than when I was interacting with a spirit and you warned me to stop. I didn’t listen, and you remember what that cost me.”

“I get that, but I’m not interacting with this one. I would never do that.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You think it just happens to be hanging out here, outside your door, with no agenda whatsoever?”

“Owen, all I’m saying is he’s not doing anything scary or harmful.”

“That you’re aware of.”

She sighed. “Don’t you think we have much more serious battles to fight?”

I knew no matter how gently I tried to say it, if I accused her of being deceived, it would start an argument, which would evoke a flurry of evil and not only hinder my relationship with Ray but ultimately sabotage our joint mission. So instead I turned around, marched right up to the unholy weakling, and commanded it to leave all over again. I was so loud, Mrs. Greiner came running out of the house, Ray Anne’s dad behind her.

“Everything’s fine.” It was basically true. There was a problem, but I was handling it.

Her parents went back inside. Meanwhile, that Creeper stopped pretending to be asleep and started limping down Ray Anne’s lawn, hobbling toward the curb. But before it could get there, a pair of big greenish-gray hands reached up from beneath the ground, up through the grass, and drove pointed claws into the mongrel’s back. It howled in agony, of course, still masquerading as a victim.

Ray Anne grimaced. “What was the point of that, Owen? He was only sleeping.”

I huffed. “Did you really just criticize me for sending a Creeper away?” My anger spiked higher, my neck instantly tense and hot. “Evil forces are never neutral, much less innocent, Ray Anne. You know that.”

The pale-pink Creeper was dragged underground, thrashing and screaming, leaving a bloody mess in the grass. I pointed to the nasty maroon spot. “Creepers don’t have blood, Ray Anne. This is all a trick.”

She gazed at the stain from where she stood in the driveway. “The Bible doesn’t say if they have blood or not.” She faced her car again. “Can we go now?”

I’d been living with the nagging worry that Ethan might come between Ray and me at some point, but never in a million years would I have imagined a Creeper would. It seemed to me that’s where this was headed—her pity for the “poor thing” creating resentment toward me for hating it.

I got in the car but sat silently in the passenger seat while Ray drove us to my wooded property. I mulled over whether I should tell her how her instability was making everything feel odd and unsafe to me. Ray Anne had always been a rock, keeping me anchored to truth and reality. Well, at least she’d always tried to keep me on the right path. But it was like that determined girl had gone missing, replaced by someone gullible and fragile I didn’t recognize.

I hadn’t felt this lonely in a while. Or this concerned about Ray Anne. But would it do any good to tell her that?

The sun had nearly set as she and I stood a distance away from the Caldwell Cemetery, both quiet, anticipating that the final two Rulers might show themselves. That Bloody Mary statue—as I’d started thinking of it—and the “miracle tears” it had cried remained a mystery, but it wasn’t important compared to the other unsolved situations weighing on me.

Standing in the woods, sensing nothing but an occasional Creeper-tainted breeze, my racing thoughts were in serious need of sorting. I got my phone out and typed in my notes app:

1. 1. Find how to get serpent/curse out of Ray Anne.
2. 2. Identify all 13 people marked to die plus how to protect them—ASAP.
3. 3. Come up with plan to fight back against witches and warlocks haunting Elle’s place and mine.
4. 4. Will the student pastors be willing to help us tomorrow?

And finally, the one I’d been keeping to myself.

1. 5. Am I losing my mind, or has some invisible form of evil been spying on me, toting around a crying baby?

Even now, standing next to Ray Anne, I felt the invisible presence.

I read back through my list and shook my head. They didn’t exactly have how-to videos for stuff like this.

I put my phone in my pocket and assured Ray Anne we were okay. She was gasping at every sound, even leaves rustling. I could tell she was trying to be her adventurous self but failing.

We waited for over an hour, but nothing happened. Honestly, I was relieved no Rulers showed up. My instincts had been right—Ray Anne couldn’t have handled it.

I held Ray’s trembling hand the entire walk through the woods back to her car. This wasn’t the Ray Anne I’d fallen in love with, but I was already committed to her without any official vow—for better or worse.

On the drive to her place, I contemplated what I needed to do that night, back at the church—more specifically, what I needed to confront. I would’ve liked to have had Ray Anne there at my side, standing strong with me, but in her condition, she had no business attempting any kind of spirit-world standoff. Especially one like this.