THIRTY-TWO

IT DIDN’T MAKE SENSE. I TOOK RAY’S PHONE AND TRIED TO PIECE THE LOOSE ENDS TOGETHER. JESS EXPLAINED THAT VERONICA TENDED BAR AT THE RESTAURANT WHERE JESS WORKED, AND THAT’S WHERE THEY’D MET. VERONICA HAD EVEN HELPED JESS GET THE JOB THERE. SHE’D MOVED IN WITH VERONICA A FEW DAYS AGO, INTO AN APARTMENT ACROSS TOWN FROM MINE. BUT THAT DIDN’T ADD UP. VERONICA LIVED IN MY COMPLEX.

Both employees at my apartment’s leasing office said no one named Veronica Snow had ever rented a unit there. I pulled up a social media picture of her on my cell, but the two men maintained they’d never laid eyes on her. “Believe me, we’d remember a woman who looks like that,” one of them said.

I called Masonville High. Principal Harding wasn’t willing to give me Veronica’s address, but it didn’t matter, because Harding discovered that Veronica had left her street address blank on her paperwork.

Who was this woman?

Ray Anne drove us to the apartment Jess shared with Veronica and pounded on the door, ready to rush Jess to the police station to file a missing child report. Jackson had been gone nearly twenty-four hours, and Jess had been so out of it —high on who knows what —that hours had passed before she even noticed her son was gone from his crib.

Normally Ray Anne was pretty calm under pressure, but right now she was shaking and coming unglued.

Jess’s Mustang was parked out front, but she wasn’t answering. I tried the door. It was unlocked.

The place was a mess, but it was the smell that troubled us.

Sulfur.

Was Molek back?

Ray called Jess’s name, but there was no sign of her —until we opened a bedroom door. She was on her back on the floor next to her spilled purse, not moving. My immediate thought: Jess had needed her asthma inhaler but hadn’t been able to find it. Ray and I hit our knees next to Jess, and immediately, an arm’s length away, big chunks of the tan carpet started falling, disappearing into endless darkness.

The same black abyss I’d seen Meagan plunged into.

I put my ear to Jess’s mouth —she wasn’t breathing. Ray Anne was already calling 911, and I started CPR while she made a frantic plea for an ambulance. I’d never seen Jess so colorless. Her lips were turning blue.

Even when my arms started stinging with fatigue, I didn’t ease up. To quit would mean giving up Jess’s soul to never-ending, unthinkable suffering. Death had been in this apartment —Molek or some other lethal grim reaper that smelled just like him. Maybe he was still here, spying on us. Either way, it was up to me to keep Jess out of his bloodthirsty hands.

That’s when Heaven’s mercy intervened. An armored Watchman descended from the ceiling and knelt next to Jess. I pulled my arms away and collapsed backward.

I knew this Watchman.

It was the same one who had rescued Jess from drowning when she’d given up on life in high school. He gazed at her face, then at me. He didn’t say it, but I knew —I had to get to work again helping keep her alive.

I’d just started another round of chest compressions when my spiritual eyes saw Jess’s shackled soul start to thrash. She sat up out of her body, crying and flailing her arms and legs in restless turmoil. But the Watchman placed his huge hands on her chest —on her soul —one palm on top of the other, and gently pressed her down, back inside her skin. And he stayed there, pinning her in place while I did CPR, until the paramedics arrived and rammed an epinephrine shot into Jess’s thigh. At last, she started breathing.

As Jess was hoisted onto a gurney and rushed out the door, a middle-aged police officer approached. I recognized him: Officer McFarland, Detective Benny’s sidekick when I was under investigation.

While Jess was whisked away in an ambulance in front of a curious crowd, Ray Anne gave McFarland a detailed description of Veronica —everything we knew about her. Ray begged the officer over and over to help find Jackson. With the recent string of abductions, the police were on high alert, but based on his hesitant nods, I got the feeling he wasn’t ready to classify Veronica as a hard-core kidnapper. Still, he vowed they’d start searching immediately.

I stepped away from the gawking mob in search of some isolation where I could try to hear myself think. I was fidgety and buzzing with adrenaline. I bent over with my hands on my knees next to a lamppost at the far end of the parking lot, concentrating as hard as I could.

Veronica had taken Jackson . . .

Was this evil’s way of distracting Ray and me at a crucial time? Or was it worse than that —a maneuver that somehow played into Molek’s determination to reclaim his throne?

I glanced at my cell. Noon. Twenty-two hours until the town converged at the high school. Hopefully, converged.

Jess had nearly died —what more would the kingdom of darkness pull between now and tomorrow’s gathering? I wasn’t crediting Creepers with having given Jess asthma, but I was sure they had launched anxious thoughts at her, bullying her into an asthmatic panic. This wasn’t the first time they’d targeted and pursued her.

My mom had left me a voice mail, and as I strode back to Ray Anne, I played it. Turns out a donor organ had become available, and Dr. Bradford had driven my mother to the hospital to get prepped immediately for surgery. Had my mind not been as chaotic as the scene outside Jess’s apartment, I’m sure I would have made the connection right away. As it was, it took a few seconds before I stopped midstride and covered my open mouth.

The donor . . .

Ashlyn.

It had to be her.

It blew my mind how that situation had come full circle. There was no way God had wanted Dan to shoot Ashlyn. And yet Ashlyn’s unfair physical death was about to spare my mom from facing eternal death.

“You’ll see,” the robed Watchman had said to me the night I’d shed my shackle, after Dan’s shooting rampage. I’d chosen then to trust that some good would come out of the tragedy.

Hard as it was to believe, it had. I hoped Ashlyn’s mom was able to realize it, at least on some level. I felt so bad for her.

Ray Anne ran to me. “We have to look for Jackson! Where could she have taken him?”

There was no time to sit around and come up with a well-thought-out plan.

Ray Anne pulled me by the arm toward her car. “Where should we start?” It didn’t matter that Detective Benny had arrived and approached us to let us know the police were on the case. She was out to find Jackson herself.

My first instinct was to search the one place I knew Veronica liked to go. “Drive to my land.” No, I couldn’t think of a single reason she’d want to bring Jackson to the clearing, but we obviously weren’t dealing with a rational person.

When we turned onto the four-lane road that leads to Masonville High, Ray and I both saw it at the same time —the enormous, gruesome chair hovering almost directly over the high school parking lot now. Many more Creepers than before leaned into the back of Molek’s throne, having gained an advantage against the opposing Watchmen, who also had to deal with fighting off other groups of Creepers swarming them.

Ray Anne pulled over, and we both jumped out of her car.

She dug her fingers into her scalp. “Have we already lost?”

I had to admit, the scene didn’t look good. But I held out hope. “Until Molek is seated on that throne, we still have a chance.”

We piled back into the car and sped past the high school. In the grassy field behind the campus, a crew was setting up a large canopy tent and stage for tonight’s Spring Scream. Of course I thought of Riley. Had she been lumped in with the rest of Masonville’s missing persons, or was Detective Benny carefully exploring evidence for each victim, Jackson included?

A little farther, we turned onto the dirt road closest to the clearing, then parked and set out on foot. But when we got to the clearing, there was no sign of Veronica or Jackson. We trekked back to the car and took the search public, spending all afternoon showing people Jackson’s picture and Veronica’s, too, asking everyone who’d stop and listen if they’d seen either of them. Ray Anne’s parents also joined the search.

I tracked down Hector’s cell number, but he swore he hadn’t heard from Veronica and he’d already told police the same thing.

By the time the sun began to set, Ray Anne and I had stopped and questioned people at countless stores, restaurants, gas stations —you name it.

“She probably skipped town with him hours ago,” Ray Anne said, slamming on her brakes in front of Franklin Park, careering to a stop next to the basketball court. Same place I’d shot hoops with Walt and Marshall on that fatal day —their last day on earth.

Ray Anne left her car door open and sprinted toward the empty playground. I caught up with her as she collapsed on her hands and knees in the grass, sobbing. “Where are you, Jackson —where?” She pounded a patch of clover with balled fists and cried her heart out. I tried to wrap a tender arm around her, but she pushed me away.

Right or wrong, Ray Anne agonized like it was her own child that was missing.

I sat beside her, unable to do much of anything except be with her. She finally sobbed herself into exhaustion and shrank to the ground, laying her head on my shoulder. I wiped strands of her hair away from her soaked cheek until she grabbed my hand and held on tight. We stayed that way awhile.

I noticed some students in a front yard of a house across the street were dressed up in costumes and posing for pictures —headed to Spring Scream, no doubt. One wore a black hooded robe and held a grim reaper’s sickle. I’m sure he meant to be comical, but it struck me as grotesque. And it triggered a disturbing train of thought.

Hooded witchcraft Creepers. Drawn to Veronica’s gathering in the woods.

What could she possibly want with Jackson?

I closed my eyes in concentration. Jess’s child. And Dan’s. Dr. Bradford’s grandson —a man introduced to the ways of the occult by my mom’s parents.

A nerve-racking chill scurried the entire length of my body.

A secret society where bloodlines matter. And unorthodox holidays call for celebration.

I swallowed hard while pulling my phone out of my back pocket. I did an online search, and instantly, an occult calendar came up. I scrolled the list of dates, hoping my gut instinct was way off. But sure enough . . .

Today’s date, in bold, unmistakable print:

April 19 —Annual Feast of Molek, a sacred evening to pay homage to the ancient god.

And just like that, I knew why Veronica had taken Jackson, where she was going with him tonight, and the reason we only had a few hours left to stop her. But I had no idea how to tell Ray Anne.