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Jared jammed his hands in his pockets, but instead of staring at the ground, he kept his eyes fixed on me.

“Why don’t we move this party before somebody figures out Kennedy’s gone?” Lukas walked around the side of the Jeep, wearing a crooked smile—one of the few
noticeable differences between the Lockhart twins. Aside from Lukas’ smile and his black nylon flight jacket, and the scar above Jared’s eye, the two brothers were mirror images of each other.

He caught me in an awkward hug. “It’s good to see you.”

“So where did you get this thing?” I asked, climbing into the backseat next to Jared.

“Impound,” Priest said.

Alara whacked him on the arm. “A friend.”

Lukas started the Jeep and pulled off the shoulder. “Alara won’t tell us. I think she borrowed it from the Mob.”

“Or an ex-boyfriend,” Elle said.

Alara scowled at her. “Shut up or I’ll call your mom and tell her where you really are.”

“Where does she think you are?” Lying to Elle’s mom wasn’t easy. It required flawless execution, and I was usually around to help cover her tracks.

Elle threw me a smug smile. “Taking a prestigious drama workshop at the Miami Center for the Performing Arts.”

“She believed that?” The likelihood of Elle’s mother letting her travel to another state without verifying the details was less than zero.

“After she spoke to the director,” Elle said.

“How did you pull that off?”

“Alara helped,” Elle said, as if that explained everything.

Alara crossed her arms. “Only because you blackmailed us. She wouldn’t help us find you unless we agreed to let her come along. If I knew she was such a pain in the ass, I would’ve left her in DC.”

Elle pouted, but I was impressed. She’d always been resourceful but usually limited her talents to torturing guys who liked her. This was a whole new level. “Give it up. I want details.”

Alara shot Elle an intimidating glance. “My cousin Thaddeus is the director. The center is one of my family’s foundations.”

“You worked things out with your parents?” I knew how hurt Alara had been when they asked her to abandon the Legion and come home.

“Not exactly. Thaddeus and Maya have been helping me. Thad dealt with Elle’s mom, and Maya has been sending money.” Alara pretended to inspect her silver nail polish when she mentioned Maya, the younger sister she’d spared by joining the Legion in her place. “She still feels guilty that I was the one who ended up with my grandmother. And Thad and I were always really close.”

“You look cold,” Jared said, changing the subject. He rubbed his hands over my arms to warm me up. “Turn up the heat, Luke.”

Lukas turned a knob on the dashboard, and the lyrics of Jared’s favorite song, “Cry Little Sister,” blared from the speakers.

Lukas and Priest groaned.

Alara covered her ears. “Make it stop.”

“Change the station.” Elle scrunched up her nose.

I couldn’t help but smile.

“It’s not the radio,” Lukas said.

“Someone paid for… whatever that is?” she asked.

“It’s Jared’s favorite song,” Alara said. “From
The Lost Boys
soundtrack.”

Elle looked confused. “The lost what?”

“You’re all hilarious.” Jared tried to reach over the seat and turn it off.

Lukas swatted his hand away. “Come on. Just once for Elle.”

Priest, Lukas, Alara, and I joined in for the chorus.

Jared ignored us and unzipped a backpack in the trunk. He handed me an extra shirt. “Here. Since my brother doesn’t know how to turn on the heat.”

“Stop crying already.” Lukas shut off the music, with a crooked smile still plastered on his face, and cranked the heat.

Jared peeled off his wet thermal and slid on a dry one. I tried to ignore the way the sight of his bare skin made me feel.

Nice
, Elle mouthed, smiling.

I pulled the extra shirt Jared had given me over my head. Within seconds, I had slipped my arms out of my wet sweater and yanked it through one of the sleeves.

Jared watched as I tossed the sweater over the seat. “I’ll never figure out how girls do that.”

“It’s an innate ability they’re born with, like rolling their eyes,” Priest said.

I leaned my head against Jared’s shoulder, exhausted. “Where are we going anyway?”

Lukas glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “I want to put some distance between your school and us. Then we can hit a truck stop and eat.”

Elle stretched her legs between the seats and propped them on the center console. “Promise?”

“Think we should head to West Virginia?” Priest slipped on his headphones. “The prison’s not that far.”

I stiffened. “Why would you ever want to go back there?” The thought of going anywhere near West Virginia State Penitentiary made my skin crawl.

Priest turned to Jared. “You didn’t tell her?”

“Tell me what?”

Jared bit his lip. “After the four of us met up on the other side of the state line, we went back to the prison to find the Shift.” He paused for a long moment.

“It was gone.”

D
o we still need the Shift?” I tried to sound curious, but thinking about it brought back nothing but bad memories.

Lukas glanced at me in the rearview mirror again. “No. The Shift served its purpose. But we figured it was better off with us.”

“Just in case,” Priest said.

“In case of what?” My shoulders tensed, and Jared pulled me closer. My body fit into the space underneath his arm perfectly. “Did you find something new in the journals?”

“Priest, what’s your malfunction?” Lukas shot him a warning look. “She’s been locked up in that place for weeks.”

“Sorry.” Priest frowned and pushed his bangs under his orange hood. “Even if it’s useless, a member of the Legion probably designed it. I can’t stand the idea of some kid finding it in the rubble a few months from now.”

“He just wants to take it apart and see how it works,” Alara said from where she was stretched out in the third row.

“It’s a badass piece of mechanical engineering,” Priest said. “Of course I wanna take it apart.”

I settled back into the space under Jared’s arm, relieved. Priest was just being Priest. “So what have you guys been doing since…” I didn’t want to bring up the night at the penitentiary. “Since we got separated?”

Jared squeezed my shoulder. “Looking for you.”

“I have no idea what they were doing before I started helping them,” Elle said, gesturing wildly. “But we’ve been doing all kinds of stuff for the last four days. Searching for birth certificates, making lists of all the towns with crazy weather, making charts of demon trails.”

“She means patterns,” Lukas said.

“Exactly.” Elle nodded, launching ahead. “And Alara lied to a priest. She gave him some sob story about needing holy water to heal her sick dog, so he’d bless a bucket of tap water for us.”

“If we run into another vengeance spirit, you’ll thank me,” Alara said.

“How many vengeance spirits are we talking about?” I turned to Jared without realizing how close his face was to mine.

His blue eyes flickered down to my lips for a second. “Just a few before we picked up Elle. Nothing Andras-level.”

Like the mirror in my dorm room?

I couldn’t tell them yet. Jared had already been stabbed with a piece of glass because he was worrying about me instead of himself. If he found out about the mirror, he’d be even more distracted.

“I’ve been tracking crime and violence that might be related to Andras,” Lukas said. “All the mass murders have taken place between—”

“West Virginia and Pennsylvania,” I finished for him. I pictured the walls in my dorm room, wishing I could show them to him. “I was looking for patterns, too. If we get a map at the gas station, I can re-create some of them.”

Lukas gave me a strange look. “Okay.”

Priest shook his head at me. “The things I could build with a memory like yours.”

Lukas ignored him, his eyes catching mine in the mirror. “That’s also the area where all the girls disappeared.”

At the mention of the missing girls, I looked away.

“You know, they all kinda look like—” Priest began.

“I know.” I cut him off.

“We don’t have to talk about it right now.” Alara
leaned over the seat and silenced Priest with a look. “There’s a truck stop before the next town.” She pointed at a sign.

“Thank god,” Elle said, tousling her dark red waves with her fingers. “I’m in need of a serious caffeine fix.”

“Where is Faith Waters now?” I asked, stirring a cup of burnt coffee. I still wasn’t ready to call her my aunt.

Lukas shoved a handful of onion rings in his mouth, washing them down with his second strawberry milk shake. The truck stop was empty for the most part, and the waitress seemed relieved every time he ordered something else.

He shrugged. “We don’t know. She doesn’t have a bank account or any credit cards, not even a driver’s license. No cyber footprint.”

Priest pulled one of the headphones away from his ear. “Which means she’s probably the person we’re looking for.”

“Then how are we going to find her?” I asked.

Everyone except Elle—who was busy flirting with a guy sitting at the counter—stared at me as if I already knew the answer.

Lukas flicked a balled-up napkin at Elle. “Think you can concentrate on what’s going on over here?”

“I’m capable of doing two things at once, thank you
very much,” she muttered under her breath, without compromising her smile for a second.

Lukas took his silver coin out of his pocket and flipped it between his fingers. “If we want to find your aunt, your dad is the logical place to start.”

At the mention of my father, Elle whipped around in my direction. She was the only person who knew the truth about what happened the day he left—how he saw me watching him through the kitchen window, and still drove away. I never told my mom.

The note my dad left her said enough:
All I ever wanted for us—and for Kennedy—was a normal life. I think we both know that’s impossible.

I picked at the fries on my plate. “I don’t know anything about him. He took off when I was little.”

“Okay. What do you remember from before he left?” Lukas asked.

“She said she doesn’t know anything about him.” Elle flashed him a warning look.

Lukas ignored her. “Come on, Kennedy. You have a photographic memory. There must be something.”

Elle slammed her glass on the table. “Her father ditched her when she was five years old. He never even sent her a birthday card. He’s an asshole.
That’s
what she remembers.”

Heat spread across my cheeks. “Shut up, Elle.”

Jared’s hand tightened around mine under the table. I
stared out at the rain running down the windows. Anything to avoid the pity and questions I knew I’d see in his eyes.

“I’m sorry.” Lukas sounded sympathetic and uncomfortable, the way my friends had when they found out my mother was dead.

My embarrassment turned to anger. I hadn’t seen my dad in twelve years. He didn’t even show up to claim me when my mom died. Yet he still had the power to hurt me. “You want to know what I remember about my dad?”

“Kennedy, it’s okay—” Jared began.

I held up a hand, silencing him. “My dad smelled like Marlboros and mint toothpaste. More mint or more Marlboros, depending on how well he’d covered up the smell of cigarette smoke. He liked his bacon crispy and his coffee black. He didn’t shave every day, so his face was either perfectly smooth or covered in stubble, and he had the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. His favorite candy bar was 100 Grand, and he’d let me eat them before dinner even though it drove my mom crazy. He loved Johnnie Walker, Pink Floyd, and Edgar Allan Poe. He hated musicals, collared shirts, and magicians.”

I stood up. “And he said he loved me more than the moon and the stars and everything in between. But he lied.”

No one spoke as I headed for the dirty glass doors at the front of the restaurant.

“Kennedy?” Jared called after me.

“Give her a minute,” I heard Elle say as the doors swung closed behind me.

I leaned against the building under the awning, next to the truckers trying to take one last drag of their cigarettes before they went inside.

Jared’s green army jacket flashed in my peripheral vision. He grabbed my hand and pulled it behind him, drawing me close. “When you told me about your father, I didn’t realize it was that bad. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Because I can still see my dad climbing into his car, and the note, and my mother’s tear-streaked face. Because I didn’t want you to know that my own father didn’t want me. Because I didn’t want you to look at me the way you are right now.

“There’s nothing to tell. He wasn’t around. It doesn’t matter.” I started to turn away, but Jared kept my arm locked behind him and my body against his.

He lifted my chin. “Is that the reason you think everyone is going to hurt you?”

The familiar numbness I felt whenever I thought about my dad for too long spread through me. “Jared, I don’t… I can’t talk about this. Please.”

“Okay.”

We stood side by side in silence, watching the trucks pull in and out of the parking lot. I didn’t want to talk about my dad and relive the pain that never seemed to go away. But my memories were the only possible clues we had
left, and if Andras was responsible for the crimes on my dorm room walls, he had killed dozens of people.

By the time I slid back into the booth a few minutes later, I was ready. “What else do you need to know?”

Alara turned the sugar dispenser upside down, emptying what looked like half the contents into her coffee cup. “You don’t have to talk about this, Kennedy. We can figure out another way to find her.”

“We don’t have time.” I pulled my shoulders back and took a deep breath. “Ask me whatever you want.”

Priest fidgeted with his headphones. “Did your father ever talk about his childhood?”

“Not really. I know he grew up in DC, but my grandparents died before I was born.”

Priest and Alara exchanged a look.

“Anything else? Like a special place you went together?” Lukas asked.

I started to say no, but then an image flickered in my mind. The photo I’d found tucked into my mirror while I was packing up the house, after my mom died. Me sitting on my dad’s shoulders, in front of a gray weather-beaten house. “There was this picture of us.…”

I closed my eyes and focused on the details in the photo, things I’d never paid attention to before, scanning them one by one.

A broken gutter on the side of the house.

The half-mowed lawn behind us.

My missing front tooth.

Pink flowers on a dogwood tree.

My dad’s silver wedding band.

The quarter-sized hole in the knee of my jeans.

Untied blue Keds.

A green sticker on my Wonder Woman T-shirt.

I zeroed in on the sticker. Blurry letters circled the outside, but the white writing in the center read
I VISITED THE WORLD’S LARGEST BOTTLE CAP.

“There’s this old picture of my dad and me in front of a house. I have no idea where it was taken, but there’s one of those stickers on my shirt that you get when you visit a cheesy museum or landmark.”

“Do you remember going anywhere like that with him?” Priest asked.

“No. But the sticker says ‘I visited the world’s largest bottle cap.’ ”

“It’s better than nothing. Who’s up for a road trip?” Lukas asked, just as Alara took a sip of her sugar-laced coffee. She swallowed too fast and ended up in a coughing fit. Elle tried to pat her back, but Alara swatted her hand away.

Lukas’ fingers flew across the screen of his phone. “The world’s largest bottle cap is located in Massachusetts, at the Topsfield Museum of Revolutionary Taxidermy and Patriots.”

Elle scrunched up her nose. “That is so disgusting.”

“It’s a museum with a giant bottle cap in it. What do you expect?” Priest stole one of my fries. “Just be glad they didn’t taxidermy the patriots.”

“Your grandparents lived in Massachusetts, right?” Lukas asked.

I nodded. “Boston.”

“It’s a connection.” He sounded hopeful.

Alara crossed her arms. “You aren’t actually suggesting we go to Massachusetts because of a sticker? To look for what, exactly?”

“I agree with Alara,” I said. “It’s a long shot.”

Priest took off his headphones and hooked them around his neck. “My granddad used to drag me to all these weird places he loved when he was a kid. Maybe Kennedy’s father took her there for a reason.”

“Like to see the world’s largest bottle cap?” Alara asked.

Lukas pocketed his coin. “The Shift is gone. Andras is orchestrating a murder spree, and we don’t even know where to find him. So unless you know something the rest of us don’t, this is about as dead as dead ends get.”

“I’ll pay the check.” Alara slid out of the booth.

Lukas nodded at Priest and they followed her, most likely a tag team effort to sell her on the road trip idea. Otherwise, we were looking at ten hours trapped in a car, on the receiving end of Alara’s sarcasm.

Ten hours in the car.

“Elle, did you bring any extra clothes?” I asked.