“There’s no one else, Jared. My Aunt Diane isn’t capable of keeping a secret like this. There’s no way she’s part of a secret society. And my dad’s parents died before I was born.” I fought to hold myself together, but I felt the seams I’d stitched together over the past nineteen days, tearing. “He’s the only family I have left.”
“Your father has a sister.”
It was another mistake. “If he had a sister, don’t you think I’d remember her?”
“Not if you’ve never met her. You said he left when you were young, right? What if she’s been hiding all this time?”
“Hiding from what?” My voice rose, and Jared glanced at the back of the building as if he was worried someone would hear me.
“No one knows why the fifth member fell off the grid. But my dad used to say a person who disappears without leaving a trail, is someone who doesn’t want to be found. Take a look at this.” Jared took something out of his pocket and handed it to me, along with his cell phone. “Use the light.”
I held the phone over the page. It was a photocopy of a birth certificate.
“Alexander Madigan Waters,” Jared recited the information from memory. “Born in the District of Columbia, to Lorelei Ann Madigan and Caleb Quinn Waters.”
“A copy of my father’s birth certificate? That doesn’t prove anything.”
“It does if you compare it to this one.” Jared handed me an almost identical sheet of paper. The District of Columbia seal was stamped at the top of this one, too. “Lukas searched DC public records to find out if your mom had a female blood relative she could’ve chosen as her successor. Turns out, your dad is the one with the secret family member.”
I scanned the document and found the baby’s name: Faith Madigan Waters. Born in the District of Columbia, to Lorelei Ann Madigan Waters and Caleb Quinn Waters, two years after my father.
I held the proof in my hand, trying to reason it away. How could my father have a sister I’d never met? Did he abandon her, too?
“If Faith Waters is the fifth member of the Legion, she might know how to stop Andras,” Jared said.
No one wanted it be true more than me. The last few minutes I’d spent in Darien Shears’ cell replayed themselves in my head every day. His story about a Legion member giving him the final piece of the Shift to protect. The look on his face as he lay in the Devil’s Trap, begging me not to assemble the Shift. I could still hear his voice.
The Shift doesn’t destroy Andras. It frees him.
It was the decision that would change everything—destroy a demon, earn my mark, and save the world, or unleash a demon and his wrath. If only I had made the right choice.
“There’s something else,” Jared said. “While Lukas was hacking into school servers looking for you, Priest and Alara spent days dissecting and translating the journals. None of us had ever read our journals cover to cover, except Priest. My dad and uncle never let those things out of their sight. Then our family members died and suddenly, the four of us were the Legion. We were so focused on finding Andras and destroying him before he crossed over that no one knew if the journals explained what to do if it actually happened.”
“Do they?” A flicker of hope fought its way through the darkness.
“We’re still looking.” Jared took a deep breath. “But we figured out what Andras wants now that he’s here.”
“What?” I braced myself for the answer.
Jared shifted nervously, the leaves rustling under his boots. “Remember the original entry in Lukas’ journal? The one where Markus wrote that Andras wanted to open the gates of hell? He meant it literally.”
I thought about some of the vengeance spirits we had encountered and the violence they had been capable of—the girl in the yellow dress and Millicent Avery at the bottom of the well; electrocuted prisoners and Darien Shears; and the dybbuk wearing the magician’s skin. I couldn’t imagine what was waiting in hell.
“You have to find Faith Waters.” I thrust the documents into Jared’s hands. He reached for me, but I stepped back. “I’m staying here.”
“Wait.…” Jared stared at me, his expression blank. For a moment, he was silent, and I wondered if he heard me.
Please don’t make me say it again.
Fear flickered in his eyes, and he fumbled with the papers, trying to shove them back in his pocket. He raked a hand through his wet hair. “Kennedy, please. Don’t ask me to leave you again. I can’t do it.” He took a step toward me erasing what little distance I’d created between us, and rested his forehead on my shoulder.
I wanted to wrap my arms around him, but it would only make it harder to walk away. “I’ve screwed up enough already. If something happened to Alara, Priest, or Lukas because of me. If something happened to you—” A knot formed it in my throat.
“Something already did,” he whispered. Jared took my hand and slid it under the bottom of his damp thermal, guiding it across his bare skin.
My fingers hit a strip of tape.
I yanked up his shirt and ran my hand over his stomach until I found the bandage taped above his hipbone. “Oh my god.”
“I’m okay.” Jared moved my hand away.
“Then why is there a half a roll of gauze on your stomach?”
“It could’ve been a lot worse.” He shrugged. “We were taking down a full body apparition in an attic. One of the windows was shattered. I was distracted and I didn’t notice. The spirit had a piece of the glass, and I got cut.”