“Not anymore.” Lukas tossed me a copy of the local paper. It was open to the page with a tiny picture of me and the details of my supposed abduction.
Priest sat down next to me. “Don’t worry, you’re on the same page as a story about a ninety-six-year-old woman who won the lottery playing her cat’s birthday. People probably won’t even see it.”
“And we come bearing gifts.” Lukas handed us each a cup and Jared opened the box. Coffee and doughnuts, they smelled like heaven.
“That box better be the only thing that’s pink.” Alara ripped open several packets of sugar at once and dumped them in her cup.
I walked around to the back of the van and tossed the guns into one of the duffel bags.
“Hey.” Lukas was standing behind me. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I just wanted to give you this.” He reached under his jacket and pulled out a pad of white paper. “I know you don’t have a journal from your mom, but I thought maybe you could start one. Or you can just draw in it. Priest says you’re really good.”
I reached for the pad and our hands touched.
There was something between us, even if it wasn’t the magnetic pull I felt with Jared. I ignored the hypnotic blue eyes and soft lips they shared, and really looked at Lukas. I thought about the way I felt safe whenever he was close, and the friendship he offered as easily as a smile.
“It was all they had at 7-Eleven, but I’ll get you a real one when I have a chance.”
“No, it’s perfect.” I held it against my chest. “I miss drawing.” I reached up and hugged him. “Thanks.”
Lukas slid his hands around my waist and pulled me closer, and I breathed in the scent of his skin—the smell of the woods after it rained. His cheek brushed mine. “Anytime.”
I slipped the pad into the duffel and followed him back to the other side of the van. Jared didn’t look in our direction, his eyes glued to the ground.
“Did you guys find out anything or what?” Alara dumped two more packets of sugar into her coffee.
“Get this.” Priest tore a glazed doughnut in half and shoved it in his mouth. “There’s an old magic shop in town. Some weird guy owned it. The waitress at the diner said he was always traveling and bringing back all kinds of bizarre junk for his store.”
Alara scrunched up her nose. “I hate magicians. They’re just a step above mimes and clowns.”
Priest finished off the other half of the doughnut. “You’re not the only one. They found the shop owner dead in the store two weeks ago. When we asked how he died, she just kept saying it was too horrible to talk about.”
“That’s helpful.” Alara took a doughnut out of the box, careful not to touch the pink cardboard. “Did the waitress mention a box?”
Priest shook his head. “No. But she did say it took a while before his body was discovered.”
She perked up. “That’s weird.”
“Not really,” Lukas said. “No one ever went in the store because the place smelled like cat piss.”
“It could be a coincidence,” I said.
Jared tossed an untouched doughnut back in the box. “He didn’t have any cats.”
22. THE BOX
Yellow police tape ran across the door, where a plastic sign was flipped to CLOSED. A thick layer of dust coated the shop windows, which displayed a collection of unmagical-looking items: cheap black top hats and polyester capes, a corroded birdcage with a fake dove inside, silver linking rings, and a wooden ventriloquist’s dummy.
Breaking and entering in the middle of the day was risky, but every choice we made now felt like a risk. Jared parked in the back alley, hoping no one would see us, while Priest picked the lock with a piece of wire rigged specifically for the purpose.
The door swung open, and the nauseating stench of ammonia hit us.
Alara gagged. “You’ve gotta be kidding. I’m not going in there without a gas mask.”
“Your call.” Jared walked inside. The dusty haze of daylight followed him, revealing dozens of overflowing boxes, crates, and metal storage shelves.
Priest flipped a switch and fluorescent lights above us illuminated an enormous storage room filled with even more junk. “This guy was a total hoarder.”
The whole place felt like the inside of Pandora’s box, something best left undisturbed.
I touched the handle of the nail gun tucked in the back of my jeans for reassurance. “This doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d have a wine cabinet.”
Lukas tipped over a trash can full of dismembered doll parts, tiny flesh-colored arms and legs sticking out of the top. “It can be any kind of box.”
“Someone get a reading. I can’t stand this much longer,” Alara mumbled, her nose buried in the crook of her arm. It hadn’t taken her long to reconsider her position on urine-infested magic shops.
I reached for an EMF and my elbow hit something hard.
A huge vanishing cabinet with a crimson door loomed behind me. Inside, a painting of a snake twisted around bits of broken mirror and colored glass glued along the walls, its mouth open and ready to strike.
“Guys… this is a lot bigger than a wine cabinet.”
Priest and Jared walked toward me, Priest’s eyes glued to his EMF. “Hopefully, whatever’s living in there isn’t. The needle’s going crazy.”
Jared’s eyes locked on mine, and my heart sped up. Until his expression changed, and I realized he wasn’t looking at me anymore.