“Pretty girl with an ugly soul.” The voice that answered this time didn’t belong to Lukas. It was distorted and wrong—the sound of something horrific trying on human skin.
Working quickly, I let my mind guide the marker. I drew the first line, positioning my other hand so I’d know where to begin the horizontal line I needed to make next.
The heavy metal door to the alley slammed shut.
Someone had made it out—maybe all three of them.
But if the door was closed, the guys were locked out. I was the only one who could help Alara.
I concentrated on the one thing I had always been able to do—the skill that felt more like a curse than a gift.
My hand finally stopped when the marker finished the last line. I peeked through the crack just as the dybbuk charged Alara. When its body touched her wet skin, a hiss of white steam rose above them, and the dybbuk lurched back. I had to get that thing away from her and into the cabinet. Fast.
I flung open the door. “Hey, over here! I’m in your nasty box.”
It whirled around, the blackened eye sockets facing me. “Get outtt!”
“Kennedy, no!” Alara shouted.
It was coming right at me—
Don’t move until it steps inside.
I pressed my hand against the false back of the cabinet, but I wasn’t quick enough.
The impact punched the air out of my lungs. A sickening sensation gripped me, like something was crawling through my body and fighting its way out the other side. I felt the dybbuk twisting and writhing like hundreds of snakes trapped under my flesh.
I threw my weight against the back of the box, and the wall sprang open.
My cheek hit the concrete and I clawed at the floor, dragging myself away from the box. I rolled over and realized it didn’t matter.
The dybbuk was trapped, its limbs jerking back each time it tried to reach outside the boundaries of the box. “What have you done, ugly soul?”
Alara ran toward me, her long legs vaulting over upended stage props that paled in the presence of real magic. She dug through her pockets and pulled out a disposable lighter, holding it against the rotted wood. The flame fluttered, then caught and climbed up the edge of the box.
“We have to get out of here,” she said, shoving me toward the door.
Ash flaked in the air like peeled skin as the side of the cabinet burned, and the fire leapt from the box to the wall behind it.
“Go.” Alara pushed me ahead of her.
The alley door was only a few feet away when a spirit stepped out of the shadows, blocking our path.
Deep claw marks covered the dead magician’s face and neck, as if a wild animal had attacked him. Whole sections of flesh had been peeled from his broken body, but a tired velvet suit hid the worst of the damage.
The skin straining over the dybbuk’s bones flashed through my mind—the way it looked like it didn’t quite fit. My stomach convulsed.
Alara shook her head in disbelief.
“I tried to keep it safe,” he said. “That was the only place I thought no one would find it. I never wanted it to get out.” The spirit glanced at the cabinet that was burning up and vanishing without its magician. His arm shot out toward us. “May—”
I ripped the nail gun from my waistband and squeezed the trigger, sending a spray of cold-iron nails into his body. The magician exploded, sending tiny bits of purple velvet floating down over us.
23. MARKED
The black smoke rose from the building and sirens screamed in the distance as the van sped down the alley. Jared was stretched out on his back with his head in my lap. He rolled toward me, his arm falling around my waist. I brushed the hair away from his bruised face.
His eyelids fluttered.
He winced and pulled me closer, clutching the back of my shirt as his fingers trailed across my bare skin.
Jared blinked a few times before his blue eyes stared up at me, glassy and unfocused.
“Kennedy?” he mumbled, struggling to sit up. “What happened?”
Priest lifted one of the headphones away from his ear. “You got your butt kicked, that’s what.”
Lukas guided the van into a deserted gas station and climbed in the back with the rest of us. “You all right?” He held up three fingers. “How many do you see?”
“Nine.” Jared swatted his hand away. “Now tell me what happened.”
Alara started talking before anyone else had a chance. “Kennedy drew the Wall in the cabinet and bound the dybbuk inside.”
“How did you know what it looked like?” Jared asked.
Alara answered for me. “She saw it in my journal.”
“And you remembered it?”
Telling people for the first time was the worst part. My memory had always set me apart from other people, creating a boundary I couldn’t cross. “I have eidetic memory—”
“It means photographic.” Alara rushed on. “She can remember anything she sees and—”
“Not anything,” I corrected. “Images and numbers mostly.”
“Whatever.” Alara waved off my denial. “You basically took out that thing alone. I singed it with a little holy water, but you did the rest.”
I listened, barely registering the fact that Alara was talking about me. “She’s exaggerating, but I did get these.”
I opened my hand and revealed the green glass disks.
Alara smiled. “Like I said, I was just along for the ride.”
It was strange to hear her bragging about me. Climbing in the well to help Priest had earned me a level of respect, but that was something anyone could’ve done. Drawing the Wall was different. It required skill and proved I finally had something to offer.