speakers. I release Jake’s hand and cross to the front door, opening it and stepping onto the porch. The night is cool and smells of wilting wildflowers. I inhale and lean out over the railing. I stretch past the post, looking up and down the highway.
Deserted.
Huh.
“Olivia’s car’s gone,” I say over the blaring music, stepping back inside and closing the door behind me.
“So is my bag,” Jake calls.
He’s staring at the empty kitchen table, his face pale, his hands clenched in a chaos of sandy hair.
“What?”
Surely I heard him wrong.
“My bag. It was on the table and now it’s . . .”
Did he just say . . .
I run over to the stereo and silence both of the Shanes with a slap of my palm.
“Your bag is gone?”
“Gone.”
“And the halo?” I say, fear bouncing from lung to lung, shortening each breath.
“Gone,” Jake says, letting his hands drop.
The icy hammer of panic pounds at my stomach and it folds in on itself in response. But Jake starts to laugh. He leans forward, his hands on his knees, and cackles loud and childlike.
He’s lost it.
Completely and utterly.
It was only a matter of time, right? I’m seeing rogue demons, Marco thinks I’m going to die in a fire that happened sixteen years ago, and Jake’s losing his mind.
“Jaaaake,” I whine. “What are we going to do?”
His voice slowly quiets, but not before releasing another high-pitched sigh.
“What are we going to do?” I ask again.
At last he turns his face to mine. His eyes are white again. Celestial white. My hands shake. The halo’s nowhere to be found, but Jake’s eyes shine back at me, promising to die in my place should occasion call for it. I rub my eyes, but when my hands fall away and I open them again, Jake’s white eyes remain. The same frightening, wonderful white that terrifies me every time I see it.
I have to tell him.
“Jake . . .”
But his long legs bring him toward me until he’s so close I can smell the coffee on his breath, feel the fire radiating from his eyes. He grabs my hands and together we drop to our knees. Before I can say a thing, Jake answers my earlier question.
“We pray.”
27
Brielle
I think we should check the chest,” I say.
Canaan called not long ago from the city. He’s been following the foundation’s money and keeping an eye on Henry. He promised to keep an eye out for Marco and Olivia, but the phone’s been silent for hours, and our prayers have dwindled to whispers. A quick glance at the clock tells me it’s nearly four in the morning.
Jake jumps to his feet. “I’ll do it.”
He jogs down the hall and I head to the kitchen, under-whelmed by the silence of the Father. I fill a glass with water and down it like a shot. Unanswered prayers are still hard for me to understand.
From my perch at the kitchen counter, I see Jake emerge from Canaan’s room down the hall. He has something in his hand. Small, thin, rectangular. It looks like a picture.
“What is it?” I ask, my pulse quickening at the thought of a way forward.
“A tattoo,” Jake says, coming back down the hall. His steps are slow, measured. His face ashen. Jake shows me the picture. It’s one of those snapshots they hang in tattoo shops showing off their work. The top and bottom of the picture still has tape residue left on it. It’s brittle with age and faded, but the photo is of the back of a man’s neck.
Scrolling artwork creates an oval of sorts, just below his hairline. It’s about three inches wide, all told. Within the oval, inked in heavy cursive, is the name Jessica Rose.
It means nothing to me. I flip the picture over. “Evil Deeds Tattoo Parlor” is stamped on the back along with an address in northwest Portland.
Men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil.
I’ve just guzzled a glass of water, but my mouth goes dry, my tongue like sandpaper. I tell myself I’m okay. I’ve seen crazy stuff before. This isn’t anything to be shocked by. But I drain another glass of water, and another.
“This was in the chest?”
Jake nods, his hands in tight fists upon the counter.
“You know this tattoo parlor? You recognize the name?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t think so.”
“Then what?”
But Jake says nothing. I lift his arm and step between him and the counter, forcing him to look at me. The celestial light that had shone