by J. E. Taylor
“I figured they needed to move on.” I stepped into the dark, musty space and held my nose against the need to sneeze. “And Nick owed me a favor.”
CJ drew up behind me.
“He showed up pretty damn fast. I’ll give you that.”
The door clanged closed, encasing us in darkness. If it weren’t for CJ’s bright aura, I wouldn’t have seen the crumbling floor in front of us.
I sneezed despite trying not to.
“Bless you,” CJ said and went to step around me.
“Hole in the floor.” I sneezed twice more.
“How can you see in here?”
“Your aura. It’s bright enough to see a few feet in front of us.” I pulled off my glove and let my fingers ignite, lighting up the rotted entry that we stood in, along with the gaping hole preventing us from going any farther in the structure.
He closed his eyes, and a pulse of power went through my body searching the building like a sonar ping. The pulse returned a few minutes later, and he opened his eyes. “Nothing more than a few birds and rats are alive in this building, outside of you and me.”
“Agreed,” I said. I wasn’t keen on trying to climb down the hole, but I would have if I had felt any twinge of evil, regardless of the danger. We also didn’t run into any demons, so this couldn’t be the place. I closed my hand, and we retreated back into the sunshine.
We still did as much of a walk-through of the other questionable structures as we could, but they were in a similar state of disrepair as the first condemned building had been. Not one of them had fuzzy walls like what we saw in the video, either, although a few had moss growing, but that was the wrong kind of fuzzy.
We started back toward the car.
“You have a choice. Drive to Cedar Grove, New Jersey, or drive to Staten Island after Cedar Grove.” CJ tossed the keys up and down in his hand as we walked.
“Can I just drive to a place to eat instead?” My stomach growled.
He glanced at his watch. “This took a lot longer than I’d hoped.” He pulled out his phone and sent a text to Valerie that we had seen another place on the list, and while there had been ghosts and a very odd tour guide, it certainly wasn’t where Lucifer would have stayed. He let her know we were heading to New Jersey after we grabbed food.
He tossed me the keys. “You’re driving this leg. After we eat, I need a nap, especially since I know I’ll have to use angel fire again before this day is over.”
Chapter 8
I wasn’t sure CJ was happy when I pulled into a restaurant known for its pancakes. But I didn’t care. The thought of a tall stack of sweetness covered in strawberry sauce and whipped cream had made my mouth water enough to turn the wheel. They had other items on the menu, but I already had what I wanted tattooed on my mind before I was even handed a menu.
“Pancakes?” CJ asked as the waitress walked away. His voice held the disdain echoed in his gaze.
“Yes. You don’t see me mocking your dinner choice, do you?” I crossed my arms and sat back in the seat.
He wiped his face and leaned back. “Sorry. Just more stressed than I thought,” he mumbled and smiled up at the waitress as she brought his coffee and my whipped-cream topped hot chocolate.
“I was actually hoping we would find him earlier rather than later,” he said after the waitress left. “That way I wouldn’t have to continue to play different scenarios over in my head.”
He tried to smile for me, but it didn’t work. I knew exactly what he was talking about, too. The quiet times like this were when the what-ifs became darker and more violent, and the stretch of time only ate away at my confidence instead of bolstering it.
He chuckled and stared into his coffee. “You and I are alike in that manner.” He lifted his gaze and shrugged. “The time allows us both to cultivate our doubts instead of building up our defenses.”
I took a fingerful of whipped cream, but instead of sucking it off my finger, I flicked it at CJ. It was childish, but I didn’t need him voicing my thoughts with his own spin on them. It stopped inches from his face, and his eyebrow rose. The glob shot back at me, heading straight for my forehead.
I couldn’t help but laugh and caught the cream in my palm. I promptly licked it off my glove.
CJ grinned and nursed his coffee. “I get why Alex likes you.”
“Thanks. I think.” I wiped my hands on one of the napkins and glanced towards the kitchen where our waitress was gathering our plates. “I haven’t had a second to really breathe and be myself since my mother died. It’s just been one thing after another. So...” I shrugged.
“So, when you see a chance to be outrageous, you take it?”
I shook my head and flicked my gaze to the approaching waitress. She arrived before I could formulate an answer. She set my plate down and then CJ’s.
“Thank you,” I said and picked up my silverware, then dug into the tall stack.
CJ picked up his loaded burger, and we both devoured our meals.
“No,” I finally said. “But I do take my chance to provide levity when it presents itself.”
“You don’t talk like you were raised off the grid.” He wiped his mouth and crumpled his napkin.
“And you do talk like you were born with a silver spoon.”
“You mean like a pretentious ass?” He smiled.
“I didn’t say that. You did. Besides, Tom never talked down to me.” I found myself saying more than I would have had we stayed holed up at the house with everyone around. Somehow being alone with CJ made me a little braver in sharing my thoughts.
“But I have.” He closed his eyes and hung his head. “You’re only sixteen. So yes, I have treated you like a child because you are. I don’t want to boost you beyond what you can do because it’s unwise to make you think you are invincible. I’m trying to help you not repeat the same mistakes I’ve made.”
“I’m not you, Mr. Ryan.”
He leaned on the table on his elbows. “No. You’re better than I am. You’re almost as smart, too. So, I’m a little harder on you because of that. Just like I was strict with Alex. Between you and me, he’s even smarter than I am, but I’ll never admit that to my son.” He looked out the window behind me. “Lucifer is smart, too, so the combination we are up against is formidable enough to scare the crap out of me. He knows we both want my son back.” He bit his lip and met my gaze. “I’m afraid he may have already destroyed that possibility.”
I recoiled in the seat. What CJ had insinuated left me cold and hollow inside.
“We have to be prepared for that reality. Both of us.”
My gaze darted around the restaurant, and he took the cue, peeling off enough for the dinner along with a hefty tip. He led me out to the car, but instead of climbing in the passenger seat like I thought he would, he went around to the driver’s side and put his hand out for the keys that I’d put in my pocket.
“Are you sure?” I hesitated with the keys in my hand.
“Yes. Dinner helped, and we do have some things to discuss on the off chance we win this.”
“Thinking optimistically?” I asked as I placed the keys in his palm.
“Well, I think we’ve beat the other alternatives right into the ground. Don’t you?”
He was right. I had envisioned every awful scenario as we’d traveled down from Maine. I nodded and circled around to the passenger side.
He started the car. “Let’s not talk about failure. If we by some miracle pull this off, we have to figure out a way to try to fix what those videos destroyed.”
“How?”
“I have an idea, but I’m still figuring out if it will work or not.” He sucked his cheek between his teeth for a moment. “But for it to work, there can’t be a trace of the bodies. No bone, no blood, nothing to trace back to any of them.”
“You want me to burn the place down.”
He glanced at me. “No. We need to purify it with angel fire. And then maybe burn the place down just to be sure, but I’m
not certain that will be needed.”
I thought about how I’d decimated an island in the South Pacific. “I’m not sure I have the angel fire thing under control like you do.”
“You really leveled an island?”
“It was a small island,” I mumbled under my breath and looked out the window.
“Well, then, I’ll have to be the one who does the clean-up. We don’t need you going nuclear and wiping out an entire town from the map.”
“If Alex is holding my hand, I should be able to control it.” I crossed my arms and cringed at the whine in my voice.
He nodded.
Silence filled up the car, and I fidgeted in the seat. “Is that it? That’s your big idea?”
He chuckled and glanced at me. “The second part of my idea has to take place in Paradise Cove. But I have never tried to film a spirit, so I’m not sure it will even work. I asked Valerie to take some videos on her camera to see if they appear normal on film. So, we will know by the time we get to the next stop whether it works or not.”
It was a brilliant idea.
Film Naomi and Gabriel with a time stamp at a later date than what Lucifer sent to the television stations would wipe out whatever damage Lucifer did to Alex’s future if there was video proof of everyone alive.
My throat tightened. “You can’t film Bridget.”
CJ nodded. “That’s the only gap in the plan.”
“And how will you explain all of it?” I knew a later time stamp would show that they were okay despite the earlier videos, but what possible explanation could be given to the general public to wipe those scenes out?
“Well, Lucifer provided us with that when he mentioned my father. My dad was one of the best editors out there. So, we just have Alex explain that he was trying his hand at special effects and video editing and was attempting to produce a low-budget horror flick. The release to the news stations was meant to be teasers, and he didn’t think about the consequences that went along with sending those blind.”
“And what about the finished movie? They are going to ask about that.”
CJ glanced at me. “Computer crashed and a fire at the place he was filming destroyed his equipment.”
“You’ve thought this through.”
“Between the darker outcomes, yes. I’ve put some thought into this. As you said, the only gap is Bridget. We can even show Tom if needed. I just hope it’s enough.”
I didn’t want to think about the ramifications if we freed him but couldn’t exonerate him, so, I focused on a more troubling issue.
“What do we do with Grace?”
CJ shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“What if she’s... pregnant?” I squeaked out. If Grace was pregnant, it would be CJ’s grandchild by blood. I knew how strongly Tom felt about family, and CJ was the same.
He was slower to answer this time. “I don’t know how to answer that.” His voice cracked. “If she is, it isn’t Alex’s child, regardless of the DNA. Sleeping with Grace was not what Alex wanted.” He wiped his face. “Alex won’t want anything to do with Lucifer’s child.” He glanced at me, and then his cheeks reddened. “Present company excluded.” He stared out at the road ahead. “If she is pregnant, she would be carrying your half brother or sister.”
My stomach clenched at the thought. Everything about this was wrong. I wrapped my arms around my abdomen and held tight, trying to reconcile what that would mean. My brain couldn’t fathom it, and I concentrated on the passing scenery so the darkness wouldn’t overtake me.
“We’ll deal with all that after we save Alex,” CJ said, closing the conversation.
He turned on the radio and began to sing along softly. The croon lulled me, relaxing the tightness of my muscles until my eyelids drooped. The last thought before I fell asleep nearly jerked me awake.
What if Lucifer had already destroyed Alex’s soul?
Chapter 9
My eyes fluttered open at the slowing of the car. I licked the dryness from my lips and swallowed the pasty taste of sleep from my mouth. The partially crumbled sign for Overbrook Asylum loomed before us. And beyond, large dumpsters piled with debris and construction equipment dotted the mostly cleared landscape.
“Your research sucked,” I said in a raspy voice.
CJ pulled the car to a stop. “It seems so,” he replied and pulled his phone from the holder, then texted Valerie. When he finished, he plugged the address of our next stop into the GPS and then turned the car off.
When he stepped out and stretched, I climbed out of the car as well.
“Do you want me to drive?”
“No. We have to drive through the city, and you’re too new at driving to do that.” He walked around the car and leaned on the hood with his phone in his hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure the other places I had listed aren’t going to be a waste of time.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “As much as I like road trips, I don’t want to keep hopping from one to another to another that don’t fit the profile.”
I nodded. It was just wasting time. Time we really didn’t have.
“Did Mrs. Ryan get back to you about your idea?”
He put his finger up. “Hang on a minute.”
I leaned against the car next to him and scanned what he was looking at. It seemed the next few places on the list weren’t ruled out by tours or construction. He flipped to his messages and pressed play on an attachment Valerie had sent. It showed Tom and April sitting on a blanket having a picnic. Tom was framed by light. April wasn’t.
CJ sucked in his bottom lip and played the video again. “We might be able to fix the lighting,” he said, but his voice didn’t sound all that sure.
“At least Tom looks solid and not ghostly.”
CJ raised his eyebrows and nodded before he pulled the GPS back up. “It’s going to be another couple of hours before we get to Staten Island. I need to fill up the car before we hit the highway again. Did you want something to drink for the ride?”
“Sure.”
He handed me a twenty-dollar bill. “You can grab me a coffee while you’re getting something for yourself.” He turned and got back into the car.
I followed and put on my seat belt while he spun us out of there and back onto the main road. He pulled into a gas station with a convenience store, and while he topped off the tank, I went inside to hit the restroom and then find something that struck my fancy to drink.
The drinks were easy, but it was the fast-food section that had me lingering. I stared at the chip selection with a coffee in one hand and a sports drink tucked under my arm. Nothing jumped out at me. I walked down the sweets aisle and stopped in front of the packages of frosted cream-filled cakes.
My mouth watered, so I grabbed one of the packages and headed to the counter. It was probably going to give me another sugar crash, but it looked too good to pass up on and nothing else had drummed up that kind of reaction.
When I climbed in the car, I handed CJ his coffee and put my drink into the cup holder. As soon as we were on the highway, I dug into the cakes, offering one of the two treats to CJ.
“Thanks. But I’m good,” he said, but his gaze lingered on the chocolate.
“Are you sure?” I asked, waving the cake so he got a good whiff of chocolate.
“Yes, I’m sure.” Dimples appeared in his cheeks as he focused on the drive.
I enjoyed every bite of the sweet confections and grinned at CJ after I licked my fingers clean. I didn’t bother with the drink yet. The chocolate lingered on my tongue, and I closed my eyes, relishing it.
“We are staying the night in the city before we hit Staten Island because I have a feeling that going into one of these places in the dark will be the death of us.” He glanced at me with serious eyes.
“Pun intended?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What? Are you afraid of the dark?” I didn’t mean for that to escape, but it was out of my mouth before I
had the good sense to shut my trap.
The hard stare he sent my way sent a rush of heat to my cheeks.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. The lingering chocolate taste soured, and I opened my drink to wash it away.
“There is too much risk if we go after him at night. We don’t want to get blindsided by anything. Demons, hellhounds, other monsters. Who knows what he has at his disposal?” He took a sip of his coffee, winced, and swallowed it as if it were bitter. “The traps Gabe talked about; those won’t be fatal.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Lucifer likes to be the one who delivers the death blow.” He glanced at me. “And he will only kill us after he’s subjected us to the kind of torture that nightmares are made of. So, if it is all the same to you, I’d rather hit him during the daylight when I can see things coming.”
I nodded dumbly in the seat. The one thing CJ was good for was cutting right to the point. Although right now I would have preferred him not to be so brutally honest. I would have much rather just enjoyed my chocolate dessert and stared out at the uninspiring highway view.
WHEN CJ PULLED INTO a garage across from Central Park in New York City, I glanced over at him in surprise. He bypassed the attendant with a wave and drove to the top floor, then parked right next to an elevator.
“We own the penthouse,” he said and put the car into first gear before shutting it off and yanking the emergency brake. He stepped out of the car and opened the trunk to grab our overnight bags.
I took my jacket when he handed it to me and followed him to the elevator.
“None of us have been here since...” The elevator doors opening interrupted CJ.
He didn’t need to explain. I had Tom’s memories. I already knew neither of them had been to the apartment since their adoptive parents had been murdered by Lucifer. So, us going to stay there was a big deal for CJ.
He glanced at me as the elevator ascended. When the doors whooshed open, I stepped out onto the landing. There was only one door, and I wondered how many people took that elevator thinking it would bring them to their floor.
