“He’s not possessed?” The words slip out of my mouth before I can stop them.
Henley’s eyes land on me. He backs up so fast he stumbles over his own feet and goes down hard on his ass. I want to tell him it’s okay, but my brain is moving so quickly that it’s almost tripping over itself.
Why would Morrow abandon his host when he’d already lost Griffin and DJ? Why wouldn’t he get in his car and flee?
He’s not trying to escape.
He’s up to something else.
I glance up at the cameras. Maybe he wanted to get to the control room without being followed so that he could plan his next move.
The building has more cameras than I expected. At least one in every room, and multiple for larger ones like the playing area. He probably has them outside, too, but we just didn’t see them.
My breath snags.
If he has cameras outside?—
I spin my wheelchair around and start rolling as fast as I can toward the exit, my palm burning from the friction of the wheel. In seconds, Griffin has grabbed the handles and taken off at a dead sprint, pushing me so fast the walls blur.
I press the button on my earpiece. “Zoey? Zoey, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
We burst through the door and hit grass. The wheelchair lurches to a stop and I pitch forward, catching myself on the armrest.
Griffin lets go of the handles and dashes past me, sprinting toward the van. I can hear Bob barking.
No.
DJ rushes past me after Griffin. Benji pushes my chair over the grass, the wheels fighting the uneven ground. The fence gap slows us down, and I want to scream at my useless legs, at this stupid fucking wheelchair, at every second it takes to reach the van.
Griffin gets there first and wrenches the back doors open. My stomach drops when he staggers back, a strangled yell tearing through him.
DJ’s running so fast that she can’t stop in time and collides with Griffin. The impact seems to snap Griffin out of whatever daze he’s in because when Benji and I reach the back doors, Griffin has launched himself into the back of the van. DJ swears and darts around the outside.
Bob is pressed under the seats, teeth bared.
Zoey is slumped against the wall of the van, one hand clamped around a crowbar that lies limp on the ground. Her eyes are unfocused and staring up at Morrow, who’s writhing in the air above her. His features are sharp enough that I can make out every hair shimmering on top of his head. He’s so focused on Zoey that he hasn’t noticed Griffin just a couple of feet away, with his hand deep in a salt bag.
Griffin pelts salt at Morrow, who undulates in the air, his connection with Zoey snapping as he turns to confront this disruption.
Morrow lunges at Griffin with a roar.
DJ fires rock salt from the side door. The spray tears through Morrow’s torso and shatters the window on the other side of him, glass exploding outward. Morrow lets out a shriek so high and sharp it feels like someone’s driving nails through my eardrums. He whirls on DJ, his form condensing.
“Any second now, Genius Boy!” Griffin yells.
Benji runs to stand behind DJ and begins yelling Latin from memory.
Griffin twists the cap off a containment jar and slams it onto the van floor. Morrow swipes a hand at him that Griffin barely dodges.
DJ fires another shot at Morrow, and his form scatters before reforming. He tries to flee, but Griffin gets the big ghost vac Donny used in the parking lot, attaches it to the jar, and turns it on.
The pull from it keeps Morrow pinned. He stretches like taffy being pulled apart, tendrils reaching for Griffin’s face, for DJ at the side door, for anything solid to grab onto.
A tendril lashes out toward Zoey. Griffin throws himself sideways, his shoulder slamming into the van wall as he blocks Morrow’s path.
One smoky hand wraps around Griffin’s wrist.
