Thankfully, they’ve already searched the garden shed tucked behind our carriage house.
I stand close behind Jude, trying to make myself small while he works the padlock with a ring of spare keys he found in the manor. I can hear reporters outside the fence, hidden from view by a copse of trees. Which means we’re hidden fromview, too. Still, my anxiety builds with each key that fails to fit.
Finally, one of them clicks.
We slip inside and shut the door behind us.
The wind stops.
The commotion outside goes quiet.
Pale winter light filters through the shed’s dusty windows and spills across several red plastic jerry cans set against the wall.
“Bingo,” I say, picking one up to measure its fullness.
Gasoline sloshes inside.
We’ll have to wait until dark to get them out, but it’s nice to know we won’t have to make a trip to the gas station.
Jude rubs his jaw, surveying a collection of tools hanging on a peg board. “Which of these might be useful against a deranged soul sucker and his pack of hounds?”
“And any other monster we run into along the way,” I add, taking note of the crowbar and the sledgehammer Rafe used to break into the crypt.
Jude grabs a pair of hedge shears.
I slide around a wheelbarrow toward the shelves lining the back wall, crowded with cans of paint thinner, bottles of motor oil, and jugs of weed killer. Torn fertilizer bags slump in piles on the floor next to empty terracotta pots.
I pick up a rusty can of turpentine. “We could use some of these chemicals to build explosives. I’m sure Twig would know how.”
At the moment, he’s confiscating blowtorches from his dad’s auto shop. He and Naomi plan to turn them into bonafide flame throwers.
“The more fire power, the better,” Jude says, turning on a flashlight to check the batteries. He shines the high-powered beam onto a sack of road salt.
I imagine pouring a giant circle of it around the pond in the Water Garden. Maybe it would work. Maybe Vorat wouldn’t be able to get through and the prisoners would be safe.
Jude turns the flashlight off. “I’ll have to go in first.”
I set the can of turpentine next to the gasoline, my stomach twisting into a knot. He’s talking about the plan. We haven’t worked out all the finer details yet, but this one I saw coming.
Twig, Naomi, and Harper can’t go into the Overlay with him. As soon as they enter, whatever magical trap Vorat has set will trigger and they’ll be teleported into his lair. But not Jude. He won’t be teleported. Like me, Jude has angelic DNA, which means he can stay in the shadows doing recon. As soon as Vorat leaves, he can send out anotification. Only then can Twig, Naomi, and Harper join him.
“I don’t really like that part of the plan,” I tell him, grabbing a machete off the peg board.
“There are several parts I don’t like myself.”
I keep my attention fixed on the tools. There is so much I would say if fear didn’t have me by the throat. But it does, because in the back of my mind, I can’t stop thinking about the ruby. One more power source for Vorat to draw from.
If we free his prisoners and kill his hounds, how much of Jude’s soul will he take?
I turn to face him. “You’re a good shot.”
He smiles faintly, like he isn’t quite sure where I’m going.
“I watched you the other day in the paddock with your bow and arrow.”
He pulls a rusted sickle off a hook.
“You hit the bulls-eye every time.”
