Page 112 of Some Kind of Haunted

“Jack . . . It’s . . .” How do I say this? How do I crush him the way I know this will? “Harrison took me to the clock tower.”

I can see that doesn’t make sense to him. That he can’t make those words go together in any way that he can accept. “What?”

“He took me there and he . . . He tried to get me to make a deal with the demons. He said . . .” I swallow at the emotion, because he needs this straight. Deserves it told to him quickly and concisely. Sure, it’s a dagger to the heart, but if I don’t drag it out then at least it’s not twisting in the wound. “I don’t know if he killed Amelia or pushed her to it. I know he killed Cleo. They wouldn’t make a deal with the demons.”

“Lexi, that doesn’t make any sense.” But I can see that he’s not as sure about that as he probably should be. That even in his rejection of what I’m telling him, he sees the little things we should have questioned.

I hope.

“He’s one of them,” I say, matter-of-factly. “He made a deal by giving them his blood freely. They can’t feed yet, but when they do, he’s going to run Midas as he pleases. That’s what he gets out of it. And when I wouldn’t make the same deal, he—” It sticks in my throat. But I look at Jack and I give it to him as straight as I can. “He tried to kill me.”

Then I brace for him to tell me he should have known a crazy bitch like me would make up something like this. I wait for him to let me go. To step back and refuse to believe what I’m telling him. I understand it. This is too big a leap for him to make. He might think he loves me, but he’s only known me for a few weeks. He’s always had his grandfather.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” I tell Jack in a whisper. “I don’t. But he did this to me.” I point to my face. “With the same knife he used to kill Cleo.”

I feel Logan move behind me. Like he, too, expects Jack to reject this and he’s backing me up. Ready to fight Jack if need be.

But Jack doesn’t fight. He doesn’t even really react. He stands there, much too still.

He looks out at the dark. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

I put my hand on his arm, and only then does his gaze finally meet mine. He looks wrecked. “Why would he do that?”

My eyes fill with tears, but I blink them away. “He said he’ll get to decide who lives, who dies. Who prospers, who fails. He’ll control it all. And he seems to think he’ll be around long enough to wait for the next harbinger, so I guess he thinks he’ll live a long time, too.”

Jack shakes his head vaguely, but he doesn’t pull away from me. If anything, he leans in.

He clears his throat. “We have to stop him, then,” he says, but his voice is hoarse and my heart breaks.

But there are demons slurping in the shadows, and he’s right. We have to stop this.

“I think I know how.” I hold him a little tighter. “It’s us. A Bellamy and a Darling. We can undo it. End it. With the rock and our blood.”

“Isn’t that just doing a deal with the demons?” Logan asks from behind me. “Your own deal, sure. But how is it different?”

I shake my head, not wanting to look away from Jack. “No, because we have a choice. The blood doesn’t matter unless we do it willingly.” Harrison made that clear. “So we’ll choose to reject the deal. For us and everyone after us. Because the deal is a choice.” I look at Logan then to make sure this lands. “They want us to think they have all the power, but if that were true, why are we the ones who have to decide to give it to them? We have the power. If we work together, we stop it.”

“You dreamed this,” Jack says, his voice gruff. “You were on top of the rock.”

We all turn to look at it. In my dream, I was standing on top and I was waiting for something.

“We need to get up there,” I say now. “We’ll go up and . . .”

I’m not sure how to do this thing I know we have to do. I’m not sure of anything.

“And say the words,” Jack says, in that same steady, gruff way, and he knows because he’d been studying my dreams for weeks. It feels like an intimacy. It rushes through me like one, even at a time like this. “In your dream, you heard words. The same words Virginia said to us.”

The air clogs in my lungs, but I manage to say it. “The beginning is the end.”

We gaze at each other. Jack looks certain, or at least he’s pretending he’s certain. But it feels right. Virginia’s words, my dream. All this help we’ve been given—like the spotlight from the airport, which could very well be Virginia’s doing.

Because if the harbinger exists, that means good exists—and always has. It means that there were generations of us who didn’t want to go along with this deal. With selling ourselves out to demons.

It also just makes sense to end as we began.

But as I turn with Jack toward the rock, Logan grabs my arm. “I’m a Darling, too. You’ve been through enough. You’ll stay right here in the light. Jack and I—”

I shake my head. “This is mine, Logan.” I look at Jack. “This is ours.”