Page 42 of Some Kind of Haunted

But I don’t leap out of the way when he walks toward us. I don’t move, and he doesn’t change his trajectory, and I’m certain that we’re both remembering how close we were in that closet. His gaze is green and stern and so steady, and I think, maybe he doesn’t hate me at all—

A hand wraps around my arm and tugs, and Logan is peering down at me. “What are you doing?”

I shrug like I don’t know what he’s talking about. He propels me away from Jack and into the hangar. I think I deserve a prize for not looking back.

Inside, Cleo’s got some chairs shoved together around a fold-up card table.

“I brought snacks,” Nora says brightly, producing a bag I didn’t realize she was carrying and slinging it onto the card table.

Cleo gestures to a little miniature fridge on the floor against one wall, where there’s a rudimentary kind of camp kitchen set up. “And I’ve got booze.” She throws herself into one of the chairs, then kicks back in it, her arms folded behind her head. “We’re going to need it.”

Chapter Fourteen

Jack comes to the table with something tucked under his arm. In the light of the hangar, his dark hair is windswept and his leather jacket isn’t zipped, like he’s too tough to feel the cold air. He probably is.

The effect these things have on me is . . . probably not something I should let myself think about too closely in the presence of my brother.

Jack is clearly unaware that he looks like a series of daydreams. He drops the rolled-up paper from beneath his arm, then spreads it out across the part of the table that isn’t taken up by the snacks Nora laid out in a neat line.

It’s a map.

“This is Midas when it was first platted,” he explains.

“Platted?” Logan echoes.

“Platted?” I chime in, because I’ve never heard that word before.

Jack looks at us as if we cause him pain. “Mapped,” he bites out, jabbing at the map. “In the deal, certain areas were marked as kind of . . . demon zones. The demons took the mine and the flood wall.”

He points to those on the map. He does not mention the clock tower, which sits smack dab in the middle of those two things.

I can’t say I like that.

“The settlers got the town,” he continues. “Except for during the Feed.”

Logan is frowning at the map. “How do you know this?”

“Harrison has journals from back then,” Nora replies. “He’s collected first-person accounts. In the beginning, when the population was just a couple of families, everyone knew because everyone was part of it. All the founding men of the town were involved in the deal. But as time passed, some information became lost. People started making excuses for the things they saw, and so they saw those things less. They thought the Feeds in every generation were natural disasters, because what else could they be? They stopped believing that demons could exist. Except for, mostly, descendants of the founding families who had the information and belief passed down.”

“Why would anyone make a deal with a bunch of demons?” I ask, sitting in my chair and acutely aware of the fact that Jack is standing beside me. So close I could reach out—but that would not be cool. Obviously. I clear my throat. “I feel like most people, if a demon appeared, would not think, oh, hey, let me work on my negotiation tactics here.”

Logan makes a low noise, his eyes still on the map. “The better question is why would a bunch of demons make a deal with humans when they could just do whatever the hell they want?”

“Those are both good questions,” Nora says in a voice that makes me think she really ought to be a teacher. Then I think of the patience required to both knit things and show other people how to knit things, as well as fix mistakes, and figure she’s in the right place. “As for the human settlers, instead of constant fear and destruction and ugly death, they could count on periods of peace and relative safety. They could send their children to school without fearing they’d be taken on the way. They could harvest their fields without fear they’d never get home that night. In return, the demons get a dependable food source once a generation, and whatever happens in the demon zones.”

“Why would the settlers offer that?” Logan looks up, dumbfounded.

Jack studies him. “Lots of reasons. Some people will do anything to keep the people they love safe.”

That lands in me in a way it probably shouldn’t, and my cheeks start to feel hot.

“At the cost of others?” Logan sounds appalled. “Generations of others?”

No one quite knows what to say to that.

“Things get lost to history,” Cleo says into the silence. “Not everything is so simple.”

“Every generation does what they think is best,” Nora says softly. She glances at Jack, but his expression is inscrutable.