Page 81 of Some Kind of Haunted

This is Jack.

But he’s not looking at me. He’s staring out the window at nothing but darkness. Yet, when he finally speaks, he does not confirm my worst fears.

That I am repulsive and unlovable, and he is particularly able to see that.

He introduces something else entirely.

“I knew your mother.”

In the grand scheme of possible things he might have said in this moment, the idea he’d bring up my mother wouldn’t have even ranked in the top million. I would have guessed his heart belonged to a demon before I would have guessed my mother was in the mix.

“My mother,” I echo.

“She was not in that mine by accident. She was saving me.” He says this low and fast and he doesn’t stop to let me emotionally react, either. “The demons like to lure who they can to their hiding spots. Kids always work. Especially kids who aren’t particularly well watched after. I was four.”

Just like Harrison when the Feed came and took his parents.

I try to picture Jack at four and can’t get there, but what he’s saying is terrible no matter his age. “You were lured into the mine?” I shudder at the thought.

Then I think about the way Logan was clearly being pulled to it. What if I hadn’t stopped him?

“My parents weren’t about to try and find me, but your mother did. It’s what she did. She found me and got me out, and she told me—no, she warned me, that one day you would come. She put a picture of you in my head that’s been there ever since. Her daughter. Her harbinger. You would come, and everything would change.”

And I get it now.

This is why he acted like he disliked me on sight. This is why everything is so charged and he avoids it, ignores it, rebels against it.

My mother told him I would change everything.

My mother.

Who was in that mine. Saving Jack.

“And then she died,” I say, because that’s what the article Logan found said. That she died in the mine. Not giving birth. In that mine.

Jack’s green graze meets mine. “She died saving my life, Lexi. So there’s no shortage of people I owe to stop this damn Feed.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

I really don’t know how to absorb all this information. I’m not sure I’ve fully accepted that article Logan showed me about our mother, and I never read any of the details. I just couldn’t bring myself to picture her trapped in that mine.

I’m pretty sure that if Jack were one of the details, though, Logan would have mentioned it to me.

I realize I’m shaking my head, like I don’t believe him. I have no reason not to. But I need more information. I need—

“How?” I manage to ask.

His forehead creases. “I don’t remember how I got there. I don’t even remember climbing inside the mine itself. I just remember being there, and then . . .”

He pauses. I don’t know if he’s reaching back to try to remember what actually happened. Or maybe he’s trying to put things into words that don’t fit there—something I know too well. What I do know is that I have not really seen Jack like this before. Unguarded. Like his mask has slipped.

Like what’s underneath is him remembering what it was like to be a helpless boy trapped in a mine. I feel my heart kick at me. Or maybe for him, though I doubt he’d appreciate me telling him that.

He swallows, but keeps talking. “It was dark. I heard the slurping. I’m sure I screamed. Cried. Tried to get the hell out of there. But I couldn’t . . . It was like being slowly absorbed by something black and thick and sticky. It didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t get out of it, and I knew that was bad. I’d heard enough of my grandparents’ warnings about steering clear of the mine to know I was in trouble.”

My throat feels dry. I’m watching Jack closely, feeling drawn to him and this story and this moment in ways I can’t really explain. It feels like a physical thing, but we’re not touching. I can tell he’s trying to keep himself blank, separate from this memory, but he can’t manage it.

“Then I heard your mother’s voice.” He glances at me. “Your parents used to come into the antique shop. Sometimes my grandmother would stop by the knitting store when she was babysitting me, and your mother would be there. I knew her. I knew you.”