Page 96 of Some Kind of Haunted

I put my hands on his chest, but that’s more for me than to hold him back. “Jack, listen to me. Logan is going there right now to do what he can, legally, and while he does that we need to do what we can.”

His gaze is green and sharp as it lands on mine.

“I don’t know why she did it,” I say. “I don’t know what possessed her, but—”

“I do,” Jack interrupts. “We were talking. About your dream about the rock.” He puts his hands over mine, wraps his fingers around them, and then pulls them off his chest. But he doesn’t let me go. “About me wanting to take you down there. About what Virginia said about endings and beginnings, and I thought if I could get you there, maybe we’d get some answers, but obviously that couldn’t happen while you were in jail.”

I inhale sharply. She sacrificed herself for me. Or for the cause anyway. I feel dizzy. “Okay. Then we should go. Now.”

Fuck my shower.

“I think you have to wait until Halloween.”

I look over at Harrison when he says this. He’s looking at his stack of journals, not me, a thoughtful frown on his face. “Jack’s been filling me in on everything. Halloween is the day the original deal was made. So if we’re believing in these dreams, in Virginia’s ramblings . . .”

He says both of these like he does not believe, but not meanly. He’s giving off a sort of experienced exhaustion, like we are young and naive and he’s indulging us.

I typically don’t love being indulged, but these are desperate times. I can’t manage a smile, but I try to give an encouraging nod.

“If you’re risking yourselves to go to the rock, it should be on Halloween,” Harrison says. He taps his finger on the top of the stack of journals. “It’s two hundred years since the original date. Time has weight. I think it matters.”

It makes sense, but Halloween is tomorrow night. The thought of Nora being incarcerated that long makes me sick, but Jack is already agreeing with Harrison.

“Okay, Grandpa. I bet you’re right.” He reaches over and pats Harrison on the shoulder. “I’m going to take Lexi back to the diner. She needs to eat. Maybe shower.”

“Definitely shower,” I mutter.

Jack is focused on his grandfather. “Maybe you could find out what sort of things we can do once we actually get to that rock? Just going can’t stop it, right? We need words or something.”

Blood, I think.

Harrison nods, looking pleased to be involved. He pats the journals on the counter next to him. “Will do.”

Jack drops one of my hands, but not the other, and leads me out of the antique store. He’s wrong to say we should wait—I feel this all over me and deep inside me, like an ache. If nothing happens today, then we can go back tomorrow, on Halloween, too. We can go a hundred times if it comes to that.

What’s the sense in waiting? Especially with Nora behind bars? Even five minutes there is too many.

“Jack—” But he doesn’t let me speak.

“Don’t worry,” he says, pulling me to a stop in the hallway and looking down at me. “We’re not waiting for Halloween.” His eyes are so green they almost hurt, and I can read the fury and determination in them. “We’re going tonight.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Jack takes me upstairs, though I can hear that the diner is teeming with customers. He doesn’t seem to notice them. He doesn’t seem to notice anything but me. “You need to clean up, eat, and get a little sleep,” he says.

I desperately want to shower, but I don’t know how I’ll be able to keep any food down. And I don’t know how I could possibly sleep even in the best-case scenario—which this definitely is not—with my mind turning in circles, knowing Nora took my place.

And the last thing that happened when I slept here.

All I can think about, aside from Nora sitting in that jail cell, is that rock. The site of the first demon deal that caused all of this centuries later.

“What are we going to do at this rock?” I ask him in a low voice, really no more than a whisper, as he leads me upstairs. His hand on mine, which feels entirely too natural. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. We could unleash anything. And we already lost—”

But I can’t bring myself to say her name. I can’t believe she’s not going to come stomping in with a smirk. The enormity of what happened—and is still happening—clogs my throat.

Jack tugs me along to the bathroom. “I haven’t figured it out yet, so maybe we have to play it by ear. It’s okay, Lexi. I know how to protect us from demons.”

“So did Cleo, didn’t she?”