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There was no place for a key. Just the round, jagged clasp that connected the lid to the box. Despite the tiny voice inside my head telling me to keep my hands off, I slowly turned the clasp to the right. A tiny clicking noise inside the box indicated it was unlatched. All its secrets lay just beneath, ready to be exposed...
“Lizzy!”
I jumped at the sound of my name
and looked up to see Luke standing in the doorway. He wore a tired smile that brightened as we locked eyes. Pushing up from his desk, I ran to give him a hug.
“I’ve missed you,” he said as his chin rested on my head. “When Esther said you were back, I had to come find you right away.”
I squeezed him extra hard, grateful he’d returned. “Yeah, I caught her cleaning out your office. I’m afraid you’re going to have to put a lock on this place.”
He loosened his grip and rolled his eyes. “Not even the archangels could keep that woman out of here. I’ve learned to just let her accomplish the task at hand. It’s easier than fighting her.”
I laughed. If I’d learned anything about my aunt in the year or so since I’d met her, that was certainly true.
His blue eyes twinkled as he looked down at me. “Are you ready to go greet the newcomers? You know, I had my doubts, but I think these Australians really know their stuff. They’ve already got a dozen ideas of how to get to work in the lab. They’re going to improve our demon hunting by spades.”
I nodded at him and followed silently out the door of his office. Before he shut it, my gaze fell on the innocent looking box sitting on his desk. Somewhere, inside of me, I felt a sudden and resounding disappointment—as if I’d failed a vital task. I couldn’t tell if that emotion was coming from me...or someone else.
Shaking off the feeling, I let Luke lead me down the hall as he chattered about his visit with the Europeans. He was excited about the year to come and hoped it would be a year to remember. Even though I tried my best to listen, I couldn’t help but feel the opposite of my father. He might want a year to remember, but I certainly didn’t. I’d already experienced the hardest year and half of my life. I certainly didn’t need any more.
But something told me we weren’t in the clear just yet.
Chapter Five
Luke lead the way down a spiral staircase to a portion of the basement separate from the dungeon they’d stuffed me in last summer. Despite the fact that it was well-lit by humming blue sconces on the walls and fluorescent lighting on the ceiling, I shivered and felt the immediate desire to rush back upstairs for air. Underground spaces freaked me out now. I preferred my feet at sea-level, with enough exits to make a getaway, should I ever need it.
“I’ve never been in this part of the basement before,” I told Luke as I eyed the crystal clear glass door in front of us. A high-tech panel with a touch pad hung at chest level next to it.
“Most of our warriors have no interest in the research side of operations.” Luke swiped the screen of the panel and keyed in a code. “I’m not surprised.”
Guilt made me squirm. Nephilim research was one of Luke’s passions. I’d listened to him drone on about tech things that made no sense to me, not bothering to show any interest. I’d behaved like the typical warrior. All about the fight and ignoring everything else. I vowed right then and there to change.
“Besides, before this summer started, our research lab wasn’t anything to boast about,” he added with a shrug. “The Nephilim we brought in recently have carried us into the new millennium. This was just a wooden door with a rusty old lock that didn’t stay shut half the time. They’ve really made us shape up.”
I followed him through the door once it clicked open and into a gigantic room that reached as far as my eyes could see. It was bigger than the ballroom that lay somewhere above our heads. Rows and rows of computers with brilliantly lit screens, stainless steel tables loaded down with various experiments, and a few dozen men and women walked around in white lab coats.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was so much more involved than I’d expected. I’d imagined a tiny little room, not much bigger than a closet, stuffed with three scientists and an old-school green screen computer. This was so much bigger, so much better. Like a scene from the super hero movies that Gabe occasionally made us watch together. I scanned the room and tried to soak in as much detail as I could.
“Over here, we’re working on a demon catcher,” Luke said, ushering me toward the nearest table on which a young brunette woman fiddled with a strange looking steel square. She smiled politely at us and returned to her business.
“Oh, and over here, we’ve got grenades.” He held up a smooth silver ball, no bigger than the palm of his hand.
I eyed it cautiously. It didn’t look like any grenade I’d seen.
“It’s completely harmless to humans and Nephilim,” Luke explained. The tenor of his voice rose as his cheeks turned pink with excitement. “It sends out a blast of blessed olive oil. Not enough to do any really damage, but enough to stun the possessed. It’s almost complete. Just a few more bugs to work out. Have to figure out why they keep exploding at random, though.”
With my eyes glued on the offending silver grenade, I took an involuntary step backwards and ran into something hard. With a loud oomph, I rubbed my elbow and turned to see a man standing tall above me. He gave off a golden glow, as if he had lived on the beach all his life, and had long sun-kissed amber hair that fell to his muscular shoulders. Not exactly the kind of person I expected to run into in the manor basement. Light caramel eyes rimmed with dark lashes blinked at me with concern.
“Excuse me, love,” he said in an Australian accent that would’ve had Raquel drooling on the spot. “Didn’t mean to run you over, there.”
“No, it’s my fault. Don’t worry about it.”
His lips melted into a pleasant smile. “American, huh? I didn’t know they grew them so beautiful at Westward Manor.”
Involuntarily, I blushed and waved a hand in front of my face. Good thing Gabe wasn’t here to see that. “Actually, I didn’t grow up here. Lived in Hanna, a little town just a few miles north of here, until last year.”
I wasn’t sure why I was offering that information. Something about the tall, athletic man with a faded denim shirt and worn jeans under his lab coat seemed to instill confidence.
