They were late. He’d expected them sooner. He’d broken the Priory’s cardinal rule. The Priory’s only rule. Fed to him in a warning the day he’d accepted his initiate into Godbole’s elusive chapter.
“One day soon, a girl named Delaney Meyers-Petrov will come to Godbole. You will stay away from her. Do you understand?”
A laugh built in his chest. Died in his throat. He couldn’t believe he’d ever thought he could stay away. Whitehall knew, from the very moment he’d seen Colton’s test results, that Colton was less a boy and more a creature. He knew, in the way Colton’s mother had known, that Colton had come back different. That, in ripping himself from Hell, he’d carried a part of it home with him. That he’d nursed it, all this time, this tether to a world not meant for the living.
“There is no good that can come of it,” Whitehall told him once. He’d been afraid of them. Of the possibility of their union, a boy half-dead and the girl who possessed the power to command him. He’d been terrified to think that quiet, obedient Colton might obey someone other than him. He had, Colton thought, grown to like it a little too much—having sole dominion over something forged in hellfire.
“There is an order that must be maintained here, Mr. Price. You and I are playing with something completely unprecedented, and I cannot do this without you. Focus on your brother. Stay away from the girl. Do not place yourself in a position where she might become a distraction.”
The doorbell rang and rang and rang, as if someone was pushing the buttons a dozen times over. It heralded out a grating tune, ringing all through the house.
“Jesus Christ.” He pulled himself up from the beanbag. He shut the door, whisper soft, on Liam’s ghost. He headed down the stairs, still in gym shorts and an old T-shirt, assailed by the constant screech of the bell. “Jesus,” he said again, wrenching open the door. “What?”
Adya Dawoud stood huddled on the stoop, her hijab the color of the sky, her boots melting the iced-over slush. The sound of the bell still reverberated through the foyer. Over her shoulder, Mackenzie Beckett idled on the sidewalk, her gaze thunderous. A sophomore whose name he couldn’t quite recall hovered a few steps behind, shivering in a thin dress the color of blood.
“I don’t recall inviting any of you over,” Colton said.
“Lane is gone.” The words were out of Dawoud before he’d finished speaking. At her news, he felt everything in him go resolutely still.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“We were all at Whitehall’s Thanksgiving potluck and she just—” Dawoud flared her fingers in apoofmotion. “Left.”
“You don’tlooklike you’ve been in an accident,” Beckett noted, peering up at Colton through a stare like razor wire. Colton ignored her, his focus trained on Dawoud.
“She went to Whitehall’s,” he repeated, a little dumbly. They’d spoken on the phone just that morning, but she hadn’t mentioned Whitehall. He would have warned her against it. He would have told her what waited for her there, locked upstairs in the empty studio. He would have told her that she was walking into something she might not walk away from.
“It’s him,” Dawoud said. “Isn’t it? Whitehall is the reason all those boys are dead.”
“Yes,” Colton said.
“What will he do to Lane?”
The question tore through him. Lane was his. She’d always been his. And he was hers. They were painted the same shades. Threaded with the same lines. He’d spent his whole life drawn to her, and she to him. And Whitehall knew it. He knew it, and so he wouldn’t be careful with her.
He didn’t answer Dawoud’s question. Instead, he asked, “Have you tried calling her?”
Dawoud’s only response was to fish a phone out of the pocket of her coat. The screen was black, glass splintered. He recognized the case at once. Panic tightened his throat.
“Where did you find it?”
“Second floor,” Dawoud said. “Outside one of the bedrooms.”
“And where was Whitehall?”
“Gone.”
“Shit.” Colton speared his hand through his curls. “Fuck.”
“Is it a demon?” Beckett asked, her stare unrelenting. “Inside of Lane? I talked to my mom, and she told me there are some malignant spirits who are capable of acting as hitchhikers. She called them skinwalkers.”
“It’s not a demon,” said the sophomore in the red dress, speaking through chattering teeth. “I saw Lane in the library the other night. There’s something looking out of her, but it’s not demonic. Demons are made.”
Adya looked annoyed. “And how do you know?”
The sophomore shrugged. “I read.”
“She’s right,” Colton said. He knew enough of Hell to know that demons were made. Cobbled from the pleas of a small and begging boy. Packed with teeth and with tethers. Left crawling on all fours like an animal, drawn to the warmth of a little, living thing all clad in color.
