Indigo:Tell Gage I miss him and hope he’s okay.
Indigo. My throat suddenly felt bone dry.
“Your mom?” Gage asked.
I nodded, trying to wrap my mind around the whole thing. I reread the texts three more times before deleting them.
“Hey, Gage… wanna go on a date to the Trinity Church cemetery?”
Gage chuckled. “Sounds romantic.”
If they were planning something about my mom, I needed to know what it was, consequences be damned.
CHAPTERTWELVE
“Stop pushing!” Marlow whisper-screamed as we huddled inside the surprisingly decent sized mausoleum and fought for window space.
Dash shot her a glare. “I’m six-feet-two inches tall, Marlow. I can’t see. Move over.”
“I’m six-three,” Jacob added.
“I’m six-four,” Gage said as if this was a competition.
Clutching his sword to his chest, Gage crouched on his heels next to me as I reached out and smacked all of the men on the arm one by one. “Play nice! No one is comfortable.”
Drea chuckled as Gage, Jacob, and Dash all looked at me then and said nothing. We all stood inside of the twelve-foot-wide stone room that held four sarcophagi. The window of the mausoleum was tiny, maybe twelve inches by eighteen inches and we were all pushing for a visual on Apollyon and Arthur. The issue was that the window was a mere two feet off the ground so you had to crouch on your knees or heels to be able to see anything.
Marlow swung around so fast then that she nearly clipped Dash in the chin. “If you are not manning the audio equipment, or your father is not Apollyon, thenstep back.”
Ouch.
Drea, Dash, Jacob, and Gage stood and stepped back, and Marlow rolled out her neck, putting her tablet up on the tiny stone windowsill so she could look down at it. “There. Now I have room to work.”
I rested on my knees and glanced down at the tablet. There were eight or ten audio tracks playing sounds of wind and other creepy cemetery noises, like a tree scratching against a gravestone. When I’d told Drea where Gage and I were going tonight, she’d insisted the entire team come to support me. Marlow had rigged up the cemetery with listening devices every forty feet so we could get a decent audio of what they said without being seen. The last thing I wanted was Gage to be spotted by his dadorfor Apollyon to see me.
Skye suddenly appeared right in front of the tiny glass window, and I yelped, covering my mouth with my hand.
“They’re coming.” She grinned and then poofed out of existence.
“Skye!” I hissed, my heart pounding so loud in my chest I was sure the entire room could hear it.
“What did she say?” Drea tugged on my braid.
I sighed, trying to get my wits back. Seeing a ghost actually appear in a cemetery was the stuff of nightmares. Even if it was a somewhat friendly, slightly annoying, and unpredictable ghost.
“She said they are coming.” I hadn’t seen Skye since we returned from my training session in Avalon, so I hadn’t told her we would be here. How she knew what we were even up to was beyond me. I just imagined her and Aurum watching me from Avalon and plotting different attacks to test my skills. All of a sudden, a tingle shot up my spine and my power surged inside of me. There was a reddish flash of light outside the window and then it was gone.
What the…?
“Master Apollyon,” Arthur’s voice crackled on the audio and the entire mausoleum went stock still.
Marlow turned the audio down so that they wouldn’t hear themselves talking, and I scanned the cemetery for a visual. The second we’d stepped inside the cemetery I’d gotten a rush of energy, but nothing like the one I’d just felt. When I’d asked everyone else about it, they’d looked at me like I’d grown three heads—except for Gage. He’d just said cemeteries can be a source of power for Shades. Something cryptic that I was definitely going to ask him about later. Was the energy surge I’d just detected me sensing the portal and Apollyon?
“Over here!” Jacob hissed from the other end of the mausoleum, where he was crouched in front of another window.
I stood, scrambling over four stone caskets and all of my friends. When I reached the second window, I fell on my knees next to Jacob.
“Did you find her talisman?” Apollyon’s voice played out of the tablet Marlow held. Marlow was right behind me and bopped Jacob out of the way with her hip.
