Revealers (20 page)

“I’ll try. When do you want me to come over?”

“Now, but don’t come here—meet us by the playground near Connor’s.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Thanks!” I click off my phone. “Let’s go!” I head for my bedroom door, and then turn back to them. “Do you think Finn Dolan could be a werewolf?” I ask.

Zahara scoffs. “I don’t know what the hell to think anymore.”

“I could totally see him being a wolf!” Sascha says. “He’s always sniffing.”

Margo cocks her head. “He is always sniffing, isn’t he?”

I nod and turn back toward the door. “That would explain a lot.”

“Hey,” Sascha adds. “I noticed when I landed that your mom’s workshop has seen better days—what happened?”

I pick up my broom and walk outside. “I had a little pity party, but I’m over it now.”

We sit facing out in different directions on the small merry-go-round near the center of the playground, holding binders in our hands—a concession I made so Margo didn’t have to worry about Dani sneaking up on us.

“She’s probably not gonna show,” Margo says. “If she’s smart she won’t,” she adds.

“Would you just relax? Things are tense enough,” I say.

“Look!” Zahara says, pointing toward the swing sets.

Dani gives a little wave. “Are we cool?” she asks.

Sascha bursts into tears and looks at me.

“It’s OK,” I say.

She nods, and goes running over to Dani, hugging her tightly. She takes Dani’s hand and leads her back to us.

I look over at Margo and see tears brimming in her eyes.

“We’re cool,” I say.

We tumble into a big group hug, and then Sascha pulls back.

“Let’s see them,” she says.

Dani smiles and reveals her new teeth. Margo draws back slightly and Zahara swats her in the arm.

“We’re going to Connor’s to see if we can find anything that’ll help us get out of the covenant with our souls intact,” I say. “Michael’s gonna distract him and we’ll sneak in.”

“Someone has to invite me in,” Dani says, looking slightly embarrassed.

Margo reaches out and squeezes her hand. “I’ll do it.”

I smile, thinking there’s hope for Margo after all. “Great! We need to go through everything fast so we can get out before Helena gets home. Don’t touch any of the stuff lying around—some of it is lethal.”

We see the van pull up into the parking lot. “Are we ready?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah!” Zahara says. She puts a hand out in front of her and then we all place one on top.

Dani’s cold hand on top of mine sends shivers up my arm. “Let’s do it!”

“Can you still cloak yourself now that you’re—you know?” I ask Dani.

“Yeah. The other vamps were so jealous. Well, sort of. They can turn into mist, but that’s not as cool as being able to become completely invisible. If I were, like, evil I could so sneak up on my victims and they wouldn’t know what hit them!”

She notices we’re staring at her. “Not that I would sneak up on anyone, I’m just saying!”

I shake my head. “Let’s fill Michael in, and then knock this coven on its ass!”

We wait, cloaked by the side of Connor’s house, and watch Michael ring the bell.

After a couple of minutes pass, Connor opens the front door.

“Hey,” Michael says. “I was wondering if we could talk?”

Connor hesitates. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

Michael glances toward where we said would be, and I wish he could see us. I will him not to give up. “Um, I won’t stay long, okay?”

Connor looks at his watch. “Yeah, I guess.”

I tilt my head toward the rear of the house, and we all slink around to the back porch. I slowly turn the handle and give them the thumbs-up when it moves. I pull the door open just enough for us to slip inside.

As I walk into the dark kitchen I hear Margo whisper, “I invite you in.”

“Thanks,” Dani whispers back.

We walk past the living room. I look in and see Connor sitting on the couch.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about all that,” he says to Michael. “It’s just been really tough lately, what with Dani missing. I didn’t want Jules to get more upset than she probably already is. And I talked to my mom about it—she was just talking hypothetically about Dani. So it’s no big deal.”

Dani swats my arm. I turn to her and she rolls her eyes.

We head up the stairs and I cringe with each squeak the old stairs make. I hear Michael talking in a loud voice and know he’s trying to cover the noise.

I breathe a sigh of relief when we make it to the room. “The lights are on, Connor must have been up here. Reveal,” I whisper.

“Whoa,” Zahara says quietly. “Look at all of this!”

“Holy shit!” Sascha says.

“Over there.” I point to the computer and the desks, and we head toward them. The screen displays Connor and Helena’s e-mail. “Look through all the papers and notebooks.”

Z starts rifling through some papers while Sascha opens a thick accordion file stuffed full.

“Margo, why don’t you look through the file cabinet? Dani, you could read some e-mails. I’ll look through the ledger.”

Everyone nods. I turn to look at the three ghost balls lying on the desk in open containers filled with packing material. I shudder as burnt eyes and body parts come in and out of focus in the midst of the green light inside two of the balls. The bright white light in the third ball zips and twists around the glass threads inside and I wonder if it’s a different kind of ghost.

“There’s just receipts and junk in here,” Sascha says. She closes up the file and grabs a notebook.

I start to open the ledger when I notice the box where Connor put the Ouroboros ring is still sitting on the desk. I lift the lid off and unfold the paper lying on top of it.

Dani peeks over from the computer chair and looks in the box. “There’s your friend!”

“Yeah, right. Hey, why don’t you look through the ledger? It has a list of kills and stuff.” I slide it in front of her and start reading the description of the ring. My stomach twists when I get to the third paragraph. The ring has the unique ability to convince the wearer that the giver of the ring is being truthful— deservedly or not. The Ouroboros’s ruby eyes light up in response to the giver’s words, and the spell infused with the ring influences the wearer to trust the giver implicitly.

I resist the urge to tear the paper into a million little pieces. I fold it back up, numbly place it on top of the ring, and replace the lid with a shaking hand. I purse my lips and try to hold back the tears brimming in my eyes. He freaking lied to me and I bought it! Every time I had doubts, I let him drive them away with a kiss.

“There’s, like, thousands of kills listed in here,” Dani says to me.

“What?” I ask, pretending not to hear her so I can buy myself a few seconds to shake off the crawling feeling I have all over. I wipe my eyes and sniff. I need to focus on why we’re here, because given everything going on, my son of a bitch boyfriend is the least of my problems.

” I said there’s thousands of kills listed, and this one nut job who was keeping track in the early 1800s wrote down stuff like they killed a wolf with a mole sprouting three hairs or that some vamp had freckles.” She flips the pages toward the back. “And we sure are hunting a heck of a lot more since we took over the job.”

Dani runs her finger down a page counting under her breath. “Look at the totals after we started hunting. Ten here in March.” She turns the page. “April has, um, twelve. And look at this.”

She points to the brown writing under the comments about the kills. “We appreciate your added efforts and will adjust the payment accordingly. “

“Gotta love a book that lets you converse with demons,” I say.

Margo shuts a drawer in the file cabinet. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she says, giving me an “I told you so” look. “There’s just a lot of boring paperwork and Connor’s old report cards!

You’re not dating the sharpest stake in the box, Jules.”

I shake my head. He was smart enough to fool me. “Just keep looking.”

Dani flips the pages back toward the beginning. “Anyway, if you look at most of the other years, the coven only averaged five or six hunts a month tops. A lot of months only have one or two.”

“Maybe there’s just more nightmares to hunt now,” I suggest.

Dani glares at me.

My cheeks flush. “Sorry, let me try that again. Maybe there are more supernaturally afflicted humans to go after.”

“Yeah, but it seems like the increased hunts happened once we took over,” she says.

“Holy shit!” Sascha says. “Look at this.”

We gather around a large black notebook she’s opened. “Maybe this has something to do with the increase in hunts!” She points to what looks like a contract of some sort. “We got paid to stake Kelsey!”

“We know that,” I say. “The demons pay us every time we stake someone.”

“No, look!” Sascha jabs her finger at the paper. “We got paid to stake Kelsey—like a hit—

as in someone paid the coven so we would get her specifically.”

“No,” Margo whispers.

I scan the page rapidly and stop at the signatures at the bottom. Oh, no.

“Margo,” Zahara says, “your mother was the coven representative for this—she signed it!”

I point to the other name. “And it looks like Troy Dillon’s parents paid the coven five thousand dollars to dust her.”

Dani laughs. “So, not only did our mothers sign away our souls, they went and pimped us out as supernatural hit men!

“Dani!” I say.

“Sorry, hit people?”

“That’s not funny!” I say through clenched teeth, trying to keep my voice quiet.

Dani gives us all an indignant look. “Why does Margo get to be the only one who can let loose with inappropriate jokes?”

I tilt my head at Margo, whose bottom lip is quivering. Dani rolls her eyes.

“Sorry, that was very insensitive of me,” she deadpans. “I need to remember that those of you with souls might get upset about the fact that our mothers are running a coven-based mafia.”

“Dani!” I say again.

Margo shakes her head. Her face is pale, and I can see her eyes moving across the page reading the contract. She reaches out a hand and runs it along her mother’s signature.

“Sorry,” Dani says. She looks at me and mouths, It was just a joke.

I turn the page. “This is the wolf we got—the one who was at that bar by the stream—

signed by Helena.” I turn another page. “Here’s the man we got in the mall parking lot. The coven got thirty thousand dollars for him; brokered by my mother.” I look up at the ceiling and shake my head. “Damn it!”

I turn to another page. “One thousand for a vamp.” I flip to the middle of the notebook and start reading. “Six thousand dollars for one Jenna Maloney” I look farther down the page. “Seems this woman turned a guy into a wolf, and his parents were willing to pay fifteen thousand dollars to have someone—us—shoot her with a silver bullet. I guess they didn’t realize we’d have done it for less.”

I rapidly turn the pages and check the signatures. “Looks like all of our moms are in on this.”

“What are we going to do?” Margo asks. “We can’t hunt anymore—we just can’t. But if we don’t—that vision.”

I put an arm around Margo’s shoulders. “What if we summon the demons—maybe we can work something out.”

“Oh, man,” Zahara says. “That’s asking for trouble.”

“But I don’t understand. Why would they do it?” Margo asks, her face red and tear-streaked.

“We don’t need the money—the freaking demons were taking care of that!”

Sascha puts a finger to her lip and takes a deep breath. “We don’t need the money, but Connor is trying to sell stuff from past hunts, and there’s the new deal with the ghost balls. I wonder if this is more about greed than need. Or maybe our mothers—and Connor—wanted to feel more empowered, to do something for themselves that isn’t tied into the covenant.”

“If someone was really looking to empower themselves,” I say, “you’d think they might have come up with something a little more PC, like maybe getting a job helping the elderly instead of turning their daughters into contract killers.”

Dani raises her right hand. “Well, I for one am willing to get dragged off to hell to stop this.

I’ll sacrifice whatever is left of me to break the covenant and show our moms we’re better and stronger than they are!”

“You don’t know who they’d take!” Margo hisses. “They probably don’t even want you since your soul is already floating around!” Her face crumples. “I’m scared. I know my mother did all this awful stuff, but I don’t want her taken, either.”

Zahara nods.

No one says anything.

“Who here thinks it’s not okay to swap demon blood with their toddlers?” Dani asks. “Who thinks our mothers did have a choice, and it was beyond wrong to sign off on their kids’ souls?

And who the hell thinks this whole coven is way more screwed up than the creatures we’ve been hunting?”

Margo raises her hand. “I do,” she says softly.

The rest of us raise our hands.

“And who says anyone has to get taken?” I ask. “We’ve killed more than a few demons before.”

Dani nods. “We need to tell the stupid coven the gravy train days are over, we’re done with the hunt, and if they haven’t invested their money wisely, they can get a job bagging groceries or flipping burgers. And if a demon does show up, we kick its ass!”

“We’re talking about a whole realm of demons!” Margo says. “Even if we manage to kill one, what’s to stop them from sending more?”

“Nothing is stopping them,” I say. My heart is racing, wondering if we can go through with this and somehow prevent the vision from coming true. “All we can do is try. Let’s go over to the meetinghouse and see if our moms are still there. We can tell them it’s over, and then if some demon pops up, we won’t be taken by surprise.”

I glance at Sascha and hope she’s not thinking about her father.

The front door slams and we all jump. “Connor!”

Sascha shuts the notebook and pushes it back where it was.

Footsteps sound on the stairs. We all back away from the desks. “He’ll hear us if we try to sneak out,” I whisper.

“So what if he does?” Dani says. “We can just uncloak and tell him his mom’s a bitch, and then we’ll be on our way.”