51. Jude’s Promise
JUDE’S PROMISE
Police want us to stay put. But we need to organize. Gather supplies. Make preparations. We have tasks that need to get done, and we can’t do them in Twig’s basement. Unfortunately, the entire town is on high alert, which makes keeping a low profile difficult.
After two and a half weeks of no new developments—families waiting for answers, the spotlight slowly fading—the media has rolled back into town with a vengeance.
Two more teenagers have gone missing. They vanished on the infamous Vandenberg Estate.
Investigators are also searching for a pair of students believed to have been in contact with the missing teens before their disappearance, but their whereabouts remain ominously unknown.
News vans converge, parking outside the gate while authorities commandeer the property. By noon, the invasion is complete. The Vandenberg Estate has become a spectacle.
Exactly like it was thirty years ago.
To make matters worse, extreme winter weather is expected to hit Foggy Hollow by nightfall.
Authorities are racing the clock.
Emergency lights flash against the mansion.
A mobile command trailer has been parked along the drive.
A pop-up canopy flaps in the wind as police, FBI agents, and search-and-rescue volunteers hunch over tables crowded with maps and coffee thermoses.
Generators hum. Radios crackle. K9 units sweep the grounds while Dad helps in any way he can, walking officers to service paths, explaining the trails, unlocking and re-securing sheds and maintenance buildings.
Thankfully, they’ve already searched the garden shed tucked behind our carriage house.
I stand close behind Jude, trying to make myself small while he works the padlock with a ring of spare keys he found in the manor.
I can hear reporters outside the fence, hidden from view by a copse of trees.
Which means we’re hidden from view, too.
Still, my anxiety builds with each key that fails to fit.
Finally, one of them clicks.
We slip inside and shut the door behind us.
The wind stops.
The commotion outside goes quiet.
Pale winter light filters through the shed’s dusty windows and spills across several red plastic jerry cans set against the wall.
“Bingo,” I say, picking one up to measure its fullness.
Gasoline sloshes inside.
We’ll have to wait until dark to get them out, but it’s nice to know we won’t have to make a trip to the gas station.
Jude rubs his jaw, surveying a collection of tools hanging on a peg board. “Which of these might be useful against a deranged soul sucker and his pack of hounds?”
“And any other monster we run into along the way,” I add, taking note of the crowbar and the sledgehammer Rafe used to break into the crypt.
Jude grabs a pair of hedge shears.
I slide around a wheelbarrow toward the shelves lining the back wall, crowded with cans of paint thinner, bottles of motor oil, and jugs of weed killer. Torn fertilizer bags slump in piles on the floor next to empty terracotta pots.
I pick up a rusty can of turpentine. “We could use some of these chemicals to build explosives. I’m sure Twig would know how.”
At the moment, he’s confiscating blowtorches from his dad’s auto shop. He and Naomi plan to turn them into bonafide flame throwers.
“The more fire power, the better,” Jude says, turning on a flashlight to check the batteries. He shines the high-powered beam onto a sack of road salt.
I imagine pouring a giant circle of it around the pond in the Water Garden. Maybe it would work. Maybe Vorat wouldn’t be able to get through and the prisoners would be safe.
Jude turns the flashlight off. “I’ll have to go in first.”
I set the can of turpentine next to the gasoline, my stomach twisting into a knot. He’s talking about the plan. We haven’t worked out all the finer details yet, but this one I saw coming.
Twig, Naomi, and Harper can’t go into the Overlay with him.
As soon as they enter, whatever magical trap Vorat has set will trigger and they’ll be teleported into his lair.
But not Jude. He won’t be teleported. Like me, Jude has angelic DNA, which means he can stay in the shadows doing recon.
As soon as Vorat leaves, he can send out a notification.
Only then can Twig, Naomi, and Harper join him.
“I don’t really like that part of the plan,” I tell him, grabbing a machete off the peg board.
“There are several parts I don’t like myself.”
I keep my attention fixed on the tools. There is so much I would say if fear didn’t have me by the throat. But it does, because in the back of my mind, I can’t stop thinking about the ruby. One more power source for Vorat to draw from.
If we free his prisoners and kill his hounds, how much of Jude’s soul will he take?
I turn to face him. “You’re a good shot.”
He smiles faintly, like he isn’t quite sure where I’m going.
“I watched you the other day in the paddock with your bow and arrow.”
He pulls a rusted sickle off a hook.
“You hit the bulls-eye every time.”
“I had a good coach in boarding school,” he says, grabbing a pruning saw, too.
“I need you to promise me something.”
Metal clanks as he drops the tools next to the turpentine.
“If we can’t get rid of him in the hedge maze, if he comes back to the Water Garden, your first target needs to be the ruby.”
“Okay.”
“Before you go for any of the hounds.”
“Sounds good.”
“Jude.”
He takes a small step toward me. “I’m very motivated to destroy the ruby, Selah.”
His attention dips to my lips, and when his eyes meet mine, I can feel the full weight of his longing, his restraint, and it couldn’t be clearer.
His motivation has nothing to do with saving himself, and everything to do with the distance I’ve kept between us.
The distance I’ll continue to keep until the ruby is gone and my love can no longer harm him.
His gaze is so intense, it sets my skin on fire.
I turn away and take a shaky breath, forcing my mind back to the task at hand.
We’re here to collect weapons.
My attention snags on a clipboard hanging near the door.
“This is a diagram of the hedge maze,” I say, pulling it free.
If the maze is the same inside the Overlay as it is outside the Overlay, then surely a map will give Rafe and me an advantage.