The Sweetest Burn

“Stop!” I said, and Brutus paused with his thickly muscled leg still in midstomp.

I went over to the slab, looking down at the small crater that Brutus had made. Most of the shattered rocks inside the hole were pale gray to match the slab. But a few shards of purple remained at the bottom, and I followed their trail to a hollow purple rectangle embedded inside the stone blocks. When I touched it, power sizzled through my veins.

“Is that it?” Adrian asked, crouching next to me.

I jumped into the hole for a better look. Then, even though it hurt, I stuck my hand inside the rectangular purple casing, sliding it in until I’d gloved my arm almost to my shoulder.

“No,” I said, glad that the pain wasn’t as bad as when I’d touched the cloth back at the campus chapel. “But I think that this used to be its casing.”

Considering its location and the power coming from it, it had to have been in contact with an extremely hallowed item. So, why did the power coming from it feel far fainter than the power that the cloth had given off? If not for the long, rectangular shape of the casing and the inlaid gold etchings in the form of locusts, frogs and a large river or sea, I’d think that the casing had once contained another hallowed artifact instead of the staff. But the shape and etchings were too specific to be anything else, not to mention that this was where the former chapel that had housed the staff used to be.

Maybe time made the difference, I mused. It had been almost a hundred years since the chapel had resided here. If it had been that long since the staff had been in the purple casing, that could account for the lessening of the supernatural imprint it had left.

But the staff had been here. I knew that as surely as I’d known that I’d found David’s slingshot when I touched it for the first time, but it wasn’t in the box now. I withdrew my arm, and while the pain lessened at once, trepidation replaced it.

Only Adrian and I knew that the staff was no longer here. If Blinky or another demon had managed to translate the runes on the tablet, they could show up any second, and they wouldn’t be in a talking mood. We’d beaten them here, but that didn’t mean we were safe.

“Ivy,” Adrian said, and the urgency in his voice told me that he’d come to the same conclusion. “We need to leave. Now.”

* * *

ADRIAN DROVE LIKE a proverbial bat out of hell back to the basilica. We had sirens blaring behind us for the last five minutes, but Adrian drove the van right into the wooded section that led to the gateway. When the van could go no farther, he had Brutus fly us the rest of the way. We’d marked the tree closest to the gateway, not that I needed the big X to know where it was. Being in contact with the staff’s casing had put my hallowed senses into overdrive. I could’ve found the gateway blindfolded and with both hands tied behind my back.

“Come on,” I said when we reached it, and held my arms out. Shouts in French plus the sound of crashing through the woods meant that the police were almost upon us.

Adrian ducked under my right arm and Brutus hunched to fit under my left, but when I was about to pull them through the gateway, Adrian stopped me.

“Don’t go back to the realm where Jasmine and Costa are. Think of New York City instead.”

I didn’t ask why. There was no time. The last thing I saw before I pulled everyone through the gateway was a group of policemen bursting out from the trees, but by the time the officers reached us, me, Adrian and Brutus were long gone.

We tumbled out on the other side of the gateway to land with a splash into foul-tasting, chilly water. I coughed, trying to expel what I’d inadvertently swallowed, and Brutus let out a howl that blasted my eardrums. He shot out of the water as if fired from a cannon, flying around in mad dips and turns. It was night here, but Brutus was easy to see against the huge, lighted bridge above us, not to mention the wall of brightly illuminated buildings on either side of the waterway.

Adrian pounded on my back to help me cough out the water. Once I was breathing normally again, he withdrew his knife and carved an X onto the stone support beam next to us.

“This looks like the Brooklyn Bridge,” he said, the knife disappearing under the water to presumably go back into his pants. “Remember that.”

“Gateway’s under the Brooklyn Bridge, got it,” I said. Not only was the water cold, it also had a current. If Adrian hadn’t hauled me against him and held on to a corner of the bridge’s support beam, we would have floated down the waterway by now.

“Brutus!” Adrian called out, and the gargoyle swooped back toward us. When he got close, I saw that his expression was as incensed as a newly bathed cat’s, and I wondered if this was the first time that Brutus had ever gotten wet.

“I know, boy, we’re getting out of here,” Adrian muttered.

He let me go and said something in Demonish. Brutus dipped down and grabbed Adrian with his clawed hands, then flung him high over his head. Before I had time to wonder if Brutus had lost his mind, he swooped down under Adrian, who landed on Brutus’s back and grabbed the reins as if he were a cowboy stuntman. If I wasn’t busy treading water while floating past the bridge, I would’ve given them a round of applause.

Then Brutus flew down and angled himself toward me, and I grabbed the arm that Adrian held out to me. He hauled me up with a lot less flair, not that I wanted to duplicate his aerial acrobatics. When he settled me in front of him, I gripped the base of Brutus’s wings to steady myself, and hugged my legs to the gargoyle’s sides to keep from sliding off.

“When did you learn to do that?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard against the wind.

Adrian’s mouth touched my ear as he leaned down. “During one of the long, lonely nights when Zach kept me from you.” Then he pulled the reins to the right, and Brutus turned, flying us back toward the large city across the bridge.

“Stay high,” Adrian shouted to Brutus.

The rest of what he said was in Demonish, so I didn’t understand it. Not that I was trying to translate based on the few words that I knew. I was too busy staring at the endless glittering cityscape beneath us. Some buildings were so tall that a quick swoop downward would’ve had Brutus brushing their roofs. Other, smaller buildings seemed to crouch next to the skyscrapers as if seeking shelter in their shadows. Brake lights and headlights colored the streets below with lines of red and white, and all the various noises were so loud that they drifted up to us as a dull hum even from our height.

Brutus flew us toward a large, darkened section within this brightly lit concrete maze. As he descended and I saw the tops of trees, I realized that this must be Central Park. Brutus landed next to a small bridge, and as soon as we slid off, he shook out his wings, expelling the last of the water from them.

By this time, I’d figured out why we were in New York. “You think the staff might be here,” I said through teeth that were starting to chatter. Summer or not, being soaked in a cold river and then flown around at high altitudes was enough to make anyone chilly.

“Father Louis said that the chapel’s first stop in America had been New York, although he didn’t say where. Still—” he flashed me a quick grin “—five minutes on Google will fix that. We know that the staff used to be in the chapel’s other, previous locations, and since the demons didn’t beat us to it in France, it might be here.”

“It’s definitely worth checking out,” I agreed.

Adrian’s gaze swept over me, lingering in certain spots. “Plus, I know a safe place we can stay in the city, so after we check the chapel’s old site, we’ll go there. First, though, I need to call my friend to get you some dry clothes and shoes.”

Dry clothes sounded so good. So did a shower. Not only was I wet and chilly, I could smell things that I didn’t want to think about. That river hadn’t been hygienic, to say the least.

“What about Brutus?”

Adrian patted the gargoyle. “He can fly around Central Park and then get some fish out of the bay. He’s got to be hungry.”

At the mention of food, my stomach let out a disturbingly loud noise, as if I needed reminding that it had been over a day since I’d eaten. Adrian heard it and he pulled me into his arms.