With a clink, Wes held up the end of the chain still attached to the fixture. “So, this chain didn’t just give . . . It was cut.”

“Uhhh,” said Patrick, who squinted at the chain. “Maybe we should cut.”

Charlotte shot him a glare.

“Aaaafter we’re done here,” he amended.

“Cut?” Lucas repeated. “It’s metal. How could it have been cut?”

“Um,” Wes said, examining the severed link. “With something really . . . really . . . hot?”

Wes peered up at Lucas, who had been watching me. Quickly, Lucas looked away, striding to where Wes stood to hand him a bundle, not even sparing the chain a second glance.

“You and Stephanie should start in the attic,” Lucas told him. “Cover the second-floor bedrooms next, and then work your way back down.”

“Right,” Wes said, dropping the chain and simultaneously shooting Patrick a questioning side-glance. Patrick’s gaze widened in return.

So. They were starting to pick up on the fact that Lucas hadn’t told them everything. He’d asked me to trust him, but at what point was that just me participating in recklessness? When did I speak up to tell these people who, with the exception of maybe Charlotte, had become my friends that the word “spirit” did not even begin to cover the problem here?

“What does this stuff do exactly?” I asked, holding up the dried leaves, attempting to ease the tension.

Lucas straightened his glasses and handed a bundle to Charlotte, keeping one for himself. Next, he withdrew a grill lighter.

“The burning of sage helps to drive out negative entities,” Lucas explained.

“This is a lot of sage, though,” said Wes, who lit his bundle with a silver lighter from his pocket. He blew at the flames, causing tendrils of smoke to rise from its end. “For one house.”

“Not for this house.” Lucas gave Wes a side-glare.

“Normally, cleansings aren’t where we begin,” explained Patrick while setting up a video camera and tripod. Charlotte, in the meantime, began tracing long air-designs with the smoke in doorways and around windows in the foyer. “But . . . since we’re not here to investigate, we’re starting with the sage.”

“It’s a ritual a lot of paranormal investigators rely on when confronting or trying to clear malevolent energies,” Lucas added. “But spirits can react negatively to sage smoke, so everyone . . . just be on your guard.”

“That’s geek-speak for ‘we’re all scared shitless,’ ” Wes said as he approached me. He reignited his lighter before holding it out to me. Taking my cue, I applied one end of my own bundle to the flame, letting it catch before blowing it out as the others had done. Vines of smoke then began to drift up from the slow-burning leaves, carrying a warm and earthy aroma—that same part of Lucas’s scent that, until now, I’d never been able to pinpoint.

“You’ll hold my hand if I get scared, won’t you, Armand?” Wes asked.

My cheeks flamed. So did Lucas’s, though less from embarrassment than anger. “Are you seriously going to be like this, man?” he asked. “Here?”