The Gathering Dark (20 page)

Keira rolled her eyes. “Your confidence in me is breathtaking. Just . . . whatever. If you want to do this in person, then you’ll have to come get me, Captain Secrets. The insurance company totaled my car.”

“I’ll be there in an hour,” he said. His voice brimmed with regret and something that sounded an awful lot like he was saying he would have loved her, if he’d had the chance.

The sound spilled over Keira, breaking everything it touched.

It broke her open.

It broke her heart.

Chapter Twenty-Six

K
EIRA STARED OBSESSIVELY AT
the driveway, watching for Walker. The shadows lengthened in front of the house. As she turned on the lights, the phone rang.

She hesitated. It was tempting to let the machine pick up, but with all the crap that her parents were going through, she knew she couldn’t do that.

She rushed to grab the phone. “Hello?”

“Keira. You’re there. I hope I didn’t interrupt your practice time.” Her father sounded as wrung-out as an old mop.

“Hi, Dad. No, I was—” She glanced out the window, checking for Walker. She didn’t want to tell her dad where she was
going. If he had questions—any questions—she wouldn’t have answers. “I was just hanging around.”

“I know it’s been a difficult day,” her dad said. “I’m going to come by in a while and get some things. If you want to talk, I’d be happy to. If you need a little time, well, I understand that, too.”

She really didn’t want to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with her dad. Not yet, anyway, but it seemed like a flat-out “no” would be unnecessarily rough—like slamming a piano’s key-cover just because practice had been hard.

“Okay. I don’t know exactly what my plans are yet. I’ll . . . if I’m here, maybe we can talk. I don’t know. I’m sorry. It’s not . . . ” She heard her voice thickening as the emotions gathered in her throat.

“It’s okay,” her dad reassured her. “I understand. No pressure. I’ll be there in a bit.”

“Thanks.” Keira sniffed back her tears and hung up. She stared out the window for a minute, shaking off the call. Everything was broken, and she didn’t know how to fix any of it. She wanted desperately to dissolve into sobs, but Walker would be there any minute.

Pull yourself together. Pull. Yourself. Together.

Walker’s car slid into the driveway.

Time’s up.

Composing her best impassive concert-pianist mask, Keira grabbed her coat and went out to face Walker. Surprise fluttered across his face when she opened the car door.

“Hey,” he said. “Um. I thought maybe we could talk here. At your house.”

So he can tell me what’s going on and then run away without having to drive me home first.

“Sorry,” she said, slamming the car door. “But it turns out my dad’s sleeping with someone else and my parents are separating.” She jammed the seat belt into the latch. “He’s coming home to get some of his stuff soon. I’d rather not be here when he does.”

“Oh, Keira.” The guarded expression on his face broke and Keira felt her own mask crumble in response.

She thought about her dad, stacking work pants and polos into his racquetball duffel. Emptying his shelf in the bathroom’s medicine cabinet. Wanting to tell her all about where he was going and why he had gone.

“Is there anything I can do?” Walker asked quietly.

Keira bit her lip. She wanted him to wrap his arms around her. She wanted to bury her face in his jacket and block out the crashing noises of her life being demolished around her.

But she couldn’t. Not when she was trying her hardest to prove that she was strong enough to handle whatever was going on—with or without him.

She looked up at Walker’s gray eyes. “There is something you can do. You can get me out of here. And then you can answer my questions. I don’t give a crap where we go, as long as it’s away from this house.” She hesitated. The desire to be somewhere
familiar swept over her like an incoming tide. “Actually, I take that back. There is somewhere I want to go.”

“You name it, I’ll take you, kitten.”

Keira wrinkled her nose. “Okay. Two things. One, don’t call me ‘kitten.’ ”

Walker tried to swallow his smile, but he didn’t quite manage it. It made her want him more, which in turn made her even more angry with herself.

“What’s the second thing, then?”

“Let me drive. It’ll be easier than directing you.” It was a test, and she knew it. She felt the imaginary red pencil in her hand, waiting to grade his response.

“You have major control issues, you know that?” The words were harsh, but his tone was gentle. Not quite worthy of an F, but close. A D-minus at best.

“Fine,” she admitted, flicking her hair back over her shoulder and watching as his eyes followed the fiery strands. “I like being in control. Can I drive or not?”

He dragged his teeth across his bottom lip, considering. “Okay.” He pulled the keys out of the ignition and spun them around his finger. “You can drive. But you had better be careful,” he warned, patting the dashboard.

She plucked the keys from his hand. “Don’t worry. I know how pissed you’d be if I put a scratch on your
baby
.”

He grabbed her hand, curling his fingers around hers so that the sharp metal teeth of the key pressed against her skin.

“Keira.” The bravado was gone from his voice. “I’m not worried about the car. I’m worried about
you.
It’s my job to worry about you, to keep you safe. None of what’s happened—what’s going to happen—is me trying to be a jerk.” He slid his hand up her arm and it was like flint against steel. Just like that, she was on fire.

“Safe from
what
?” She pulled her arm away, but it was too late. The flames had already spread. Everywhere.

Walker shook his head. “Let’s get where we’re going first. I actually
don’t
want you to wreck the car when I tell you.”

Normally, Keira would have rolled her eyes at that sort of drama, but something in his voice stopped her.

“It’s really that bad?” she asked in a small voice.

He didn’t respond, but she saw his jaw clench.

“Well. Let’s go, then,” she said, squaring her shoulders.

Keira climbed into the driver’s side, sliding the seat forward and adjusting the mirrors while Walker folded himself into the passenger seat. She snuck a glance at him. He was pretending to be relaxed, but he kept pressing on an imaginary brake with his right foot.

Keira’d been to the little park so many times that the turns came as naturally as breathing. She wished she’d been able to calm down enough to enjoy driving his car. Instead, by the time they got to the playground, her shoulders were bunched up around her ears. She pulled into the quiet parking lot and shut off the car.

A few tendrils of mist curled around the slides and swings.
The park was deserted, but the bleak weather made it look lonely, too.

She turned to give Walker the keys, but he didn’t notice her outstretched hand. He stared out the windshield, his fingers curled tightly around the door handle.

“Here?”
He looked over, his eyes searching hers. “Why here?”

Keira shrugged. “It was my favorite park when I was a kid. I always felt safe here. Happy.”

“Damn,” he whispered. “It started that early.”

“What started that early?”

He jerked his head at the playground. “C’mon. Let’s go find somewhere to sit.”

The two of them wandered between the metal cages of the equipment, heading for the merry-go-round. Walker sat down and patted the space beside him. There was enough room for her, but it seemed like it might be smarter to put one of the metal bars between them.

Wind whipped through the park, making the swings creak on their chains.

Screw it.

She squeezed in next to him, glad for the warmth. Still. Whatever came next was going to hurt. She could tell.

“Okay,” she said. “Enough waltzing around. Talk.”

Walker reached over and wrapped his hand around hers. “I’m trying. It’s hard to know where to start.”

Keira stared down at their linked fingers. A strand of darkness, thin as a thread, trailed down Walker’s wrist. As she watched, it swirled across the back of his hand, like it was reaching for her.

Keira had spent hours staring at the backs of her hands. She’d watched her fingers move over piano keys and checked her wrists to make sure that they were in the proper position above the piano. She knew the pattern of the veins beneath her translucent skin, every tiny crease in her knuckles.

In one instant, that all changed. She watched a coal-colored ribbon unfurl beneath the base of her thumb. It stretched and spread until it touched the marks on the back of Walker’s hand and nestled there comfortably, her own darkness rubbing up against Walker’s.

“Can you see that?” Her voice shook. She didn’t look up. “That dark stuff on our hands?”

“I see lots of stuff that other people don’t notice,” he said.

Keira tugged her hand out of his and stood up, turning to face him.

“What kind of stuff?” she demanded. “Like dark marks on your skin that come and go? Trees growing in my living room? What about the door in the middle of the road, when you drove me home after the accident? Did you see
that
stuff?” Saying the words was like walking to the very edge of the high dive. She’d left herself exposed. Vulnerable. One push and she’d fall. She wrapped her arms around herself, her marked hands curled into fists.

Slowly, Walker stood up. He stepped toward her, gently pulling her arms away from her body. He held her balled-up fists in his hands. There was something desperate in his eyes.

“What about now?” He inched closer. Her knee brushed against his leg. “Do you see anything like that now?” The desperation in his eyes changed tone, becoming another sort of begging.

Right then, Keira couldn’t see anything but Walker. She shook her head slowly, the air around them so thick that she could barely move.

His hands slid around to the small of her back. She looked up at him, frozen.

Burning.

Both.

His lips were close enough that she could feel his breath against her mouth. Her eyes drifted nearly closed.

Just as her eyelashes tangled together, the park completely disappeared.

And that’s when she screamed.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

W
ALKER LIFTED HIS FACE
,
but he didn’t let go of her.

Keira wriggled out of his arms, spinning around disbelievingly. The park was only a faint, ghostly outline. Around it—around
her
—an enormous, vaulted room had sprung up.

Beneath the arched beams of the ceiling were rows of benches, arranged in a circle around some sort of machine that was all claws and points—a jagged row of spikes pushed out of the floor, reaching for a barrel that had been suspended in midair. The barrel itself looked like it was made out of coal—it glowed darkly, pulling the light that rippled across its surface into itself, rather than throwing it back into the room.
Gleaming teeth jutted out of the barrel at intervals, like a sort of horrible, mechanical grin. Keira shuddered.

“What the hell, Walker?” She didn’t bother to ask him if he was seeing the same thing. It was obvious he was.

Filmy strands of darkness, like blackened cobwebs, hung from the machine and draped across the benches, undisturbed by the wind that buffeted the park. Walker wrapped his arm around her and tugged her closer to the mechanical monstrosity, ducking under one of the black wisps.

“It’s a church,” he said quietly. “Or, it used to be, back when our kind still thought that praying would fix things. There was a handle they’d turn, trying to get this thing to make music. Like a—”

“Giant music box,” Keira finished, suddenly seeing the metal hulk in front of her differently. If the spikes in the floor had been even, and tall enough to reach the bumps on the spinning barrel, it would have looked a lot like the insides of the ballerina jewelry box she’d had when she was five.

“Exactly.”

Her knees weakened beneath her, and Keira lowered herself onto one of the benches. Only the bench didn’t stop her. She sank right through it, landing hard on the ground.

“Ow! Damn it!” She scrambled to her feet, brushing stray bits of mulch from the back of her jeans. “If I can see it, why can’t I
sit
on it?”

Walker shoved his hands into his pockets. “Because even
though you can see Darkside—” He paused and shook his head, disbelief written across his face. “You’re not
there.
It’s like a mirage in the desert. Except this mirage is real. The world you grew up in isn’t the only one out there, Keira.”

Keira drove her hands through her hair, cupping her head like it was in danger of cracking. “That’s crazy. You know that sounds crazy, right? The two of us having a shared hallucination is more sane than that. How do you know it’s real?”

“When I told you I moved to Sherwin two years ago? I moved from
there
.” Walker gestured toward the church. “I mean, not this church specifically. From Darkside.”

Keira took a step back. “No.”

“Listen, I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s not as bizarre as it sounds. There are scientists who’ve detected our world. They just can’t
see
it yet. Did you take physics?”

Keira nodded.

“Have you ever heard of dark matter?”

Keira shook her head, too stricken to answer.

“Damn. Okay, well, you know there are particles—protons and neutrons and stuff—that make up everything humans see?”

“Yeeees,” she said slowly, her memory reaching for the science lessons she hadn’t paid attention to.

“Well, just because that’s all humans can see doesn’t mean that those are the only particles out there.”

“The other ones are dark matter?” Keira guessed. Her face had gone numb, and she couldn’t tell if it was from shock or cold.

“Exactly.” Walker stepped toward her, closing the distance she’d created between them. “Darkside is even bigger than the human world. There’s more of it. Dark matter, Dark
side
is everywhere. It’s in everyone’s living room, moving through their hands while they work, coexisting at the bottom of the ocean. The particles aren’t built to interact. The worlds are meant to be completely invisible to each other.”