The Gathering Dark (24 page)

“Yeah.” She stepped into his open arms and pressed her face against his shirt. Beneath her cheek, his heart beat furiously. She closed her eyes, focusing on the rhythm. There was a pressing sort of squeeze, and the uncomfortable sensation of something viscous running over her, like cold egg dripping down the back of her neck.

And then it stopped.

She opened her eyes.

First she saw the plaid of Walker’s shirt, and then, beyond that, the stained green carpet of the hotel room. She let out a shaky breath and stepped away from Walker, spinning around so she could see the whole room.

She stared at him, shuddering with cold. “That’s twice. This whole time I’ve seen Darkside, I’ve never gone there. And now, I’ve been there twice in one night. You kiss me and I end up there. What gives?”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Here.” He held out his hand. Keira took it, and the cliffs shimmered into view. Her mouth fell open.

“It’s us.” An aching certainty filled Walker’s voice. “The more we touch . . . ” He pulled her into his arms and Darkside came into sharp focus around her. Keira had to close her eyes against the two equally real worlds. It hurt to look at them simultaneously. “The more contact there is between us, the more access you have to Darkside.”

“So when we kissed,
if
we kiss . . . ” She bit her lip, not wanting
to say it. As though it wouldn’t be true if she didn’t say it.

“If we kiss, you end up where the Reformers’ guards can see you. Where they can catch you.”

She let her head fall against his shoulder. “We can’t
kiss
?”

Walker laughed bitterly. He stepped back and caught her chin, tipping her face up to his. A tiny smudge of darkness slipped into view at the edge of his jaw, pulsing like a heartbeat.

“Believe me, we can kiss.” His eyes burned. “That was the most mind-blowing, reality-bending—” He stopped. “We
can
kiss. It’s just not
safe
for us to do it again.”

Keira shivered, still cold to the bone and aching for the warmth of Walker’s mouth on hers. “Unbelievable.”

“I’m sorry about the cold,” Walker said. “It goes away after you’ve been back and forth a few times. Until you get used to it, crossing between the worlds messes with your metabolic systems. You’re probably going to be—”

Keira’s stomach growled.

“—hungry, too,” he finished.

“Yeah. Oh, my jeans!” She twisted around, looking for evidence of the black muck that she’d fallen into, but there was nothing on her.

“With the exception of the Seekers, dark matter stays Darkside,” Walker said. “But you can sort of take baryonic matter—the stuff that makes up your world—into Darkside. Clothes and instruments. That sort of thing. As long as it’s been
impregnated by enough dark matter by being in close contact with a Seeker. Or”—he looked at her—“by an Experimental.”

She could have been stripped naked each time they’d crossed. God. It was a pretty slim silver lining, but she clung to it anyway.

Wait . . .

“So if dark matter has to stay Darkside, how come the Seekers aren’t naked when they come over here?” she demanded.

Walker’s mouth twitched with amusement. “At first, they were. Now they keep a stock of things from this world to wear when they think they’re going to cross. It’s not easy.”

“So they can take clothes back to Darkside—what about people? Can a Darkling bring them across? They’re baryonic.” The word felt strange in her mouth.

Walker’s face twisted like she’d suggested microwaving a puppy. “Uh, yeah. Humans are made of baryonic matter. The thing is, once baryonic matter’s in Darkside, it disintegrates. The environment’s too foreign. It’s one reason music is such a challenge. Even if instruments are coated in dark matter, the baryonic stuff underneath disappears, and the materials we have in Darkside can’t re-create the sound they make.” He shook his head. “Anyway. The point is, stuff disintegrates. So if
people
come Darkside, they—”

“Disintegrate too. You can stop there. I get it.” Something snippy had crept into Keira’s voice. It was too much to absorb all at once, and she was full to the brim with surprises.

“I know this isn’t easy for you,” Walker said gently. “Why
don’t you go take a hot shower and I’ll go hunt down a vending machine so that you’ll have something to eat.”

“Fine,” Keira agreed miserably. Realizing that she was being nasty to him while he was trying hard to take care of her, Keira turned back to Walker. “I mean, thanks. I’m sorry.”

Walker shook his head. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

He slipped out the door, leaving her alone in the threadbare room. She turned and headed into the bathroom, intending to stand in the shower until she’d used all the hot water in Sherwin or the world ended, whichever came first.

•  •  •

When she was finally warm, Keira climbed out of the shower and stood, wrapped in a towel, in the steamy bathroom. The reality of spending the night in a hotel room with Walker came crashing down around her. She had nothing to change into. And her mom was going to expect her to be home in a couple of hours—to be crawling into her own bed for the night.

She could hear the staccato chatter of Walker flipping through the television channels. She pulled on her shirt and underwear, wrapped a dry towel around her waist, and stepped out of the bathroom.

Walker looked over at her, his eyes widening in appreciation at the amount of thigh visible beneath the inadequate towel she was wearing.

“Wow.” He cleared his throat. “So, I got you some stuff to eat.
The choices were pretty pathetic, but it’s better than nothing.”

She picked a package of cookies off the dresser and looked for somewhere to sit. She noticed that the bed had been made.

“Did you do that?” she asked.

“Yeah, I put the sheets on while you were showering,” Walker said.

It was so domestic—so
cute
—that Keira had to wrestle down a desire to run across the room and throw herself into his lap. Instead, she pulled a cookie out of the cellophane and perched on the edge of the bed.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked.

Walker stared at her appraisingly. “I don’t need to.”

Keira swallowed the cookie carefully. “You mean you’re not hungry right now, or you don’t ever need to eat?”

“Of course I need to eat—you’ve seen me do that plenty of times,” he said. He still sounded guilty, somehow.

Keira stared down at the package of cookies in her lap. “But crossing back and forth doesn’t make you hungry anymore?”

Walker leaned back in the worn chair. “True. I’ve done it too many times. And to be honest, I don’t really like the food here. Darkside stuff tastes way better. It’s nothing to look at, but it’s
delicious
.”

“What’s it like?” She recalled the fruit she’d seen in her living room.

“Fruits and vegetables, I guess you’d call them. There are huge orchards near here where we grow a lot of . . . well. You
don’t have a word for them, I don’t think. But they’re sweet and kind of creamy. I guess you’d call us vegans?”

“You don’t eat meat? Wait. You had pot roast the other night.”

“Yeah. It’s not that Darklings don’t
want
to eat meat. There are hardly any animals Darkside, and even if you could find one, you wouldn’t want to eat it.” He shuddered.

“So, you miss it?”

“I miss the food, yeah. But there’s not much else left for me over there. My parents are gone. I never had many friends, since no one else’s parents approved of my family.” His eyes were rueful. “It was so easy to say yes, when the Reformers got ahold of me after my parents died. They made it seem like finding the Experimental would fix everything. That I’d be important. That I’d have a place in the world again. And by the time I realized they were wrong, I was stuck.”

It took Keira two tries to swallow the cookies in her mouth.

“Stuck how?”

“Stuck between, I guess. I don’t belong there, and I don’t belong here.” His shoulders slumped. “And then I found you. You’re beautiful and talented, but other than that”—he gave her a small smile—“you’re just like me. You know what it feels like to be stuck. To not belong wherever you are.”

He was right. Keira’d never felt like she was in the right place. She’d been working her whole life to get out—to get away. It had never occurred to her that she might feel equally misplaced once she got out of Sherwin.

Walker looked at her, spreading his palms open. “When I found you,
really
found you, it was the first time since my parents died that I didn’t feel alone.”

“Oh.
Oh.
” It was so exactly how Keira felt that she could barely breathe.

“
Oh
good or
oh
bad?”

“Good. No, really good. I hadn’t put it into words before. But that’s exactly it.”

Walker looked so relieved that it made her chest ache.

“Did you really think I’d break all of my own rules just because you were cute?” She sighed. “I wish we weren’t both so stuck. And I’m not talking about Sherwin.”

“I know. But we
will
figure it out. I swear.”

Keira stared around the room, her head full of questions she didn’t want to ask. She wanted things to be as normal as they looked. A shabby bed. A dented brass lamp. A glowing digital clock.

“Oh, crap! Is that really the time?!” Keira leapt off the bed, barely catching the towel before it fell.

“Yep,” Walker said. “So, what are we going to do about your mom?”

The way he said
we
made Keira feel calmer. Whatever happened next, she wouldn’t have to deal with it alone. She’d always pictured herself facing the hard things in her future on her own. Partnerless. Practically friendless. Sure, Susan would be in the background—a phone call away, if they needed each other.

Keira sure as hell needed Susan now. If Susan covered for her, then Keira’s mom wouldn’t freak out when she didn’t come home that night.

“Call her and ask,” Walker said.

Keira jumped like he’d slid an ice cube down her neck.

“Jesus Christ, don’t tell me you’re psychic, too.”

“Nope. But if you’re trying to pull one over on your mom, who do you call? Your best friend. I just did the math.” He tapped his temple.

“I don’t know if I can ask her to lie for me like that.”

Walker shrugged. “If you want, you can tell her you ran away to join the circus. But it’s your call. If you’d rather tell her the truth . . . ”

The thought turned Keira’s stomach. “She’d send me off to the mental ward before you could say ‘schizophrenic.’ I’ll call Susan.”

With each ring, her heart beat lower in her rib cage. When the voice mail message came on, Keira squeezed her eyes shut.

“Hey, it’s me,” Keira said. There was no way to even begin to explain what had happened. “God, I didn’t want to leave this on a voice mail. Things are really screwed up. I need your help. I mean, really genuinely life-or-death need your help. If either of my parents call you, please, please,
please
tell them I’m at your house. I can’t say why right now but . . . ” She bit her lip. She was asking a lot of Susan. Maybe she did owe her some of the truth. “If you can call me, I swear I’ll try to answer. I have a lot of things to explain to you. Until then, please cover for me. I’m begging you.”

She ended the call and looked at Walker. “How much can I tell her?”

He spread his hands in an I-don’t-know gesture. “As much as you think she can handle without freaking out, I guess.”

Keira chewed on her lip, considering that. She’d always trusted Susan with everything, but everything had never included something this bizarre . . . or this deadly.

“Do you think she’ll cover for you?” Walker asked.

Keira shrugged. “I hope so. I’m gonna call my mom now.”

She dialed her house, praying that the ancient answering machine would pick up.

“Hello?” her mother answered.

Shit.

“Um, hi,” Keira said.

“Honey. Where are you? It’s getting late—I was starting to worry.”

“I know. Sorry. Listen, I’m at Susan’s. I’m going to stay here tonight.”

Walker made a
longer
sort of gesture with his hands.

“Actually,” Keira said quickly, “I might stay for a couple of days.”

“You want to stay at Susan’s? For a couple of days?” Her mom sounded confused.

Keira knew what she had to say. She didn’t want to do it, but hurting her mother was the only way to keep herself safe.

She’ll be more upset if I end up dead.

She took a deep breath. “It’s just been so tense around the house, with you and dad . . . ” It was true, but it was also a complete lie. “It’s making me crazy. I need to get away from it for a couple of days.”

There was a long pause. On the other end of the phone, Keira could almost hear her mother crumbling.

“Oh.”

Another pause.

“Well.”

Silence.

Keira finally cracked. “Mom?” She was on the verge of retracting the whole thing and saying she’d run away to play piano in a blues band, when her mother finally spoke.

“I understand.” Her voice was an octave higher than usual and quivered with tears. “I wish it wasn’t this way. I don’t want the stress at home to affect you, but—” She stopped abruptly. “Okay. You can stay with Susan for a few days, but then you need to come home so that we can sort this out. As a family. We’re still a family, Keira, we’re just different now.”

Ain’t that the truth.

“Thanks,” Keira said, with honest relief in her voice. “I’ll call to check in.”

“I love you, Keira.”

Crap. She could hear her mother crying. Keira was acutely aware that she was leaving her mom broken and alone, in a house full of Darklings.

They can’t find her. She’s human. She’s why
I’m
half human.

The question that had been humming around the edges of Keira’s thoughts came soaring in.

So why hasn’t my dad ever bothered to tell me I’m half Darkling?