The Gathering Dark (34 page)

“What’s with the shrieking? You okay back there?” her mother called.

“Fine,” Keira called back. “I stubbed my toe.”

Much, much more carefully, she looked for the other world, barely dipping a fingertip of her awareness into it. It snapped into view immediately, sharp and clear as broken glass.

The Hall itself was still listing to one side, but the scurry of activity around it had stopped. The fence that she’d seen the guards constructing earlier had been finished and reinforced, and guards stood at regular intervals around it, their backs to the building.

Watching.

Waiting.

The one closest to her lifted a hand. Keira was sure he’d seen her somehow. He seemed a breath away from pointing at her and shouting, but instead he adjusted the shoulder of his robe and dropped his hand back down by his side.

Keira shuddered. The Darkside wind that always seemed to be blowing ruffled her hair.

Keira pulled herself all the way back into her bedroom. She realized with a shock that she was having trouble keeping
Darkside
out
of view, instead of the other way around. Before, it had always been something that disappeared unless she was focused on seeing it. Or unless Walker was touching her. The sudden effort of keeping only her own world in view sent a wave of worried nausea through her.

Walker could see both worlds any time he wanted to. Was this what it was like for him?

Sympathy clanged through Keira, making her head ache. It was horrible. How did he do it?

Her mother’s voice floated in from the kitchen, followed by Walker’s rumbling laugh. Keira shook herself, remembering that she was supposed to be changing. She pulled off Susan’s clothes and wondered if it would look weird if she showered.

She decided it would.

With a sigh, she pulled on a clean bra and underwear, trying not to think about it too hard as she reached for the prettiest ones in her drawer. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but what the hell. Maybe Walker would see them. Who knew? She was owed a little optimism, right?

Trying to hurry, she pulled a pair of jeans and a white cami out of the closet and added a purple corduroy shirt on top. The purple of the shirt and the dark denim of the jeans would be decent for hiding Darkside if she had to. The cami was practical—layers seemed practical.

She threw on socks and a pair of running shoes, remembering the ballet-flat disaster from that morning.

Fine. She was dressed.

Keira grabbed an empty bag from the corner of her closet and stuffed in a few extra pairs of everything, a hairbrush and her deodorant, and threw the bag on her bed.

Before she zipped it, Keira reached to snatch the car charger for her phone off of her desk. Her gaze landed on the little framed picture next to the cord. In the photo, she was about ten. Her parents had taken her to the beach for an impromptu picnic and her mother had asked a nice-looking girl to take their picture. Keira and her parents stood, their arms tangled around each other, squinting into the sun. They had matching sunburns across their noses, matching windblown hair, matching smiles. It was the smiles that broke her heart.

Keira snatched the picture off her desk and slipped it into the bag too. She wiped her eyes. They’d be wondering what was taking her so long. It was time to go, and she turned to leave her room. She tried not to think about everything she was leaving. She tried not to think about saying good-bye.

It was just too terrifying.

Keira stopped in the bathroom to grab her toothbrush and splash some water on her blotchy face before she headed back to the kitchen. It didn’t matter. Walker and her mother still looked worried when they caught sight of her expression. Keira dropped her bag in the corner.

“You okay?” Walker asked quietly.

“Fine,” she said. Her mother turned to open the pantry and Keira shot Walker a look that she hoped said,
Oh, my God, we are in seriously deep shit
. He looked alarmed, which—ironically—left her feeling relieved.

“Oh, no!” Her mom spun around, her eyes scanning the counter.

“What?” Keira and Walker asked in unison.

“I’m out of spaghetti.” She glanced desperately at the simmering tomato sauce and boiling water. “Shoot. Um, let me, uh . . . ”

Keira watched her mother flail for an answer. “Walker and I could go get some more?” she suggested.

“No, no,” her mom snatched her purse off the counter. “Just keep an eye on the sauce for me. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. You can play for a bit—I know Susan doesn’t have a piano.” It sounded a little bit like an apology and Keira glanced at Walker, wondering exactly how hard he’d had to work to charm her mother out of her suspicions.

The garage door slammed and Keira looked at Walker.

“Oh, my God, Walker, it’s
right there.
” She kept her voice low, aware that her mother hadn’t driven away yet. “There’s practically nothing between us and Darkside.” Her voice rose and Keira stopped, fighting for control. “I have to work
not
to see both places at once. It’s making my eyes hurt. How do you
do
that?”

She pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to slow the beat of her pulse.

Walker crossed the kitchen in two enormous strides and wrapped his arms around her.

“It’s not easy. I know,” he whispered against the crown of her head. She could feel the worlds sliding beneath them like the shifting of dry sand. Walker’s breath puffed out, stirring her hair. He was the one keeping them from crossing over and she knew it. Keira tried to focus, to help him, but it was too hard. As comforting as it was to feel his chest beneath her cheek, the effort of staying out of Darkside made her head feel like a pincushion. She pulled away.

His smile was bittersweet. “Come on,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I know exactly what will make you feel better.” He tugged her toward the living room.

Keira stood in the doorway for a moment, staring at her piano. The wood gleamed in the evening light. It looked for all the world like it was beaming at her—like it was as excited to see her as she was to pull out the bench, flip on the lamp, and play.

More than her room, this was what she thought of when she pictured
home.
Leaving her belongings behind was hard; leaving her piano behind was impossible.

“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered. “I don’t want the last time I play it to be . . . like this.”

Walker put his hands on her shoulders. He stepped in close behind her, his body pressing against hers, warm and solid.

The touch made her shiver in spite of his heat.

“If you pass up your last chance to play your own piano just because you don’t want to say good-bye, you’ll wish a thousand times that you had this moment back.” He leaned his head against hers. “Come on—I’ll be right there with you.”

Keira let him guide her across the room. She couldn’t bear to play, but he was right. Not playing would hurt more. The pain was worth it if she could have one more memory of her piano.

Chapter Forty-Four

K
EIRA TRAILED HER FINGERS
silently over the flat whole notes and the intimate ridges of the black half-step keys that interrupted them. She was vaguely aware of Walker, leaning against the windows, over her shoulder, just out of sight. Taking a breath, Keira rocked forward and ran a set of scales at lightning speed. The stiffness vanished from her fingers and her shoulders relaxed. Darkside didn’t seem quite so close with her focus fixed on the piano, and as it receded, so did her headache.

The Beethoven sonata was open on the music stand and Keira launched into it, feeling herself strengthen with each note. The arpeggios wrapped around her, weaving her frayed
edges back together. Her skin hummed with the music, alight with the feeling of coming back to herself.

This was where she belonged.

This was who she was.

She didn’t care about Darkside. She didn’t care about Susan. She didn’t care about her parents. She didn’t even care about Juilliard. All that mattered was playing herself back into one piece. A tiny thread of her awareness stretched behind her to where Walker stood.

With a start, she realized that she still cared about him, even as the notes swept away everything else. Instead of weakening her connection to the music she played, he made it stronger. She was playing for both of them. She needed him to hear the music as much as she needed to create it.

She reached the end of the second movement, but as she turned the page to begin the Allegretto, Walker quietly cleared his throat. Keira glanced at him, the question in her eyes but not on her lips.

“Play something of yours?” he asked. “Please?”

The heat in his eyes was like nothing Keira had ever seen before. It made the glow that came with his wanting little jokes look dim. This was a bonfire. A solar flare. A supernova.

She nodded and turned back to the piano. When her fingers dropped onto the keys, she felt exposed, vulnerable, more than if she’d been standing in front of him naked. Her body was just her body. Her music was part of her soul.

The scariest part was how badly she wanted to give him her music—to give him all of her.

She closed her eyes and began to play. Her fingers automatically found the melody from the day he’d taken her to the shore. It spilled out of the piano, crashing through the room the way the waves had battered the rocky point. Keira couldn’t hear Walker’s steps over the music, but she could feel him drawing closer. She perched on the edge of the piano bench and reached for the soaring, twisting notes that brought back the memory of the two of them alone in the fog. The music stretched up toward its peak as Walker slid onto the bench behind her. His legs rested on either side of hers and his arms wrapped around her middle, loose enough to leave her room to play but tight enough that they supported her too.

The intense, yearning arpeggio that represented the kiss she’d imagined happening that day rang through the room. Walker pressed his lips against the back of her neck as her fingers moved against the keys. The sensation of his mouth against her skin shot through her, like the last tumbler of a lock falling into place with an enormous
click
.

It wasn’t until she realized how completely still Walker had become that Keira’s fingers slipped off the keys.

The
click
hadn’t been in her head.

It had been an actual sound, as real as the notes from her piano.

Walker stood and Keira spun to face him. Something was
different, and it took her a moment to figure out exactly what that was.

Her headache was gone. She wasn’t struggling to keep Darkside out of view. Stunned, she reached for it, looking for the tree that should have stretched over her like a canopy. No matter how hard she battered against the membrane of her reality, she couldn’t see past it.

“It’s gone,” Walker gasped. “I can’t—” He snapped his head around to look at Keira. “I can’t see Darkside. Can you?”

She shook her head.

“Hang on.” He ran for her bedroom as Keira waited in the eerily empty living room. A tiny corner of her mind was amused that she’d gotten to a point where she was disturbed by
not
seeing strange, dark visions. But it was a very tiny corner of her mind.

The rest of her was freaking out.

“I can still see it in here,” Walker called. He sounded relieved, but there was an edge to his words.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Well, for one thing, I don’t know why I can see Darkside in your bedroom but not in the living room. And for another, the guards are panicking.” He strode back into the living room, his handsome face twisted into a grimace. “They’re all running.”

Keira looked around the room, feeling blindfolded in spite of her sight.

“Running where?” She sat down on the edge of the piano bench.

“Away, for now,” Walker said. “They’re just
scattering
. But I’m sure they’ll be back.” He shook his head slowly. “Nothing like that has ever happened. I don’t know exactly how, but something pulled Darkside back together. It’s all rippled and thick, like a scar. But it looks more solid than any part of Darkside I’ve ever seen.” His face was white as bone.

“It happened while I was playing,” she said. “Do you think maybe . . . ?” The end of her question died in her throat.

The muscles of Walker’s throat jumped as he swallowed. “If you did that, somehow, then we have a way to save you. The Reformers would never kill someone who could undo the damage the rest of the Experimentals did to our world.”

“But I’ve never done anything like that before—at least, I don’t think I have. If I don’t know how I managed to stitch Darkside back together, how will I be able to do it again?”

Keira ran her hand over the wood trim beneath the keyboard. Besides the scratch from her metronome, the bottom of the keyboard was the only damaged place on the piano. It was scarred by a long row of slashes and crosshatches that had been scratched into the wood. They’d been there when Keira had gotten the piano. She used to rub them when she was nervous, feeling the pattern of them against her fingers.

Keira’s fingers stopped. Her breath hiccupped in her throat.

She hadn’t looked at the scratches in so long, she’d almost forgotten what they looked like. In one swift movement, Keira pushed the bench out of the way and ducked beneath the piano.
It felt awkward—she hadn’t sat beneath the instrument since she was a little girl. She had to twist her neck uncomfortably in order to see the scratches. The sight of them made her mouth dry and her palms moist.

“Keira?” Walker sounded worried. “What are you doing?”

“I think you need to see this,” she said simply, unable to find the words to explain.

Walker folded himself into the space beneath the piano, next to her.

“Look.” Keira pointed at the etchings above them. “Is it the same as what was on the outside of those needle boxes in the Hall of Records? It is, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Walker said, his eyes traveling back and forth over the slashes and crosshatches. “It’s writing. Darkside writing.” He looked at her, biting his lip uncertainly. “The message is addressed to you.”