The Gathering Dark Read Online Free Page B

instead. “Tomorrow.”
    She hung up and stretched out on the bed. The remembered sounds of the sonata rang in her ears, and while she listened, she saw Walker’s gray eyes staring back at her from her thoughts. She tried to see the notes instead, but no matter how much she worked at it, his eyes were still there, watching her from behind the music.

Chapter Four
    W HEN SHE WOKE UP , the clock on her nightstand said that it was three in the morning. Groggy, Keira sat up and looked at the textbook still splayed open on her bed. Crap. How could she have fallen asleep without doing any of her homework? She couldn’t let her grades slip any lower.
    Cursing, she slid off the bed and stumbled down the hall toward the kitchen in search of a snack. She needed something that would keep her awake long enough to write a limerick about 1930s politics that Mrs. Eddiston would deem worthy of a passing grade.
    The bluish glow of the streetlight filtered in through thewindow, giving her barely enough light to see. On the counter next to the sink sat a single, lonely piece of fruit. A puddle of shadow surrounded it, like a spotlight in reverse. It looked like a banana, except the skin was as red and shiny as an apple’s.
    Great. Dad’s shopping at the fancy grocery store again.
    Her mother would have a fit—she was always griping about Keira’s dad’s “champagne tastes.” Exotic food wasn’t in the budget.
    Keira reached for the fruit, but her fingers wouldn’t close around its smooth skin. They curled in on themselves, as though she’d grabbed at empty air. She blinked hard, clearing the last of the sleep-fog from her eyes. There was definitely something on the counter. She could see the stem, the bruised spot along one side. She reached for it again, her fingers slipping through the pool of inky shadow.
    Her heart twisted in her chest. Something was wrong. Really wrong.
    She grabbed for the fruit one more time, hoping it was all a dream. An optical illusion. A mistake.
    The overhead light flicked on, flooding the kitchen with its glare, and Keira barely managed to bite down on a shriek before it escaped her mouth.
    “Keira? What are you doing up? It’s the middle of the night.” Her father stood squinting in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. His face was marked with ridges from the throw pillows. He was sleeping on the couch. Again.
    “I fell asleep before I finished my homework,” she said. “I needed a snack to wake up enough to do it.”
    She gestured at the counter, which was empty and worn and scratched. There was no weird fruit. No weird shadows, either. It had all disappeared.
    Her father scratched at his stubbly chin. “Well, hurry. I don’t want you exhausted tomorrow. You don’t get enough sleep as it is. It makes me worry, you know.” He shuffled back into the living room, not even bothering with any pretext of going back into the bedroom.
    Her empty stomach forgotten, Keira walked over to the light switch. She flipped off the light and stared at the counter while her eyes adjusted to the dark. The shadow was gone. The fruit was gone.
    It was never there in the first place, she reasoned. A trick, like some sort of eyestrain. Or migraine. Maybe I was sleepwalking or something.
    She clung to all of the rational explanations, ignoring the sense-memory in her fingers of the cool, liquid dark of the shadow.
    It. Was. Just. A. Fluke.
    Limericks . That’s what I need to be thinking about.
    Keira walked back to her safe, normal, lamp-lit room. On the bed, her history book waited. When she reached for the cover, it was smooth and hard beneath her hand. Solid. Normal.
    It was the only time Keira could ever remember feeling relieved to open a textbook. With a sigh, she settled down and started to read.
    •  •  •
    “He might not be working today,” Keira warned Susan. In front of them, Take Note’s glass door shone in the almost-warm March sun. “It’s not like he told me his schedule