There was nowhere for her to go, and Keira felt trapped. She needed out—out of the house, out of this hopeless situation, out of this mess of her life.
Walker tried to help her with her bag, but Keira hitched it over her own shoulder.
“Thanks, but I’ve got it,” she said.
“Proud,” he accused, but there was a light in his eyes that made Keira feel the smallest bit better.
“I’ll call you,” she promised her mother again. She wanted to make one she could actually keep.
“You’d better,” her mother said, turning to the dishes. It was probably supposed to be a warning, but it sounded more like a plea.
Before she could lose her nerve—or her mind—Keira turned for the front door. She glanced at her piano. The keys seemed to smile at her. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t gone to her piano to solve her problems.
Pike’s words echoed in her mind. If the music made sense to her, it would save them. Nothing in the world made as much sense to her as the piano. If Walker could figure out where Pike was, then they had a real chance at figuring out how to satisfy the Reformers and stay alive, too. She was sure of it.
Keira held on to that tiny kernel of hope as she hurried out into the failing light with Walker. The night crept around them, and Keira worked to keep Darkside out of sight. Proving to herself that she was still strong enough to do it.
Proving that she could still see her life however she wanted, wherever she wanted.
“So, which is it?” Walker asked, opening his door. “Hunt for Pike or go to New York?”
Keira looked over at him, blinking as Darkside flashed behind him for a moment before she forced it away.
She wanted this not to be good-bye. She wanted to come home again.
“Pike,” she said. “I know it’s risky. But let’s go anyway. I don’t want to run forever.”
She got in the car and buckled her seat belt.
Ready or not, she thought, here I come.
Chapter Forty-Six
WALKER DROVE THROUGH TOWN, weaving through neighborhoods. Keira could see him thinking. A familiar little furrow had appeared between his eyebrows, and she kept her mouth shut, concentrating on plugging her phone charger into his fancy dashboard while he thought things through. She turned her attention to Darkside, letting it slip into view. Though the sight of two worlds moving past the car window turned her stomach, it eased the ache of trying to hold Darkside at a distance. As they reached the edge of town, the Darkside forest gave way to rockier terrain. Beyond it, where the edge of Maine trailed off into the ocean, Keira could see the Darkside mountains. They were craggy and treeless, the Darkside stone glimmering beneath the strange, ever-moving stars.
“Isn’t there an ocean Darkside?” she asked, forgetting her plan to let Walker think uninterrupted.
“Not here,” Walker said. “Those are the Novitiate mountains. They go for a long way, and beyond them there’s another forest, like the one here. There’s another city or two on the other side of the mountains, but they’re in the middle of the Atlantic in this world, so it’s pretty much impossible to cross back and forth from there.”
Walker stopped talking as abruptly as if someone had clapped a hand over his mouth.
“What?” Keira asked.
Walker ran a hand through his hair. “At the north edge of the mountains, there are these caves. They’re beneath your ocean and the peaks are really unstable, because the fabric of Darkside is still weak from when the mountains formed. No one goes there. It would be like camping on top of a lake covered with paper-thin ice.”
“Thin as thread,” Keira said, the pieces falling into place.
“A rocky haven,” Walker agreed. “No one goes in or out of the caves.”
“In a watery grave,” she finished, “because crossing over would put you under the Atlantic Ocean. That’s where he is. It has to be!”
Walker was silent.
“We’re likely to get killed trying to find him there,” he finally said.
“You don’t have to go. I’m the one the Reformers are after. Take me as far as the coast, and I can go the rest of the way myself.” Keira’s chest felt empty as she said the words, but she meant them. She didn’t want Walker to get hurt again. The memory of him lying bleeding and broken on the floor at the Hall of Records stung her.
He put on his turn signal.
“Not a chance.” His voice was steely. She’d never heard him sound like that. He looked over at her. The ticktickticktick of the turn signal measured out the seconds as he stared at her. “I threw in my lot with you ages ago,” he said. “The Reformers want me as much as they want you, now. I betrayed them when I chose to protect you. Please don’t question that.”
She swallowed hard and his eyes softened.
“Please,” he said.
She reached for him, grateful and apologetic at once, but as her fingers grazed his neck, headlights illuminated the car from behind them.