“Go on,” Walker said behind her. “The sooner we’re out of sight, the better.”
She shook herself, willing her frozen muscles to stir. In one fast move, she slithered into the cave on her belly. Inside, it was blacker than the devil’s own heart. Leaving just enough room for Walker to come in, Keira curled up against the slippery stone of the cave’s wall, shivering with fear and the exertion of the climb.
He pulled himself in next to her and they both turned to face the darkness at the back of the cave.
“Hello?” Keira called hesitantly.
The walls seemed to soak up her voice. Nothing responded to her—no answer. Not even an echo. The silence that followed was the most heartbreaking sound Keira had ever heard.
In the noiseless dark, a sob rose in her throat. She hadn’t realized how deeply she’d believed Pike would be waiting for her.
Walker pulled her against his side.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “This is a good place to hide. We’ll wait for the chaos to die down and then we’ll figure out a new plan. We can keep traveling, find some way that you can keep up with your music. . . . ”
Keira’s hands curled into fists at her sides. She could feel her whole life slipping through her fingers like sand. Juilliard was gone. Her family, Susan—all of it, gone. Just like that.
There was a snapping sound at the back of the cave. Before Keira could even ask Walker what it might have been, one of the peculiar Darkside lights began to glow in the recesses of the cave.
Keira leapt to her feet, ready to run, but clueless as to whether she should be running toward the light or away from it.
A figure stepped toward the lantern, shrouded in a heavy hooded cloak. Keira felt Walker’s protective presence behind her as she willed herself to call out again.
“Uncle Pike? Is that you?”
A hand reached up to pull back the hood and Keira leaned in, struggling to see. In the strange Darkside light, the face that appeared was thin and aged, but it was distinctly familiar.
Pike Sendson grinned at her. In the gloom of the cave, it looked like a skeletal rictus, instead of the charming smile she remembered. But still, she smiled back.
“Keira. You made it.” His voice was cracked and reedy, a long-unused instrument. He stretched his arms out to her, but when she didn’t go to him, he looked so wounded that his arms began to shake. Keira’s stomach knotted when she saw that he was missing most of the fingers on his right hand. “You look like Hope itself,” he said. “I’d almost given up. All these years, hiding and waiting—I thought maybe I’d been wrong about you. Misjudged. That happens, you know. Bad judgment.” He wrapped his arms around himself, rocking slowly back and forth in front of the lantern.
The desperation rolled off him in waves, pushing Keira back even though she wanted to run to him. Walker put a hand on her shoulder and Keira reached for it, covering his fingers with her own.
“Uncle Pike—”
“Uncle?” he interrupted her. His eyes cleared and he spoke with the same ringing confidence she remembered. “Don’t you know? Can you really have come all this way and not know?”
Keira grimaced. It was one thing to think of Pike as her father—her biological father—in the abstract. It was another to acknowledge it to him in person. For all his flaws, her true father was Dennis Brannon. He was the one who’d always been there when she needed him. Pike was a memory; a myth. “I know that you’re my father.”
He smoothed the front of his tattered robe again and again. “I imagine it’s not easy for you to accept that, but I hope in time you’ll be able to. I am prouder of you than anything else I’ve done in my life. I knew you were special the first moment you smiled up at me from your mother’s arms.” His face darkened. “Keira, you’re in a great deal of danger.”
“I know. That’s why we came. We read the note.” She stepped toward him.
“We?” The suspicion in Pike voice was shrill as a siren. The muscles in Keira’s legs bunched in response, begging her to back up—warning her to keep her distance. Pike’s eyes darted around the cave and his hands clutched ineffectively at the sides of his robe as though he’d lost not just his fingers but his grasp on reality, too.
“We. Walker and me. Walker was the one who found me,” she said.
Pike squinted at Walker, who waited outside the wavering lantern light. “I wanted a visitor, but I wasn’t expecting two. Two might be too many. Who are you, exactly?” he asked.
Walker stepped forward. “I’m Walker Andover.”
Pike wavered on his feet, stretching out an arm for balance. “Andover? But then you must be—that’s not possible—” he stammered. His eyes rolled wildly.