She stumbled over to the ancient computer that her parents kept in the dining room. After it finally wheezed to life and plodded its way onto the Internet, she typed “dark matter” into the search engine.
The results brought her simmering headache to a rolling boil. There were university pages and online encyclopedias and astrophysics journals, but even the most simple-looking introductory sites were full of physics terms she didn’t understand and numberless equations that didn’t make any sense.
She picked through it like a dish of spoiled berries, looking for something worth eating. Here and there she caught a sentence, once or twice even a whole paragraph, that she could grasp.
Walker had been telling the truth. Scientists seemed to agree that for the universe to work the way it did, there had to be something more out there than the stuff that humans could see.
Something invisible.
Something dark.
Something that worked exactly how Walker said it had. The molecules moved through the regular world without anyone feeling them, hearing them, or seeing them.
Except Keira.
There were pages and pages about the experiments scientists were doing to find dark matter—smashing atoms together in Switzerland, arguing about theories at Berkeley—and part of her wanted to laugh, because she’d already found what they were looking for.
They might as well hand over the Nobel Prize now.
She flipped off the computer and went back to the piano. She didn’t even put her hands on the keyboard. She just sat there, looking at the black keys nestled so neatly between the white ones, the same way Walker’s world pressed up against hers. The difference was, she liked having both kinds of keys on the piano. She wasn’t at all sure she liked having an extra world in her life.
Vaguely, she heard the furnace shut off, and then later kick on again, driving out the chill that had settled in the room. The house phone rang a couple of times. Once, Keira heard her mother leave a message, saying she’d be back later that night. The other times, the line disconnected after the machine picked up.
She knew it was Walker.
Finally, his voice drifted through the living room. “Keira, please. Call me back. I know this must be hard to understand, to accept, but—there are still things I need to tell you. Please.” There was a pause, then a click as he hung up.
Her back stiff, Keira stood up from the piano and turned off the answering machine, setting the phone’s ring volume to silent. Slowly, the trepidation seeped out of her and questions started to shape themselves around what little Walker had told her about Darkside.
If what he’d said was true, then did it really mean her father wasn’t human? Was that why he and her mother fought all the time? And how the hell had Walker found her, anyway?
The danger Walker’d hinted at sent a shiver through her. She had to call Susan. There must be some way to warn her about Smith without sounding completely insane.
Keira grabbed her cell phone and turned it on before she could second-guess the decision. Or, twenty-second-guess the decision, more like. As soon as the screen glowed to life, she punched the speed dial for Susan’s phone.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Keira. Oh, my God, I’ve been calling and calling. Are you okay?”
Keira’s mouth went dry. Susan knew already? Had Smith said something himself?
“Keira?” Susan’s worry poured through the phone.
“Sorry. I . . . ” She forced back a crazed giggle. “I don’t know if I’m okay or not, actually.”
“I don’t blame you. Why didn’t you call me right away?” Susan said. “My mom ran into your mom at the mall earlier. She told her about your parents separating. Keira—I’m really sorry. I knew they fought a lot, but I didn’t know it was that bad.”
Oh. Right. Her parents.
“I guess I was too shocked to talk.” Keira blew out a long breath. “But yeah. I’m ninety-eight percent sure my dad’s having an affair.”
“Oh, crap. That’s horrib—” A call-waiting beep interrupted Susan. “—ow could he do that to you g—” Beeeeep.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know,” she said over another beep. She knew without checking that it was Walker, calling again. She was tempted to dump him into voice mail.
“Who’s beeping in?” Susan asked.
“No one,” Keira said a beat too quickly.
“Walker?” Susan asked, her voice cooling.
“Yeah,” Keira admitted. “We’re—he’s . . . Things got kind of complicated.”
Susan sighed. “Smith said that might happen.”
Keira finally understood what people meant when they said their blood ran cold. Her skin seemed to freeze from the inside out. “He did?”
“Yeah. I’m so sorry. But listen, Smith said something about having some friends who’d be really interested in meeting you. Guys who are way more important than Walker, he said.”
Keira leaned her forehead against the wall. What guys was Smith talking about? Susan had no idea what she’d gotten herself into. Actually, neither did Keira.