At least for a minute. Long enough for one more hug. A few last words before she ran away from Sherwin.
Her throat closed up, her panic choking her.
“So, do you want to tell me what happened with Susan?” Walker asked gently.
“I told her the truth.”
“You did what?”
“Don’t worry,” Keira growled. “She didn’t believe me. Not for a second. God, she barely believed that I didn’t sleep with Jeremy Reynolds.”
A muscle jumped in Walker’s jaw and she watched him struggle to stay focused.
“You didn’t believe me about Darkside at first either,” Walker pointed out.
Keira opened her mouth to contradict him, but he was right. That was the whole reason why she’d wanted to cross over in front of Susan in the first place—to prove herself. Why should she expect Susan to believe something Keira herself hadn’t wanted to accept? Especially when Susan wasn’t having the same strange visions of Darkside that had plagued Keira?
She rubbed her burning eyes.
“Everything is so screwed up,” she said.
She felt Walker’s hand on her knee. “Not everything,” he said.
Keira cracked open an eye.
“Okay,” she relented. “Almost everything. How can you turn into Mr. Silver Linings at a time like this?”
Walker cocked an eyebrow at her. “Because it’s necessary.” His face grew more serious. “I can’t have you sliding off into the abyss of despair. If we’re going to stay ahead of Smith and the Reformers, I need you on your toes.”
Keira stared out the window as the familiar streets slipped past.
“Where will we go?” she asked.
“I thought maybe New York,” Walker said. “The Darkside terrain there is difficult—it’s all steep mountains. They’re older and more stable than the part of the range that runs up north, but they’re still considered uninhabitable. I hear the same about Manhattan,” he joked, “but I know you’ve always wanted to go there. Juilliard may be out of the question, because it would pin us too publicly in one place, but we could find some way for you to play, and let the crowd hide us. It’s a start, at least.”
“Yeah. Okay. That makes sense.”
New York. It should have been a dream come true.
Instead, it was just another waking nightmare.
Chapter Forty-Three
THE SMELL OF TOMATO sauce wafted over Keira as soon as she walked in the door. Her mother hadn’t wasted any time starting dinner.
“We’re here,” she called.
“Oh, good. I was about to put some water on to boil for the pasta. Come on in and say hi,” her mother called back.
Walker touched Keira’s arm, stopping her as she headed for the kitchen.
I’ll go talk to your mom, he mouthed. You, he pointed a finger at her, go watch what they’re doing over there—he gestured toward the Hall of Records—and see if we need to be worried.
Keira’s eyes widened. She shook her head. What kind of chivalry was that, anyway? Hey, babe, why don’t you go check out the creepy noise in the basement?
She pointed back at Walker, her gesture telling him to do surveillance instead.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “It would look incredibly weird if I hung back while you went in the kitchen.”
Crap.
He was right. Keira heaved a sigh and nodded. Fine. She would go back to her bedroom and look Darkside. She was tough. She was independent. She could do this.
Walker headed into the kitchen. “It smells amazing, Mrs. Brannon.”
“Thanks, Walker, but please, call me Julia.”
Keira winced, immediately reminded of her parents’ problems. She wondered if her mother’s last name would even be Brannon much longer.
“Where’s Keira?” her mother asked.
“I think she went to change and get some clothes and stuff together.” Walker’s voice was a shade louder than was absolutely necessary and Keira knew he’d intended for her to hear the comment.
No time like the present, she thought. She walked down the hall to her room and stood next to her bed, facing her closet. She started to reach for Darkside and yelped as she felt the familiar squeezing chill of moving between two worlds. She braced her feet against the carpet, willing herself to stay in her room. It took all of her effort to push back the magnetlike draw of Darkside. With a soft pop of broken suction, she was back in her bedroom. What the hell? She hadn’t had any trouble staying out of Darkside this morning. Why was she slipping over so easily?
“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.