The Gathering Dark (42 page)

The Reformer in the center raised a hand, stopping the guard. “Our decision is final. Disobeying the Tribunal’s decision will result in both of your deaths. We are not
negotiating.
”

“I think we are,” Keira said quietly. She glanced down at the weapon that quivered in the guard’s hand. “You could kill us. But then you’d never get the information that’s trapped in the Hall. There’s no one else who can repair the damage for you.” She looked up at the hooded figures of the Tribunal. “You let us go home, or you lose all those records. Which do you prefer?”

The Tribunal bent their heads together without responding. Keira couldn’t tell if it was a good sign or a bad sign that they hadn’t bothered to leave the room to discuss their response, but what was done was done.

When they’d settled themselves on the bench again, the center Tribunal member nodded at Keira.

“Though we are not pleased by your impertinence, we concede that the Hall of Records is too valuable to lose. We will allow you to return home—if, and only if, you are able to repair the fabric of Darkside near the Hall.”

The Tribunal head turned to Pike. “Dr. Sendson, your life will also be spared, but not your punishment. You will remain here, imprisoned, for the rest of your natural days.” He motioned to the guard behind Pike, who seized him.

Pike struggled against the guard’s grasp. “No! You can’t! They’ll need my guidance! I’m the only one who understands it.”

The terror in his voice made the air itself quiver. For a moment, Pike seemed completely sane. It was as if the glowing, charismatic man her mother had always described was still in there somewhere. Now he’d be doubly imprisoned, once by the Reformers and once by his own mind. The idea crawled up Keira’s spine, raising goose bumps on her skin.

“Wait!” she called out. “You can’t take him! Pike—tell them how you can help us!”

But Pike didn’t even glance at her. His silence was absolute, as though he’d decided he agreed with the sentence the Tribunal had given him. How could she save him if he wouldn’t defend himself?

As they dragged him away, Keira wanted nothing more than to bury her face in Walker’s chest. Instead, she squared her shoulders and watched him go. When the heavy door swung shut behind him, she slumped down. She wondered if Smith was somewhere in the Reformers’ compound too. If he was, would he be in one of the cells, like Pike, or would he be walking the halls with the guards? She’d saved herself and
Walker, but the feeling that she’d failed Pike and Smith made the moment bittersweet.

The walls pressed in on her, as if the ocean that waited in her world was weighing on them.

She looked up at the Reformers.

“How are we supposed to get to the Hall?” she asked.

The startled jolt that ran through the Tribunal was so uniform that she wondered if anyone had ever dared to ask them for something so directly. She waited.

The Reformers needed her. They needed her badly enough that she could ask them for things in return for her help. She had every intention of reminding them of that. They could make her pay for her life, but they didn’t own her.

The centermost Tribunal member answered. “We will transport you back to the Hall of Records. You will repair the damage, restabilizing the Hall. And then you may cross back into your world, no closer than three hundred rescaps to the Hall.”

“Rescaps?” Keira asked.

“It’s a distance,” Walker whispered. “Like meters.”

“Oh.” She looked back at the Tribunal. “Fine. I accept your offer.”

The Tribunal shifted uncomfortably, clearly unaware that they’d still been negotiating. Keira ate the smile that wanted to creep across her face.

“Then you will leave immediately.” The Tribunal member hesitated. “Walker Andover? Will you go with her, or do you require separate transport?”

Keira glanced over. Walker’s eyes were wide with surprise. He cleared his throat. “I will go with her, your Eminences.”

“Fine.” The Tribunal member waved them away. “You are dismissed.”

As the guards led them from the room, Walker wrapped his arm around Keira’s shoulders. For the second time that day, her feet barely seemed to touch the ground. But this time, she felt like she was flying.

“We can do this, right?” he whispered, as the guards ushered them down the hall. “If we fail . . . ”

Keira slid her arm around his waist. “We won’t fail. We won’t.” She put as much confidence as she could muster into the words. After all, they’d already fixed parts of Darkside—twice. They could do it again.

They
had
to do it again.

She hadn’t come this far just to lose everything in the end.

Chapter Fifty-Four

T
HE TRIP BACK TO
the Hall of Records may have taken an eternity. Keira couldn’t tell. She didn’t care. The Darklings put them in the windowless belly of a strange contraption that they called a transporter. It was something like a cross between a bulldozer and a stagecoach made of a material that looked like graphite.

But she was alone in the compartment with Walker. There was no one to interrupt them and no risk of accidentally crossing into Darkside. With everything riding on their success at the Hall of Records, there was also no way to tell if this was the first moment they could touch each other without holding back—or if it was the last.

The transporter lurched into motion, clacking rhythmically as it moved across Darkside, and Keira launched herself into Walker’s waiting arms.

In the near darkness, their lips met with the tenderness and ferocity of a kiss that was unlike any other they’d shared. They weren’t going to crash through into Darkside. They’d already fallen through that barrier. They’d already fallen in love. There was nothing left to keep them apart.

The unexpected scrape of Walker’s teeth against her bottom lip was like a match against tinder—it set Keira on fire so fast that her legs buckled.

Walker caught her without breaking their kiss. Gently, he lowered both of them to the floor between the seats. The floor was hard and the space not quite big enough for the two of them, but Keira barely noticed. She just wrapped herself more tightly around Walker, sliding her palms across his skin and gasping when he slipped his own hand beneath her shirt. His fingers traced the shape of her ribs and Keira arched into his touch.

He lifted his mouth from hers, pulling back to look at her. She could barely see his eyes in the darkness.

“Do you remember back in the hotel? When I promised to make up for all that lost time, once it was safe?” Walker asked softly.

“I remember,” she whispered.

Walker’s fingertips swept across her waist. Every inch of her that wasn’t being touched ached to be next.

He propped himself up, his body hovering over hers, the same way he had that morning in the hotel. Keira’s breath went ragged.

“Good,” he whispered. “Because I love you. And I intend to take back every single minute that I didn’t get to touch you”—his lips grazed her neck—“starting now.”

The rest of the trip was a blur of warm skin and soft mouths and whispered promises. When the clacking of the transporter stopped suddenly, Keira sat up so fast that she nearly cracked Walker’s nose.

“Are we here?” she asked, struggling to pull her slowly disintegrating clothes back into place. Her shirt was tattered, and the fabric at the shoulders was so thin it was nearly transparent.

Walker ducked into what remained of his shirt, and Keira stared regretfully at his clothed chest.

“Probably,” he said.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the door flew open. Keira had to close her eyes against the Darkside light that flooded the compartment. The intensity of its strange glow hurt her eyes.

“The Hall of Records,” the guard said simply.

Keira saw the listing Hall, surrounded by the ring of gnarled trees. Shimmering on the other side of it was her own neighborhood, quiet beneath the night sky.

The night sky—they’d been gone almost a whole day?

Keira stumbled out onto the unsteady ground. It was like
having sea legs on land. At first, Keira thought it was from being in the transporter, or from too many emotions being stuffed into one day. She took a few tentative steps and saw Walker waver next to her, trying to catch his balance.

It wasn’t them. It was Darkside itself. It had been so destabilized by all the crossings that she could barely stand. In her own world, she could see her house, not very far from where they stood, but still completely unreachable.

The guard next to her held out a blanket.

Not a blanket. A robe. There was one in his other hand too. Walker grabbed it and flung it around his shoulders, fastening it at his throat. It was just like the hooded robes she’d seen Smith and the other Darklings wear in the Hall of Records. It wasn’t as bad as the leathery robes the guards wore, but she still recoiled from it.

“I’ll wear my regular clothes, thanks,” she said. “It’s not that cold.”

The guard huffed. “The Reformers insist.”

“It’s just a robe.” Walker’s voice was softer. “Underneath it, you’ll still have your own clothes. You’ll still be yourself. Also—this won’t disintegrate over here. Which
I
think is a damn shame, but I’m guessing you don’t want to end up naked in front of the guards and the Reformers and whoever else is around?”

She shook her head.

“Come on. I’ll help you fasten it. Turn around.”

Keira spun in a neat half circle, stopping as she faced the Hall of Records, which tilted like a sinking ship.

Walker draped the robe over her shoulders, and she was surprised to find that it was light and silky-soft against her skin.

“Oh!” she breathed. “It feels nice.”

Walker brushed a kiss against the back of her neck as he hooked the clasp at her throat. His fingers lingered by her collarbones and she shivered all over again, though she wasn’t in the least bit cold.

“You feel nice too. Come on. Let’s go pay our debt,” he whispered.

A sudden rush of nerves overwhelmed Keira. She managed a nod, and he put a reassuring hand on her shoulder in response. She could see the piano, right in front of the Hall of Records’s entrance. It was a nicer one than she’d played for the Tribunal. The lacquer was still smooth and shiny. They must have brought it into Darkside very recently for it to be in such good condition.

Standing next to the piano was a single robed figure. “You may begin,” he murmured. It was one of the Reformers. She’d recognize that voice anywhere.

No hello. No thank you. Just—you may begin.

Fine, then.

Keira slid onto the piano bench. She ran a set of scales to warm up, in spite of the wooden sound of the notes and the impatient shifting of the Reformer next to the piano. It was
hard to relax—hard to focus—while she was being watched so intently. She could feel the stares of the guards, who were impossibly curious about what they were about to witness.

Walker settled himself behind her on the bench and tucked his chin over her shoulder. “Ignore them,” he whispered. “Ignore all of them.”

With Walker wrapped securely around her, Keira felt shielded from the prying gazes. Her fingers moved more fluidly against the keys and she could feel a new piece in her hands, begging to be played. It crowded out the other music she knew, pushing aside Beethoven and Bach and even Keira’s own compositions.

“I think I should play something new,” she whispered.

“I can’t wait to hear it.” His lips grazed her ear.

Without preamble, she launched into the music that filled her head. It was sharp-edged and staccato, full of the anxiety of being captured by the Reformers and the terror that they would never be let go. Though the song began with a jittery feel, it built with a steady rhythm, headed toward an explosive arpeggio. She leaned in hard to reach the last notes. As she stretched toward the top of the keyboard, she abandoned herself to that same soaring feeling she’d had when the Reformers had agreed to release them if she fixed the Hall. Walker’s mouth found the hollow below her ear as his hand pressed against her thigh, steadying her on the bench.

The notes suddenly sounded the same against her ears as
they did in her head, and she knew what was coming next.

The snap that went through Darkside didn’t rattle her. Keira kept playing, determined to reach the end of the piece. The final, aching crescendo slipped from her fingers and hung in the newly strengthened fabric of Darkside itself. Keira lifted her hands from the crumbling keys, but Walker wrapped his arms around her more tightly.

They both looked over at the Reformer who stood with his arms crossed and his head bowed.

It looked as if he were praying.

Eventually, he raised his head and looked from the piano to the front of the Hall and back.

Keira’s heart was thumping so loudly that it was hard to hear him when he finally spoke.

From the voluminous folds of his own robe, the Reformer reached out a hand and ran his fingers through the air, as though testing the thickness of the space. “It will be strong enough for us to access the records again. It is acceptable.”

Turning away from them, the Reformer called over the nearest guard.

“Disassemble the fence,” he ordered. “The Sorters may be allowed back in. The Hall is safe.”

Keira felt Walker slump behind her on the bench as the tension drained out of him. Still, her own spine refused to soften. They’d fulfilled the conditions of their release. The Reformer himself had said so, but he hadn’t bothered to thank them.

Keira disliked being treated like a . . . well. Like an experiment.

A transport vehicle like the one that had carried Keira and Walker back to the Hall rumbled into view.

“You may go behind the building and cross from there.” The Reformer turned to go.

Behind the building? That would put them in Jeremy’s yard. It wasn’t far from her house, but Keira could think of a lot of places she’d rather reappear in the human world. Before she could protest, the Reformer climbed into the belly of the transporter and he was gone.

Walker slid his hand beneath Keira’s robe and hooked his finger into the belt loop of her jeans. The guards were busily taking down the fence, stacking the sections haphazardly against one of the lampposts.