The Gathering Dark (7 page)

Walker looked both smug and relieved. “Good.”

“Hey. Bad day, huh?” said the tow truck driver. The embroidered name patch on his coveralls read
Shrimp.

Keira stood up, grabbing her backpack. “You could say that.”

“Dispatch says I’m takin’ this over to Brutti’s Body Shop?”

“Yes, please.” Keira looked around, hitching her book bag up onto her shoulder.

“Need a ride?” Shrimp asked. His eyebrows lifted slightly, the tip of his tongue wetting his bottom lip in a way that made Keira’s stomach turn.

She felt Walker behind her—not stepping in and not taking over, but still behind her. Still watching.

“No, I’m good, thanks.” She was glad to be able to say it.

“A’ight,” he sighed. “They’ll call you when they’s got an estimate.”

Keira nodded and headed for Walker’s sleek black Mercedes sedan. She couldn’t wait to get away from the twisted remains of her own car and in front of her piano, where she could forget about the whole disastrous day.

“You sure you’re okay?” Walker asked as Shrimp loaded
the remains of her car onto the back of the tow truck. “I can’t believe that you got out of there completely unhurt like that.”

Keira followed his gaze, seeing how deeply the driver’s side was bowed in. She shivered, holding her ribs where the door handle had slammed into them. But they felt fine. Perfect, even.

“I’m just tough, I guess,” she said. It would have sounded a lot more convincing without the quiver in her voice.

“Yeah, I got that. You’re not gonna let me open your door for you, are you?” Walker hesitated for a moment at the back of the car. The fading sunlight tangled in his hair, glimmering around his head like a halo.

Keira slipped around him to the passenger side. “Not a chance.”

“One step at a time,” he muttered, clicking open the doors with his key fob.

Keira slid into the car. The smell of Walker surrounded her. A steel travel coffee mug sat in the cup holder, and the floor was littered with paper napkins and straw wrappers.

Walker climbed in next to her and started the car. The engine turned over on the first try. Keira tried not to be jealous.

“Nice car,” she said mildly.

“Thanks,” said Walker, slinging an arm behind her leather seat. He turned to look out the back window as he pulled out of the parking space. “You’d think someone would’ve noticed that I’d stolen it by now.”

Keira froze in her seat. “You’re—are you kidding?”

“Um, yeah. I am.”

A muscle in her jaw jumped as she clenched her teeth.

“Do I really look like someone who would steal a car?” he asked incredulously.

“Listen, I barely know you,” she said defensively.

“Fair,” he said, hesitating at the edge of the parking lot. “But that’s only because you tried to go running off before we finished talking earlier. Which way?” He gestured toward the street.

“East to Madison and then right,” she said.

“So, no, the car’s not stolen. I came here with . . . I mean, my parents left me enough money for a lousy car and a decent apartment, or a nice car and a crappy apartment.”

“And you picked the
car
?”

A wash of pink in Walker’s cheeks revealed a hint of embarrassment. “I’m a guy,” he said. “Of course I picked the car.”

Seeing his bravado momentarily waver softened Keira.

“I guess everyone has that one thing that they can’t resist spending money on, huh?” she said. “Susan’s always harping at me about how I could have better clothes or a decent car if I didn’t spend so much money on music.”

“Exactly.” He relaxed, looping one hand through the steering wheel. “But I don’t think you need better clothes. You’d only be torturing the male population of Sherwin.”

He wasn’t the first guy who’d told her she was hot, but he was the first one who’d ever said it in a way that made her feel
beautiful. He made it sound like something obvious. The compliment warmed her more quickly than the heat streaming out of the air vents.

Walker turned onto Madison and Keira gasped.

There was a door in the middle of the road. A door, standing there all on its own, like the entrance to some sort of grand house that had moved away and left it behind. It was intricately carved, with a pattern of circles and interconnected lines. It had a worn metal handle, but with only the bleak meridian of Madison Street behind it, there didn’t seem to be any reason to open it. In front of the door, a swath of impossibly dark shadow lay like a doormat.

Or a threshold.

Walker drove straight toward the door, completely oblivious to it. Part of her wanted to scream that she was about to be in a second car wreck in as many hours, but she watched the car in front of them pass through it like a mirage.

Because I’m hallucinating. Again.
It was exactly like what had happened with the fruit in the kitchen.
Oh, God.

She reached up to touch the side of her head. Maybe she had smacked it when the SUV hit her car, after all. If she had a concussion, that might explain the sudden appearance of a door that no one else could see.

A shocked yelp slipped out of her mouth as the door handle whipped through the car between her and Walker, then disappeared through the backseat. Keira bit her lip.

“Uh . . . you okay?” The rumble of Walker’s voice shook her back to reality. He leaned forward in his seat, like he was on alert, as if she might throw up or freak out. It was the same way people in school looked at Kendall Philips last year, after her boyfriend dumped her and she’d lost it and smashed in his locker door with a softball bat.

She glanced in the rearview mirror. The door was gone—the only thing behind them was a rusted-out Cadillac. Keira dropped her hand from her head. Her scalp wasn’t tender at all—no lumps. No bumps. Whatever was wrong with her was obviously not from the wreck.

Obviously.

Anxious, she launched into a finger exercise, playing the notes on her lap. “I don’t know. I guess maybe I did crack my head, after all,” she said. “I’m seeing—my vision’s kind of funny.”

Walker’s next words were as careful as a Bach composition. “Funny how, exactly?”

She shook her head. She didn’t want him to think she was crazy. The thought of him shaking her off like some sort of lunatic he’d found muttering on the street corner made her ache.

The entrance to her neighborhood loomed on the right. “This is my turn.” She pointed. “Take the first two lefts and we’re the second house on the right.”

He fixed his eyes on the street in front of them and put on his turn signal. A muscle in his jaw jumped, and she noticed
that his knuckles had gone white around the steering wheel. “Seriously, Keira—if something’s wrong with your head, you can tell me. You
should
tell me.”

His sudden intensity sent a shiver through her. He didn’t seem cocky anymore, and there was an edge in his demeanor that she hadn’t seen before. She licked her lips, weighing her response. In her bag, her phone began to ring. The ridiculous ringtone broke the tension in the car.

“I bet that’s my mom.” She bent and wrenched open the front pocket of her bag, digging frantically until she came up with her phone. Keira had never been so grateful for a distraction—even if it did mean dealing with a thousand questions from her panicked mother.

Chapter Nine

“K
EIRA?!
I
JUST GOT
your message.” Her mother sounded frantic. Keira could hear the slip-slosh noise of papers being thrown into desk drawers. “What happened? Where are you? I’m coming right now.”

“Mom,
calm down.
I’m fine. I called the insurance company and a tow truck, and Walker’s driving me home. The car . . . ” She hesitated, seeing the damage in her mind’s eye. “The car’s pretty bad.”

“I don’t care one whit about that old car, as long as you’re not hurt. And who on earth is Walker?” Her mother demanded. “I haven’t heard that name before.”

“He’s just a friend, Mom. From the music store.”

Walker shot her a sly look when she said the word “friend.” The way his lips quirked up at the corners said that he had every intention of making a liar out of her, but then his face darkened. He cracked his neck uncomfortably.

Keira watched him out of the corner of her eye. “We were having coffee before the guy ran into me. Walker stayed to help.”

Her mom made a skeptical noise. She always made little “oh, it’s too bad you’re not going to the dance with all of your friends” comments when homecoming and the winter ball rolled around, but Keira knew that her mom was secretly relieved that she didn’t date. It was one less thing to worry about.

“Well, I’d like to meet him. I need to thank him, anyway. I can’t believe I wasn’t available when you called. The
one
time I had to take shorthand all week, and
this
happens. And where is your father? Did you try him at work?”

“I did, but it went straight to voice mail.”

“Oh, nice,” her mom snarked.

Walker pulled into the driveway, and Keira felt a rising flood of embarrassment lapping at her ankles. She saw the faded siding and the wild tangle of untrimmed bushes with fresh eyes. It was all so shabby.

“Mom, we’re here. I’m gonna go, and I’ll see—”

“Wait,” her mother interrupted. “I’m in the car. Have Walker stay for a few minutes. I want to meet him.”

“Mom, we’re just
friends
. And I’m sure Walker has other stuff to do tonight, besides hanging out until you get home.”

Walker turned off the car. “Nope,” he said, loud enough for her mother to hear. “I’d be happy to stay and say ‘hi’ to your mom. Besides—” He lowered his voice enough that the phone wouldn’t catch it. “If your ‘vision’s funny’ then you shouldn’t really be here alone.” He raised his eyebrow pointedly.

“Good,” her mother chirped in Keira’s ear. “I won’t be more than fifteen minutes. Twenty, tops, if there’s traffic. See you then!”

Keira ended the call and closed her eyes. When she opened them, Walker was staring at her expectantly.

“Well, are you going to invite me in?”

She grabbed her bag off the floor without even bothering to zip it shut. “Fine. Come on in. But when my mother starts with the fake Junior League act and the snippy comments about the mistakes people make when they’re young, don’t expect me to rescue you.”

Walker’s charcoal eyes widened. “Hey. I
did
save you from having to ride home with Shrimp.”

Keira’s shoulders sagged. He was right. He’d done her a favor and she was being prickly as a thistle. Just because he’d managed to slip through all her hot-guy defenses didn’t make it okay for her to act like a brat.

“Sorry. You’re right. Mostly, I’m embarrassed about what my mother’s going to put you through when she gets here.”

“Mostly?”

Keira paused. “Yeah. The rest of it is that I don’t get exactly what’s going on here.” With her finger, she drew an oval in the air between herself and Walker. “I don’t like that feeling. It makes me grumpy.”

Walker stretched his hand toward her, slow enough that she had time to back away if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to move away from his touch. She stayed where she was and let him brush back a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know exactly what’s going on here either. You’re not the only one whose plans
this
”—he drew the same oval in the air that Keira had—“might be messing with.”

Keira cocked her head to the side. “Really? What are your ‘plans,’ anyway?”

“You know, get a degree in music engineering, total domination of the human race—the usual sort of stuff.” With the same devilish smile he gave her every time they shared a joke—the smile Keira was already starting to think of as
her
smile—Walker swung open his door and stepped out of the car.

Things looked even worse inside the house. Her father’s breakfast dishes were congealing on the kitchen counter, and a pile of laundry was strewn across the dining room table. A pair of her underwear, decorated with hot-pink polka dots, lay draped across the top like the flag at the summit of a mountain. She shoved the pile onto one of the chairs, burying the underwear beneath a couple of T-shirts.

“Sorry—it’s not usually this messy in here. My parents have both been working a lot.” She was babbling.

She hated babbling.

She shut her mouth and turned to Walker. There was a twinkle in his eyes that made her wonder if she hadn’t been fast enough with the laundry.

“So. This is the wonder that is my house,” she said. “We can wait for my mom in the living room, or sit at the kitchen table . . . ”

“I want to hear you play.”

“You—really?”

Walker stepped close to her. The tips of his black boots brushed against her shoes and he took her hand. Her fingers curled around his, and she let him lead her toward the gleaming piano.

“This is gorgeous,” he said, running his finger around the curve at the back of the piano.

“Thanks. My uncle left it to us when he died. It’s pretty much the only nice thing in our house.”

Walker peered at the rows of strings and hammers beneath the open top. “It’s so . . . complicated.”

“Not really.” Keira slid onto the bench, feeling more comfortable than she had all afternoon. “But wait until you hear how it sounds.”

She positioned her hands above the keyboard, hesitating for a moment while she decided what to play. She’d been
practicing the new Beethoven piece so often that it was waiting in the tips of her fingers, but it didn’t fit what she was feeling right then, and it wasn’t 100 percent perfect yet. She didn’t play anything for anyone unless it was perfect.

Finally, something came to mind. She hadn’t practiced the piece in ages, but it would be exactly right. Rachmaninoff. The Prelude in C-sharp minor. With her fingers poised on the keys and her feet on the pedals, she started to play, her left hand reaching way down the keyboard for the low notes that marked the first lines. The music flowed through the piano, filling the room with its dark, sweet sound. Her eyes closed for a moment as the tempo built, rising in intensity until the room crackled with it. Her fingers flew over the keys, and the rhythmic thrum of her foot against the pedal was as natural as breathing. The music carried her up, sweeping her into the crescendo, washing away all her tension and uncertainty.